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Comment by nawitus | Hacker News Reader

>It misses the fact that work is fulfilling for (most) people.

Basic income is not against working, it's point is to let people work in all kinds of situations. Old-fashion social security usually makes the tax rate for certain part-time / freelancing work 100% (e.g. $100 increase in pay can reduce benefits $100, therefore the actual marginal tax rate is 100% and most people won't do that work).

> But just paying people to breath has problems as well.

You can do that in most Nordic countries, and it has many more benefits than disadvantages. For example, you can walk safely everywhere because everyone has sufficient social security. Street robberies and whatnot are practically non-existent.

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> You can do that in most Nordic countries, and it has many more benefits than disadvantages. For example, you can walk safely everywhere because everyone has sufficient social security. Street robberies and whatnot are practically non-existent.

To me that sounds like an argument against BI. You're basically saying that we can have the social safety benefits of BI for only 10% of the cost by using means-tested programs . Since that's what the Nordic countries are doing, and according to you it works really well.

>You're basically saying that we can have the social safety benefits of BI for only 10% of the cost by using means-tested programs .

No, BI can cost the same amount as Nordic social security, while increasing motivation to work and helping people more. (Source in Finnish: http://www.vihreat.fi/files/liitto/Perustulolinjapaperi.pdf ).

Nordic social security works better than American social security, that's fore sure, but it can be improved on. The main problem currently is that social security assumes that people are either unemployed or employed full-time. This assumption is increasingly false. There's more and more part-time (and 'part-period', e.g. full-time for 3 days only etc.) and freelancing work.

Basic income really means social security without that assumption. If you work 0h/month, you get 100% social security. If you work 120h/month, you don't get anything (because you'll pay for the basic income through taxes). If you work 60h, you'll get someting in-between.

And there's no paper work or bureaucracy.

1) Work is not nearly as fulfilling as doing nothing for most people. I have no trouble admitting this to myself. And while I'd probably still do something, I'd no longer see any need to make any compromises to work together with anybody else. That would be satisfying. It would also be an economically negative proposition, but I'd learn a lot. Or at least, I'd feel I do.

2) About the "Nordic countries". WTF ? Have you looked at the crime stats for Malmo ?

Please note that the nordic countries are in a somewhat special situation just because of their location. They also have very few homeless. Of course, homelessness is a death penalty there, merely because of the weather. That means that in Nordic countries everybody has a house, and not made from wood, double glazing, brick, generally solid and everybody's inside before the sun is down. Breaking and entering after dark is insane.

>2) About the "Nordic countries". WTF ? Have you looked at the crime stats for Malmo ?

Yeah, well immigration can create major problems with crime.

>They also have very few homeless. Of course, homelessness is a death penalty there, merely because of the weather. That means that in Nordic countries everybody has a house, and not made from wood, double glazing, brick, generally solid and everybody's inside before the sun is down. Breaking and entering after dark is insane.

Yeah, because we have a good social security and everyone can get an apartment.

Or because homeless people just freeze to death quickly...

> And while I'd probably still do something, I'd no longer see any need to make any compromises to work together with anybody else.

How is this a problem, when all the essencial work is done by machines and people who do like to do those particular types of work?

"Work is fulfilling" is one of many illusions the society created to shield itself from the fact that we are still, as we have been for the entire history, slaves who can only either work or starve. We are used to this state of the world so much that we've invented many cultural memes so that we can feel good about it.

It is very similar to how people invent 1001 reasons why death is good and gives meaning for life. It doesn't. It's just we can't bear the sadness of our situation, so we invent excuses and stockholm-syndrome ourselves to avoid the pain.

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