Giving children a future without oppression - basic income

There may be many factors that cause children's narcissism to grow up in an unsatisfactory environment. In terms of the overall social environment, I think economic oppression may be the most important factor. As I mentioned in the previous article, I think "basic income" is a system that can widely and effectively improve the environment in which children grow up. In the last chapter of this book, I want to introduce this deeply futuristic thinking system to you.

Please imagine the following scenario:

• Wouldn’t there be more room for parents to choose to raise their children at home if they didn’t have to work both outside the home just to meet basic living needs?
• If parents can not struggle and suffer for basic survival conditions, can they have better emotions to accompany their children?
• If parents don’t need to worry about their children finding a job in the future, would it be better for their children to develop according to their characteristics and interests, rather than forcing them to study “promising” or “popular” subjects?
• If we don't have to worry about not being able to live, when we have a new understanding and development direction in our lives, can we have the courage to change our lives?

All of the above are favorable conditions for the development of narcissistic structures, and through the system of "basic income", they will have a good chance of being realized.

Let's find out together!

What is "Basic Income"?

The so-called "basic income" means that the government regularly distributes a fixed amount of money to each national without any conditions, and the main purpose is to ensure the basic life of each national.

At first glance, this may seem like a no-brainer idea, and the usual confusion and doubts are:

• What we want to protect should be the disadvantaged groups, why should we give money to people who are already rich?
• Just subsidizing the needs of the disadvantaged groups has already suffocated. How could the government finances have the means to pay such a huge amount?
• If there was a basic income for everyone, would anyone still have to work? If no one works, will society collapse?

This system can bring many changes and benefits, I think the main ones are:

• It achieves true social justice, indiscriminate and equitable distribution of the benefits produced by the common resources of all.
• Avoid labelling disadvantaged groups and "poverty traps", and eliminate the social welfare system full of censorship and discrimination.
• People no longer need to engage in exploited jobs for basic survival, and in the long run, people can be freed from work and truly engaged in activities they love.

achieve social justice

Unequal distribution has always existed in human society, causing many social conflicts and problems; despite the continuous progress of civilization and the continuous adjustment and change of social and national systems, the uneven distribution has not only not improved, but even worsened. This has led to antagonism between different groups, as well as suspicion and distrust of the political system. There have been endless disputes and disagreements over what kind of system is the real distributive justice.

Unilateral equality has proven to be an unfeasible system, and a laissez-faire free economy has actually brought about greater unequal distribution; modern countries have experimented with various planned economies, but they still have not been able to effectively solve the problem. ! What kind of system can bring about maximum distributive justice without unduly affecting the development of society?

The proposal of "Basic Income" is - "guarantee the basic living of everyone", by giving everyone a fixed amount unconditionally and regularly, to ensure their right to survival. Such a "right to exist" comes from the following facts:

• The resources on the earth belong to all mankind, and civilization is the result of long-term accumulation; the results of each person's work use the efforts of predecessors and the shared resources of the earth.
• The establishment of the state is a kind of "social contract": the state promises to take care of each citizen, and the citizens therefore agree to obey the state's system; therefore, the protection of the basic right to subsistence is the state's obligation, and the payment of personal basic income is a clear and simple and concrete practice.

The above two things are not unhappy, in fact have been going on. All countries will build public facilities and maintain government operations through "taxation", but the tax system is complex and easily manipulated by vested interests. The real disadvantaged often cannot benefit from the changes in the tax system, so it is still full of unfair distribution.

The government engages in public construction through taxation. Although it is beneficial to everyone, it cannot truly guarantee a person's survival; the state only completes public construction, and does not fulfill the obligation to protect each citizen in the "social contract". Although many welfare countries currently try to take care of everyone's right to subsistence through various welfare systems, complex systems and discriminatory scrutiny often leave those who really need help without assistance, and suffer from "labeling" in the process. "s damage. These reviews are not only a waste of resources, but also inefficient, and more likely to have various drawbacks.

Even if resources are managed correctly and correctly to those in need, there is a new problem - the poverty trap.

escape the poverty trap

Most of the current social assistance systems will set a certain threshold. When the income is lower than the set amount, the subsidy will be given; once the income is higher than this amount, the subsidy will be cancelled. But the subsidy may be withdrawn when the recipient struggles to find a job and has an income. Therefore, when he tries hard to work, his income may not increase much; and the working conditions he finds may not be good or very unstable, and he still runs the risk of losing his job again; once he loses his job again, he has to experience A tedious and self-respecting process of applying for relief. These situations often make them lose their motivation to look for a job again, which leads to the deterioration of their ability to work over time, making it more difficult to return to the workplace.

So they seem to fall into a trap from which they cannot get out, which is the "poverty trap". Once you fall into this trap, it is easy for people to lose self-esteem and even give up on themselves; this often leads to the discriminatory vision of others around them, thinking that they are lazy and waiting for others to help them. Gradually society began to exclude these people, leading to divisions between groups.

Accepting relief from others has never been and can't be a comfortable thing. No one wants to be in the role of being rescued all the time, which is very harmful to self-esteem; but because of the inhumanity of the system design, they have no way out. , can only give up self-esteem.

There are also some systems that try to adjust this defect and design a buffer mechanism. But it also faces the problem of censorship, and the process is full of the questioning of the censors and the avoidance of the censored; constantly challenging the bottom line of human nature, the result also leads to self-esteem damage.

Because the basic income does not need to be reviewed, it can completely avoid the poverty trap and protect people's self-esteem.

free from work

When the overall economic environment is poor or job opportunities are reduced, in order to survive, it is often necessary to accept low-paying jobs with poor conditions; even if the economic situation is good, capitalists will deliberately lower the wages and conditions of work in order to obtain higher profits. . This leaves most people without special skills in a state of being easily exploited. Many social welfare groups hope to improve the situation of exploitation by raising the "basic salary". However, the experience of raising the basic salary in South Korea in recent years shows that the increase has not only increased the income of the bottom people, but has also reduced it. To everyone's surprise. After analysis, it is found that the main reason is that the nature of work is very different, and the simultaneous increase of the level has caused difficulties in the operation of certain industries; and the capitalists always have a way to avoid the restrictions of the system, so the actual income of the bottom people increases. no help.

With a basic income guarantee, people do not need to be forced to accept unreasonably exploitative jobs for their basic livelihood; employers also need to provide good enough working conditions to attract human input. In this way, the employer and the laborer can make the way and time of work more flexible according to their respective needs.

In addition, a basic income can also make people more willing to work without monetary compensation, such as caring for a sick family member or social good. In fact, these activities are of great help to the society as a whole. Many people are actually committed to it, but they are unable to engage in these activities for the sake of life.

On the whole, basic income can make people more selective about work, and in the future, it may redefine people's definition of work and change the type of human civilization.

There are so many benefits, so let’s talk about your doubts next.

Why send money to everyone?

The spirit of basic income is that all development results will use the resources of the entire society, and everyone has the right to enjoy "social dividends"; it is distributed to everyone on an equal basis to avoid resource-intensive censorship and labelling of disadvantaged groups. Some people will think, why should people who are already rich send it to them? But to implement this system, there will be a certain degree of tax increase. Those with higher incomes actually saw their overall income decrease more after tax increases, while the majority of people with low- and middle-income incomes saw their overall income increase. The result is a more even and efficient overall distribution, which is where the system is clever.

Is it financially affordable?

The distribution of basic income does require a considerable amount, but at the current scale of total human production, it is definitely affordable. According to the white paper published by the "Taiwan Unconditional Basic Income Association", it is recommended that adults over the age of 18 will be paid 12,608 yuan per month, and those under the age of 18 will be paid half the amount of 6,304 yuan; if it is to be fully implemented, it will not affect the current government operations. , a single tax rate of 31% can be accommodated, while the current average tax rate in Taiwan is 13%. Estimated at this amount, the annual income of 840,000 becomes a dividing line, and the income of those less than 840,000 will increase, accounting for 67% of the population.

Such a tax increase is not a big deal, but it is not out of reach, and this is still in the case of other budget changes. If the original social welfare budget is integrated, the personnel costs of the review are deducted, and the carbon tax and environmental protection fund that can be levied in the future, as well as the taxation of capital gains due to the replacement of humans by robots, the actual amount of tax that needs to be increased can be even less.

Basic income is actually not a new concept, and it will be hotly discussed recently, mainly because of the recent maturity of artificial intelligence, machines may replace manpower in large numbers, causing a large number of unemployment problems. Mass unemployment will cause economic shrinkage and social turmoil, and will have a greater impact on human society. Therefore, even the business community has a lot of voices in support of basic income. For companies, economic contraction is an even scarier thing; if no one buys what they make, it doesn't matter how well they do it, it's just a loss of money. How to plan early and implement it gradually to reduce the impact on the economy is more important than against it. This trend can be seen from the political views of basic income among the candidates for the next US presidential election.

Basic income may no longer be a question of "whether to do it", but "how to do it".

Is everyone out of work?

Another common question is whether having a basic income will keep many people out of work and reduce productivity as a result. Will it really be so? Some small-scale experiments at present do not seem to have observed such a phenomenon, and the employment rate in some places has dropped slightly. After in-depth understanding, it is found that most women return to take care of the family or young people return to school instead of school. Nothing happens. But this still does not relieve the doubts of most people. Switzerland held a referendum on this issue before, although a survey by Swiss NEOPOLIS showed that 64% of Europeans supported the basic income system, and only 4% of the people said they would choose not to work after passing. On June 5, 2016, the Swiss overwhelmingly rejected the referendum – by a margin of 23.1% in favor and 76.9% against, rejecting the UBI referendum proposal of about $30,720 per person per year.

When faced with a real choice in a survey that seemed to have the majority approval, the results were completely reversed. How can such a difference be explained?

I think this reflects a person's distrust of others. We believe that we can work, but we do not believe that others will do the same, and we do not want our hard work to be shared by others. It is not that people are ungenerous and unwilling to share, otherwise there will not be so many donations and mutual aid behaviors, which is a kind of happiness for people. But when the object of sharing is not sure who it is and may even be used inappropriately, there will be a feeling of being deceived and disadvantaged, which is unbearable. I think this is an important psychological factor that makes it difficult for "unconditional basic income" to be widely accepted.

Based on my own experience in researching people's psychology, I would like to explore, after people obtain basic life needs, will their desires stop? Is it really human nature to be lazy? Do people really expect to live a life of nothingness?

I think this is a bit underestimated of human desire! The reason why human beings have developed the current civilization, unlike other animals, only survive and reproduce, is because human beings have different desires and abilities from other animals. I think that after people have met the basic needs of life, the desires that truly belong to human nature are just about to begin! Can you imagine yourself doing nothing after meeting the basic survival conditions? Once a desire arises, it drives you to pursue it, and it goes back to the original socio-economic system. But this time you have more options. You can continue to make money to satisfy more desires, or to practice your ideals but there may be no monetary reward; when you are confused, you can stop and think about the way forward; when you are tired, you can rest and recharge. But you must not sit idle forever, which I think is really against human nature.

Especially in recent years, the progress of artificial intelligence and robots has greatly improved the production capacity, which should not be a bad thing. Perhaps human beings should think from a different angle: there are not as many jobs that people need to do in the past, so let machines do the work of production, and people can engage in other activities besides production. The production capacity of machines comes from the long-term collective achievements of human beings, and should be used to ensure that all human beings can maintain their basic living needs.

new century of mankind

Human production has long exceeded the needs of survival, and the earth's resources have been over-exploited; the environmental damage caused has even threatened the survival of life on the entire earth. I think that through the system of basic income, people can rethink the meaning of work and production; in addition to expanding the possibility of human culture and spirit, it can make people no longer just produce for production, but can cherish limited resources, Produce what humans really need.

Even because we are free from the threat of basic survival, the relationship between people will be greatly changed; we no longer need to be in a life-and-death struggle for survival issues; way to realize each other's dreams.

If the basic income is implemented, it will be the arrival of a new century for mankind. I look forward to seeing this new world in my lifetime.