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A comment on Basic income doesn't emphasize divisions between poor and working people. Parent comment

Re:Basic income doesn't emphasize divisions between poor and... by sidlls on Monday August 29, 2016 @11:26AM (#12382489)
This treats rights (legal) as though they were laws of nature. I have yet to see convincing data or argument supporting this notion.

There is ample evidence from history that the legal construct called "rights" is in fact not absolute at all. In fact, all the data we have suggest that "rights" are in fact provided by the government. The mechanisms differ (e.g. the US's constitutional republic encodes government-defined rights in the Constitution and laws derived from it), but ultimately "rights" are something that people, in the forming of the government they live under, agree should exist.

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Re:Basic income doesn't emphasize divisions between poor and... by r_smart on Monday August 29, 2016 @01:59PM (#12383764)
The US constitution recognizes rights that are inherent to people and enumerates them in the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights does not grant the rights within it, it merely recognizes them. Theoretically, the government has no authority to infringe on these rights. Obviously, in practice this is different.
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