Billionaire-Fueled Lobbying Group Behind the State Bills to Ban UBI Experiments

No it isn't. The problem is that all these programs never actually end up redistributing wealth, but they always end up redistributing income, usually taken via higher taxes from the already shrinking middle class, leading to further deepening of wealth inequality.

As the super wealthy don't just have a public bank account with billions of $ under their own name, like your grandma, but have their wealth under various assets, entangled corporations, trust funds and non-profits, spread across various tax jurisdictions both on- and off-shore, making their wealth very difficult to track and tax correctly, plus gaming the financial system so that their companies are always billing each other for services till they're running at a loss, never seemingly generate any meaningful profits in their home "high-tax" jurisdictions.

FFS they have entire teams of well paid experts dedicated to these "tax optimization schemes", something the middle class and small business owners can never afford. THIS IS WHY WE HAVE WEALTH INEQUALITY, not because some middle class people earn higher wages after busting their asses in school and university. Just look at IKEA's elaborate tax dodging scheme. [1] Why can't he pay Swedish taxes like all Swedish businesses?

[1] https://www.greens-efa.eu/legacy/fileadmin/dam/Documents/Stu...

The most effective way for “my side” to win is to convince enough of “your side” to join me. I can only do that through understanding your position. So I appreciate your participating, even when it is unpopular.

The worst possible outcome is the intended one: where UBI recipients spend it on essentials, and society adapts over time such that a large swath of the population becomes dependent on state-issued subsidies for basic sustenance.

This would create an entrenched concentration of "soft" power that gives centralized political institutions -- and by extension, the factions that control them -- an unprecedented level of top-down control over society, which will invariably leveraged for ulterior purposes.

Of course a lot of other money was spent (1 trillion in direct payments and income support respectively out of roughly 13 trillion in total new COVID spending). But I think giving out free money distorts markets in unpredictable ways.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PSAVERT

https://www.covidmoneytracker.org/