We worry about providing Universal Basic Income because people might stop working, but here's a thought: maybe, just maybe, with a little financial security, people might actually pursue work they truly choose rather than work to just not die. Imagine that world for a moment.
As someone who is strongly against UBI, and strongly supportive of welfare I can earnestly say people simply not working is not at all the reason I (or most people against UBI in my opinion) are against it.
The reason i am against it is because it causes people more harm than good. People who are in a position where they need assistance need to be given the tools to get out of their situation, and the help to get there needs to be conditional on this (and we should be spending the money that goes with that). Financial assistance should be conditional with mandatory job training or mental health therapy needed to help someone succeed, not just money.
In fact when there are underlying bad habits, as can often be the case, it is possible money can even make a persons condition worse and cause them to sleep farther into poverty.
@freemo [hachyderm censors blob] problem is that administrators tend to not have a local understanding of which tools the person needs. there are many stories on BBC of british orgs going to africa to give government determined handouts only to realize nobody there has supply for gas ovens or the town wanted a post office and shoes and they tried to dig another well
Absolutely. There is no doubt that actually providing real assistance is a more nuanced and complex thing to do than just piling a bunch of paper bills on someone.
But something that is simple, that doesnt fix the problem (and in fact makes it worse) is not a good argument for the simpler approach. Solving problems for real takes more effort and nuance, but since it actually stands a chance of solving problems (and hopefully with improvement more so over time) its still the way to go.
This is a big problem with society in almost everything, they deny things simply due to complexity in excahange for something simple that isnt a solution at all.
@freemo typically the alternative to "piling bills" is the gift card/ commmunism approach. which is summed up by an episode of MASH where logistics says they can give out a pizza oven if you scratch out the field and write pizza on it, but can't give out what they were actually requesting for the field unit
@freemo i think the typical objection to ubi is just a trauma response. "i had to scrape salt off the roads for six cents a day so you should too!!"
realistically what i worry about looks more like HUD housing's issue. when the state says we'll subsidize up to 500$ a month, all the housing here went up by exactly 500$ a month. the market just sees the free money as free real estate and adapts to soak it all. so ubis keep working well in limited episodes where the market doesn't get the chance to figure out how to soak it all, but i'm fairly sure everyone's rent would go up the day ubi happened, probably by however much it was :/
> i think the typical objection to ubi is just a trauma response. "i had to scrape salt off the roads for six cents a day so you should too!!"
There could a bit of people who think that.. i mean there are plenty of grump old crumudgeons.
But of all the people I've debated UBI with, the ones that were against UBI were largely against it for the reasons I've stated, that it enables bad habits rather than fixing them. Not saying poor people are drug addicts, but its a similar mentality, you give a drug addict cash all you do is enable their bad habit, you pay for their rehab you might actually fix their problem. Most poor people in my experience were never taught the skills they need to get out of poverty. With the right skills its easy (I've done it for myself and many other people), but obtaining those skills are non-trivial. Worse yet most poor people are taught its not the skills that is the problem but the system is just against them, so quite often they will push back on the very things they need to do to fix the problem.
In short, more money tends to make poor people just reinforce their bad habits and makes things worse not better most of the time.
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