Universal Basic Income

[SteelCurtain]

The 500 was just a number I threw in there without thinking too hard about it. You can lower the amount in your analyses as you see fit.

Again, how would you fund something like this?

My first thought would be tax penalties for companies that don't pay living wages, they need to subsidize the wages of their workers. (which will have the dual effect of companies either choosing to raise their employee's wages in order to pay the person rather than the government, or offsetting the cost itself.)

My second thought would be that when this problem gets deep enough and the effects ripple through (unemployment going up has an effect on crime and tax revenue) that it will actually cost less in the long run to pay people a UBI, seeing as you'll get a portion of that money back in taxes, whereas police spending and welfare programs are pure expenditures.

I disagree with this completely. I'm not against helping those that need it temporarily but this whole living your entire life on money given to you from the government just because is not acceptable.

---

And I know $500 was just a random number but geez how much are you making to think that would be okay to just give away? Until January I wasn't making $500 a week and was making decent enough money to live on. Now I make just over that and with four weeks of that I'm throwing money at my loans like it's nothing. I might as well quit my job and just live off the government for $2k a month doing nothing.

I agree that right now, this isn't necessary.

My argument for it is in the future when automation, modularization, and tech replacement affects major employment areas like the service industry, logistics, and continued losses in the manufacturing industry when we are going to have massive, widespread unemployment. When you can't be a waiter at Olive Garden or a cashier at WalMart anymore, what are we, as a society, going to do?