For several months, 'Basic Income' has been discussed to a great extent in Germany. For those who aren't familiar with the concept.....on paper and via university thesis projects over the past decade, it's been this idea that you could bring people under a national umbrella.....where you'd assign an amount of money to them (everything for home, kids, utilities, food, etc) in one simple payment, and it doesn't matter if you work or not.....you get that 'check' each month.
The key piece to the German enthusiasm now (at least from the far left groups)? Well....they want it to be unconditional. That means that if you just sat around and didn't do anything, especially when asked to go and apply for work.....nothing would deny you the Basic Income 'check'.
A lot of people would look at this concept and naturally ask some questions.....like it appears that you'd accidentally (purposely) bump the cost up (maybe 50 to 100 percent higher than what they already pay).....so where does the extra money come from?
Back around eight years ago....some petitions came into the Bundestag and they finally agreed to do a research project, and determine some facts on Basic Income. You can actually go and review the presentation given at the end by the government reviewers.
The obvious problem they pointed out in research.....there was no known way to finance the eventual cost of Basic Income....recognizing that costs would go dramatically up and taxes had to increase somewhere.
But then they came to a more pressing issue.....on the physiological side.....they felt there would be a decrease in general motivation to go out and find work, if unemployed. While acceptable to have five to eight percent in unemployment.....if you started to find 15 to 20 percent of people just unwilling to look for work.....the whole government would likely fall apart.
Unhealthy rise in immigration.....to gain access to Basic Income? Well....this gets brought up and legally.....if you authorize the visa....you can't deny the new guy this Basic Income package.
Will something like Basic Income be implemented? I think the budget and taxation folks will freak out and raise a big stink, but there's a fair number of political folks ready to fall on their swords and accept a massive taxation problem to resolve welfare issues.
If you had some dynamic in play where people were forced into retraining and certification programs....making them employable....then you might find some reasons to accept Basic Income, but in a country of 82-million....if five to ten percent weren't that enthusiastic over such a 'push'.....there's not much of a reason to proceed forward.
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