Basic Income

From Wise Nano

Molecular manufacturing promises to create great wealth, however, the question remains how to divert this wealth such that a maximum number of people can profit from it. A the implementation of a basic income may be one solution to this problem.

Basic Income, according to the BIEN (Basic Income European Network), is defined as following:

• A basic income is an income unconditionally granted to all on an individual basis, without means of test or work requirement. It is a form of minimum income guarantee that differs from those that now exist in various European countries in three important ways:
  • it is being paid to individuals rather than households;
  • it is paid irrespective of any income from other sources;
  • it is paid without requiring the performance of any work or the willingness to accept a job if offered.

This model offers financial independence for everyone. Many of the crimes happening today have their cause in lack of financial independence. Among them, theft, robbery, modern slavery (sweatshops, trafficking in human beings), and fraud are almost always associated with desire for material wealth or simply material existence. Or, as German poet J.W. Goethe put it in one of his plays, "First the gorging, then the morality"

A major advantage of basic income is that it has been analyzed extensively in economic literature. After careful consideration, it appears like a good idea even to such economic conservatives as Milton Friedman and Richard Nixon, both of whom advocated it.

One of the most cautious and least coersive or intrusive ways in which a basic income could be integrated into the current economic system would be to allocate pollution credits (for heat, noise, nano-litter, imposed risk to pedestrians from driving/flying etc) uniformly to the Earth's population, and then to allow people to sell their credits freely. As this proposal is not an intrinsic part of the basic income concept, and is supported by other considerations as well, it is discussed in more detail on this page.