Quote:
Originally Posted by Rochard
But there is no incentive to do better. People will just coast on $22k a year.
My friend does this, which is why he is no longer my friend. He has a serious medical condition but it hasn't affected him in fifteen years. There is no reason why he can't work, but why bother - He makes $30k a year and that's barely enough for him to live off of. But there is no inncentive for him to get a job and make money because he's getting by and doesn't have to work.
Might be cheaper for us, but it will create an entire class of people who said "Fuck it, I don't want to work and I don't have to".
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I personally have a lot of reservations as to whether it would work or not. There is a chance that you are correct and many people would just say fuck it and collect their $22K a year and do nothing. I think we would see many young people who get out of high school just saying fuck it. At that age $22K seems like a lot of money and you could just hang out with your friends and do whatever you wanted.
All that said, $22K isn't that much in most areas of the country so the quality of your life would not be very good. Most people would be motivated to at least put some effort into things and better themselves. As things are right now there is a segment of the population that has figured out how to game the system and just lives off of it because they are too lazy to work. Those people would continue to exist. The real question is how many more would choose to live off the system? I don't know that number.
I personally think it would motivate a decent number of people. Right now if you are making minimum wage and getting welfare help you have very little incentive to better yourself because it isn't going to be easy. You will quickly find yourself in the welfare bubble where you make too much to get welfare, but not enough to live well. Many people making $15K-$18K per year can't imagine how they can get to $40K per year without getting a degree or getting lucky. So they just don't try. With this system they could actually see a path and maybe getting some success early on would spur them to work harder and achieve more.
Maybe I am dead wrong, I don't know. I just like thinking outside the box when it comes to some solutions. The number of people on welfare and government assistance is just going up and up and up. Clearly the current system isn't working to well.