Replacing current benefits with a Universal Basic Income
If you don't know about UBI it's a system where everyone gets a given amount of money every month.
Why I support UBI:
- It effectively eliminates poverty by allocating a basic floor income to everyone citizen every month.
- It encourages less fraudulent behaviour like under the table work for people collecting benefits.
- Power to say no to undesirable jobs, and negotiate wages more effectively.
- Useful in the case of massive job displacement due to machines/AI.
- Unpaid/volunteer jobs are now rewarded. (This with platforms like steemit would be revolutionary.)
- No more invasive means testing (Everyone gets it.)
- Less inequality!
Some ways to fund it:
- Allocate resources from some of the other benefits programs.
- Cut some military spending. (This is more for the USA)
- Add a luxury tax
- Land value tax
- Carbon Tax
With other effective taxes you probably wouldn't have to add to income tax and can probably reduce it over time.
You can read more about basic income at these following websites.
http://www.basicincomecanada.org/
Other notable people I follow:
Scott Santens - http://www.scottsantens.com/
Federico Pistono - https://steemit.com/@federicopistono
Matt Orfalea - https://www.youtube.com/user/Orf
Would be awesome
Yeah it would
Some ways to fund it:
Well I think we'll see more sites like steemit in the future. I don't think joining steemit will fund UBI but it has other cool purposes. If you have enough in steem power, I guess it is a sort basic income in a way if you power down.
This seems like an extremely effective way to completely hollow out all people's will to produce goods and services. It's basic economics really - subsidize something and you will get more of it. Tax something and you will get less of it. This will subsidize mediocrity and stifle the entrepreneurial spirit that built Western Civilization. Simply would not work in real life.
What it eliminates is the motivation to do work that does not really need to be done. In real life, our priorities might change drastically, and people would still do all sorts of work for a variety of reasons.