A website called Livingincome.me promotes a proposal called “the Living Income Guaranteed.” Although similar to basic income, this proposal has some significant differences. According to the website, “The Living Income Guaranteed is the provision of an actual ‘Living Income’ for each eligible citizen – an income that provides a reasonable level of financial security so that everyone may lead a dignified life. Unlike the Basic Income Grant proposals, the Living Income Guaranteed is not unconditionally provided but is allocated through a means-test. The Living Income Guaranteed is a social security ‘net’ available to all; on an as-needed basis.”
The LIG proposal is online at: https://livingincome.me/wiki/The_Living_Income_Guaranteed_Proposal
More info as at: https://livingincome.me/
Living Income Guaranteed
Welcome to the Sandbox! Yes, I think it is a great idea to have a sandbox where young people, and those new to the idea, have a chance to play with all possible ideas. This website from South Africa gives us a good example of how valuable a sandbox can be. Here everyone has a chance to play the “What if …” game. What if everybody can get as much money as they want? What if money grows on trees? What if nobody has to pay income taxes? What if people can live for 500 years?
All of these thought experiments are valuable for the growth of the individual participants, and for the possibility of new contributions to the general conversation which may ultimately come out of the sandbox.
But the real value of the sandbox is the chance for the players to confront the opposition to their ideas in a non-threatening context, where they can see what problems might arise with their “What if …” scenarios, without having to suffer the blows which their thought experiments would no doubt immediately provoke if expressed directly on the “mean streets”.
The idea of a Basic Income Guarantee has a long and distinguished history going back hundred of years, and includes such illustrious proponents as an American founding father, Thomas Paine, in the 18th century, French philosophes in the 19th century, an army of acclaimed academic thinkers in the 20th century, including the universalist, R. Buckminster Fuller, and the current 21st century standard bearers such as Phillippe Van Parijs, Guy Standing, Karl Widerquist and a host of others.
It is characteristic of our global democratic aspirations that we don’t force people to spend one-third of their lives studying history and theory before allowing them to speak their minds. Freedom of speech is the keynote of democracy. But all speech has consequences within the context in which it is heard. And this is why it is so important to have the sandbox, the place where you can try out your ideas in a safe context, and where your ideas can grow as you learn what will work and what will not.
As far as the proposal of the Living Income Guarantee goes, the big problem is that its authors have not thought through the consequences of making their income guarantees conditional, selective and means-tested. This is where learning the history is indispensable, because most welfare programs which have existed to date have been means-tested, and all have resulted in monstrous bureaucracies which ultimately come to own, control and oppress those whom the programs were designed to help. But the discussion of this has a long history, and much can be learned from information available from the international organization BIEN (Basic Income Earth Network) and USBIG (United States Basic Income Guarantee network), not to mention such readily available sources as Wikipedia.
On the other hand, it is possible that organizations like L.I.G or Equal Life Foundation are deliberately disseminating disinformation to confuse and discredit the credible popular movement for universal unconditional Basic Income Guarantees by trying to associate patently absurd and sophomoric ideas with the genuine movement, supported by legions of sock puppets. For my part, I choose to believe, at least until convinced otherwise, that the sandbox is just what it appears to be: a sandbox. As Marc Bolan once said, “Let all the children boogie!”
I’m part of the team that published the Living Income Guaranteed proposal, so thank you for taking the time to go through it!
We’ve played with the concept of an unconditional living/basic income, but find that there is in fact a lot of resistance among people to ‘give those who already have money’ more money – and it is a concept that is also not feasible in for instance third world countries with large populations. To distribute available funds to everyone in such a scenario would not guarantee a living income, but if it were distributed to those who actually need it – one can uplift them out of poverty. Our first concern, hence, is that each one’s human rights are guaranteed. We’ve noted the argument on the experience with previous means-testing and how it has been inefficient. We’ve therefore written a blog for clarification on specifically what we mean with ‘means-testing’, since mention of the term seems to invoke immediate resistance. Means-testing can be extremely simplistic and cost-efficient. Here is the blog: http://economistjourneytolife.blogspot.com/2013/12/day-253-living-income-guaranteed-and.html. Thank you for reading!
I’ll have to make this brief, because after reading your link, I must tell you that this is the stuff trolls, shills and sock puppets are made of.
On the other hand, if you are a real person, and sincere, then what does this statement from your webpage mean?
“With LIG, we suggest no personal income tax be charged and information sharing would be done from the perspective of receiving benefits in the form of Living Income.”
This makes no sense, so are you just having trouble expressing yourself, or is there some ulterior motive here?
I have watched some of the Google-hangout discussions on your website, and there I heard an LIG proponent make a statement that does make sense: that LIG will be funded by nationalizing public resources. This makes sense, alright, but the entirely WRONG sense. Now you are talking extreme socialism. This was the idea behind the communist movement, and always involves empowering an elite to take charge of the “nationalizing”, and then we get Stalin, jackboots and totalitarianism all over again.
Also, your plans to have technology solve the problem of money also leads directly and inevitably to totalitarianism: “Such points will only effectively be eradicated once money is entirely digitized and no transactions can take place without there being a record of it in the system…”
If you really want to help people with a democratic movement to eliminate poverty and preserve individual liberty, you should be doing everything you can to support the EU campaign for a vote on an universal unconditional Basic Income Guarantee, and get involved in the uuBIG discussion.
And keep in mind that what will ultimately make this idea work is that it requires governments to treat everyone the same.
““With LIG, we suggest no personal income tax be charged and information sharing would be done from the perspective of receiving benefits in the form of Living Income.”
This makes no sense, so are you just having trouble expressing yourself, or is there some ulterior motive here?”
It is useful to read an entire paragraph to provide context to a sentence.
In terms of the nationalization of resources and fear of totalitarianism – check out the following blogs for perspective: http://economistjourneytolife.blogspot.com/2013/12/day-255-how-will-companies-be.html and http://economistjourneytolife.blogspot.com/2013/12/day-255-how-will-companies-be.html