Basic Income Isn’t a Handout — It’s a Dividend
It’s also part of a pro-enterprise risk management system.
In a sense, the nation state you live in is a special sort of giant collective enterprise — and you’re one of the joint owners of this enterprise. But let’s make this ownership arrangement a little more formal and make you, along with all other resident citizens, an official shareholder. It would be a similar situation to if you owned shares in a major corporation - but, in this case, all shareholders own exactly the same number of shares each. And the shares can’t be bought or sold.
And suppose this ‘national corporation’ pays regular dividends — not once a year, but once a week. It’s always the same amount and it’s just about sufficient to pay for all your essentials — such as food and shelter.
What have you got? You’ve got a Basic Income system.
In essence, a Basic Income is a Citizen’s Dividend. It’s not a handout. It’s what you should be entitled to, as a joint owner in your national enterprise.
And we can take this analogy even further, because there’s something else — something very important — that Basic Income and our system of share ownership have in common: They’re both ways of sharing risks, so that each individual’s exposure to risk is limited to what…
