El Financial Times vuelve a hablar sobre RBU. Everybody should - TopicsExpress

El Financial Times vuelve a hablar sobre RBU. Everybody should have a basic income. It should be paid monthly, not as a lump- sum capital grant, to reduce weakness of will problems. A basic income is affordable because it would substitute for many forms of transfer, including the ludicrous array of subsidies that go predominantly to upper-income groups and corporations. And it would cut administrative costs of existing social assistance schemes. We should recognise that our individual wealth is due far more to the collective efforts of our forebears than anything we do. A basic income should be seen as a social dividend on their efforts. None of us knows whose forebears made the vital contributions to our current status. It was evident from the 1980s that globalisation and technological innovations, coupled with labour market flexibility policies, were bound to generate a “precariat” – people experiencing declining and volatile real wages and labour insecurities. Social insurance and assistance schemes could not provide them with basic security. Many face horrendous poverty traps. Only a basic income could provide them with basic security. Unless that happens, there is a danger that more and more will turn to the populist far right. Politically, a basic income is becoming essential. There are standard objections, notably that it would give something for nothing (as does all inheritance) and would reduce labour supply. But our theoretical and experimental research, including extensive pilot schemes in India and Africa, and work in Canada, show that people provided with basic income work more, not less, and work more productively and co-operatively.