| > The majority are lazy, and if given money, will sit watching reality TV and stuffing their face with ice cream. I'm sure you can cite evidence of this claim from basic income pilot programs, then? (there has been a few). > Most people are also selfish. The idea that they'll all start doing things to benefit others is a bit far fetched. Here we agree, but it's beside the point as there's a very good reason for them to do things to benefit themselves that will have the side effect of benefiting others: They'll make more money. The point of basic income programs is to create a lower threshold that is predictable, simple to administer and unconditional. It's not to create a ceiling on income. > Communism (Which is what this is), has failed. This is quite comical, because it has nothing to do with communism, and indeed the idea predates socialism by about 300 years. It has over the centuries had supporters spanning large parts of the political spectrum. One of the important aspects of basic income is that it is not particularly ideological in its basic form: There's no implication that the basic income is meant for widespread redistribution, though some proponents wants it to be high enough for that. Many proponents, in fact, specifically makes the argument that done properly it may potentially reduce government expenditure by eliminating a whole host of benefits programs that are expensive to run and hence cut administrative costs. This is an argument often made by liberalists (as in classical liberals by the European definition) for example. In fact, if you were to push for a form of basic income that would be high enough to make it something most people would happily live on if they could otherwise work, it would be fundamentally at odds with Marx ideas of communism. In "Critique of The Gotha Programme" he skewered the idea that communism involved equal pay, by pointing out that this would be extremely unfair: People have different needs. Instead, according to Marx, the goal for a communist society should be from each according to ability, to each according to need - in other words: while a basic income could fit within a communist framework, as the only source of income it would just create different problems: it would overpay people who choose to not contribute even though they are able to, and would underpay people with special needs. This, incidentally is also the reason pretty much no proponents - regardless where they fall on the political spectrum - advocate a basic income that is particularly high. It's called basic income for a reason. |