Sunday, June 28, 2009

Basic income

Everybody has a right to live, pursue happiness, and enjoy the small things in life. Of course, when the chips are down, and we are at the mercy of destiny, we may be not able to live. The problem with humanity is, the safety network is sometimes too loose and / or negligent when the society itself is well and thriving.

Thus I am for the introduction of a basic income. People might say that it is counterintuitive or morally suspect to be provided with an income when one is not working. Some might claim that its introduction might seriously undermine the work ethics. I rather think that the basic income can be incorporated into the economical system in a step conceptually similar to the renormalization in quantum field theory.

4 comments:

(ma)gog said...

I wish there had been a basic income system when I was a single parent of the two little children. My income at that time from several mixture of works like teaching, translating, or writing small articles, was just enough to keep the daily life of us three. I benefitted of course, from the special scheme for the single parent families by the local government, like reduced health insurance or public nursery fee. With a basic income, lots of young mothers with small children would be able to spend more time being at home for their children, thus the children would be brought to the circumstance where they feel much more safe and being cared. The outcome of all this is that there would be a economically balanced society consisted of psychologicaly balanced citizens who have been brought up in the condition where standard happiness is promised to everyone of them. Does the "renormalization" in quantum field theory means that there is a similar force in the quantum field to make itself a balanced system??

masami said...

Thanks to your journal,I met the beauty of Koch snowflake.

Kiwiぽん said...

I'm study & researching Basic Income at Basic Income Lab now.
I'm very happy that Japanese famous scientist introduces BI.
Thank you.

Anonymous said...

I think that basic income is a fair and good idea. But, with every good idea there are positives and negatives; some people would become reliant on the wage (unmotivated to work) and some would be enabled to choose an occupation that was their passion instead of settling for the first job to pay their bills. I think the positives would outweigh the negatives, so I a fan of basic income. I used to be an Alaskan resident and their yearly dividend checks are similar to this idea.