Television is so glamorous... sorry, I shouldn't have talked.
One of the most persuasive arguments against a universal basic income is the people will stop working.
They'll take the universal basic income, they'll pool it and they will simply
live in idle life.
It's a serious issue and I had to take that into account in the design of the
program. And the solution that I came up with is pretty straightforward. As long
as people have a job that pays less than thirty thousand dollars a year, they
continue to get the full ten thousand dollars.
Now there is a certain tax that is levied on after thirty thousand dollars
a year, but at that point you have to ask yourself are you going to quit work and
exchange a forty thousand dollar a year lifestyle for a ten-thousand-dollar a year
lifestyle? People to live satisfying lives need to be responsible for their
own lives.
There's much more to be said about the problem of work disincentives, but a
program of a universal basic income can be structured so the people are lured
into working until they can't afford to quit.