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Social programs generally are not considered as income and do not preclude you from being eligible for other social programs (i.e. the benefits stack). This creates the unfortunate situation that some people that don't work at all receive more annual income (in kind) from the government than their working neighbors. It works out to nearly $60k per year in benefits.
I support the idea of a basic income that strives to create an equitable situation for the working class.
Meanwhile as a software engineer, the work you do can be put on your resume and used as leverage for better opportunities.
It also artificially eliminates jobs that need to exist via austerity (e.g. not building necessary infrastructure), offshoring (moving manufacturing jobs abroad) and massive transfers of wealth to the already wealthy (e.g. wall street bailouts).
The techno-utopian notion of us approaching a post-work society glosses over these three things in a major way.
That said, there's no reason offhand to provide basic income to minors. Parents can choose to have as many children as they want, at their own expense. One of the key advantages of basic income is getting rid of the complexities and irregularities of the current welfare model. Subsidies for children are one of those complexities.
Indeed.
A foster care system is, in my opinion and at least in poor areas of large metros - is a good (and pretty depressing) example of what many people are willing to do for money. To some extend - childcare subsidies demonstrate the same.
> Simply stating something does not make it a fact.
Your first quote makes it sound as if it was the inevitable outcome.
SOME people. Not all. It's a slippery slope fallacy.
What if the same type of people that try to manipulate the system do it because it seems like the only reasonable way to stay afloat?
It could be possible then that some of them would not have more kids to get more money.
UBI still permits people to have children that they'd otherwise be unable to afford, but at least the absence of other sibsidies will force individuals to decide how they'd like to budget that income, on children or otherwise.
I'll reply to the implied point in a second post.
Importantly, in that universe, different regions of human colonization had different limits for births; including un-affiliated areas (space between planets) having unregulated birthrates.
For the context of Earth/Terra:
I forget if it was one or two children, but for sure, for two parents 'the first child is free'. Let's simplify that and say that for each contributing parent (to society) the first child is free.
After that additional children slots can either be obtained through exponentially larger tax payments, performing a significant contribution to society (E.G. Nobel Prize winners might be granted unlimited reproduction rights), or winning a lottery.
Obviously in the case of massive global war, famine, or disease (age death waves included), additional children might be built in to the quota to keep the population at desired levels.
Was he advocating that? I thought it was just a setup for plot points explored in Ringworld.
So I think it's kind of a pseudo problem.
You could solve most of that by making sure that people use condoms and that it isn't religiously wrong.
In Europe and Japan, yes. Birthrates are down and that leads to a number of bad social and economic consequences.