About Basic Income and Rents.

I have got into another of these twitter debates in the past two days. I generally avoid them because they are so futile. They usually start when I make a comment to these interested in that topic, to correct some type of misinformation. I do not particularly invite any response from the author of the misinformation.

What I often get is a kind of pile on from people repeating the misinformation like it is a received truth and not processing what I said. I usually end by explaining the facts of the matter as clearly as I can within the limits of the Twitter format and then blocking any further responses.

Sometimes the experience motivates me to write a short piece explaining the matter, and blogging it. So it is with the little piece of nonsense from a couple of days ago now, about how Basic Income will solve the problem of high rents and shortage of rental units in most large cities.

There never was a cause more ill served by its devotees than the idea of a Basic Income. That is, the idea of just giving everybody a flat income. The Basic principles of Basic Income are that the income must be for everybody, enough to live on, and without conditions. Almost every BI ‘expert’ misses at least one of these points.

The problem is that there is no real organization developing and promoting the idea. There are some half assed groups mostly interested in philosophical discussions and disdainful of brain tanking; of actually working out how the concept would work and how to actualize it.