Off Topic — HabitableZone

Off Topic » in reply to Thanks

On "social credits"
TB — (archived)

Heinlein wrote "For Us the Living" in 1939. I haven't read it, but I'm familiar with the concept.

Deep in the heart of many well-meaning people is the idea that nobody should really HAVE to work for a living. If they have the all-too-common outlook that wealth simply IS, and society is all about deciding how to pass it around, this seems reasonable.

Someone with even a marginal notion of how economics really works could see exactly what would happen in a democratic society with a "minimum guaranteed income" with the "right" to The system would divide (even more than it has already) into a hugely-taxed productive sector, and what would essentially be wards of the state. Guess how the latter would vote on economic issues, particularly the parameters of what a "minimum guaranteed income" would be.

We are already at the point where those who don't pay taxes are beginning to outnumber those that do. Again, in a democracy, an economic positive feedback loop.

How this would somehow result in high-paying toilet cleaning jobs is beyond me. The more likely result would be toilets that didn't get cleaned all that much, or even more reliance on illegal labor than we have now.

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