I've been rolling something around in my head.
If everyone receives Minimum Basic Income, what happens to all the relationships where one of the individuals no longer has to depend on the other(s) to survive?
Just let that marinate for a moment.
Not just the economic landscape but the social landscape could be transformed.
Not for nothing, but this is literally part of the entire point of Universal Basic Income.
When abused people can just literally walk away, knowing they can still have enough money to live, the world will be a lot less sheltering of abusers and that is a massive fucking benefit.
It gets better than that, if we go with my ideal UBI scenario, in which we peg UBI to "enough to live in any major metropolitan city in the country" and do NOT adjust it for cost of living.
Suddenly, the poverty and scrabbling for survival of rural areas? Gone. That UBI will go a whole long fucking way out there. Suddenly, people who had to move to the cities to get jobs that paid enough? Can afford to move back. Heck, they can afford to get decent fucking broadband out there and continue working, just, not in the city. Suddenly, people who live in rural areas but want to move to the cities with like-minded people? That's affordable, too. Suddenly, people who want to have a bigger house, but are stuck in a tiny apartment in a city? They can afford to move out to where there are bigger houses.
Universal Basic Income would realign our whole damn society, and I think it would long-term be for the better.
[ ID: tweet by athelind: "Basic Income is not a 'solution' to the 'problem' of automation. It is the FULLFILLMENT of the PROMISE of automation." /ID ]
UBI would not only give abused people the freedom to leave bad situations and end hunger and homelessness, it would force corporations to pay reasonable wages to attract people to work crap jobs, which the corpos could then deduct from their (higher, to pay for UBI) taxes, creating a positive feedback loop that encourages better pay
many would use UBI to quit abusive jobs and find better jobs even if they pay less, because their costs of living are paid for
many would start small businesses, do crafts and handiwork, create art and media, increase their education and health (physical and mental), dive into science and research, and so forth. we'd see a boom in innovation and invention, and the world would become a better place for most folks
so, to appease conservatives: the economic argument is that the economy would grow a great deal. some tests that show it works in the real world:
heck, Ireland is already testing UBI for artists, and wants to implement it widely:
lots more info on Wikipedia:
the only argument against UBI comes from those who'd pay greater taxes - big corporations and the ultra-rich - but they'd do fine, because now there'd be more consumers of their products and services. and if they're not providing anything to society that would benefit from others doing better, well, they don't deserve to benefit from society
there's literally no reason to not implement UBI
