111–120 of 390 posts
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Oh for God's sake. Have a child, get dumped/divorced, now you're a single parent. Parents are supposed to be omniscient? God already has a job (and parenting didn't work out so good then either)
Or your partner has a fatal disease or accident.
Don’t discount the weight of emotional trauma and the self-sabotaging habits it has the potential to engender. Most people are slaves to their limbic systems. Most people don’t have self-education or resources to seek the help they need to fix these underlying problems. Society does them no favors. Media and advertising are designed to promote consumption. And not even healthy consumption. The idea that we are black…
>Most people are slaves to their limbic systems. Excuse me, but would you mind not repeating this meme in the future? The "limbic system" is actually at the core of human consciousness and cognition, and at the core of what "reasoning" really is . The story of the brain as having a "rational human part" and an "emotional animal part" is a myth and a canard. If you could rephrase or reconsider, you'd have the thanks o…
"They work in big cities and rural towns. They’ve tried to save — but rent, child care, student loans and medical bills get in the way." Yikes. I'm not exactly living paycheck to paycheck, but I can relate to this. It's really funny - my wife and I make quite a bit of money - whatever twisted form of capitalism we currently live in has been designed in such a way to extract most of it away from us. One begins to wond…
It's human psychology. Below a certain level, your mind will simply talk itself into spending your available money to make you happy. You don't need that car. A car half the price would have been plenty good enough. But you did it anyhow. You don't need fancy breakfast cereal that costs twice what the generic stuff at Aldi costs. You don't need all those electronics and toys. You don't need to eat out that much. If y…
This obviously isn't a binary, but I've been consistently fascinated with the inability of the people I know (generally middle- to upper-middle class) to shift their consumption downwards to meet a goal. Not everyone wants as much leisure time as I do, but I know tons of people with all sorts of reasons they'd like to save more, and every one of them consumes more while making less than me (when I'm working). I used to think the issue was that I grew up without a lot of disposable income, but now I know people with similar backgrounds whose floor on consumption rises in lockstep with their income.
That is to say, I don't disagree with your analysis here, but for God's sake _why_ do people do it?
[1] Contracting is obviously possible, but it often constrains the type of work you can do.
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You'll never have banks working in consumers self interest as long as they are profit driven organizations. Public banks tend to work better for actual sensible banking.
Unless you pay upfront for the service rather than having a free bank account. If your economical model is to take advantage of people going overdraft you can be certain the bank won't try to help clients. If the bank can make more money by having clients with more money that would probably work better, now I'm not sure how that would scale.
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Definitely true in america. In countries such as the netherlands, if you lose your job, you get up to 38 months of 70% salary, rent benefits, child care benefits, and of course your illness will still be treated.
In the USA, many states will allow you 50% income for 6 months, and potentially Medicaid for health treatment. This isn't much, but I was speaking in more general terms of "what if someone permanently decides to stop work."
In the province of Canada that I live in, you get $650 - $800 a month as a single adult if you stop working and enter the system. You are allowed to work on the side and gain up to $200 extra a month.
If you managed to get in the social housing program, you also get housing that is capped at 25% of your income along with free electricity and water. Some also offer internet and tv at a reduced price.
For reference, my 4 rooms apartment's rent is 675$/month.
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>Most people are slaves to their limbic systems. Excuse me, but would you mind not repeating this meme in the future? The "limbic system" is actually at the core of human consciousness and cognition, and at the core of what "reasoning" really is . The story of the brain as having a "rational human part" and an "emotional animal part" is a myth and a canard. If you could rephrase or reconsider, you'd have the thanks o…
We all understood what he meant. But if you can provide a superior alternative conveying the same meaning succinctly, please do.
Don’t discount the weight of emotional trauma and the self-sabotaging habits it has the potential to engender. Most people are slaves to their limbic systems. Most people don’t have self-education or resources to seek the help they need to fix these underlying problems. Society does them no favors. Media and advertising are designed to promote consumption. And not even healthy consumption. The idea that we are black…
It is an interesting argument to blame people for their own problems that are largely structural and as the article indicates, effect a large swath of society. It's the same argument for blaming the homeless who say own an iPhone.
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Which is why without tight controls on lending/debt Universal Basic Income will just lead to similarly desperate outcomes subsidized by the state.
I think you misunderstand the "Basic" term in UBI. But if you truly think markets can't provide affordable basic living accommodations to everyone, then we should we not be discussing some non-market solutions for distribution of resources?
The market based solution is already present in city streets today with mentally ill, drug addicted, and others (under employed) living in tents and cardboard (or their illegally parked vehicles).
Once their UBI payday loans are properly directly deposited to a bank to repay last week's debt, they can once again return there. The idea that the most downtrodden will be better with their finances than 80% of the rest of the population is laughable.
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I think the bigger issue than lending is that if it's not funded with a land value tax then all the increase in income will be eaten up in rent.
The opposite is the case. High rent is a localized problem (mostly found in relatively dense cities) and UBI would go a lot farther in a low-cost-of-living area where rents are low as well. So, people who have no use for living in the city (not hyper-productive or anything) would gradually opt to spread out and rents would fall.
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I think the very fact that people in wildly different circumstances are living paycheck to paycheck is a huge flag that this isn't as simple a problem as "they don't get paid enough". Income and expenses are intricately linked by psychology. It's almost irrelevant what your paycheck is, if you're prone to this problem then somehow expenses will always rise to meet it. If expenses weren't actually determined by payche…
That's because all the surplus goes into rents. If your job depends on you living in a big city, then you need to pay a fortune to get a tiny fraction of the quality of life that your parents had and that you had as a child growing up. A lot of corporate jobs these days force people to live like rats in big cities.