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£10,000 proposed for everyone under 55
The government should give £10,000 to every citizen under 55, a report suggests.
The Royal Society for the encouragement of the Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) said it could pave the way to everyone getting a basic state wage.
The idea sees two payments of £5,000 paid over two years, but certain state benefits and tax reliefs would be removed at the same time.
The RSA said it would compensate workers for the way jobs are changing.
The money would help to steer UK citizens through the 2020s, "as automation replaces many jobs, climate change hits and more people face balancing employment with social care", the report said.
Also at The Guardian and CNBC.
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UK's Royal Society of Arts Proposes £10,000, 2-Year Basic Income
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The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
If little else, the brain is an educational toy.
-- Tom Robbins
(Score: 3, Funny) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday February 17 2018, @04:29AM (28 children)
I mean, I never would have guessed that artistic types leaned communist.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 17 2018, @06:46AM (3 children)
Not all of us.
Here's my take on it:
If you're worth watching/hearing/experiencing, then do your marketing and build a career.
If not, fuck off until you are, and let the rest of us get on without subsidies.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 18 2018, @06:20AM (2 children)
When you're being creative, do you have a separate Ownership Class that makes all the decisions about e.g. how you produce and what will be done with the profits?
Would such an arrangement make you crazy when you do all the work?
If so, I would call you Anti-Capitalist.
An Anti-Capitalist is a Leftist.
N.B. Profit, markets, growth, and ownership of stuff are NOT exclusive to Capitalism;
top-down economic systems|ownership models are exactly what Capitalism is.
...and a 1-man operation with no employees is not Capitalist.
A defining feature of Capitalism is exploiting the labor of others.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday February 18 2018, @07:26AM
If you're truly creative, then you are part of that "Ownership Class" rather than just whining about the "Ownership Class".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 18 2018, @07:44AM
There are people who call the tune. They are those who pay the piper.
In olden times, if you were a galant composer stroking the egos of the big knobs, they were the local king, or duke, or cardinal, or whatever. If you were a more demotic type, they were the people holding weddings and parties and funerals. The same applies, with a few modifications, to painters and poets, potters and players. Some artists had independent means of support, which meant that they then were paying for their own art's creation.
The question of an Ownership Class doesn't enter into it. The existence of an Ownership Class is the wrong model for this situation. What you're talking about is patronage, and the audience, whether they're pontiffs or peasants.
Zooming forward in time, it goes the same way with different faces. Artists do billboards for faceless corporations and filthy lucre, or they smear themselves with blood on their own dime (or the public's, if the NEA has a blood smearing grant going).
I can't speak for anyone else, but I take commissions cheerfully, and do my best. I'm quite happy with this, even when it means that someone is paying me to do what they want. So call me a capitalist stooge.
However, you seem to be confused about what capitalism is. You may be better off checking your definitions so that you can get in touch with what other people are actually talking about, because all those mom-and-pop shops trying to accumulate capital are pretty darned capitalist.
... wait, reading some other crap you apparently posted, forget it. You don't want to know, and you don't care how wrong you are. It's cool, bro. We all do our own performance art called Life.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 17 2018, @06:51AM (23 children)
Surely you can agree a universal basic income is the least bad welfare system currently proposed, even if rightly thinking all welfare is ultimately harmful. This, however, will probably still be full of inefficiency and corruption.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday February 17 2018, @07:07AM (20 children)
That's like arguing in favor of the least bad kick in the sack. The only way I'd ever agree to UBI is if it were voluntary and those accepting it forfeited their right to vote during any year they accepted so much as a dime of it.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Funny) by realDonaldTrump on Saturday February 17 2018, @09:33AM (2 children)
That's like something Paul Weyrich would come up with. Brilliant guy! He was always thinking of ways to have the FEWEST people voting. Because that's tremendous for the Republican Party! Have you ever thought of joining?
(Score: 4, Funny) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday February 17 2018, @11:41AM (1 child)
Sorry but you're not the Donald that I wrote in several times on my ballot last time around. The one I voted for wears a little sailor hat and shirt but no pants.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Saturday February 17 2018, @05:08PM
I miss Hugh Hefner, he did so much to make America great. I made so many sexy tapes for him, for Playboy. But I always, always kept my pants on. Very classy!
But a lot of our Dem politicians get caught with their pants down. Gerry Studds, Barney Frank, both queers, I can see them in a sailor outfit, that sounds a little queer (no offense to Runaway1956). Both from Massachusetts. Ted Kennedy, the Chappaquiddick guy, he was another from Massachusetts, they said his cousin did a rape. They charged him with rape, the jury acquitted him. But I think he was GUILTY AS HELL.
Just like the Central Park 5. Different but the same. They were convicted of rape but it got "vacated." Unbelievable! I spent $100,000 of my own money, I took out ads in all the papers, I said "criminals must be told that their CIVIL LIBERTIES END WHEN AN ATTACK ON OUR SAFETY BEGINS!" Law & Order is so important. Protecting our precious, precious women, so important.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 17 2018, @11:11AM (3 children)
> The only way I'd ever agree to UBI is if it were voluntary
So you'd be okay with UBI if was neither U nor B.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday February 17 2018, @11:37AM (2 children)
I'd be okay with us having an amendment to the effect of "neither private citizens nor elected officials can vote themselves more money". It's as plain as the deep, deep hole we're standing in where that road leads to.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 17 2018, @08:58PM (1 child)
Cause welfare is why we're in massive debt. God DAMN you so duuuuumb
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday February 18 2018, @12:02AM
Yeah, I've actually looked at what percentages of the budget and tax revenues entitlement spending comes to. You might want to do the same before you look like an even bigger idiot.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by wonkey_monkey on Saturday February 17 2018, @01:27PM (12 children)
Ah, so only the richest can afford to vote? What could possibly go wrong?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday February 17 2018, @08:16PM (8 children)
I'm far from rich and seem to get by just fine without a dime of government handouts. If you're having difficulty, I suggest you talk to a CPA about setting you up a thing called a "budget" and then follow it.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Saturday February 17 2018, @09:16PM (7 children)
Or you could stop making assumptions and being condescending, and see how your idea disenfranchises the worst-off in society.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday February 18 2018, @12:05AM (6 children)
Yes, because all those rights in the constitution and amendments are far less important than the right to live comfortably on money you've done fuck-all to earn.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 18 2018, @04:03AM (3 children)
Fuck you.
Welfare is not "live comfortably" money, it's "basic survival" money. You're arguing against your own illusions. My family has occasionally been on welfare--in the "socialist" Europe, at that--and I gotta tell you, your imagination is ridiculous. With two or three types of welfare and both parents working off-the-book, it's still barely enough to support a family.
(Score: 1, Troll) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday February 18 2018, @12:20PM (2 children)
Of course it is. You're in a socialist nation. Did you expect something other than abject poverty for all?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 18 2018, @12:58PM (1 child)
Completely missing the point, as usual. I guess this is where you declare the debate "won".
We were *not* in abject poverty. We were poor, sure, but never in danger of starving. We had health insurance. When we couldn't pay essential bills, we could go to the town hall and ask them to cover that. Free education -- me and my siblings all finished a good high-school. Even the bus passes were free.
I'm refuting your point that being on welfare is "comfortable living", you idiot. It's NOT. You're imagining some lavish lifestyle, having fun all day, waiting for the checks to arrive and spending them on luxury items. Sure, there's an occasional exception that manages to cheat the system to live like that, but that's what it is -- an *exception*. Most people on welfare either work hard and just need a little help, or are unable to work at all due to disabilities or something.
But living on welfare is not terrible either, in a socialist country. I'm extremely grateful I wasn't born in the US -- if I was, I'd likely be digging through trash looking for food scraps instead of doing my PhD.
I still fail to understand how you reconcile "abject poverty for all" with "live comfortably on money you've done fuck-all to earn", but I'm sure that's one of those logical arguments you brag about using to win every single debate you're in.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday February 18 2018, @01:27PM
See, this is where the place you're speaking of is important. In the US, our benefits are structured in such a way as to make it far more financially viable to exist on government handouts (if you're eligible) than to work unless you make significantly more than average [learnliberty.org]. It's been that way for long enough that I can only assume that it is a deliberate attempt to keep people dependent on government handouts and thus voting for whoever promises them the most.
In Europe, you're significantly farther down the communist rabbit hole and feeling the effects that communism always brings to any nation it touches. If you want to know your future, have a look at Greece.
Next time do please try to understand that different situations are going to have different circumstances and thus results. You'll sound less foolish.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Sunday February 18 2018, @07:44PM (1 child)
I can't work out what you're trying to say here.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday February 19 2018, @02:59AM
Beats me. I've slept since then. Looks like I was addressing the ludicrousness of him using the word "disenfranchisement" non-ironically. You know, as if being able to dip your fingers into the pockets of others was in the bill of rights or something.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Sunday February 18 2018, @08:15PM (2 children)
We used to have that system here in the UK. Only male land owners above a certain age were allowed to vote.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday February 19 2018, @03:02AM (1 child)
Big difference. I'm saying let everyone vote unless they're sucking the government tit. Franklin warned us about this shit a couple hundred years and change ago:
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by wonkey_monkey on Monday February 19 2018, @07:33PM
It hasn't stopped the richest getting themselves some tasty tax breaks.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 17 2018, @02:02PM
Can by very harmful if it attracts muslims
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday February 17 2018, @06:53PM
No, I can't agree on that. In addition to the problem that one could end up with the needs-based welfare system anyway (after all, how far again is UBI going to go with someone who has expensive, long term health problems?), we also have a huge conflict of interest with the people receiving the UBI for little cost to themselves: who get to decide, because they vote, between more UBI now and a better society tomorrow. It's not enough to pay lip service to these problems.
Without some incentive to align those interests with those of general society, it's just more lunch for the Free Lunch crowd.