If someone's that highly productive they'll still be able to earn enough that going out to work would make economic sense. Or they could have the fathers change the diapers.
If someone's that highly productive they'll still be able to earn enough that going out to work would make economic sense.
This is absolutely true in a free market with no labor distortions (BI, tax, etc). However, we already live in a world with distortions (taxes, welfare, regulations) that drive a wedge between economically optimal and actual choices. How would adding an even bigger wedge help?
Also, due to women's sexual choices, most likely the father is also highly productive. So your "fathers change the diapers" is not really a viable solution - it just means you lose his output rather than hers.
Actually I can't imagine anything closer to the "free market" utopia than a labor market with basic income.
The current market is not free because people are forced to offer their services if they don't want to starve. That's a huge distortion that you would remove with basic income.
I don't think it's even true without market distortions. The whole point of BI is to give people without adequate income some means to support themselves. In other words, it changes the compensation to our hypothetical woman from $0 to $X,000.
At the margin this will certainly cause people to drop out of the workforce. Heck, as I get closer to having enough assets saved to be able to require, I'd probably choose the pull the trigger on that decision sooner.
However on the other side it should be easier to remove the welfare cliffs that exist in current systems. In the UK there are points where the marginal tax rate is iirc ~75%. In the US there are points where you end up with less money if you work more.
So we may be removing other large disincentives at the same time.
I wonder how big of a basic income you could pay out while keeping the distortion from the basic income about the same size as the distortion from the replaced programs.
Later: Which is not intended as more than hand-wavy thinking out loud. Regardless of the impact, a basic income is a political pipe dream in the US. More immediate improvements in quality of life might come from better aligning incentives in the healthcare system and fixing cliffs in existing programs.
