UBI and the Anti-Work Vibe Shift

I was bringing it up as a starting point for discussion and to show how UBI doesn’t imply extra spending.

Proponents suggest bring more programs into a single UBI could significantly lower operating costs. A single check each month could replace some or all of: Housing assistance, Supplemental Security Income (SSI), Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), including Pass through Child Support, General Assistance (GA), Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI), etc.

Healthcare in the US is similarly split across Medicaid, Medicare, VA benefits, ACA health insurance subsidies, Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), plus a host of things you haven’t heard of like Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program. There’s a massive opportunity for cost savings by simply reducing administrative redundancy.

> true state wards are fairly rare and the system would have no chance of working if they weren't

How so? Wouldn't that, at the very least, solve homelessness?

I wouldn’t argue that you’re responsible for anyone. I would argue more that if you value the suffering of conscious things, it is a very short logical leap to care about such in all humans, even those who you don’t directly interact with. You don’t need to feel anything about them or be responsible for them to take the alleviation of broader human suffering into account when discussing policy. Do we disagree on this?

Very good points.

You're right, it does tend toward medieval when the serfs have less agency than the landed gentry.

>Why should it cost to live?

We would have to get out our slide rules, or maybe go back to them ;)

Well if previous generations productively built the richest country because of the most widespread opportunity (without taxing income) in historical times, and prevailed handily like no other when challenged by financially devastating world-wide conflict, with plenty of time to invest the surplus wisely and let it appreciate, you would expect by now everybody would be able to coast, but Nooo . . .

The government dropped the ball and it was already big enough to take away everything you had.

In complete defiance of what all those generations had in mind for us now, and everything every American had ever worked for.

That's why the cost of living is not lower, if not zero, or even negative, if only slightly better choices would have been made. Compounded over all this time !! And that's with only better stewardship of the percentage taken out of laborers' pay once that got going, without even considering the wealth of the citizens that had been built up before the quest for revenue did a 180 and turned on internal targets.

>we should be reducing costs and liabilities.

This is the only real answer and the ongoing failure there is bad enough, but it's getting worse not better at a growing rate, and the few that do benefit when the majority suffer have had the upper hand financially for so long now, there may never be any possible reduction. I think this underlies a lot of the confusion about a solution since there's been increasing doubt for generations that there even is a solution to costs that didn't used to exist. It's been over 50 full years since I saw this accelerate through the roof and I already thought how was all of this bearable before that? It was plain to see it was unsustainable or we would end up like we are now. The only fair and predictable way to reverse never-ending wasteful costs that end up being imposed universally (to all citizens whether they own any currency or not), would be to roll them back in the reverse order in which they were imposed. And go back as far as it takes for the US to be as "rich" as it once was.

That was then and it already seemed impossible :(

>Do you think we have tried all the recomended remedies?

Even back then I never thought all sensible remedies would be tried in my lifetime and it was more of a shock then compared to a gradual boiling since.

>And who do we look to to define what is and isn't recommended?

There is no answer when everybody who says they have one can only be lying.

>We're in uncharted territory here

That's so true, in spite of so many similarities and logically expected negative outcomes for an increasing majority, it's still not supposed to be this way by this time at all, and surely never been quite like this before. It's been awry for so long it can only get weirder.

Plus those actually acting in decision-making positions have never been as intellectually incapable of making sweeping changes, and everybody knows it, especially changes for the better. There is no end to the decline in brainpower. Politics only gets in the way further since smart people are limited to the same choices as dumb people.

Now a lot of the financial decision-makers are billionaires, but if they are so wise with money why is the whole country not as "rich" as it used to be?

UBI does seem a little communist being a "mandated wealth redistribution" but I think there are complete free-market capitalists who are OK with it when they do the math for themselves. At their scale it's not wealth being redistributed, it's a pittance.

It's like UBI could be huge and apply to everybody which really adds up, but too late, that's not sweeping changes any more. It's actually more likely and less disruptive to the powers-that-be compared to fixing the real problem which I'm sure some very sophisticated financial institutions have calculated would be even more costly, for them. By untold amounts, so don't go there. Everything unspoken may not be an assumption.

>I would love to see honest research

Your eyes would have to be very privileged for that :)

Citizens be damned, let them eat cake, or soylent green, whatever they can get their hands on. Maybe not, if you do give enough for the population to have cake every month, they might be revolting anyway, so why bother ;)