Basic Income discussion exerpts - On Point radio show

http://onpoint.wbur.org/2016/01/14/universal-basic-income-government-welfare

 Carl wyderequist Georgetown University school of foreign service in Qatar. 


"We need to do this because we have poverty in the richest country in the world. And all the richest countries in the world have poverty. And the ones that are closest to the basic income model, the nordic countries have the least poverty it is unnaceptable that we use destitution, and poverty and homelessness as an incentive to get people to work. If you want someone to work for you, pay them a wage that makes them want to work for you. Don't starve them to death and then say "you cannot use any of the resources of the earth to keep yourself alive tomorrow unless you do what I tell you." I'm for freedom and you have basic income if you want a society where people are free.


 Question about the work ethic based on the bible story Adam and Eve being cast out of the garden and condemned to work.

Well when Adam and Eve were cast out of the Garden of Eden there was no ownership to the earth and they had to sweat and work to do it but they didn't have to take orders. They didn't have to go to a boss man and say oh I'll do whatever you tell just so I can survive to tonight-  the early humans were hunter gatherers that had the whole world out there that they could hunt, gather, collect and work with as they wanted to. And even in early societies that was not taken away from them. In the bible you have when the kingdom of Israel is established every family gets a share of the ownership of the land of Israel. And every time there's a jubilee the money goes back to every- or the land goes back to every family so you don't get landless propertiless people with no choice but to go work for somebody. But now we've created a system we're governments and private individuals own all the resources that everyone else needs to survive and those who don't have any property are put in the position where they have- not just to work but they have to work for someone -they have to take orders everyday. And forcing a person to take orders just to survive is not right - that's not what freedom is about. Freedom is about - we all share this earth. We all get something from the products of this earth. And if you want me to do something for you -pay me a wage on top of whatever else I get that makes it worth while for me to do that.


Venture Capitalist responding to a caller saying "This is disgusting...nobody owes anyone else anything...go out and make something of yourself"

Albert.  Wanger Union Square Ventures
Casey who paid, for your education? Casey where did the knowlege come from in the textbooks that you read. Where did the infrastructure come from that you make your phone calls for you business for? It's not like we are all doing this all by ourselves from zero. We have - we're standing on the shoulders of the collective innovation of humankind over thousands of years. So this idea that anybody creates anything ex nihilo.  That's the wrong idea.

Carl W.
If you really want an economy based on the work ethic you've got to take capitalism and throw it in the trash. Cause that's not what capitalism is. And I'm a capitalist too, I own 14 houses thanks to I make a good salary and I'm investing that money. A lot of lucky circumstances. I do not work for those houses I just collect money and I reinvest the money. If you have money the system will award you with more money. Now some of that money you can say is made out of your effort but the rich people of this earth did not invent the earth. They did not invent the land and the rewsources that are on that earth. Yet they own them. And they want to be paid for them. And they want - and some of them at least - some of them want something for nothing. they want to pay nothing for the duty that they impose on everyone else. Whenever you say, this is my property -this resource is my property, you're putting a duty on everyone else to respoect that, when that duty wasn't there before. For millions of years we had no such duty --
that's well -communism is the idea that we'd all be better off if one dictator owned everything. That is -this is really very far from communism. capitalism is where rich people own everything and they tell the poor what to do. Communism is when a dictator owns everything and they tell the poor what to do. Basic income society is wehr noone call tell someone else what to do. It's a society based on free -it's that we all have equal right to this earth and nobody owes anybody else anything. and if you're gonna take part of this earth then you gotta pay someone else back for it. They don't have to give you the earth for free, they don't have to give you your labor for free. If you want them to work for you -give them a good offer. give them a good job.





Neil Collins-
"For people who can't see how society helped them get what they have, it seems pretty simple to me. Just ask yourself this question: Would you have it without society? If you lived on an island all by yourself, without society, would you have been able to "create" the college degree or whatever else it is. If you could not have it without society, then society helped you to get it.

Pretty much everything we have has been made as a collaboration of vast amounts of people, hardly any of which you will ever meet and most of them are no longer alive. If you are using a pencil, the lead was mined by other people, the mining machinery was invented piece-meal, over time by many many people, the wood was logged by others, the logging equipment is made of metal which was made from ore that was mined, etc...
Go try to make a lead pencil "all by yourself" without society. And that's just a pencil.

Electronic devices that we use every day, that we are using right now, can only function by the use of mathematical equations which no one person can be given credit for, certainly not anyone who is alive today. This progress of math and science has been a collaboration of many thousands of thinkers, stretching back in time since at least the ancient Greeks. Almost none of them were 'paid', but they did what they did out of curiosity and the desire to advance and improve the human world, society as a whole.

The land that we live on was in fact stolen, usually through bloody murder and genocide. In America the land was once used by the native Americans, if you want to talk about Europe, many tribes like the Celts were killed and stolen from under the excuse of spreading "Christianity" and the loyalty of various kings. When you go to a Real-Estate agent to buy a house or land, how did they get that land? And yet somehow, cash is exchanged for these things as if some person 'created' even the land all by themselves."