81–90 of 736 posts
>The randomly selected applicants Why would you want to randomly select here?
That's the best way to do it. Otherwise all the money will go to the rich brat children of politicians/etc who are socially connected to whoever they put on the selection committees.
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Those can go and do normal jobs like grocery clerks. While doing their art in free time. Like many famous artists were doing.
With the modest size of the monthly checks, most of them may need to do that anyway. But the obvious point is to help "artists" in Ireland. It's pretty normal for small nations to want to cultivate / protect / subsidize their arts / culture / language / whatever. The Irish gov't isn't trumpeting this program because they think it'll annoy Irish voters.
But I think people who benefit from this won’t be artists. But people who are good at making money off artsy projects.
I’d see much more value in investing in supply and demand. First, provide free studios with arts supplies, music instruments and so on. Next, force government agencies to hire local artists. Make municipalities have live music for local events and hire local musicians. Make gov agencies buy local art for decorations etc.
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> not a UBI Who said it is a UBI that this "rebuttal" even makes sense to appear here? The Irish government isn't calling it a UBI. The article doesn't call it a UBI. Even the FAQ for the program says it is not UBI: >> Why this is not a Universal Basic Income >> It is important to note that that the Basic Income for the Arts Pilot is not a Universal Basic Income. This is a sectoral intervention to support practicing…
Basic Income and UBI are colloquially synonyms, people use them interchangeably, and the Irish government are almost certainly using it to endear themselves to supporters of UBI and to get more coverage for their policy than media would give them if they just called it a grant. This happens all the time. For example, in the UK there was a push for a "living wage" in the 2010s, which the government responded to by reb…
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With the modest size of the monthly checks, most of them may need to do that anyway. But the obvious point is to help "artists" in Ireland. It's pretty normal for small nations to want to cultivate / protect / subsidize their arts / culture / language / whatever. The Irish gov't isn't trumpeting this program because they think it'll annoy Irish voters.
I’m all for encouraging people to create art. But I think people who benefit from this won’t be artists. But people who are good at making money off artsy projects. I’d see much more value in investing in supply and demand. First, provide free studios with arts supplies, music instruments and so on. Next, force government agencies to hire local artists. Make municipalities have live music for local events and hire lo…
325 Euros/week sounds like basic rent & food & transportation. Not artsy projects with enough spare Euros for someone to skim serious money off from.
Providing "free" studios, supplies, instruments, etc. sounds like a scheme to give politicians more photo ops and bureaucrats more jobs. Why can't the artists just source exactly what they think they need from existing supply chains?
Dublin's Grafton Street with it's buskers is and was so unique to this American. I wondered if anywhere else in the world matches the musicianship heard on that street and in Dublin's bars? Music is engrained in it's culture in a way I have not experienced before(tho the weird looks I received wearing my baseball cap in Dublin was off putting as I had not experienced that in Berlin, Paris, Reykjavik, Amsterdamn, etc)…
In Dublin's best music venues, nobody is singing along because it's brand new material from brand new artists. If you're singing along to well known songs in Temple Bar then I'm afraid you're missing some of the best music the city has to offer, in venues like Whelan's, Workmans, Sin É, The Grand Social etc.
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That's the best way to do it. Otherwise all the money will go to the rich brat children of politicians/etc who are socially connected to whoever they put on the selection committees.
I agree that it's a problem. But how do you prevent it from been overflowed by people like me that can't draw a circle with the bottom of a bottle?
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The problem is soon (and to some extent currently) there won't be enough work for everyone, and there definitely won't be enough to support them at a historical lifestyle level. I guess those people continuing to live (or live semi-well) would be fantasy to you. I'm not sure where society will go at that point. The western world has sold a 'we are improving your life' story to get buy in from the masses. What do you…
Your entire idea of economics is backwards. There is more than enough work for everyone right now, and (outside of recessions) we will not run out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy As more and more work is automated, the lifestyle level increases rather than decreases. Automation lets you produce more with the same amount of labor, increasing productivity and raising the standard of living. This i…
"Ray Dalio says America is developing a ‘dependency’ on the top 1% of workers, while the bottom 60% are struggling and unproductive"
https://fortune.com/2025/10/27/ray-dalio-america-dependeny-t...
"Millions of Americans Are Becoming Economically Invisible " https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45374779
War is unproductive and a destructive use of resources but that doesn't change that it has historically be an outlet for unused labor. My point was that if we don't approach things intelligently/intentionally we can end up with crappy unwanted/unintentional outcomes.
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This is such a bad faith argument. Society has largely agreed that welfare is a valuable thing to do, from disability to social security. Calling taxation theft just says that you aren't able to be rational about this.
From reading their comments here, it seems to me that they are saying the theft occurs when labor is sold for a pittance in foreign markets so that things produced by said labor can be sold at a lower price (as compared to when more expensive labor is hired) in domestic markets. ("Basic income" = other people work as slaves in a factory somewhere so you can sit at home and "discover yourself.") The UBI would logically be an extension of that whereby the UBI program itself can only be funded by this disparity and therefore any beneficiary of such a program must be participating, however indirectly, in that theft. (Perhaps especially if one is a loud proponent of such a program.)
Ostensibly, from this perspective, one might consider whether the laborers should benefit more from their labor, rather than the consumers of products which are produced by said labor. It doesn't seem a particularly disagreeable or irrational perspective, at least on its face, though the seemingly disparaging mention of Marxism looks out of place given this perspective is rather Marxist.
Of course, whether one refers to that as "theft" is up to them; I'm just offering this alternate perspective since I didn't read it the way the parent did.
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This is such a bad faith argument. Society has largely agreed that welfare is a valuable thing to do, from disability to social security. Calling taxation theft just says that you aren't able to be rational about this.
> Calling taxation theft From reading their comments here, it seems to me that they are saying the theft occurs when labor is sold for a pittance in foreign markets so that things produced by said labor can be sold at a lower price (as compared to when more expensive labor is hired) in domestic markets. ("Basic income" = other people work as slaves in a factory somewhere so you can sit at home and "discover yourself.…
This person doesn't like taxation. Tough.