Re:We Need a Basic Income Guarantee
by dragonwriter on Tuesday September 03, 2013 @12:46PM
(#6321985)
> Essentially, by keeping the basic income guarantee sufficiently low that most people don't want to do that.
Which, it should be noted, it is pretty much economically impossible not to do except in the very short term, barring vast increases in productivity (or decreases in people's expectations of acceptable living standards.)
> There are 3.5 million truck drivers in the USA. How do you retrain a 55-year old truck driver to be a software engineer? If you can't, should he go work at Burger King for a much lower wage instead?
And, even if you can, how do you do it when he still needs to work full-time to pay his existing bills?
Which, it should be noted, it is pretty much economically impossible not to do except in the very short term, barring vast increases in productivity (or decreases in people's expectations of acceptable living standards.)
> There are 3.5 million truck drivers in the USA. How do you retrain a 55-year old truck driver to be a software engineer? If you can't, should he go work at Burger King for a much lower wage instead?
And, even if you can, how do you do it when he still needs to work full-time to pay his existing bills?