Bill Bonner, the man behind Moneyweek, has a go at the idea of Citizen's Income:
This is crazy!
If you can earn $30,000 a year without working, it will be hard for anyone earning less than $60,000 (about the same as $30,000 after taxes in many places) to get up in the morning and put on his overalls.
Why bother?
The waiters will abandon us at our tables, our glasses unfilled and our dirty dishes still in front of us. The valet parkers will drive off in their own new cars. The burger flippers will leave their hot patties in midair as they head home. All the low-paying jobs, and more than a few middle-income posts, too, will be vacated.
To be fair to Bill, who normally speaks sense, he is against the whole idea of a welfare state. However, what I'd like to ask him is "why do the rich work, then?" Why did Lord Rothschild, a man who earned millions a year and was already worth many millions more, work a longer week than I did, as I discovered to my amazement when I was working on his house. Even his clerk of works had enough money never to have to work again, but still put in a full week's work. It doesn't seem to have occurred to Bill, though, that if someone who earns $30,000 a year after tax can earn $30,000 a year without working, they would rather continue to work and earn $60,000 after tax than remain on $30,000 in idleness. If everyone on $30,000 a year would rather remain idle than earn more, why does anyone on that salary in the absence of a CI ever look to augment their income?
I also heard the selfsame argument being put forward on Radio 4 today, with the same whiff of classism - the rich may work when they don't have to, but the poor are different, they are all feckless, idle layabouts who wouldn't get out of bed unless they face the threat of starvation - a piece of economic and social claptrap easily disproved by the numbers of people who draw the dole and work illegally.
Debate Magazine
