> However, because no one _needs_ a job to live (because they can just live on the basic income)
Well, someone needs a job for the system to work, since it's presumably funded by taxation. At least one person (more realistically, a large portion of the population) still needs to be creating wealth.
I don't know that we necessarily need to have jobs.
We could fund it by taxation of revenue and wages, rather than just wages.
A company who fires all it's employees, and uses only robots, would see a huge surge in profit from reduced overhead. That profit could be taxed at something like 60%.
The owner(s) of the business still see windfall from the cost savings of laying everyone off, and the basic income now rises for everyone and can now cover the lost wages of the newly unemployed, using the companies new profits as a funding source
so..redistribution of income? This isn't anything new. I find it interesting that so many people on a forum about technology and business would suggest punishing businesses for using technology to make their business so efficient.
When the music and movie industry wanted more protection for their IP, many people here made comments about the horse and buggy/automobile and they just needed to "change with the times".
Why should employment be any different? If your job is being taken by a robot..maybe you should think about learning another skill.
>so..redistribution of income? This isn't anything new. I find it interesting that so many people on a forum about technology and business would suggest punishing businesses for using technology to make their business so efficient.
You may find that this is because not all of us value technology solely for what increased productivity it can provide over our current, but that we create and use technology to work /for/ us so that we can spend more time doing what we would rather.
> Well, someone needs a job for the system to work, since it's presumably funded by taxation.
Someone needs income that is taxed. That doesn't require a job, though in the short term (e.g., until we've reached a very advanced level of automation where most market income goes to capitalists who own completely automated firms), yes, it relies on lots of people still working -- its a replacement for poverty support programs which removes the disincentive for work that many of those contain in the eligibility criteria, and the administrative overhead that enforcing eligibility rules creates, not a replacement for work.
Most people, even if they aren't starving in the street, are willing to work more to get more. That certainly tails off at some level of combined work and income (as work has an increasing marginal cost and income a decreasing marginal value), but for the vast majority of the population, that's far above the level BI could conceivably be set at without vast technological progress.
I the think that we should add a single requirement to the basic income. logging on into a national library 5 days a week for a minimum of 1 hour a day. do vr classes. force them to complete and pass standard mathematics and physics. it might take them 10 years to reach calc 2 but at that point we'll have someone who can contribute. you could even teach material from patent applications.
It could balance itself out. If not enough people work, BI will drop and some of the people on BI will decide it's worth getting a job to live more comfortably.
Well, someone needs a job for the system to work, since it's presumably funded by taxation. At least one person (more realistically, a large portion of the population) still needs to be creating wealth.