Replacing Social Welfare Programs with a Min Income Payment

Offering: a national/federal minimum income for all citizens of the US. an amount slightly above the poverty line, so let's say $15k per adult person (no children subsidies...at least not directly). this minimum income replaces all social programs, both direct (SS, medicaid, medicare, section 8, welfare, SNAP, Obamacare) and indirect (legislative pork/stimulus, especially within the military).

Argument: our economy does not have enough jobs for our population. this is a good sign, as it means we are essentially living in a post-scarcity world. as a society we don't all NEED to work (especially as hard as we do). and before you start calling this a lazy/hippie argument, as another person once put it: isn't this the point of societal progress?

why do we want a more efficient and progressing system if not to make our lives better/cheaper? instead of 100 people needed to farm, with technology we only need a handful to do the same job. instead of inefficient "big box" stores, we have amazon.com. instead of blockbuster, we have Netflix. instead of paying $1/minute for long distance calls from a wired phone in our kitchen, we have free long distance from a cell phone (or international calls via skype for even more savings). instead of our cars getting 10 mpg, we get 30 mpg. on and on and on and on.

how do we deal with the problem of simple lack of jobs? and technology is only going to eliminate the need for even more jobs in time. once Google's self-driving car gets going, we stand to lose 5-6M jobs in the "Driving" industry (cabs, transport trucks, car services, etc). in a decade or so after that down the road, we stand to lose 10x that once we stop buying cars as a society (if you need me to explain, i can). retail jobs are going to becoming more and more useless. hell, most retail jobs only exist due to familiarity and b/c our society wants to give people shitty jobs just to give those people something to do. you don't need to pay a clerk $10/hour to hand you cigarettes, lotto tickets, or candy when a smart vending machine can do that for much less.

yes, i know that as technology increases/expands, we will have new industries of technicians, professionals, developers, and/or coders that will arise, but these will not replace the sheer number of jobs (and most of the jobs that will be lost are currently filled by people incapable of higher-end jobs, anyway). the millinos and millions of people who are (1) unintelligent, (2) purposefully uneducated, and/or (3) unskilled will not job job opportunities in the modern economy (and it is a big problem TODAY, let alone as the economy advances and leaves these people behind).

so what options do we have? the first is a policy of emigration, which i don't mind, but is probably impractical. second we can continue to expand the growing current welfare state/system (that is going broke). third we can cut off everyone and just see what happens. fourth is a min income.

the min income allows people a subsistence living if they "opt out" of trying to fit into the system of production. this sounds ridiculous, but they're already out of it, and they aren't going to be able to fit into it down the road. they can either be subdued, forced out of the country, or starved to death/killed. there is no other option for these people. even the most libertarian-leaning person has to accept that these people will not fit into a modern/developing economy.

the min income goes to everyone, so it's not biased like current social welfare programs. the min income also does not prevent any person from opting into the producer economy. if you want to be middle class, nothing stops you. if you want to go for upper class/elite? go for it. if you want to supplement your min income by working part time at some lower-end job, go for it. the idea is that by forcing people "off the teet" of these jobs as a full time, primary income will open up economic opportunities to the current unemployed via splitting up that "full time" labor into multiple part-time opportunities. this will both allow people to "rise above" the min income, possibly give then incentives to improve their education/skills, and give MORE people "stuff to do" in the future economy.

*Note/Disclaimer: these are not my own ideas. i have just sort of started to consider them (b/c i used to think it was insane). wiki has been posting about these ideas for months now, and i suggest all of you spend 1 hour of your life listening to this podcast. it goes into details about all of these concepts in much greater, more learned details.