Killer Argumants against Citizens' Income, Not (14)

In the comments to the last post on CI/UBI, Sobers wrote:

You’re assuming those who currently net payers-in will continue to pay into the pot at the same level for those who are net recipients. If the amount is set at a level that allows a reasonable lifestyle (say at current benefits cap level for a family of 4) then significant numbers of people will say ‘F*ck it, I’m not working 40 hours a week to get only a few £££ more, I’m going to take it easy and take the UBI and do nothing instead’.

However, once again, what we observe in real life tends to contradict how many people think human beings behave based on the prejudices handed down to them.

1) Landlords, non-exec directors, the heirs of rich parents and other people with unearned incomes still work, on the whole, even when their incomes mean that they don’t have to. Some don’t, obviously, but surprisingly few.

2) People are regularly had up for working when claiming benefit. Why should they risk breaking the law and being prosecuted, when they could simply adopt the attitude “I’m going to take it easy and take the dole and do nothing instead”?

3) It is possible for almost anyone to game the system and end up with enough to live on and a council house rent free, but the vast majority don’t. If we are all inherently lazy, why not?

4) If the terminally lazy give up work to subsist on their CI, that means there are more jobs available for the industrious. Who wants a lazy bastard working for them anyway?

5) Voluntary, unpaid work – it’s a thing!

This assertion has more to do with puritan ideas embodied in the Rule of St David, “He that does not work, neither shall he eat” than it does with actual observations of human nature or economics: the lazy should be forced to work for the good of their souls, and sod the wretched employer who has to try and wring some value out them in return for what they pay them.