Universal basic income is the case that gives the rich, ruling class the maximum power over everyone else. Everyone gets dependent on government money, and it takes an act of Congress to increase the baseline pay.
I disagree, BI doesn't mean that people would be more (or less) dependent on government money. BI is about a different structure of income redistribution, the magnitude of income redistribution is a different problem. The BI could be $1 per year.
Although what many BI proponents actually want is to increase the magnitude of income redistribution, they want a system where you get livable money even if you don't work, no question asked.
It's a horrendous idea for several reasons. Are we so out of ideas to fix our problems, we're now saying that working less and giving away money to people is the answer?
When you give away money without the commensurate work in a capitalist economy, prices explode, and inflation is the same as lower wages. We get away with subsidizing food. Food is cheap, there's a massive supply.
Things that we've declared human rights and there is not an unlimited supply..
Medical care and college tuition. Both we've directed massive capital inflows towards. We don't even raid the treasury for the latter, we put the crushing debt on the kids. At best, permanently making their future a little dimmer.
This basic income crap is not the answer. These people need to learn something about how capitalism works. Only giving value to others is compensated. Do some powerful folks extract too much from the system. Yes. Nothing a tweak of the tax code wouldn't fix. We need some laws changed for sure. They won't do it though, too many cowards.
... No. That's not how those numbers are related. Consider a case where I give every US citizen $500/mo, and a software engineer makes an additional $5000/mo. Then 11 unemployed persons have the same spending power as a software engineer, which is markedly different from 0...
Wouldn't it lead to massive inflation making those $500 practically worthless? The engineer's nominal salary would rise meaning you would need a magnitude more unemployed persons to have the same spending power.
It is not increasing the supply of money, so I don't see why it would cause inflation. Even if it did cause dramatic inflation $500 would become the new $250 not the new 0.
