[beeglebug]

Communism: "A theory or system of social organization in which all property is owned by the community, and each person contributes and receives according to their ability and needs."

Basic Income: "An income unconditionally granted to all on an individual basis, without means test or work requirement."

I dunno, they sound pretty different to me.

[logfromblammo]

I can make it more clear.

Communism: From each according to his ability; to each according to his need.

Basic Income: From each according to his willingness to work; to each according to his need, plus a share of society's surplus production proportionate to the market value of his contributions.

In the event where people are as a whole unwilling to contribute an amount greater than necessary to meet everyone's basic needs, Basic Income is very similar to Communism. There is no additional incentive to work harder, because any excess you produce is immediately applied to the shortfall. If you really bust your ass instead of skating by, everyone gets an extra roll of toilet paper this year.

If people are generally willing to contribute more than is strictly necessary to keep everyone else alive and healthy, they are very different. Once everyone reaches that critical tipping point, additional voluntary effort is rewarded by the ability to get things you want in addition to the things you need. And that is probably incentive enough to keep the economy from tipping back into "looks like Communism" mode. If you bust your ass instead of skating by, you, personally, can get your very own expensive thingamabob. And that allows someone else to work a job making those expensive thingamabobs, which in turn allows them to get an uncheap doohickey.

As such, it seems rather important to always calculate the "needs" in such a way that people are always incentivized to work, or to work harder than they otherwise would.

[kentt]

There are different if course. I think other people are saying they have very similar flaws, not that they are the same.

[anticon]

So in effect Basic Income is even worse as it doesn't means test recipients. If you're a billionaire, the state is still going to give you money.

[mkingston]

Yes, but the state will take more than it gives from the billionaire. This is actually more bureaucratically efficient than manually means testing every possible recipient.

[anticon]

How would they take more from the billionaire? Means test them? What if they're asset rich, cash poor... or if they have no income? The whole idea is unworkable. It's like it's been dreamed up by a 5 year old.

[dtech]

> How would they take more from the billionaire?

We have this obscure system that has been around for a few thousand years to do this. It's called "taxes".

[mkingston]

In the current system, yes. But at least we do away with one set of means testing. I would actually argue for a flat tax rate in the presence of a basic income. As for "asset rich, cash poor, no income" there are plenty of ideas out there for capital or capital gains taxes.

[bitJericho]

The point of it is that our technology is far outpacing our own capabilities, and pretty soon you'll have to literally become a robot in order to compete for basic income. Instead of allowing only the 1 percent of the rich people to own everybody else, we'll have them pay for everyone to live comfortably so they can do good works, while the rich continue to have their robots do all the work. Everybody wins.