You scepticons
on basic income, a question.
How much would you need/month as an absolute minimum to have a roof over your head, buy basic food and have your health care covered on an absolute minimum level?
So not talking a comfy 3 room apartment and any money left for a holiday, a car or even a pet. You may need to struck a deal with your neighbors to use their wifi. Maybe you find a cheap shabby 1 room apartment, or can occupy a room of a friend or family temporarily and be able to pay them some for monthly costs. For arguments sake, I'll just guesstimate it at $500/month.
Would you loose in such a situation the incentive to find work? Most likely most people won't lose the incentive to work for such a minimalistic life style is generally not associated with happiness. All this money does is keeping you away from the poverty trap. Moreover, any money you make you can keep 100%, which enables people to work flexible hours and temp jobs. Think single moms for instance, or people needing to combine work and study.
In the Netherlands the absolute minimum social net is 850,- euros/month. However if you find work.. you only make financial progress if you make more than 850,- net/month. So that is a bad incentive to find work, accept part time or flex jobs. It also is an incentive to do black work and keep that on top of the 850,-. There are 850/mnth hill billies here in the street driving a Mercedes...
My idea for the Netherlands would be to replace this with a 400-500 euros/month unconditional basic income where you can keep the full extra money working. (Because basic income is calculated via income tax, there is some break-even point where you start to contribute to the national social net when you make more money) This is also of great help especially for young people clawing their way into the market. But these are just technicalities and the automated tax system can easily be calibrated to make it work smoothly, and indeed as Noddy says allows people who now work for the gvt big brother is watching you social security industry do something more useful.
Maybe you guys live on happily forever on $500/month and lost all incentive to work.. but me somehow doubteth that seriously
You seem to prefer hundreds of thousands of poor people trapped in poverty and misery, trailer parks, drug related criminality slums and so on. It generates jobs at the DEA! And the fun of burdening students with thens of thousands of debt will teach those young baby-boom suckers what it means to fight for survival in the combative USofA! The only save havens seems to be Wallstreet&Co. Or just suck yourself into a gvt job.. Obama will take Care of you.