Australia Considers UBI

[ZiprHead]

Basic income is considered a radical idea. But in 2020 we lived it and some people want it back

Giving everyone a bit of money to live on could end up giving back a lot more to everyone in society, experts in basic income argue.

www.abc.net.au

Tomorrow a conference called Basic Income after COVID-19 — Social Security, Work and Wealth will discuss the concept of giving a living wage to everyone who needs it.

It's an economic idea that has rocketed from being a fringe academic theory to being debated in the US presidential primaries and a key policy of what is potentially South Korea's next government.

Universal basic income (UBI) is the concept of providing a low payment to everyone, removing the stigma of welfare payments. Its trimmed-down cousin, basic income, sees an amount that covers living expenses provided to those who need it, such as the unemployed, the elderly and carers.

For conference organiser, Elise Klein, the economic crisis of 2020 proved the merit of the idea, as a $550 a fortnight coronavirus supplement essentially doubled the value of welfare payments such as JobSeeker and gave millions of people enough money to live on.

Elise Klein is one of the organisers of the basic income conference.(Supplied)
"This idea that if you just give people money, people do nothing, actually wasn't the case at all," she says.

"People are extremely busy, extremely productive. And we saw that with this natural experiment from the federal government that acted like a basic income."

 

[Patooka]

With the fucking arsehole cunts elected officials we have currently running the Federal Government, this is a discussion that will go nowhere. Barnaby Joyce, Peter Dutton and Alex Hawke would reject this on general principle alone. I don't even think there would a lot of Greens or Independents who would risk their political career on this.