[pp.int.general] Basic income - how does that fit into the pirate ideology?

[carlo von lynX]

On Wed, Jul 17, 2013 at 04:53:34PM +0200, Charly Pache wrote:
> There is no more a job for every working capable human (about 40% of the
> population works nowadays, and pays for the 100%, children, elders, it
> seems that after we introduce the UBI, 8% will stop working, probably a lot
> of working poors).

For 8% preferring not to work there will maybe be 16% finding a small
but nice job (that was previously done by others who were doing it just
because they were afraid of losing it.. like sunday shifts for example..)
with a small wage that improves on their basic income. So maybe there
will be people who are fine working on week-ends only.. and others who
finally get to enjoy their week-ends without being afraid to lose their jobs.

> The problem is that in the current system humans need a payed job to live.
> The first solution would have been to reduce progressivly everyones'
> workhours without being paid less (as the productivity increased thanks to
> new technologies). But it didn't happened this way. The workers work mostly
> 100% and the others have no more job.

UBI incentivates to redistribute workload more evenly... I think.

> The technological progress makes the owners of the production facilities
> earn more and more thanks to an increased productivity. There are less jobs
> but not less benefits. That shifts the overall money towards the richest in
> the society. The UBI is a solution to share this money among all the
> participants in the society, it's like everyone would become a SHAREHOLDER
> of the society, that's why we have to take the missing money where it is,
> by the super rich companies and people.

Yes, shareholder is a good picture. The US of A were meant to function
that way, but in reality only some are shareholders and some others are
just poor. The European way to have a population of shareholders is
more appropriately implemented by a UPI.

> About the financing, Richard Stallman is right. I would add as a small
> sarcastic footnote for Anouk: Earth is a planet that has the funds to do
> this.

We can choose to get it from the corporations, or to get it from property..
or we can tax ecologically and achieve a redistribution without having to
name it such.

> In our computations, it's true that for our country we need about 200
> billions swiss francs. About 110 billions of this amount will be transfered
> from salaries charges as it is today, 60 billions exists already as money
> for the socialcare, it means we would miss about 30 billions BUT with the
> UBI we will need less money for the overall administration of the state and
> examples (see Dauphin experience, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincome)
> show that a society with UBI spends less money for healthcare. The missing
> money, as said before, will have to be taken where it is: taxing the very
> rich companies and people. This is the price to pay to live in a more equal
> society. I see no problem there as these companies and people get very rich
> thanks to the efforts of the whole society.

Nice.

> Just one more remark, someone said that 'basic income would only cover half
> to little more than half of their cost of living', that's not true, the
> basic income will cover the full but minimal cost of living (food, roof,
> social activities).

By definition. Should it drop below the minimal cost of living it would
become non-constitutional (by the wording you are suggesting for your
constitution) thus it must be upgraded or the constitution must be revised.
Correct?

> And a big step forward will be that we will finally get rid of the working
> poors, who struggle nowadays for very little wages, they won't need to go
> into slavery to get the necessary money to live.

If the jobs suck so much that no-one wants to do them, wages will have to
be raised on them. But usually there are people who actually like such
jobs - so raising the wages a bit fixes that problem, I guess. Or the
company has to fix its business model.

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