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I've been reading through a lot of comments where people are bringing up several different arguments as to why this would never work, and here I'm going to explain why I think those arguments are wrong and that it absolutely would work here.
First we have the argument that people are lazy, and we would have a new class of people who take advantage of this system and just sit around playing video games all day without contributing to the system. This is a fair point, however, those people exist now anyway. The only difference is instead of jumping through hoops for food stamps, rent assistance, and all those other government programs, all American citizens would receive a set amount of money every month.
Another argument I've seen is that it would drive up the cost of everything, so it would negate the benefits of having that extra money. This is something that I just don't think is true at all, because the companies would still want you to be purchasing their products. Just because everyone will now have more money doesn't mean that they would have to charge a whole lot more, because there will still be competition in a free market economy, and so therefore they will still have competing companies offering similar goods for lower prices.
Then you have to wonder, what would then stop all the wealthy people from leaving? Wouldn't the rich people get annoyed at having to pay taxes that cover a basic income for the whole country? To that I say that really there wouldn't be much in the way of new taxes, because we already have an infrastructure that is in place to take care of the poor, and this new system would essentially just replace that. Also, if the super rich decide that this policy is enough for them to leave, then let them leave. Honestly a huge portion of our current problems are caused by the super wealthy owning our political system and working new laws in place that make them richer and screws over the rest of the country, so I think we would be better off without them.
Lastly, I just want to say the main reason I think this would be an amazing policy: It would eliminate the fear we have that gets in the way of most of us chasing our dreams. We live in a society where we have to work a job we complain about constantly in order to barely make ends meet. Sometimes we work our way up the ladder to be doing well financially, but we still live for the weekend and constantly complain about our job. We're making money, but we're miserable doing it; or we're barely scraping by trying to build up to doing what we're actually passionate about. We work in a crappy job trying to save up enough money and courage to finally tell our boss that we quit, and then finally go do what we wanted to be doing all along. I look at that as a huge waste of time, because in these jobs we hate we're only working barely hard enough to not get fired. If we were actually working in a field we were passionate about we would be working way harder, but it wouldn't feel like work because we'd be having fun doing it. We would then see a cultural shift toward a happier society that enjoys going to work, we would become more creative and adventurous in what we do, and we would suddenly become the most productive and exciting country in the world. I think this is exactly the shift America needs in order to get back on top and stop being the laughing stock of the world.
So what do you think? Do you think we could make it work as a society? I do.
Source: http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/14/opinion/wheeler-minimum-income
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