BIG is a payment to all citizens, regardless of economic status (like the state fund payments in Alaska, these are a BIG). For some taxes would go up, others would find their net income much improved (most people, when counting their additional free time and their BIG will find they are better off). The idea is to fund enough social services that someone on BIG has enough to survive, if not buy any fancy, electronic doo-dads. It also demands that government actually sell our resources (as they are part of the commons in most countries, especially the US) for a good price.

Those who find even part time extra employment will be all the better off, but those that can't will still have their needs covered. We can finally put the insulting phrase "The world still needs burger flippers." to rest. Because, really, why the hell does it?

The basic idea is what's starting to become glaringly obvious, we don't need 100% of the population employed all the time. However, those less employed will need to be available for some periods of time to build up infrastructure (I'm not a big fan of mormons, but they actually do this pretty successfully, those receiving assistance must pitch in unless they are too ill to help).

I know a lot of people are afraid of big government, and it's easy to look at programs that don't work so well, but people then overlook the amazing amount of shit that just does work (weather satellites, fire service in most areas, FDA, etc.). No, even these programs aren't perfect and we can demand improvement, but generally they work and we have some really good infrastructure due to it. A lot of folks don't realize that the geysers in Yellowstone were filled with garbage until the Feds took over and made it a national park. A lot of people load up their guns in their trucks and go hunting, bitch about "socialism", and never realize without government management they wouldn't find any animals to shoot (and hopefully eat). I could go on.

I'll dig up a couple links for you to check out tomorrow, too tired tonight. The basic idea, though, is to uncouple peoples' incomes from their jobs. The Luddites may have been the first big movement that we have on record to protest this kind of thing, but the trend is clear (and it's actually a good trend, if we do it right) we can produce tons of stuff with very few people actually working to do so.