Universal basic income to be tested in Wales

The left see benefits or welfare as a right, and as a very important way to help people who have found themselves in difficult situations. Here in the UK, left wing people often view those on benefits as victims of their situation or upbringing. They do not think of them as of low social status.

The right see benefits or welfare as just a necessary evil to prevent mass death. Here in the UK, right wing people often view those on benefits as leeches and criminals, who have made the choice to be ineffective at achieving and maintaining a high enough income. They think of them as of low social status.

Sweden is very differently politically to a lot of countries, at least I've heard you have far less party politics. The UK is absurdly polarised on these issues.

For your cancer treatment thing, that's not how it works here in the UK at all. While we do have universal healthcare, unfortunately it varies drastically based on where you live, and if you live in a poorer area, you are much more likely to get overwhelmed and struggling hospitals. So really a hospital in a richer area will give totally different care to one in a poorer area.

Well, I thought about it, my employer wants a CRUD app but is it really necessary? Is there no other way to do it? I mean, if they had to pay Silicon Valley wages it would not be very easy to justify paying that much, so it boils down to why the employer wants the CRUD app, not how much you are being paid.

Well, the first potential reason would be that it is 100% superfluous and the employer is just following a CRUD app trend and doesn't want to miss out. I somehow doubt that this is the case but things are never black and white. In this case the wage is arbitrarily high or low.

The second potential reason is that the CRUD app is replacing an alternative, presumably the problem the CRUD app is solving has to be solved and if it is not done via a CRUD app it would be done manually by office workers. The CRUD app therefore saves my employer the cost of hiring more data entry people for example. I find this to be likely. I can crank out 3 CRUD apps per year. Assuming all three CRUD apps combined increase productivity enough to cut one data entry job (technically they were never hired in the first place) and the app is good for 3 years that means I can charge up to 3 years of salary for one year of work. The benefit to society is that people don't have to waste their life on trivial problems.

The third potential reason is that the CRUD app is the only way to solve the problem, essentially the CRUD app lets us solve a problem that is otherwise impossible to solve. In this case compensation depends entirely on how much income solving the problem brings in and thus my wage is bounded by that income. In this case the wage could be arbitrary as well but it would be tied to solving a problem. I consider this a significant driver of wages in Silicon Valley but the CRUD apps I am writing are not in this category. The benefit to society is that the problem has been solved at all.

Quip or not, it frames the conversation in partisan terms, and people on the other side are going to check out if you do that. I'm not defending partisan warfare, but being divisive in response isn't going to contribute to making the conversation any less divisive.

I can't stop you, obviously, but realize that you're doing your own position a disservice by making it less likely that people will listen.

Or, if you like, think of it this way: the country is divided about equally politically. You only need to sway a small portion of people to win an election. If you can engage with like-minded people who lean the other way but the opposing party can't, you're likely to win consistently. Don't you want to win? (Democrats, you take note too.)

And then the big question is: how is this society different from Soviet Union? Literally, i am not exaggerating: an economy where capital is, by law, owned only by the government, and private ownership of means of production is a felony (or how else you will take all capital away)? Or if you want to literally give shares to individuals, not to some immense state fund which will do the redistribution job, what will prevent these people from drinking and gambling these shares away? If American rich will be robbed off all their money so they won't be able to buy, to the Chinese rich (they will be able to afford as people will be running to sell off - if they were attracted by 2.3% returns they'd be buying stock now as it is, only reason why they don't is that they don't see it as attractive - so they WILL sell - and stock will be dirt cheap)

It all sounds like a way to kill capitalism, or sell it off to foreigners...

We decide these things together through the democratic process.

I know it is hard for people like you, who reject democracy and any kind of power anyone could have over them, it must feel terrible to not be able to escape a system you disagree with. But I also think that on the spectrum of systems we had, it is not really fair so scream "taxation is theft" and "social security is immoral" at democracy, if you consider what we had before.