I believe setting a base line amount that people should be paid for labor that is considered to be profitable protects individuals. We have a responsibility to ensure that people aren’t being exploited or taken advantage of for their contribution to society. Setting a basic income standard is a good guardrail to protect against corporate greed harming everyday people.

I am not arguing that we should start just handing money out to people. I believe we should set a livable minimum wage for corporate jobs, and also have opportunities provided by our government to pay people for doing social labor like taking care of a sick family member, or raising children and taking care of a house. These are two forms of labor that our society depends an awful lot on. Wanting a way for fair legal compensation for this doesn’t sound outlandish to me. I understand that money is not free and the actual nitty gritty of the economics isn’t my strong suit, but we waste a lot of money as a government. We would have to do a lot of restructuring and we would have to piss some people off to do it, but it isn’t impossible and I don’t believe it would be inherently wasteful. It gives people who have been doing unpaid labor, a financial incentive that could boost morale and make home lives better.

I don’t fully understand the argument of conservation of money when it comes to paying average people, when we don’t seem to have a problem with it when it is regarding using funds on relatively trivial things. We spend money on a lot of silly things in this country, and that adds up awfully quick. We waste taxpayer dollars on congressional hearings for things that people don’t actually care about and doesn’t really affect them. We waste our time and money regularly. We could reallocate low priority things towards paying low income people who are likely to put that money right back into the economy.