&gt; <i>a Senate committee report stated that by 2000 the workweek would be down to 
just 14 hours, with at least seven weeks off a year.</i><p>This is the heart of the matter. And the real question is why has this not happened yet! Depending on your political paradigm -<p>1. Government simply has shirked their duty to be gradually lowering the standard of full time employment. In fact, they&#x27;ve even let these laws erode through &quot;exempt&quot; positions, etc.<p>2. The Federal Reserve&#x27;s inflationary monetary policy creates an ever-growing housing bubble that eats up people&#x27;s surplus income, giving people no security, and keeping them on the rent treadmill.<p>BI is essentially just throwing fuel on this fire. The desire for the idea is understandable - everyone thinks of what they could accomplish if they could quit their job, and the #1 impediment to doing that is the rent they pay every month.<p>Unfortunately, the <i>only</i> sustainable lifestyle that BI can pay for is to move to the sticks, where land can be bought outright or a dwelling rented for less than the BI. For anyone who wants to stay in a populated area, it&#x27;s a fantasy - any in-demand real estate market will adjust to eat up the additional surplus. Rather than a nice gradient between the two worlds, it will further cement the divide between rural poverty and urban rat racers.<p>If we want a world where people can casually move in and out of employment (such technical&#x2F;memetic pollination is likely necessary to encourage natural tinkering rather than ignorant idleness), then we&#x27;ve really got to fix the underlying economic&#x2F;regulatory issues.