Basic Income could still mean massive inequality. Spreading the work around via healthy minimum levels of vacation and working hour limits seems like a good move whether we adopt BI or not.
You just answered your own question. In a world with better income equality you wouldn't be getting fucked over so hard you have to work 3 times the number of hours as someone else to make a living wage.
I also find the idea that inequality is what motivates success abhorrent, but whatever floats your boat.
Inequality is only a problem today, because the poor are suffering. If everyone has basic level of living standard (which probably increases as we approach post-scarcity), inequality would seem much less of a problem.
Especially in the US so much "inequality" is a First World problem.
If you said in an interview that you want to work for my company (imagining I had one and was in a position to make hiring decisions) just to spite some other person, or that you'd be taking an attitude of spiteful competition at work, I would have to politely grind through the rest of the interview and then recommend we never call you back again.
They are doing it for survival not because they have a choice.
They also have no time or ability to increase the overall demand in the economy.
If you remove the artificial incentives to work, no one will work.
That's bullshit view of humanity and frankly, insulting to me as a human being. If you really take a look at "99% of people" you'll see individuals with dreams and passions, most of whom never get to realize them. That nice girl who served you burger and fries in a drive-thru? She wanted to be a pianist, but she had to enter the job market early. She is knitting over the weekend and cares about local problems. That taxi driver who drove you to work probably builds RC planes in the little free time he has, or maybe serves in HOA.
If you really, really look at general population, you'll see people with energy to build, create and experiment. Some of them get lucky and find a fulfilling job. Most of them have to try and cram their real work into weekends, if they even have them. And yes, a lot of them come back from work and go straight to drinking and watching TV - because that's the only thing you can do to relax after you spend all your energy on a 8+ hour job and commute. It's a symptom.
Yes, if you remove artificial incentives to work, some people will stop working. Maybe a lot. They'll go drinking, spending time with friends, and trying to figure out what they really care about in life, now that they have time. And most will likely get bored after at most a month of drinking and start doing something productive. Because humans in general have the need to build, create and improve.
Things will have to be rearranged; some jobs automated, others maybe taken in short shifts out of the sense of social responsibility. But they will get done. Reality is not WALL-E.
>"builds RC planes"
Like I said. People don't want to work.
You just changed the examples of not working to be more elitist.
Who tars the roof? Who wades through clogged sewer lines? Who mines the rare metals in your cellphone? Who farms the maggots for industrial fisheries? Who makes the textiles? Who slaughters the cattle? Proctologist? Who embalms our dead? Who does QA for your phone's RAM? Who cleans up the remains at violent crime scenes? Who solders together your alarm clock? Who tears out asbestos?
These jobs (insofar as they need to be done, and some certainly do) will always be difficult, dangerous, and/or repulsive; but with basic income, they'd have to offer enough money and prestige to attract people who are now free to walk away.
No. You said, I quote, "99% of people would rather be screwing, drinking and watching TV all day long".
My examples are all kinds of things you can get paid for if you are lucky and that use skills important for providing value to society.
> Who tars the roof? Who wades through clogged sewer lines?
Initially people, for additional money. Later, machines.
> Who mines the rare metals in your cellphone? Who farms the maggots for industrial fisheries? Who makes the textiles? Who slaughters the cattle?
Machines.
> Proctologist? Who embalms our dead?
People, for additional money.
> Who does QA for your phone's RAM?
Machines.
> Who cleans up the remains at violent crime scenes?
People, for additional money.
> Who solders together your alarm clock?
Machines.
> Who tears out asbestos?
We don't use it anymore.
There's a spectrum between "no one working anymore" and "UBI giving you other choice than work or starve".
We've heard this sort of argument before, of course. Back before the emancipation, some white landlord would say "If we let these negroes go, who is going to pick the cotton?" --- We ended slavery, and we should end wage slavery.
Of course. That's why we have machines.
If I became a millionaire overnight I would probably take a month off to be supremely lazy. Then I would get back to work in whatever strikes my fancy, probably for VERY long hours.
Do you have any idea how much mindless, painful, miserable work the people of Earth do to allow you to have a computer connected to the internet, with food in your belly, streets to your house, a house to live in, with electricity to turn on? Only on a site for programming could so many people honestly believe such a white-collar-centric hypothesis.
That's why Basic Income is a topic now and not 100 or 1000 year ago. We know we could automate most of that survival-level task, at least in principle; at minimum reduce it to small amount of maintenance job while we push for development of self-healing materials. Also, UBI seems inevitable now - because the market starts to incentivize automation of everything, and that means most people will be out of jobs soon anyway. You prefer them to starve and/or rebel and trash all our progress, or shall we just skip that bullshit and go straight to something better?
> Only on a site for programming could so many people honestly believe such a white-collar-centric hypothesis.
Or maybe this "site for programming" is acutely aware of our current level of technological development.
Irrelevant. Technological progress does not erase work, it merely changes what work the market will pay for people to do:
-People will hire teams of people to play video games with them.
-They will hire teams of costume designers to create wild, highly personalized clothing for them.
-They will pay for live musicians in their living rooms.
-They will pay young beautiful people to lounge around in their living rooms.
-They will pay large teams to plan and cater elaborate parties in their homes.
-They will purchase expensive hand-thrown dishes, because they'll think it shows their authenticity and good taste.
-Homes will be decorated to a degree which we have little conception of today.
-Teams of well-paid cinematographers will produce their home movies.
-People will buy social media teams to write funny twitter posts for them.
If you can't imagine what they will hire people to do, that just says that you're not "frivolous" enough to understand the whims of the people of the future. You'd hate them if you met them, but their system will actually work, unlike UBI.
So? Neither is what 99% of companies are doing.
Three word answer: money equals power
(hah, I upvoted you by mistake)
If (legitimately earned) money is how society compensates people for providing things we value, why wouldn't influence (what you call "power"?) come along with it?
If you are concerned about "power" being used to violate the rights of people without it, there are systems of law which criminalize such acts without preventing individuals from earning more money (i.e. possibly expanding the "wealth gap").
There are two kinds of corrupt societies: ones where people get rich and then seize power, and ones where people seize power and then get rich; and while both are bad, it's _much_ more dangerous to be the second kind (power leads to money) than the first (money leads to power).