As far as I know, basic income will grow up economy as everybody will be able to pay their bills and later go to the bar with their friends. More money = more activity and happy people or life quality (depends).
I don’t really understand some of this. Why pair it with a VAT? VAT itself is a known to be a regressive tax because poor people/ households spend a higher percentage of their incomes on consumption (food etc) so the effect of a VAT is to raise their overall tax percentage.
This is definitely what happens in my country, where we have a flat 15% VAT on all goods and services. As someone on disability that means I’m being taxed an extra 15% on most of my income.
Radical is, by definition, a pejorative for any significant distance/divergence from the status quo. If you don’t think the status quo is good, then radical is not bad.
I have no problem with calling (U)BI a radical departure, because our current labor system is not good.
It feels kind of hopeless now that we’d ever get something that feels so “radical”, but I’d like to remind people that 80+ hour work weeks without overtime used to be the norm before unions got us the 40 hour work week. It feels inevitable and hopeless until the moment we get that breakthrough, then it becomes the new norm.
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