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Comment by hackula1 | Hacker News Reader

I have no problem saying that people should have a right to minimum sustenance and medical care. If this was not the case, we would not bother giving either in prison. A doctor in an ER has a moral imperative to not deny life saving treatment due to lack of ability to pay. If someone is literally starving to death, let them eat the farmer's food; that is the price civilization pays for the truly destitute not to overthrow the system. "Rights" are a creation of humans, and we can choose to make them pragmatic and reasonable. The whole modern idea of personal property rights is not even that old.

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We give those (minimum sustenance & care) in prison because we absolutely deny the occupants any rights necessary to self-providance thereof.

Ancient religious rules required farmers to not take everything from their fields, instead leaving whatever was missed/fallen for the poor to gather for themselves. Notice that it involved the able-bodied poor making the effort to take advantage of benign neglect, and not idly waiting for the farmer to dole out a significant fraction of what he reaped. Contrast this with the modern "basic income guarantee" movement, which requires nothing of the able-bodied "poor" yet requires productive workers hand over a good chunk of their earnings; this new notion is hardly pragmatic and reasonable save to those who would benefit from it (aye, many would be quite satisfied living thereon).

Can you provide a citation to this?

> Contrast this with the modern "basic income guarantee" movement, which requires nothing of the able-bodied "poor" yet requires productive workers hand over a good chunk of their earnings

I don't believe anyone has put together how much is going to need to be collected to provide a basic minimum income. Also, if you subsidize energy (renewables), food (subsidized agriculture), and healthcare (all of which is going to benefit the populace as a whole and is therefore a sunk cost), there should be a minimal cash outlay as a basic income.

Where do you think the money for those subsides come from? Productive workers who pay taxes (under threat).

I'm assuming the citation you wanted was in reference to this? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gleaning The old testament outlines at least one example of this practice in the book of Ruth. I've heard of similar practices in other religious systems but I don't have handy citations for them.

EDIT: @zaphar: The person I responded to said "yet requires productive workers hand over a good chunk of their earnings". I asked for a citation regarding that statement. It was broad with no data backing it up.

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