http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/ontario-to-pilot-a-universal-basic-income-experiment-a6916571.html
archive: http://archive.is/eAQ83
I have long been a proponent of basic income. This is not socialism. It's a social democratic reformist proposal. But it's a step in the right (or shall I say left?) direction. Accelerationism leads to nothing else but fascism. Not socialism.
Due to the nature of capitalism, labour productivity in our society continues to improve in the long-run (sure you will see short-term setbacks in labour productivity from time to time. But the general trend has been upward). We are seeing more and more automation. More outsourcing to firms that more efficiently utilize labour or to firms abroad based in countries that provide a large supply of cheap labour. As a result, the demand for labour decreases.
But the labour supply is still high. Because there were so many baby boomers and then those baby boomers had kids (us). With an excess of labour supply to labour demand, there is going to be a lot of unemployment and underemployment (ie. part-timers who want to work full-time but can't get full-time hours because there isn't enough demand for their labour).
You'd think that with there being a large surplus in labour supply and an ever decreasing demand for labour that employers would naturally gravitate to reducing full-time work week hours. But capitalism doesn't exactly work like that. Employers want to gain as much productivity as they can out of every employee they have on their payroll. Recruiting additional staff and increasing the size of your payroll costs money.
Corporations want to slim down as much as they can. They would rather have 75 employees on their payroll working 40 hours/week plus undisclosed overtime than have 100 employees on their payroll working 30 hours/week. The amount of hours they end up paying for will remain the same (3000 payroll man-hours per week). But they will have to invest more money into recruitment, payroll, accounts payable, HR, administration, etc. You would have far more bloat. And the whole goal of private enterprise is to trim the fat. Find efficiencies.
So at the end of the day, when companies do what they have to do to find efficiencies, you end up with a lot of people who are unemployed or underemployed. And what do you do with these people? Let them rot. I think that a government job program would help to some extent. A lot of unnecessary cuts have been made to government services over the years. But that won't be enough to compensate everyone who has been deemed excess to the requirements under capitalism. Ultimately you're going to need a basic income if you don't want people on the streets, starving, etc.
And ultimately if you pay out a basic income to every adult and a smaller amount to every child/adolescent, inflation will hurt only people who skew at the high-end of the wealth spectrum.
If your income is $10k per year before basic income but you receive a basic income supplement of $14k and now have $24k per year, are you better off with $24k per year even if there's some inflation or are you better off with just $10k? This is why the argument that basic income is bad for the poor because it will cause inflation is full of shit. No the extra inflation will harm the wealthy, not the poor.
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