Basic income

[Rowanwood]

Re: Basic income

I think one thing that has been missed in this debate is the amount of work which is already being done for free to make society a better place. I'm talking about the volunteers in charity shops, or for local Wildlife Trusts cutting bracken or looking for dormice, or running the local Fairtrade group or being a school governor - there are so many things that people do to make society work more smoothly that are not paid jobs. Maybe a basic income for everyone would encourage more people to do those sorts of jobs.
And the volunteering even extends to cleaning toilets. Here on the Welsh Borders, our local County Councils are closing the public toilets that they run. A village near where I live has got together a group to keep their toilets open, to keep them clean and well-maintained on a voluntary basis so that tourists continue to come and use the canoeing and walking facilities in the area. In my own village, the mayor stood up in a public meeting and vowed that the toilets would stay open if he had to go in with a scrubbing brush himself - and I believe him when he says he'll do that.
In a way, we already have a basic income as we pay benefits to people who need them, and we are supporting a huge number of people for whom jobs are not available, as well as disabled people who are unable to work (though our present government would, it seems, rather see those people homeless and hungry as they roll back benefits). Changing to a basic income system would not be too much of a leap to organise, and it would also free up people who are supposed to be spending their time applying for jobs that don't exist to do all that other work that would help local communities.

Have you ever been involved in volunteer work? The vast majority of "helpers" a 100% useless, stick around for the feel good part and disappear when actual hard work has to be done. People love to "help" animals, but they wander off when it's time to scoop poop and file 501c paperwork.

This sort of work doesn't keep society going. It's a BS, not-fun work that needs to be done that pays people who can then buy services and supplies and keep other people employed that does the work.

Most 1st world countries have enough programs to care for nearly everyone willing to do what's needed to get the help. Some people honestly choose not to get help due to pride or other malfunctions. There's work to be done, but just handing out cash I think is the wrong way to go about it.

[Evaine]

Re: Basic income

Actually, everything there apart from school governor is volunteer work that I have done personally. I have also taken the minutes for more meetings of volunteer groups over the past twenty years than most people have had hot dinners, and helped to produce a book of local history, all done with volunteer researchers and interviewers of the elderly in the area, though printed professionally. This sort of work may not keep society going, like collecting refuse, or being an electrician, or plumber, but a lot of people are doing useful work, for nothing, which would not otherwise get done.

[DanieMarie]

Re: Basic income

It's not really sustainable though. Germany had a social service system for a long, long time where men could choose social service (volunteer work, basically) over the armed forces. Most people chose social service. Even though it was only young men fresh out of school (women were exempt) and some got out of it by choosing "army" when they had asthma or whatever (which basically meant you got told to go home lol), it was still a huge cost that couldn't really be carried over. The whole thing was scrapped a couple of years ago.

Don't get me wrong...I think people should have benefits when they can't find work or are physically or mentally unable to work. I think there should be nice low-income housing for people who have little money. I think there should be funds available to finance job retraining or to go back to university. I just don't think it would work to give everyone a living wage from the get go in exchange for nothing.

I think what you're saying can maybe work differently in a village. In smaller towns and villages, people tend to have a stronger sense of community and people know each other. It would be such a disaster in a city though. People just don't have the same sense of community,and it's kind of hard to get it. And to be honest, there's just so much more to get done. Like here, I don't think most people would really want to clean the streets of Berlin on Sunday morning in certain neighbourhoods. I mean like puke, piss, broken bottles, needles, used condoms....no one wants to clean up that jazz. The only reason anyone does it is because they get paid. Here and there there are heartwarming stories of the kids that pick up bottles in Alexanderplatz because they like to skateboard (well, they used to, before it was too full of tourists to skateboard), but I don't think they really -cleaned- it...they just picked up a few bottles and larger pieces of rubbish. It was helpful and very nice of them, but not really on the same scale as what the BSR does with the city (and it's still dirty, and I've seen them clean and they do a really good job...it's just -that- dirty).

Once the city requested that all the unemployed people clean up all the ice off of the streets for a bit of extra money (and by "extra money" I mean something offensive like a Euro an hour). Guess what. Our streets were icy.