It took almost five thousand years to stop openly owning other human beings (and people still do it with different names today, but at least we don't condone it anymore).
Basic income is inevitable in any society that maintains a capitalist market economy post-scarcity. If the US wants to destroy itself by being backwards (cough, healthcare, measurement units, date format, DST, national holidays, PTO, regressive welfare, etc) it cannot hold the rest of the world back forever.
>It took almost five thousand years to stop openly owning other human beings (and people still do it with different names today, but at least we don't condone it anymore).
In the US it never stopped. It merely became only the right of corporations and the state via prisons. Maybe it stopped in other countries, but how is that different than saying it stopped at the first civilization that banned slavery?
It would happen as soon as enough people were affected such that producers of goods as well as unemployed consumers demand it from the congress and the rest of society. What that tipping point will be I dont know, but it's almost inevitable, if the current trend continues unabated.
Better late than never. It did eventually happen, if late. I'm not saying basic income is on the horizon, but if trends continue into the future, we will see something resembling it.
Nixon and team considered negative income taxes back in the seventies when it looked like we were in a downward spiral. Nixon might have been a thief and a liar but above all else he was practical.
Nope. The Tea Party will scream and yell that the government wants to give welfare queens Cadillacs, and that's all anyone will hear.
I want Basic Income to happen. But I also know that there are a lot of people who benefit from it not happening, mostly cheap-ass crappy bosses who don't want workers to have any alternative, and so are stuck there.
