There's always going to be an incentive to work since people will always want more than a substinence-level income.

This is why I said that this is really an SMP rather than a Politics scenario, since it implies that a society could be self-sufficiently wealthy, egalitarian, and yet not require individuals to work in order to maintain the wealth. Since to my knowledge such a system has never existed, it's not unreasonable to consider that it may be a literal impossibility, unless those arguing for its implementation can explain away the practical problems with creating and maintaining such a society.

It's like believing in communism (which doesn't work on a large scale anyway), while adding the caveat that everyone gets paid a subsistence wage without having to perform any work.

Then we come back to viewing this as a scenario where we attempt to maintain a basic capitalistic society but somehow increase everyone's standard of living by such a massive wealth redistribution that it no longer would have any resemblance to the capitalist society which created the wealth.

Well no, it would be new. The Swiss may be the first to provide the world with an example.
Their economists say getting the money is not a problem if the people want this.

how not? top tax rate and estate tax have been high before (top estate rate was 77% for 30+ years), trim up some of the corporate giveaways and it's funded.

This, exactly. If you're talking about stuff that actually needs to get done then those aren't "employer of last resort" jobs.

lol wut

removing the need for people to take the very low paying jobs in the first place is fantastic. Most obviously there is now a bigger incentive to automate those crap jobs away. 2ndly people will have the opportunity to train for higher paying jobs that actually contribute something to society without worrying about starving to death in the mean time.

It's real politics in my view because there are real decisions that have to be taken to tackle the problem of unemployment/low wages (or not which is a decision to) and no-one knows how they will work out in practice or how they will be modified along the way.

I agree about the practical problems of any major jump which is a good real political argument for the alternatives. Although I can easily imagine a system like this being introduced in stages in the UK and it could start now if the political will was there. Addressing the issue of how to increase it (before it's implemented) would be a major plus.

I'd rather not get into a forum war over it.

How would this increase the incentive to automate jobs over what exists today? And lol at thinking that most low paying service jobs can somehow be automated.

There's nothing wrong with discussing hypotheticals when it comes to politics.

This isn't just into the realms of pure fantasy. It's quite clearly possible for the same level of production in a country to occur while wealth is distributed differently. I'm more than open to the idea that a sufficient number of people don't want to behave in a way conducive to that, but it's certainly not the case that it's a logical impossibility. If we all wanted to do it, we could do it.

If enough of us agreed that this was the preferred societal goal, then the question would become how do future policies lead us towards that end. As opposed to let's do this first thing tomorrow morning.

Ah, you just want to troll over semantics.

Have fun with that.

It's not a semantical quibble. "Employer of last resort" implies people who are literally unemployable.

You're arguing over what you feel the definition of a word is. And not even the denotation.

Semantics.

Well automating jobs costs money. If you can hire someone to do the job at $9/hr then it may not be worth paying whatever the cost is to automate the job. But if someone doesn't need the money and isn't willing to do the job unless he gets, say $20/hr then all of a sudden it very well might be cost effective to automate that job.

And pretty much any job can be automated. It's just a matter of what the cost is.

http://www.businessinsider.com/ibms-...e-world-2014-4

pvn making a lot of sense.

Low Key:

If I get one of these "not really busywork employer of last resort jobs" and I show up and just sit there with my thumb up my ass, can I be fired? What if it's a "real" job and I keep knocking down the bridge we're building or crash the crane into stuff? Then what?

on a ****ing tear man. i don't know why i always thought you sucked.

low key, he just showed why a basic income is still necessary.

30k in Switzerland? is that for every man woman and child?

if that is the case and a family of 5 gets 150k.. screw working, and just pump out some kids

Not having much resemblance to the current state of affairs is sort of the point. Some of us think the rentier capitalism of fully developed nations is starting to show rapidly diminishing returns for most of the population.

If you're incapable of doing work without causing harm to yourself or others, you probably qualify for some sort of disability.

If you just choose not to work, that's your choice. You don't have to be paid for doing nothing.

My assumption is you could eventually lose your eligibility, but if you're a problem worker, you'd get busted down to some more remedial, physical work to start with.

This isn't some forced labor camp we're talking about. This is people having the option of working if they're willing and able. Because during the recession, we had a lot of manpower that was willing and able, but no jobs for them.

America Works! You and Frank Underwood agree.

Not even 4k definition can get me to watch that show

Why?

I'm pretty liberal and I think the US would be a better country if we changed to resemble a Western European, socialist system. But the system being promulgated ITT is like some weird, socialist fantasy which could come about only if Calvinism and Marxism have a love child.

family values though