Well, real life certainly doesn't seem to be all that meaningful to people proposing that stuff too. What I mean is: if you really think that Citizen's Income (let's keep this nomenclature here for clarity sake) is a good idea, you must think that all the people living in Soviet Russia (not to mention other places where communism was in place) are completely different from the people living in whenever-you-think-this-is-a-good-idea.
You can't really compare this situation to Soviet Russia. I mean, you're comparing a mixed economy/socialist system with a state controlled economy. Also, Living quality in Russia was higher during the communistic period, and still hasn't recovered. Cuba has a surprisingly large HDI, especially for it's relatively small economy.
Socialistic laws are in place all over Europe, and surprise surprise, they don't work all that well. Those are being revoked in Netherlands, for example. Limited in the UK. And so on.
They're also being maintained in Belgium, expanded in Germany, and are going strong in most of the Nordic countries. Honestly, the increase or decrease of socialist laws has more to do with what spectrum of political party is elected, than with actual usefulness.
The thing is, if you want to give everybody Citizen's Income, you need to take it from someone else. And when a person can earn a living by doing something, or get a living by not doing anything, there is strong incentive not to do anything. The group of people living on the social help is growing, thus gaining more votes, and politicians start targeting them by giving them more and more, which makes decline actually faster.
Work intensity related poverty risk* only constitutes 10% of the people at risk. Income related poverty risk** is at 17%. Material deprevation risk*** at 10% and unexpected costs risk**** at 40%.
Now, if we look at actual numbers, we see that while work intensity related poverty risk is slightly higher (2% in Belgium, 4%-6% in Spain, Greece), all others are significantly lower. Material deprevation tends to be higher in Eastern Nations, while the less socialistic nations tend to suffer from Income related poverty risk and unexpected costs. In effect, this means that despite worse economic prestations, less people are poor/ risk to become poor in more socialized nations and also that more people tend to recover from poverty (Because if you can't meet your basic needs, your chances of being in a suitable condition to do work and get enough money to come out positive are small).
As stated before, minimum wage is not a comfortable live style.
* The not doing anything because you can example you gave.
** People are not paying me enough to work, so I'm poor while working.
*** Not being able to pay for services (Limited luxuries, like meals with actual meat,fish or vegetarian equivalent, colour television , telephone, or 1 week vacation a year )
**** What it says on the tin.
It is not immediate, especially given right circumstances (oil would help with that, true), but the failure of socialistic economy is being more and more obvious. When you are rich, overspending just isn't as quick in killing you as if you are poor. Take Greece, for example, which was greatly socialistic and pretty close to what Owlbread writes about, and look where it is now. The fastest growing places are those where social help is small. It has always been this way and it will this way...
Greece isn't really a good example. Socialist policies combined with a corrupt political system don't work. Neither do capitalist policies with a corrupt political system, or any other kind of policies.
Sweden, and most other Nordic countries have an extremely well governed and well developed substantial welfare system, and have had little problem with the economic crisis. They even managed to avoid a double dip, and poverty levels are gradually dropping as opposed to rising in other states.
Well, not really. The fastest growing places are there were the costs are lowest and the regulations are weakest. Possibly related, but not always. Also, fast growth =/=durable.
As for the guns issues:
There are two cities in the USA which are most dangerous when it comes to gun-related violence, and those are Washington, DC, and New York. Guess which two American cities has most strict policies outlawing gun ownership?
I want a source on this. According to my information, and on a per capita basis, the 2 most dangerous cities are New Orleans (62 per 100 000)and Detroit(35.9). Washington(19) and New York(4) are somewhere on the bottom of the list, with respectively 1/3 and 1/15 compared to worst cities.
((Edit: Information found was gun related homicides. ))
As for the guns issues:
There are two cities in the USA which are most dangerous when it comes to gun-related violence, and those are Washington, DC, and New York. Guess which two American cities has most strict policies outlawing gun ownership?
Something in the south, I presume? In states of Texas, Arizona etc?
Nah, it is (obviously) Washington and New York. Both have banned guns a long, long time ago, and in both you are most likely to be shot (considering US, of course, not places like Venezuela, where there is pretty much no government at all). And I'm obviously using per capita rates here, LordSlowpoke, not absolute numbers (not that absolute numbers should be way higher in LA than Washington anyway; also in quite a few other big cities that are way larger that DC).
Now, looking at the rest of the world - second and third countries in gun ownership per capita are Switzerland and Finland. I think both are very well known for their mass shootings* or violent gun-totting murderers of any kind at all.
*Those are almost exclusively taking place in no-gun zones. I wonder why? Isn't it possible that people trying to make a mass shooting are choosing places where nobody can shoot back?...
I'm not exactly sure on statistics here, but aren't UK cops wearing anti-stab vests now? Because there is like, a ton of knife related violence? Since there are no guns?
As said before, source. My per capita numbers give a whole different view than yours.
Also, no European country is known for it's gun-totting murderers and mass shootings. That's merely a US tradition.
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