News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Basic income by dejv on Wednesday August 12, 2009 @02:31AM (#757462)
Many european countries have something like basic income implemented. It mostly realy basic income, but you can survive on that some time.
Re:Basic income by eru on Wednesday August 12, 2009 @06:55AM (#757720)
Speaking for Germany: Basically yes. But it's split on numerous agencies and bureaucracies. Also it's not unconditional. And among the worst things: The effective marginal tax rate can be quite high for people with low income. I.e. you don't pay much taxes per se, but for each earned Euro above a certain threshold you have to forfeit one Euro of e.g. BAföG. Not a good incentive to work gradually more.
Re:Basic income by pbhjpbhj on Wednesday August 12, 2009 @08:27AM (#757870)
In the UK, we just got increased child benefit (new baby) and so our reduced council tax (local taxation based on [an imaginary] property value) has been increased. Net loss to us. Sadly we're not allowed to refuse the added child benefit.

Mind you the system is so complex that they couldn't tell us in advance what child benefit we'd get - presumably they just wait and see what number the computer spits out. This number appears to have a random perturbation.