Everybody Should Support Universal Basic Income

Firstly, let me define "Universal Basic Income" as getting a living wage, no matter what, job or no job.  You have the ability to have rent, food, and health care, no matter what.  A negative tax.

Sure, the poor should support a guaranteed living wage, because that makes sense for them.

But what about corporations and the rich?  Intuitively it may seem like of course they should not support it, but there's a giant glaring problem which is not being taken into account:  automation.  Within the next 20 years, about 40% of all jobs will be made obsolete by better, cheaper, faster technology.  And that figure will only continue to rise.  Truly no job is safe.  No matter how creative or artistic what you do is, no matter how necessary you think you are to your job, the reality is, you probably aren't.  This means that a LOT of people will be without a job in the very near future, yet the world will still expect them to be able to pay their bills.

That fills the powder keg for a very large revolution.  The decreasing middle class, and the increasing gap between the rich and poor, combined with the world view that the poor should still pay for themselves even when there are truly no jobs available, means that unrest will turn into revolution, and the entire current system will simply collapse.  Which of course it must, because it simply can't sustain itself.

Unless of course the wealthy and the corporations realize that it CAN sustain itself if the poor have enough to get by and thus are too complacent to revolt.  It's in their long term best interest to pay the taxes to pay the poor so that the poor can live comfortably enough to not be starving and thus revolt and destroy the system.

That being said, I don't think it will happen.  Individual immediate self-interest will override and the Nash equilibrium will be that the system falls apart, and a revolution of sweeping reform and Constitutional amendments will happen-- and that's the best case scenario.

I currently view myself as an "voluntaryist" -- a sort of pseudo anarcho-capitalist, and I would be ok with the current corporatocracy and even a large chunk of the government itself falling apart so much that we had to rebuild from scratch.  But I feel compelled to point out that corporations and governments should actually campaign for basic income.  They might not realize it, but it is in their best interest.

If they want to maintain the status quo, they need to make it *possible* to maintain the status quo.  And having half the population revolt because they're starving because you expect them to have money when there aren't any jobs left -- that's a sure-fire way to ensure the status quo gets left behind.  (Which of course it should...)

Basic income isn't a political view within the current system.  It's the only possible way to keep the current system from collapsing.

But then again, many of us, myself included, would be happy to see the old world systems die the fiery death they should...  Whatever happens, it'll certainly be interesting to see how it all plays out!