£15 an hour to flip burgers

Out of interest where has it been tried and failed?

 

The National basic income replaces all benefits etc and gives a living income for everyone, On top of this people would have an income from employment, The only difference from now is that you would lose various departments and hundreds of thousands of employees checking millions of bits of paper, The savings would be huge,

 

If the national basic is enough to live on though where's the desire for employment?
And if it isn't enough to live on, what's the point?

It all sounds very good in theory, I'm just curious as to how it would realistically work.

 

I despise the fact that we, as a country, predicate every argument on people being either ‘hard working’ or ‘lazy’ and there’s no in between.

The overwhelming majority of those unemployed are not simply ‘lazy’ - it’s a crass stereotype that is based on the fear of somebody other than one’s self getting something for nothing.

Inequality is a huge problem in this country, and that’s nothing to do with people’s desire to sit back on the gravy train. It’s an issue that desperately needs addressing.

 

maybe you want to do more than just live eg go to watch City, have a nice car, newer phone etc

 

This whole thread ties in very well with a book I've owned for decades and finally got around to reading: G.B. Shaw's "The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism, Capitalism, Sovietism, and Fascism," first published in 1927 and reissued with the chapters on Sovietism and Fascism added in 1937.

Shaw is, as ever, eminently readable, and thought-provoking. Inequality of income is his target; he's excellent in his criticisms of the ways in which income is, or has been proposed to be, distributed throughout society, e.g. to every woman what she produces, to every woman what she deserves, to every woman what she can grab, plus more.

But, a baby, or those too old or ill to work, produce nothing but must consume; who could ever decide what A) deserves compared to B), and what would the criteria be; all who are weak, or meek, will lose out to the strong and determined regardless of morality; and so on.

Shaw's solution is Socialism. But mark his definition of what makes someone a Socialist -- the one goal you must have is equality of income for everyone in the nation. If you don't accept that, you are not a Socialist. Everything else either leads up to, or follows from, that one guiding principle. And as far as I can see, he expects this income to be such that all can live comfortably -- both rich and poor are to be abolished.

He is, or at least seems to be, completely blind to the problems with his solution. It requires, as he states, national control of all income, which means national ownership of all real property (the land) and of all production -- everything. Only then can the nation distribute an equal income to all inhabitants. So the inhabitants must be subordinated to the state, and if some get killed as a result, that seems to be just a cost of doing business (as it were). He is very blasé about the body counts under the Soviet and Nazi regimes; I expect he'd have been equally so with respect to the Maoists. As the person who wrote the introduction to the edition I have put it, he loses all touch with humanity on occasion. But he is consumed by an idea, a theory, to the exclusion of all else.

I should also note that his definition of Communism really implies communal benefits derived from communal funds. E.g. we pay our rates and taxes, we get, say, roads and bridges -- the roads and bridges don't care if we are rich or poor, black or white, male or female, ethical or unethical -- we all get to use them. Many Communistic things are part of our everyday existence therefore, and we are the better for them.

I recommend the book to anyone interested in these sorts of questions, no matter what your political leanings are.

- - -

90 years on, and inequality of income is as big a problem as ever. The middle class shrinks, and the gap between the two extremes keeps widening. Add to that machines replacing humans in many places, and we will soon get to the point that a basic national income, a living income, is going to be necessary, because there simply will not be enough jobs.

RCB

 

Inequality of income is mostly (not always) decided by the input (work effort) of the individual, if we were all made equal financially overnight it would probably take less than 10 minutes in a free society to reverse the situation back to square one, socialism/communism just cannot and does not work anywhere on planet Earth...

 

Does that happen now or are some people extremely comfortable being unemployed and collecting whatever they can get for free?

 

No one is extremely comfortable unemployed and on benefits, Perhaps you would like to try it and see? 2 MPs said the same as you and tried it and failed to last more than a week, Here is what you have to do to claim and the amounts paid, As you say in your opinion much to high and provide Extreme comfort,
https://www.gov.uk/jobseekers-allowance

 

I politely disagree and I do so because I know personally one person who absolutely will never work and openly mocks those on low income that do.

I also know another person that was pretty much forced to give up work as she was just as well off sitting at home with no working income.

The second one it's obviously a different situation and one that may well be resolved in a new system but both are issues and examples of the problems that might still remain with a national basic wage.

 

Think away the 90 years since Shaw wrote his book, and then think further back to the Industrial Revolution onwards, which produced the conditions that led to his political views. I don't think it was a lack of effort by the farmers and millworkers and miners and other industrial workers of that time that caused the inequality in income which so incensed him. True enough, though; we've always had people who want to get as much as possible and give as little as possible in return -- whether living off benefits in the modern age, or on each side of the employer-employee and customer-merchant relationships throughout time.

My post was long enough as it was without going into greater details, but Shaw does have the solution for your comment. Remember that state control of everything is fundamental to his vision -- you are not going to be given the option of being lazy; you will work your allotted hours, as will everybody else, you will get your state-determined income, equal to everyone else's, you will get your leisure time, as will everybody else. Those who choose to be lazy -- to not contribute to the work needed by the state -- will nonetheless be fed and clothed and supported by the state until the state eliminates them. It is, ultimately, a very authoritarian regime.

Socialism/Communism as it has been implemented by exceedingly fallible people indeed does not work, but socialistic/communistic elements do: health services, pensions, the police, the military, infrastructure, etc. All of these are paid for communally, and the community benefits from them.

RCB

 

Socialism and capitalism are two sides of the same coin, The powerful get rich and the poor remain poor,

 

This is borderline offensive, weak drivel.

 

Get over yerself ffs....

 

Grow up.

You’ve just explicitly equated (most) wealth inequality with laziness, suggested that the poor would merely squander their resources and then made a wild overreach to make an ill judged swing at the left.

 

Thought I made my point most eloquently actually.......I know, surprised me too...!!

 

But we don't have an enterprise society, do we?
Even at a time of low taxation, minimal job security and record low interest rates, big business and the rich refuse to either borrow to invest or to put any of their record wealth back into the domestic economy.
It's a double whammy. No only do they refuse to invest their wealth to promote our economy they also choose to squirrel it away in overseas havens, thereby avoiding even our very basic taxation and starving the economy.
Thatcherite 'trickle down' economics is a massive sham. The idea that if you free up the rich to invest then their entrepreneurial spirit will grow the economy and benefit everyone has been promoted by successive governments for the past 40 years. It's a myth. We're still waiting for these wonderful enterprise capitalists to fulfill their side of the bargain. They've got their low taxation, ultra low interest rates, low inflation, zero hours contract flexibility, and the power of organised labour has been reduced to impotence. All the conditions supposedly required to allow the free market economy to flourish are present in spades and have been for years. But still we wait for this 'enterprise society' to deliver the goods. Removing exchange controls allowed the rich to easily move their money offshore to avoid tax. It seems that they always choose the quick buck over the hard work of growing business. A deregulating Johnson government with a working majority would just throw more petrol on our burning economy.

 

I partly agree but just make the comment that money never rests, If it is banked or invested here or abroad and not invested directly then whoever they save the wealth with will lend it to those that do want to invest so is used to grow economies, As I said wherever it is placed money never rests

 

But if it's squirreled away elsewhere then the profits made here are most likely invested elsewhere rather than in Britain - that's the problem.

 

Yes that is possible but wherever it is squirrelled away there is a good chance it comes to the UK, But investors including the fund managers will always look for the highest return and the safety of the investment which is why the UK is one of the best countries to invest in