Re:Basic income doesn't emphasize divisions between poor and...
by TheSpiceIsLife on Monday August 29, 2016 @10:54PM
(#12387160)
The factory owner already us a net contributor to the taxation that paid for that infrastructure and those services.
His or her issue isn't with taxation specifically, his or problem is with more taxation in general.
My issues with Basic Income are similar to those raised by PJ O'Rourke about government in general. Government is incompetent, and BI is a recipe for handing even more power to politicians. I'm not convinced that is a good idea.
This is only one way to split the pie. Another way to look at it is the division between people who earn their lot in life by working and people who collect economic rents from the commons. It seems only fair to me that those who collect rents should contribute more. This is the principle underlying the concept of the social dividend [0].
Take a factory owner, for example. They are net recipients of many societal benefits, including: roads, electricity, water, sewage removal, education and health care for their employees, favourable tax rates for their property, etc. For that factory owner to then turn around and cry foul at being called upon to be a net contributor to basic income is hypocritical bordering on antisocial.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_dividend