I presented the BI argument to someone whose judgment I trust and whose opinion I respect, and his response was this: if America agrees to give all of its citizens over the age of 21 $6000+ a year, it had better take actual drastic measures to curtail immigration both legal and illegal, because even more people will come to America (and become citizens) than already do. Those worldwide who make less than that per year, which is hundreds of millions, will think "now we really have nothing to lose by going to America." My response was that the US would have to create stringent guidelines around who exactly could get this money -- people who could clearly prove citizenship, people who had been citizens for X years, etc. But that somewhat defeats the purpose of so-called 'no strings attached' money. Just words for thought. I'm still hashing out what I think about this issue.
The conservatives often harsh on the "freeloaders" drawn to the safety net in The Netherlands. I haven't looked at it in years and can't speak authoritatively, but your friend's response is one that tracks with reality. What the actual numbers are I couldn't tell you and am fully prepared to believe in smoke and mirrors. As per usual, the tricky bit is in the numbers: the author points out that a basic income in the Netherlands would cost 1/3 of NL's GDP. Not defense budget, not overall tax burden, GDP. In the US, similar measures (give everybody the poverty line) would cost $3.5T, or 25% of our $15T GDP… AKA 5x the defense budget. You don't get there with a flagrantly socialist tax structure, and that's a tough row to hoe from here in the land of Reaganomics.
I read that even if we axed every social welfare program that you can name, we'd still only be halfway or less to 'give everyone the poverty line'. That's why I've been operating on an estimate of $6000 when I talk about it. Not like this'll happen in the US anyway.
I agree 100%, yet I still find the discussion interesting. The Great Republican Die Off is coming, and I wonder what a generation of under-employed, over-educated people are going to bring with them.
Reading about the youth Republican movement -- such as it is -- is very interesting. There's a small crop of young GOPers who have sane social policies and also have sane economic policies. They don't have power at the moment because not enough old fucks have died but in 15-20 years maybe discourse will be level again. In other words, futurists, don't solve aging just yet...
Tom Hartmann (there I go again) said that it makes a lot more sense to reform existing parties than it does to form splinter parties, and that due to the electoral college, no more than two parties will ever work in the United States. He made the point that it is to the benefit of Democrats everywhere to work to create a sane adversarial party so that Democrats can battle policy choices, rather than dyed-in-the-wool insanity.