Basic income is a nice theory, but completely ignores the financing part. The money has to come from somewhere.
I would be really fine with receiving a basic income. From the social side I would support it. People can do what they like, like artists, developers, and creative people. May be there will be the next business opportunity, startup from that work. Yes, may be other people are lazy, that is like today.
There is a big BUT. Where does the money comes from to support this basic income? All those experiments, which are regarded as successful had the wonderful position, that the money came from outside. From the outside there was money put into the experiment, including the so successful experiment in Canada, where 75% of the money came from Ottawa, people, which where not part of the experiment.
I have not seen any experiment, the people taking part in the basic income have supported them-selfs, meaning the money for the basic income came from within this community. Only if the money can come from within the community them-self I would regard that experiment as successful.
In The Netherlands we are already spending that amount, so it doesn't need to come from anywhere. We spend well over 1000/mo on services for unemployed and poor people. We send social workers, health care all sorts of things. The general theory is that if we would supply these people with basic income they will live healthier lifestyles and not need so much care. In the long run it's thought basic income might even save The Netherlands money.
There's a lot of complaining about how it will make people 'sit around and eat ice cream' as if that's all the unemployed do. They've clearly not gone outside much. The unemployed drink a lot of beer, they do meth and they walk around aimlessly through the city and generally cause all kinds of damages and harm.
I live in the east of The Netherlands with pretty high unemployment, and it's already quite visible. But I've been to San Francisco and that's just horrible. I can't imagine how a rich person (and you have to be rich to live there) would want to live there amongst so many homeless and desperate poor people. Would it really be so bad to pay a bit of extra tax just so those people have a little less shitty lives and don't need to stroll around the SF center? It's not like they enjoy that.
Of course, it's not 100% certain that the basic income will solve that particular problem, but I feel it's worth a shot, so I'm happy Utrecht is trying it.
edit: Also let's remember that most people are simply decent. There's not much wrong with watching American Idol and eating some ice cream. If people do decide to not work under basic income (I don't think the majority will) they won't because they have a satisfying way to spend their time at home or wherever. Why is that a bad thing?
The problem is, all the calculation I have seen so far (by different members and friends of the Pirate Party Germany) included also the benefits for people with disabilities, and other illnesses. It included also the money currently used to support the public health care system and other social benefits.
If you remove all those also to finance basic income, then you are taking the money who really need it.
If you are saying - like some who support basic income - here is your basic income and now you need private health care and also all those other things of the safety net removed, than this is pure capitalism in the form of "take it or leave it".
I am more for the safety net. I am the one who also pays extra for public health care. I could easily switch to private health care and safe some big bucks monthly. No, because public health care is an important part for the society.
All the working financing models I have seen so far meant: less then 500 EUR as basic income, which does not work. Or they took the money from important parts of the social net.
May be there would one financing model: remove the costs for the military system. But that will never happen, I assume.
Ah no. Some benefits would become obsolete, The Netherlands already gives basic income to artists and people with work prohibiting disabilities for example. But it's obviously not a substitute for health insurance and other public health care systems.
The idea is that it would reduce the expense on health care services because people would become ill less often. Whether this is true remains to be tested on a larger scale, but I think some research has pointed to this being the case.
I think you are right, 500 euro would be extra spending money, not a basic income and quite possibly would have the reverse effect. It's why the basic income in Utrecht is 900, which is enough to live off as a single person.
Money isn't a "thing". It's not something tangible that gets printed or mined. Money is a representation of what humans value, relative to each other. Having lots of money is like having lots of momentum.
When monetary systems break down, for reasons such as a lack of liquidity, people fall back to the barter system. I'll give you a sack of potatoes for your hours of legal services. We're still playing the same game, but the "Monopoly Bank" ran out of paper, so we're using IOUs and direct asset exchange.
Being poor is just a state where the person lacks liquidity. Bank bailouts were enacted to "rehydrate" banks. Basic income is the bailout idea extended to the individual level.
Currencies are only valuable to you for 2 reasons: there's a finite amount, and other people value it (because they can also trade it for stuff). There's no finite amount of currency that satisfies a person; people can sense the total quantity of currency and want a fraction of this; this is why "printing money" or otherwise increasing the total pool of a currency causes inflation.
If Basic Income has a tax or other system to remove equal amounts currency from the pool, then the system might work; you would be transferring value from Producers to Consumers, much like many social programs do today.
But if there is no tax or other mechanism to remove currency from the pool, Basic Income will just create massive inflation, as the total amount of currency gets bigger, each piece of currency just becomes less valuable.
Basic Income isn't a different game. This is still the same economics. We're just adding another input to the system, everything still flows in, around, and out the same. Many poor people lack liquidity, but why they lack liquidity is because they lack something that other humans value more than their own money or assets.
It could be self funded, most advanced economies have a progressive tax system, if they switched to a flat tax system and moved the lost tax benefit to basic income it would be mostly cost neutral.
That's the thing: the money is already there. Most countries already have an extensive (and expensive) social security system. The problem is that they tend to have a lot of administrative overhead, and they effectively punish people for working, because they lose the social security payments once they get a job.
Basic income is basically the same thing, except that it's also for people who work. Same rule for everybody.
Let's normalize the total amount of money of today at 100.
If the economic grow of a 5% a year, in 365 days the total amount of money will be 105, where those 5 come from ?
Suppose you build a fountain, you pay whoever physically build it, and your money go from you to the builder, the total amount of money in the system is the same, it just change hand, however now your city enjoy a new fountain which bring some amount of new value.
I would be really fine with receiving a basic income. From the social side I would support it. People can do what they like, like artists, developers, and creative people. May be there will be the next business opportunity, startup from that work. Yes, may be other people are lazy, that is like today.
There is a big BUT. Where does the money comes from to support this basic income? All those experiments, which are regarded as successful had the wonderful position, that the money came from outside. From the outside there was money put into the experiment, including the so successful experiment in Canada, where 75% of the money came from Ottawa, people, which where not part of the experiment.
I have not seen any experiment, the people taking part in the basic income have supported them-selfs, meaning the money for the basic income came from within this community. Only if the money can come from within the community them-self I would regard that experiment as successful.