Reviews for Why Basic Income?

[SomebodyWhoDoesnt]

3 stars for the video, well stated, good music, decent animation...

2 argument against the premise of the theory... If there was a Basic Income, then where would the money to support those individuals come from? Easy Answer, the government... harder answer, the individuals not on the Basic Income programs, yet another tax towards on those individuals that are working to support themselves and their families... this will cause their income to be lower, (Slippery Slope I agree; however...) and then they will basically get to the point where they see their friends/family who have all that free time to spend with family, to do what they want and will get jealous, and why not... they are getting the same without the hours spent at the office/workplace. After sometime (another Slippery Slope, I agree), 80% of the work will be done by 20% of the people... hmmm, this sounds awful lot like communism, a slightly different version I agree, but isn't this the start of what the USSR originally wanted (argument #2), and since it was already tried once and failed, do you really want to repeat that?

adamanimates responds:

I suggest reading the Basic Income FAQ from reddit which I linked under the video:

https://www.reddit.com/r/BasicIncome/wiki/index

All of your concerns are addressed, and the idea has nothing to do with communism or the USSR. The policy was supported by Nixon and almost became reality for the US in 1970.

[OatmealPecheneg]

Nice quality of animation but it is just another utopia. BTW this thing seems communistic. I hate commies.
+10 for animation
-4 for politics

adamanimates responds:

I suggest reading "Utopia for Realists" by Rutger Bregman. It argues that we've become cynical to visions of a better future because many of the utopian visions of the past have actually come true. We're much richer than we used to be. Now the fight is whether to hoard those riches in the hands of a few, or use them to benefit all of society. We each have our positions in that debate.

By your logic though, Nixon was a communist. There was broad bi-partisan consensus for the ideas I'm talking about in the 60s and early 70s. Nixon's basic income plan was derailed by a study that said divorce rates would go up. Everyone then became more concerned about that. Turned out the data was analyzed wrong and divorce rates barely changed at all. We'd have this policy now if not for that.

[NverseMpossiblpRadox]

Well that sounds all fine and dandy in principle, but there's one simple reason why it couldn't work. Because there are TOO MANY DAMN PEOPLE. It's unfortunate that there are billionaires while there are people who can't get a job and have no money, but go ahead, do the math. All that wealth isn't enough to support all those people. The only way it could be done in principle is if we stopped having an income tax, and started having........ an asset tax. And that is a rabbit hole that no one will ever voluntarily dive into. You're going to need a full-blown communist revolution if anything like what you want to happen is to come to pass. Go ahead, make my day, figure it out. Take the entire market capitalization of walmart and exxon-mobil combined (half a trillion dollars) and divide it by the number of people on Earth (7 billion), you get 70. 70 bucks a person. That could feed the world for like a week or two. If we sacrificed walmart and exxon. And then 2 weeks later you'd be in the same situation sans walmart and exxon. Do you see how quickly all that massive wealth would vanish? No obviously not everyone on Earth would NEED the basic income, it could be like food stamps, where you get it only if you're at the bottom. Unfortunately most people ARE at the bottom, so that wouldn't cut off even an order of magnitude from just how FAST all the assets of the world would just evaporate if you tried to do anything like that social program. The super-rich are disgustingly rich but there are SO many damn people even so, that even if you did spread their wealth across the masses, it would be a drop in the bucket. It just wouldn't work. This is why the correct balance is something in between hard liberalism and hard conservatism. They're both correct, within certain parameters. Unfortunately humans are faulty creatures that fall for false dichotomies and they pick one extreme or the other. And add to that the additional baggage that comes with both groups, most egregiously that the political right is championed by religious zealots who want some Christian equivalent to sharia law to be legislated on all free nations (or at least the United States). This is why I would never be a politician. Also that I hate people. There's that too.

adamanimates responds:

I appreciate the concerns. While myself and lots of economists, like Thomas Piketty, would be in favor of a wealth tax, it's not necessary for a basic income. A form of it actually already exists in Alaska. They split the oil revenue among the population and it's called the Alaska Permanent Fund. It varies from year to year around $2000 each or so. It's less than I'd like, sure, but it shows that the principles work.

Money doesn't just disappear when you give it to lower-income people. They tend to spend it in their communities, and so it benefits the community many times over. When economists talk about the velocity of money, this is what they mean.

The 1950s and 1960s, when the economy was booming, the wealthiest Americans paid a top income tax rate of 91%. Today, their top rate is 43.4%. And there are so many loopholes in the tax code that you can probably cut it down a lot further if you have an accountant.

But even under today's tax rate, Basic Income is possible. It's just a more efficient way of distributing what we're already spending on lots of social programs. You give it directly instead of through bureaucrats who take a cut. The problem is we're taught not to trust the poor to spend it properly, even though all the evidence shows they do in fact spend it on what most improves their lives.

There's a new pilot program coming up this year in Ontario that is going to test out replacing welfare payments with basic income in three cities. The policy is closer to implementation than you might think. Economists have done the math and it is affordable. Check out the 'math' link up above if you're interested.

[Horsenwelles]

money as a concept is flawed. it is a "debt system" so why not just everyone take objects they need or want for free?

adamanimates responds:

It's already happening with digital goods. When 3D printing gets better, it will start happening with physical goods too.

I think that as long as there's scarcity though, money systems prevent fights over resources. Lots of better ways to implement them though.

[grimview]

I proved my sister wasn't doing her fair share because the rarely used large pot kept showing up on my day, as result mom ended both our allowances. We've been hearing since the 50's that robots would eliminate all jobs yet only the elevator operator job has been eliminated but many new jobs have been created. Minimum income is the first step the slavery & the dream of children, because the government give just enough to get by & takes it way to force you to do a job. I spent year stuck in warehouses temp job, & there's no way I'd of worked there if I did not have too. Unemployed includes children, spouses, elderly. Instead try managing debt, as no one buys their house for cash.

adamanimates responds:

We definitely have been hearing since the 50s that robots will eliminate jobs. But I think it's a mistake to conclude that it's not ever going to happen because it hasn't happened yet.

Maybe in your own life you only see the elevator job getting eliminated, but I see it everywhere. Warehouse jobs like you mentioned being done by machines that organize shelves, self-checkouts, self-driving cars and trucks, accounting software, and even animation. Software has changed things so that one person like me can do the job that would have taken six people 20 years ago. We are much more productive now, but wages have not risen since the 70s.

It is the opinion of many economists, not just "the dream of children," that workers should be entitled to the gains made by rising productivity.