General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsGerman experiment will test whether the welfare state can be replaced by a basic guaranteed income
...
If basic income were to be implemented, the government would ultimately abolish the bureaucratic welfare state and would instead divide the money equally across the total population, without basing the payouts on status or qualifications of the applicant.
"A basic income paid out to everyone could unleash enormous amounts of creativity," said Bohmeyer, who left his internet startup business before forming his basic payment experiment, according to a Chicago Tribune report.
...
Every few weeks, Bohmeyer picks more people through drawings to receive the monthly checks. The experiment team picks from a pool of more than 66,000 applicants. Drawings take place whenever enough donations are collected. So far, a total of 31,449 people have made donations.
Germany is not the only country considering implementing universal basic income; several other European countries have floated the idea, too.
http://www.rawstory.com/2015/12/german-experiment-will-test-whether-the-welfare-state-can-be-replaced-by-a-basic-guaranteed-income/
Android3.14
(5,402 posts)I've been reading up this, and the issue I have is what "basic income" implies as far as providing basic needs or what corporate governments would define as basic needs, the usage of the money to pay down debt, and the impact of population growth on the program.
A 3x6 foot area in a warehouse could be a "basic" shelter with multivitamins and gruel served each day as food, with the majority of the money going to corporations running the communal flophouses like for-profit prisons. With rising populations, how we define basic is important.
Do people have the right to use the money to pay off their debt? Then the poor become even more the prey of the wealthy financial industry.
I like the idea, but it looks fraught with hazards. (fraught - I don;t think I ever used that word in writing until this morning).
madville
(7,397 posts)With technological advances in automation, robotics and artificial intelligence there will be fewer and fewer human jobs in the coming decades.
Jerry442
(1,265 posts)...sent up a " negative income tax" trial balloon. The idea actually has pretty broad support. It's not just a looney-toon concept held by a tiny handful of people.
ellenrr
(3,864 posts)Manifestor_of_Light
(21,046 posts)A little town implemented a guaranteed minimum income.
Result: Crime went down, employment went up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincome
QUOTE: A final report was never issued, but Manitoban economist Evelyn Forget (/fɔrˈʒeɪ/) conducted an analysis of the program in 2009 which was published in 2011.[5][6] She found that only new mothers and teenagers worked substantially less. Mothers with newborns stopped working because they wanted to stay at home longer with their babies, and teenagers worked less because they weren't under as much pressure to support their families, which resulted in more teenagers graduating. In addition, those who continued to work were given more opportunities to choose what type of work they did. Forget found that in the period that Mincome was administered, hospital visits dropped 8.5 percent, with fewer incidents of work-related injuries, and fewer emergency room visits from car accidents and domestic abuse.[7] Additionally, the period saw a reduction in rates of psychiatric hospitalization, and in the number of mental illness-related consultations with health professionals.[8][9]