OK, OK, So we have horrific income inequality. Now what are we going to *DO* about it?

[reformist2]

It's time we established Basic Income as the fundamental economic right, and begin a new civil-rights movement for the 21st Century.

What is Basic Income? It's a minimum level of income that every citizen deserves, regardless of whether he/she works or not. As it becomes increasingly clear that today's modern hi-tech society does not need all working-age adults to work full time, it's kind of ridiculous to expect all of us to find full-time work at even minimum wage, let alone a decent wage. Basic Income has been around as a theoretical concept for over 200 years (Thomas Paine was an advocate), but I think it is an idea whose time has finally come.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income

[Warpy]

1. We are simply not being consulted about it at this point

What will have to happen is another crisis, possibly the collapse of the derivatives casino, that takes everything with it.

At that point, angry mobs will be outside the Capitol and Congress will be forced to act.

Congress has never been proactive, only reactive, and usually only when their own cushy lives are being threatened.

[liberal_at_heart]

3. I like the idea but you are right. It will take another crisis and it will take

tens of millions of people in the streets protesting.

[AnotherMcIntosh]

2. LBJ was on top of this decades ago.

"In the 1960s, a majority of Americans favored plans to give cash payments to the poor, a “negative income tax” or “guaranteed income.” Lyndon Johnson appointed a commission of prominent business leaders, academics, and union officials to study the idea; their report unanimously recommended “a new program of income supplementation for all Americans in need,” without any work requirement. Martin Luther King Jr. called for guaranteed income as a necessary step toward solving problems of housing, education, and racial injustice. Other advocates included more than 1,200 economists, from John Kenneth Galbraith and James Tobin on the left to Milton Friedman on the right."

http://freeliberal.com/archives/000038.php

[BlueCheese]

4. First thing, we extend Bush tax cuts for incomes up to $400,000.

[dkf]

5. How much do I get for quitting my job and sitting on my ass?

Are you going to give me medical benefits too?

[CreekDog]

6. please save the welfare queen arguments for another discussion board

thanks.

[dkf]

7. You said it, not I.

I'm willing to give it a try...it sounds relaxing and I'm pretty tired.

[CreekDog]

8. if that was an argument in favor

i'll eat my hat.

which is probably the kind of nutritional assistance program you'd actually support.

to be fair.

[Egalitarian Thug]

9. Yes. Even you should not be coerced into servitude by the threat of deprivation.

Even you are entitled to food, clothing, shelter, education, and health care. Besides, if you weren't forced to do something you obviously hate you would get bored pretty quickly doing nothing and perhaps finding something that you enjoy would wake you up to the fact that negative motivation yield negative results and costs more in the long run.

[FloridaJudy]

11. About as much

As I get from Social Security because I'm too old and sick to work after a lifetime of paying into the system.

You wouldn't like it. Ramen and no cable and one car trip a week (on the rare occasion a fifteen-year-old car is actually running) get tiresome fast.

Please take your worn-out right wing memes elsewhere. Few of us who don't work don't wish we could.

[quaker bill]

12. If the past / current predict the future

Not enough to be housed or fed on a regular basis. But you will be able to go to county health dept or the emergency room if you are really sick.

We buy corn, wheat, milk, cheese, when there is a surplus to prop up prices and protect the producers from the ravages of the free market, because we will likely need them to still be in business next year. Why not apply the concept to manhours?

(to some extent we already do, through unemployment insurance)

The problem is that the max $275 a week in FL does not keep one fed and housed (ready to produce again) when the free market economy stops ravaging the surplus worker.

Now one can believe in a human nature that will consistently opt for the easy way out. However if true, the entire classic free market captialist model should be pitched, as it relies on ratiional actors consistently working to seek the greatest personal benefit. If in fact, human nature consistently seeks the easiest way to get by, the model fails on apriori concept and must be discarded.

Looked at rationally, either you believe people work to obtain the greatest personal benefit, and then such minimal benefits are no threat to the system, or you find people to be inherently lazy, in which case Adam Smith was wrong from basic concept forward, and an entirely new system of thought is required.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

10. Probably not much, I think

I can give you various answers to "what should the USA do about it". But my answer to "what is the USA going to do about it?" is "probably not much", I'm afraid.