This is not by chance either. The idea of fiscal freedoms comes at the cost of fiscal safety nets. Where you draw that line is a sliding scale of course, but i still fair to see how this article is speaking a libertarian mindset.
I disagree. As a libertarian-socialist, I think we can take care of ourselves while pursuing freedom in regards to economics.
In our current system, we judge people based on their employment, history, and need, and then select people to give benefits to. There are problems with this. Bureaucracy, favouritism, politicking, etc.
With a basic income, we can reduce spending by abolishing all social assistance, reduce the amount of government employees by firing the bureaucrats who used to deny/approve people for benefits, and simply guarantee everyone a minimum amount of support. This has the benefits of reducing bureaucracy, favouritism, and politicking.
I would love to see the numbers that show a no-questions-asked basic income would be cheaper than the present social assistance monies.
There are a lot of logistics here. How do we prove you did not already get your check? What about those without mailing addresses. Or ID's? Is the basic income adjusted for families of 1 vs 7?
This idea of a minimalist ruleset for financial assistance seems like it is great at first, but will inevitably just get more and more bloated (and costly) as you actually implement it.
Most Nordic social democracies already know the answers to those questions. Basic income could be used to reduce spending. I advocate a basic income model which doesn't reduce countries to these countries, though.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincome
From the article: "She found that only new mothers and teenagers worked substantially less. Mothers with newborns stopped working because they wanted to stay at home longer with their babies, and teenagers worked less because they weren't under as much pressure to support their families".
To me that sounds like more adults would work, while those who have other obligations (childbearing) or goals (study, creative, startups) can focus on that.
I'm not saying it would be cheaper, but providing a guaranteed minimum to all adults, would remove the need for the other programs, saving THAT money. It would not pay for it completely. Removing the government jobs that oversee most of the selection and verification (fact checking if the person is pursuing offers) could be eliminated. This could also save money. Again not enough, but enough to help sigificantly.
> There are a lot of logistics here.
Absolutely. We need to take risks for rewards though, and there must be a way to test this without hurting the whole economy, but we need to all agree to take that risk before we work on the next step.
> How do we prove you did not already get your check?
Great question. My guess would be you only provide one per person per period. Any duplications would be search for via software, then again by a human. Any proven duplication will be deducted. Rinse and repeat, minimal bureaucracy. The government always pays me/requires me to pay them every year, but even though its not perfect, it works for the most part.
> Is the basic income adjusted for families of 1 vs 7?
In my mind it would be a set amount per adult. The argument that we need to provide more for larger families creates odd and sad circumstances of child farms and generational welfare homes. People need to start becoming responsible for their families. We'd still have child services. Besides, this shouldn't be comfortable for a single mother living alone who isn't working. These people can get family or charity to help them, not taxes. It SHOULD be comfortable for a single mother working 15 hours a week though, which would help a lot of people out there.
> This idea of a minimalist ruleset for financial assistance seems like it is great at first, but will inevitably just get more and more bloated (and costly) as you actually implement it.
Well, you could argue are current system will only get more bloated and costly as well (which is has). A major reform is necessary eventually, and this is an innovative and modern potential solution we should SERIOUSLY investigate past talking and move towards researching through small implementations.
Here's a simple case of a prima facie case for economic reparations in the form of unemployment benefit: the government actively manages economic policy to ensure unemployment doesn't fall so low as to stimulate wage inflation. That's not speculation or conspiracy theory; it's explicitly stated as the objective of effective monetary policy in the economic literature. People are unemployed as a direct result of a policy aimed at ensuring macroeconomic stability. Therefore, some form of unemployment insurance is justified (as, for that matter, is expecting the beneficiaries of said economic stability to subsidise it)
NB. I realise that some libertarians would prefer a "gold standard". But the logical consequence is the same: an arbitrary decision of the government to restrict the currency supply[1] in the interests of preventing inflation causes people to be unable to find work for a period of time. Ceteris Paribus, many _more_ people since credit would be a lot more expensive under a gold standard
[1]in this case to "the quantity of gold held in the Fed", which actually sounds a lot less "free market" than the status quo of to "the amount of credit private banks are willing to supply given the Fed's interest rate"
There is an actual philosophy which defends individual freedom from aggression. Objectivism. About 5% of the whole philosophy deals with these kinds of issues.