John Berry <berry.joh...@gmail.com> wrote: Jed, your system would seriously incentivise crime. > > People aren't getting enough to really live on unless they live very hard, > there are fewer jobs so crime is very tempting . . . >
Why would it incentivise crime?? It would incentivise work. It would give poor people the leeway to turn down minimum wage work. They could hold out for $15 an hour instead of $7. They could work one job instead of two because the universal payment would be about as much as they get from a second job. People could work less hard with fewer jobs overall (fewer working hours per person) and still come out ahead. $10,000 per year is a lot of money for a poor person. A married couple or a couple living together would get $20,000 which is a huge amount for poor people. It is more than the average Social Security benefit. A full-time, 40-hour a week job at the federal minimum wage pays $15,000 a year. At present there are still many jobs for people, including jobs that robots cannot do yet. We still need truck drivers, for example. Although the technology for autonomous vehicles has been developed, it is not yet in use. The idea is to have people continue to work at present, while robots gradually take over. As the robots produce more, the universal payment is increased until it is enough to live on. - Jed
