> The real fix is to fix capitalism, not write you a check every month for being born.
You write that as if it's some kind of natural law, as if the second clause is _obviously_ more absurd than the first. It's that the case and, if so, why?
That is a very strange thing to say following a comment about natural law, considering there is nothing about nature that guarantees you a right to live.
Rather, specialization of economy and and social safety nets means that it's a hell of a lot easier to survive working even a low paying job than it is to try otherwise.
As it stands right now, even if you taxed 100% of the income reported by the top 1% of earners, we might not close the government's budget gap, let alone expand the government's budget to guarantee survival for all citizens (not to mention the economic chaos that would result in taxing 100% of all income earned by anyone).
> we can make it cost very little for society to support non-working people, such that work is not compulsory for survival.
If we are supporting people that legitimately can’t work, sure. But supporting people that can work, but don’t — that’s where I have a problem because my willingness to work, even in jobs I might not like gets punished through taxes. Why do I have a personal responsibility to support others that are unwilling to support themselves. We are talking about grown adults, if they have nothing to contribute to society, why would we subsidize that? Some layabout watching Judge Judy all day gets a free pass while the guy working on a hot roof all day is supposed to pay for that? Who is going to be a janitor if they don’t have to? Producing something of value to society is part of being a part of a society. People have a responsibility to take care of themselves. They might need some temporary help now and then, but making dependency a permanent state is a great way to ensure that government has ultimate control of your life.
> The goal of a society is to eliminate as many people from needing government benefits as possible, and to ensure that only those who are truly unemployable receive government benefits.
Not only do I disagree that this is the goal of society, I don't see any reason to think that this should be the goal of society.
> Employers must pay a wage which ensures that basic needs are met.
It seems to me that this is a paternalistic and feudalistic approach that presumes that every member of society must be dependent on a particular employer.
First line: "What if the state covered the cost of living?"
Who is paying for the income? It's not "The state". It's everyone else, by taxation. You're telling people you have a right to seize their earnings for their labor. You're literally taking someone else's money, and giving it to someone else. UBI is nothing but people ignoring the moral problems of seizing assets and saying "The end justifies the means."
If a billionaire philanthropist wants to sponsor UBI voluntarily, that's a different matter. Or if you want to donate to a charity that funds UBI, please do. It'll be an interesting economic experiment. But taking assets from people and giving them to another person is wrong, no matter how good the outcome is.
>He sees “transferring money to people who are unproductive” [universal basic income, UBI] as less optimal than finding a way for them to be productive.
¿Por qué no los dos? One of the issues with the current system is that it does not serve people who are only somewhat productive, if only for the time being. We expect that every job (more generally - every production opportunity, at the margin) will pay for itself, but there's no law of economics that says this has to happen.
I certainly don't understand but there is no need. The mechanism (provided it is legal) isn't really important.
We need work, to earn enough to survive and have some quality of life. It must feel like you've contributed something useful and society rewarded you reasonably for it. Others will have to do work for you or it wont work. If there is no money for that it cant work.
> I suspect all of this is primarily cultural first, and not related specifically to work, the economy, pricing of good or services like buying a home and starting a family, which would come second.
Hmmm I think you're wrong. It sounds like you've got survivorship bias, big time.
Most people want to contribute, but the economic system fucks them and makes them dependent. Examples include: the intellectual property regime and monopolistic parasitism of the knowledge commons [1], neoliberal philanthrocapitalism [2] and the completely disgusting and neocolonial division of labour under global capitalism [3].
Can you really look at the Blackrock disaster [4] (Wall Street slumlordism), or the IRS papers or the Panama Papers and tell me that the system doesn't harm people?
> It's all of the bullshit in-between that is totally unworkable - both practically and theoretically.
No. In most countries of the world, including the United states, limited social benefits exist.
It is sometimes messy, it is sometimes unfair. But they are reality.
> Being unhappy with capitalism is being in denial about the world having scarce resources.
Food and shelter are not scarce resources. In the United States, we have more empty homes than homeless people. Every day we throw away an obscene amount of food.
So again, I say any system that requires the existence of a class of people who cannot afford these things in order to function is morally untenable. Similar shitty arguments were made in defense of slavery 200 years ago.
Communism isn't the only possible answer. Welfare programs are a common solution. The way I see it though, welfare is just the taxpayer subsidizing unlivable wages. So why not cut out the tax middleman and make the employers pay livable wages to begin with? Either way, that money has to get moved from the top to the bottom.
> I thought it was a universal basic income, i.e., an income that is applicable to all people as opposed to an income from a job.
That's implementation specific; several "UBI" schemes have focused on providing supplemental income, rather than paying whatever the person in particular actually needs (which will vary geographically, even neighborhood to neighborhood).
> The US Declaration of Independence says all people have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
The full clause is "All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."
The rights are inherent to being human, not provided for by the government. It was never intended to state that the government had an obligation to secure those rights, only that it ought not infringe upon them.
Edit: This is not to state that I disagree with programs intended to help those who need it. Rather, I'm simply pointing out that a legal justification for doing so should (and can) be found elsewhere. The moral justification is prima facie for most.
Um, if everyone has that much money, then it's not really a dramatic amount of money is it?
Having enough universal basic income to live on meagerly is one thing, but it's mathematically impossible to give everyone enough for everyone to be rich.
> Why should I pay for someone else doing nothing? I am close to 40% tax at the moment and I've been saving for a house for years (I earn too much to have any help on buying a flat). What the studies say is absolutely irrelevant because I cannot abide the principle.
You're gonna pay one way or another... Some costs will be more monetary, some will be more health/crime-related, etc, but very few of us live in countries where there is a general desire and will to force people to work.
>> How do they start with your hard-earned 30k and end up with just enough to give this guy food stamps? Totally inefficient if you ask me.
They started it with the welfare system, good idea but then let the majority of its users abuse it rather than finding work. They started it, they keep it going because their users vote for them which keeps them in power.
Are you kidding? You'd have to be insane to agree with that. Some people are already independently wealthy. Some people -- a really large number of people -- are supported by other people.
> It is the most successful social welfare system ever implemented, saving billions and billions of dollars for everyday Americans without costing taxpayers a dime. It is a testament to the power of compounding interest, to the power of a focused plan executed violently for decades.
A social welfare plan? Are you for real?
Both Walmart and Amazon are pioneers of modern union busting practices. They screw workers over as much as they can get away with to squeeze out the maximum amount of labour. Instead of writing this you could as well spit in the face of working class people.
The premise of this article so willfully ignorant of material reality, that it is impossible to take this serious.
You write that as if it's some kind of natural law, as if the second clause is _obviously_ more absurd than the first. It's that the case and, if so, why?
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