r/BasicIncome

I've been thinking about an alternative to people needing to work overtime or multiple jobs just to meet a basic living standard, and wanted to hear what people think.

Suppose a full-time employee (40 hours per week) earns less than a locally defined livable wage.

Rather than expecting them to work additional hours, the government would pay the employee the difference so they receive a livable income. However, the government would also track those payments by employer and later recover the cost through an employer-specific tax.

The intended incentives would be:

* Workers receive a livable income without delay.
* Employers who rely on paying below a livable wage still bear the financial responsibility.
* Taxpayers aren't permanently subsidizing low wages.
* Employers already paying a livable wage wouldn't face the additional tax.
* Workers would be less dependent on overtime or second jobs to make ends meet, which could potentially free up some work hours for people who are unemployed or underemployed.

What economic effects would you expect? Would this create better incentives than increasing the minimum wage, or would it introduce new problems such as reduced hiring, increased automation, administrative complexity, or unintended distortions in the labour market?

One of the goals would be to make a standard 40-hour workweek sufficient to meet a basic living standard while reducing the need for overtime simply to earn enough to live.

https://www.steelman.press/people/dario-amodei/articles/work

This is the first time I've encountered this specific argument. From how I understand it:

If AI automates 50% of jobs while leaving the rest untouched, half the population gets declared useless and the other half doesn't. Basically a caste fracture. But if AI exceeds all humans at everything at once, society faces a collective reckoning instead. The worst outcome isn't maximum job loss, it's a breakdown into useful / not-needed.

This is especially interesting in light of the fronteir models being restricted...

Will it cause a broader displacement to happen because the models are gatekept for a few years OR does it make the partial displacement even more severe because a limited number of people have access to the frontier (his zeroth world economy idea)?

Curious, what do y'all think?

Hear me out: If the higher ups are worried that the younger generation will not produce enough children to support the older populations, and AI is taking a lot of jobs, shouldn't AI pay income tax and help out in that way?

I’m 24 and unsure what to think about this future. With the way things are going and how fast the world is advancing it seems hard to believe that a basic income won’t be reality in the near future. This makes me think there is no reason to be investing heavily into retirement and to enjoy life more.

Most debates focus on answers.

Should there be a basic income?

How much should it be?

How should it be funded?

Who should qualify?

Yet answers exist within the boundaries of a question.

A question does more than seek information.

It defines the space in which solutions are allowed to exist.

The questions we ask determine which solutions we are even capable of imagining.

For most of human history, income was closely tied to human labor because human labor was the primary productive force.

But as automation and AI continue to expand, I wonder whether some of our economic assumptions are becoming as invisible as the questions that created them.

When we asked how to make candles burn longer, we were already assuming that light had to come from a flame.

When we asked how to travel faster on horseback, we were assuming that transportation depended on animals.

Inherited questions often become invisible. We become so accustomed to them that they feel like reality itself.

We stop questioning the question.

If productive value can increasingly be generated without human labor in the traditional sense, what assumptions about work, income, and economic participation might we no longer be questioning?

Hi, I am in Canada Unfortunately my Work visa ended in March so I was out of work for a few months and before that I took a month or two off to study for my exams, so this Depleted all my savings and My credit cards are maxxed out… Scotia, BMO, Triangle, Amex, PC and fairstone…. Fortunately I just got a new visa and a job so i can support myself But the debt is just too much at this point and i have been considering consumer proposal for a few months…

I never thought it would come to this as i only kept credit cards as a worst case scenario but unfortunately it has come to this…

Biggest issue is that I know i can’t payoff this debt if keep doing a job so I have a side hustle I wanted to do to earn more money which is Video editing and content creation I have been learning it since last month.. I needed some high gadgets for it so I bought pretty decent ones as they can serve me well for a few years…. Now I need some advice on how i can get my proposal approved I don’t mind my credit score getting ruined because When my side hustle starts paying off I can make everything back … but for the next year I am pretty tight…

I know creditors will check my recent purchases and it would raise red flags but it was necessary for me to invest in my venture and take risk … I hear they check your last 4-5 months history …Should I stop using my credit cards and keep paying minimum balance for a few months to make my history look clean ..?

What are the chances my proposal will be approved..?