Re:A basic income could boost the US economy by $2.5 trillion
by WorldMaker on Monday November 27, 2017 @01:01PM
(#15789430)
Right, at the very least, it's hard to improve a community when most of that community's members are working 60+ hour weeks just to provide for basic necessities.
Most companies don't have incentives to care about the communities their employees are from, or the skills to help. It's not deemed productive or efficient in current corporate interests to use corporate wealth to ensure their employees have healthy home lives in healthy communities. (Shareholders, C-Suite, board members most companies certainly care enough about their home lives/communities right now, but outside of the investor class there's very little financial empathy and little incentive to have empathy because that stuff doesn't necessarily show up on a quarterly report.)
Re:A basic income could boost the US economy by $2.5 trillion
by sliverstorm on Monday November 27, 2017 @01:05PM
(#15789473)
Frankly I guess we have a fundamental disagreement, IMO public works (which is what the original comment was talking about) are best conducted by the public sector, not by John down the street in his spare time. Now, I do agree John will probably make his neighborhood just a nicer place to be if he has time & discretionary income.
It's very hard to acquire those skill sets if you need to choose between having enough money to pay the bills, and spending time and money on acquiring those skills. Or alternatively, it's a lot easier to attract people with those skills into your community if you have the money to pay them for their skills.
My point remains, I think you'd see people in blighted areas sink a lot more of their resources into community improvement if the opportunity cost of doing so weren't as cripplingly high as it is now.