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A comment on Universal basic income: A nonprofit is about to test it in a big way. Parent comment

Re:Universal basic income: A nonprofit is about to test it i... by nksjndfdf on Friday April 15, 2016 @03:57PM (#11507175)
A very similar idea to basic income has been tried and failed miserably because it ends up as employer subsidies.

If you are willing to work for X money a year, and you get a basic income of Y money a year, then you will be willing to work for X - Y money per year if other conditions don't change. This is will end up as tax-payers subsidizing corporations in the long run.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speenhamland_system

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Re:Universal basic income: A nonprofit is about to test it i... by prodigal_erik on Friday April 15, 2016 @04:03PM (#11507220)
If Y is enough to live on, you might decide X is not enough to keep you doing that job and look for something else.
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Re:Universal basic income: A nonprofit is about to test it i... by nksjndfdf on Friday April 15, 2016 @04:11PM (#11507269)
It depends what you mean my 'enough to live on', because you can live on very little or no income, but you won't live well. At our current state we cannot provide enough for everybody for free, this might be possible in the future, but not for the next 50 years. Basic income does not fit well with our current system, it would be wiser to invest that money into useful projects such as free healthcare, education, transportation in my opinion.
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