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Re:Request For Research: Basic Income by martythemaniak on Wednesday January 27, 2016 @03:14PM (#10982844)
Indeed, I'm skeptical of anything that promises to free people from work. I think of it as a mobility scooter for healthy people - the idea of not having to walk and be tired might sound appealing, but the actual use will leave you in much worse shape.

Japan seems to have one solution to this problem. It's a culture that highly discourages idleness, yet also aims to look after people's welfare, so they have a very large number of (practically speaking) quite useless jobs - crossing guards on parking lot exits and streets with no traffic, platform attendants, park attendands, etc. It was quite weird seeing this at first, but once I started thinking about it as a socially acceptable form of welfare, it made a lot of sense.

I don't think their system will work here (serving people is seen quite positively there, whereas here it is often looked down upon here), but it is a good working example.

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