Basic income is wealth redistribution function. There is a massive income inequality problem in the US (a trivial google search will reveal, if you aren't aware of already), and a basic income would rebalance taxes as well as replace some other social programs in order to pay for it. See this reddit post for more info about income inequality and taxes.
https://www.reddit.com/r/BasicIncome/comments/3mqnyg/how_inc...
Well you spelled it, you need a communist like system to do that (i.e. take money through taxes, redistribute it through massive inefficiencies, and make sure politicians get their hefty share when the money flows).
Inequality is a false problem. It's a problem if people get poorer, but all indicators for the past 50 years show that everyone is getting richer, while rich ones are getting richer faster (which is obvious why, when you have more capital you are much more likely to increase it faster). As long as even the modest classes are getting richer every generation, everyone's life is improving.
Actually, if a state does any welfare, it probably has this problem already. Basic income offers significant reductions in those inefficiencies by simplifying the process of selecting eligible people (and retiring the required bureaucracy).
> and make sure politicians get their hefty share when the money flows
That you have under every system, from despotism to socialism to capitalist democracy.
> Inequality is a false problem. It's a problem if people get poorer, but all indicators for the past 50 years show that everyone is getting richer, while rich ones are getting richer faster (which is obvious why, when you have more capital you are much more likely to increase it faster). As long as even the modest classes are getting richer every generation, everyone's life is improving.
Inequality will be a false problem when the bottom level of society won't be starving to death or due to lack of basic health care. Again, basic income proposes turning inequality into a non-problem by securing a decent, humane minimum level for everyone.
Never been proven that UBI would reduce the inefficiencies. The State find ways to be inefficient even when it's not supposed to be.
> That you have under every system, from despotism to socialism to capitalist democracy.
Nope, if you did not have a Big government doing wealth redistribution in the first place you would not have much money being lost in such transactions because the flow would be very limited. Look at the US Federal budget, how humongous it has become.
> Inequality will be a false problem when the bottom level of society won't be starving to death or due to lack of basic health care.
Oh come on. Mass starvation is a thing of the past, check Wikipedia, the last starvations happened more than 30 years ago and the only recent ones are due to conflicts mainly - poor people do not die anymore of hunger anywhere - we have large amounts of excess food, even in the poorest places of the world, like the countrysides of China.
> Again, basic income proposes turning inequality into a non-problem by securing a decent, humane minimum level for everyone.
The advocates of UBI fail to understand that by raising the minimum earnings to everyone, you will probably make prices go up everywhere (increased taxes + prices adjustments based on purchasing power) so it won't result in any meaningful difference.
Also, not every form of redistribution is automatically 'communist'... I don't see many people who advocate basic income also suggesting that we turn over means of production to the state - just raising some taxes, and trying to make the way that we redistribute wealth more simple/efficient.
I don't know enough about it to really argue either way, but your arguments don't make much sense to me without more context.
Then you are not looking very hard:
http://ourworldindata.org/data/growth-and-distribution-of-pr...
> Also, not every form of redistribution is automatically 'communist'...
Well UBI is a welfare kind of policy and needs basically a strong State to actually work in practice. Most strong States lean towards socialism and communism because they justify their existence this way ("if we were not there, you would not have welfare, so let us increase the government budget size further") - a common trope to get folks elected.
