Remember, we know how to address many of the world’s problems, including poverty, homelessness, and climate change.
But those with capital in society choose not to.
But those with capital in society choose not to.
That’s a good 80% of the population
Except that’s just false. I actually cannot fathom where you pulled that estimate from.
You can argue that national poverty lines are made to be kept under a certain percentage, sure, then we can ignore that. Globally, yes, the majority doesn’t have capital (as in financial capital), but per country, there are stark differences. More things to consider
- internet access
- smartphone penetration
- poverty percentage
- Gross National Income Per capita at Purchasing Parity
- Global total of low, middle, high income
Especially GNI PPP: if you live in Europe, North America, Australia, China, Japan, and a few other countries, there’s a good chance you belong to the global 20% of high income earners. The minimum wage in your country will probably be higher than what a low income family earns in a year
For the current 2024 fiscal year, low-income economies are defined as those with a GNI per capita, calculated using the World Bank Atlas method, of $1,135 or less in 2022; lower middle-income economies are those with a GNI per capita between $1,136 and $4,465; upper middle-income economies are those with a GNI per capita between $4,466 and $13,845; high-income economies are those with a GNI per capita of $13,846 or more.
Can you fathom?
We are talking about people who have the capital in society to make actual systemic changes to society. Such as restructuring our economy to value lives, wellbeing, and sustainability over profit.
Quite obviously 80% of people do not have that capital.
You are cherrypicking statistics, seemingly to deliberately miss the point.
Global comparisons of income mean exactly nothing to the quality of life of people living within their country.
Even people deemed in that global top 20% are living paycheck-to-paycheck, and are unable to leverage that to make changes.
At the beginning of the Industrial Revolution there were an estimated 200 million people and virtually 100% poverty.
Now there are over 8.5 billion people and yet we’ve managed to reduce both poverty and hunger to the lowest levels in history. Along with the lowest rates of people dying due to war.
socialism didn’t do that.
It sure helped, though.
Probably one of the biggest benefactors.
Socialism has resulted in the deaths of millions of people through starvation and murder.
There are no redeeming qualities of socialism.
Completely irrelevant to what I wrote. My comment has nothing to do with socialism.
Not to mention fallaciously attributing technological innovations to capitalism as if they could not occur under other economic systems.
So in your fantasy world we would be at 8.5 billion people along with low poverty, hunger, and deaths from war… but replacing capitalism with socialism.
Likely you fantasize no income and instead it would be the whole “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” thing, right?
Unfortunately for your fantasy… the result of socialism has always been the deaths of millions of people through starvation and murder (followed by collapse and/or acceptance of capitalism)
Ah yes. 80. Wealth to scale
So because somebody has a lot, you have nothing? Because somebody has a house worth 5M and don’t have a house, means you have no dwelling? Because somebody earns 10x what you have, you have no income?
“They have more capital than I do, therefore I have none”.
“A person with more capital than I chose to vote and lobby, that means my vote is null and void and so are my efforts”.
“There’s no point in doing anything ever if somebody else is better at it”.
Are you saying that 80 percent of society owns the means of production?
Capital != means of production
It literally does, according to the person who coined the term and socialist political economic theory up to the present.
Have you read any marx? Any marx whatsoever?
Capital was coined by Marx? Say what?
First recorded in 1175–1225; Middle English; (adjective) from Anglo-French or directly from Latin capitālis “of the head” (capit-, stem of caput “head” + -ālis adjective suffix; see -al1); (noun) from Medieval Latin capitāle “wealth,” noun use of neuter of the adjective capitālis
Sorry. You’re right. Allow me to clarify. “Who used the term in political economics”
Remember that politics can be changed with votes. Tax them to finance change.
It’s difficult, but blaming billionaires takes away our agency.
Remember that politics can be changed with votes. Tax them to finance change.
I agree the wealthy need to pay a lot more in tax than they currently do.
They also have disproportionate control over the electoral process in many countries, and most political parties are not even considering taxing them to the extent that they need to be taxed. Nor are most political parties challenging our capitalist society in any significant sense.
Voting is important, but don’t expect voting alone to solve our problems.
It’s difficult, but blaming billionaires takes away our agency.
No it does not. Sod off with that. Correctly identifying a major contributor to an issue does not take away agency.
What but voting should solve the problems? You won’t stage a revolution.
Direct action.
How about direct action to make citizens vote in a coordinated way?
But you must have other direct actions in mind. Which ones?
Voting. Strikes. Mass protest. More, if ultimately required.
Why strikes and mass protests? Vote accordingly and let the law drive the change.
Because most of us have our own problems and don’t feel responsible for the lives of others.
That is false. Most of us aren’t sociopaths like you.
You, like the vast majority of people, are (almost certainly) not included in “those with capital”
Who is “us”? Unless you’re politically well connected or have nine figures in the bank, you aren’t wielding significant power to make systemic changes.
“Us” the people who pay taxes and are hypothetically responsible for paying for UBI.
Unless you’re politically well connected or have nine figures in the bank, you aren’t wielding significant power to make systemic changes.
And yet you’re expected to pay for UBI nonetheless…
You know that UBI is cheaper than policing the problems that runaway wealth disparity causes, right? UBI also means that employers cannot easily exploit workers with the threat of destitution, meaning that wages, including yours, go up. It also makes society more pleasant as people with prospects turn to drugs or crime less frequently.
The only people UBI doesn’t benefit, is the absurdly wealthy. Your myopic worldview has you voting against your own interests.
No, I don’t know any of that.
Maybe you’d like to explain who and why people would choose to work when they entirely don’t have to?
Now imagine if you lived in a society where someone gave a shit about your problems. And maybe they even have the skills and resources to fix them more efficiently than you would. Or not, does it matter, theyre willing to help.
That would be wonderful but that’s not what we’re discussing.
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It actually is. We all have problems. Humanity formed society to solve problems. Society has been hijacked (for a loooong time in many different ways) to extract value from others. Some people want to combat that.
Some “have their own problems to deal with”
Society has been hijacked to extract value
No it was formed to exchange value.
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If you can’t understand the difference between “extracting” and “exchanging”, that’s the type of thing only a dictionary can help you with, sorry.
Those with capital choose not to
Those with capital profit off of not doing so.
Like the one recent CEO saying the quiet part aloud by saying government should promote higher unemployment, since in the high employment environment employees aren’t desperate and have more demands costing him money. That employees arent feeling enough pain and despair in economy.
To be fair, this isn’t that far away from the economic theory underlying using interest rates to manage inflation - it’s just phrased in a different way.
That’s the problem with fractional reserve banking it’s making up money for those who lend theirs. It’s about extracting value from those who work for those who accumulate. It’s not a tbf, it’s a this is also an issue in every area of our society.
Ok we can all clearly see there’s a problem, what action should we take to effectively solve it?
There’s the fight club method but good people generally avoid being terrorists…
And make sure their propaganda gets pushed as truth and that any opposition to it will lead to genocide and prison camps
I recently heard it phrased like this:
Capitalism is built on hierarchy, which means someone fundamentally NEEDS to be at the bottom. There is no way around it, someone needs to suffer.
I don’t think that this is really true.
If someone has “more” then yes of course someone needs to have “less”, merely by definition.
The question is really whether those with less are living below the poverty line or living comfortably. I guess it’s a question of semantics whether “capitalism” requires people to be living below the poverty line but I don’t think it does. It’s just shitty regulations which allow wealth to become as concentrated as it has.
Socialism in principle sounds great, but most times it’s been implemented it’s suffered from the same problem as capitalism - the people with power are greedy and use their power to manipulate and oppress the populace.
I wish all .de instances a very get off my federation
German politics and energy consumption aside, I think they have the best base of knowledge for what your proposed economic model has in store for them and their allies. They had that model forced upon them, and fought for change and economic freedom. There was a freaking wall dividing their country over that.
Don’t shitpost on good discussion please.
They had that model forced upon them, and fought for change and economic freedom.
East germans, especially women and lgbt people, lost a lot of practical rights during reunification
The nazis were socialist
Daily reminder that Germany never underwent denazification
He’s referring to post-WW2 East Germany being controlled by the USSR you absolute gonk.
Amazing.
Socialism in principle sounds great, but most times it’s been implemented it’s suffered from the same problem as capitalism - the people with power are greedy and use their power to manipulate and oppress the populace.
This is true, the “dictatorship of the proletariat” is self-contradictory and impossible IMHO. Because as soon as a member of the proletariat is a dictator, they are now no longer a member of the proletariat.
Now you don’t need a dictator, you can enact socialist policies democratically. This is very slow and kind of difficult, because the capitalists will lobby and fight so hard against it, and you need to maintain public support.
That isnt what dictatorship of the proletariat means. It means that the former bourgeoisie are temporarily politically disenfranchised from proletarian democracy
Conservatism is built on hierarchy. Capitalism just says markets work and investment is gambling. You can do that and still keep everyone fed / clothed / sheltered, specifically because markets work, and can make food / clothes / shelter more plentiful. Some people having more doesn’t require private space station versus duplex cardboard box.
Conservatives only say market failure demands misery and successful gambling means unchecked power because that’s what they always say. That’s their only conclusion, applied to literally everything. That’s how conservatives think things work. The entire tribal worldview boils down to “well somebody’s gotta be king.” Just a fractal pyramid of militaries over empire, rulers over courts, owners over workers, and patriarchs over families. If you’re at the bottom you’re lucky to be alive, and how dare you question your betters.
The unspoken assumption is that change is impossible. This is genuinely how they think everything works. Like the universe itself dictates a steep gradient, and the only way things could be different is by shuffling around who goes where. So if someone is suffering, they must have fucked up to deserve it, and if you want to help them, you’re putting someone else in their place.
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Similar experiments in Vancouver: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/30/canada-study-homeless-money-spending
Ontario: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/basic-income-mcmaster-report-1.5485729
Turns out, socialism ain’t that bad eh?
That isnt socialism, the proletariat doesn’t control the means of production.
Love too go down to the government store and order an extra large socialism
Yh a lot of mfers on this site need to actually read some theory.
You read the first study? The money was not given to those that has substance abuse, mental health symptoms or alcohol abuse because they felt they represented a small portion of the homeless. Was given to people that were sleeping in friends house and some in cars and didn’t abuse alcohol or drugs. That is a joke of an experiment and in no ready ubi. Not does it indicate on any meaningful way how it is paid for as it doesn’t include everyone.
The second study found only 3/4 of the people continued to work and ultimately the 150 million dollar program was cancelled because it did not appear to increase contribution to society in any economic way.
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99.999999999% of the homeless are homeless because they don’t have enough money.
That is pretty much bullshit. From a brother in law that died of substance abuse and another I house for same reason, nearly every homeless person I have met has had some type of substance abuse. Being you are making that claim, do you have a source to back it up?
Addiction Disorders: The relationship between addiction and homelessness is complex and controversial. While rates of alcohol and drug abuse are disproportionately high among the homeless population, the increase in homelessness over the past two decades cannot be explained by addiction alone. Many people who are addicted to alcohol and drugs never become homeless, but people who are poor and addicted are clearly at increased risk of homelessness. Addiction does increase the risk of displacement for the precariously housed; in the absence of appropriate treatment, it may doom one’s chances of getting housing once on the streets. Homeless people often face insurmountable barriers to obtaining health care, including addictive disorder treatment services and recovery supports. Source
The prevalence of mental illness and substance use among those experiencing homelessness is clear, but Kushel cautions that the vast majority of mental illness among the study participants is anxiety and depression. It’s likely the lack of resources exacerbates those conditions, rather than the illness causing the homelessness, she says.
“I think that the driving issue is clearly the deep poverty, that the median [monthly] household income for everyone in the household in the six months before homelessness was $960, in a state with the highest housing costs in the country,” she says. Other studies have noted that the end of pandemic stimulus payments and rising inflation has led to rents outpacing wages. The study notes that in 2023, California had only 24 units of affordable housing available for every 100 extremely low-income households.Source
Just because you know one or two people that were homeless and also had problems with addiction, doesn’t mean the addiction caused their homelessness.
Depends where you are.
It’s not like it’s that expensive to determine who’s homeless because they don’t have money. Solving homelessness isn’t a single golden bullet.
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They gave the money to people living on friends couches. That is not exactly homeless but was considered a roommate at one time. Ubi is universal. It is in the name. Give it to every person regardless of status and see how effective it is compared to the money spent. I bet it is a poor return.
Pretty much they’re giving money to people who are most likely to be transitionally homeless and then claiming success even though most if not all of the participants wouldn’t be homeless after a year anyway.
UBI is socialism? Without any price caps on goods and services it just gives capitalists another excuse to raise prices.
… yes? All social programs are socialism.
what. Social programs are not socialismHexbear expressing opinions 🥴
what
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in the US you could call anything socialism and people would automatically hate it
Socialism, in an extreme simplification, is a mode of political and economic organisation in which the workers own the means of production, and receive the full value of their labour. While social welfare programs are often attached to that, they are not socialism in and of themselves, nor are they a prerequisite to socialism (but it is nice to have).
Inherently, the funding of social programs must be derived by taking value away from capital and redistributing it to the public. In general, social programs might not be socialist, but in the particular case of UBI it’s literally a direct redistribution of (some) surplus value from capital accumulators to society. Just like how the term “capitalism” today doesn’t describe a perfectly capitalist economy, the term “socialism” has been co-opted to refer more to progress towards socialism… In that regard, I think UBI programs are distinct from typical social programs (i.e. expanding universal healthcare further does not make a society socialist, nor does improving support for homelessness) in that they are direct progress towards socialism (i.e. expanding UBI further literally redistributes value entirely from capital to society and basically achieves the goals of social ownership).
I’m pretty sure you have literally no idea how taxes work.
Y’know what? That’s fair.
My understanding has been that the entire point of a progressive tax system is to sap money from the wealthy and redistribute it towards the public good. Whether that system works is debatable, sure.
Point being, actual UBI would require significant tax hikes and closing of tax loopholes which predominantly target the wealthy. While that may lead to capital flight, it’s not a bad thing. As a whole, UBI wouldn’t be a small step but a massive stride towards achieving socialism.
I’m totally in favor of UBI it just needs to come with rent control, food price controls, healthcare, etc. And it needs to not be paid for by taxing the working class
UBIs can be a good part of socialism, but not necessarily an essentialist value of it, though it’s not as well-utilized under capitalism…
If Feudalism means the rule of Feudal lords, by ownership of the land and thus crop rents, and capitalism means the rule of capitalists, by ownership of capital and thus profit
Then with socialism, it’s the rule of society, by communal ownership (state or not) of our industry towards societal goods, such as food, shelter, etc. and avoid the crises that come with it
If you reform the system without changing its system, it will rhyme up its mistakes all over again (do the same action but with worse effect to society)
Btw though: don’t most of the ideal Socdem countries, whom you call socialist, in the West rely on exploitative unequal “exchange” , and the Socdem countries of the Global South are slandered and sanctioned, the most extreme example being Venezuela?
Rent is only high because of artificial scarcity of real estate. The scarcity only exists because building new housing is decided neither by supply and demand nor central government planning, but by the people who accumulate more capital if housing isn’t built.
: “Did you just suggest walkable communities with plenty of brownstone townhouses? Whoa WTF I love regulations now!”We really need to push for the feds to step in and start constructing government housing against the will of the NIMBYs and local and state governments then.
California has finally started forcing local governments to build more housing to stop the NIMBYs bit it’s still going to take so many years for housing to catch up even if they start now.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The results, so far: Participants who were sleeping on the streets at the start of the experiment — now with more money in their pockets — said they were feeling safer, experiencing better mental health, and enjoying access to more stable and welcoming living arrangements.
An entrepreneur, he made his money off Wooden Ships — a clothing company that specializes in sweaters for women — and an investment in Tesla that skyrocketed during the coronavirus pandemic.
Commentary on homelessness often focuses on mental health and addiction, perceived as the chief drivers of a spike in people sleeping on the streets in cities from Sacramento, California, to Jacksonville, Florida.
But the Pew Charitable Trust wrote in a recent analysis that research had “consistently found that homelessness in an area is driven by housing costs.”
While cautioning that this was only an interim six-month follow-up for what is a yearlong program, the researchers nonetheless found stark and encouraging changes in participants’ material conditions.
That material gains were seen among all groups suggests at least some of the improvements may be attributable to something other than cash, such as increased access to other services during the study period (the researchers don’t speculate).
The original article contains 835 words, the summary contains 197 words. Saved 76%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
“No shit”
1K a month is pretty trivial compared to the cost of all the public money used to punish them (e.g cops). Even if you don’t care about the humanity aspect at all UBI makes sense just from a pure numbers perspective.
Don’t forget healthcare and existing social security!
But think of all the money prisons will lose!
I know it’s a popular sentiment, because private prisons are so in-your-face evil, but they’re not as ubiquitous as the population seems to believe.
Twenty-seven states and the federal government incarcerated 96,370 people in private prisons in 2021, representing 8% of the total state and federal prison population.
Yes, that’s too many. Yes, we need to ban these things at the federal level. But let’s not forget the grift from state and local prisons, in many cases worse because they can’t be as readily audited.
$1,000/mo. is not UBI, not like it’s usually discussed. I’d go for widening this program, let’s keep the experiment rolling until it pans out or collapses.
Every single study on UBI finds that it is a good idea that benefits both the recipients and society as a whole, but because it contradicts the dominant ideology it can’t be allowed to happen.
They tried it on Manitoba Canada. Not just a study. It rather fell flat with the most positive statement being, productivity fell less than expected.
https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200624-canadas-forgotten-universal-basic-income-experiment
This is the only experiment that comes up from Googling Manitoba UBI, and it doesn’t seem to match what you say. A study of about 2k people, definitely not the whole population, and this article lists quite a number of positive statements about it.
There was a UBI experiment in canada that was a huge success and of course the tories axed it as soon as they had the chance. Conservatives need to [extremely long bleep] … [yeah still bleeping] … … [still going] … [leeeeep] -yeah i’m going to have to redact this in post.
I’ve yet to see a study at a scale large enough to impact the local economy. Will the results hold when everyone gets monthly cash payments, or will rent go through the roof and that’s about it?
That’s about it. Why would anyone work for $20k/yr when they could get $12k for free? They wouldn’t. So those jobs would bump to $30k+, and a domino affect would occur. Nothing would be achieved other than the devaluing of the American dollar, which would lead to a loss of jobs, increased poverty, and guess what else - increased homelessness.
You obviously haven’t even looked at the wikipedia article about the studies. Your assumption has been proven wrong many times.
Kind of a weird argument, isn’t it? If we did the opposite instead, it’s not as if you’d expect rents to fall – on the contrary, rent would go up in response to the added financial burden on landlords. Setting that hypothetical aside, wouldn’t a generalized inflation of rents be an acceptable tradeoff for reducing homelessness and untethering the 50+% of young adults who still live with their parents to move and work in more economically efficient environments?
While I actually consider multi-generational housing a good thing, let’s ignore that since the reason people aren’t moving out is financial and not social.
The question is whether UBI is the best way to solve that problem (and others) and I have yet to see data that can be reasonably said to actually be universal for a region. The closest thing I know of is Alaska, and their oil payments are too small and their economy too remote to say much about larger payments in a larger economy.
To me, because money has a social and psychological value to it, what works on an individual level has no guarantee to transfer to a societal level. I would be very interested to see UBI practiced on an entire economic zone, but good luck getting anyone to volunteer.
So what if there were 100 or more small scale experiments in 50 different countries, in similar conditions. I won’t be playing with the money of the entire nation|state|county|city to possibly lose it and not get elected again!
I want vaccines to be tested on 30% of the population to see if it works.
We should be putting this prototype hardware in the hands of 40% of the population to see if there are any side effects before deciding whether to legalise it.
We will do a double blind test on 50% of the population with these new safety regulations to see if there’s an impact on incidences. The study would be invalid otherwise.
Models and small scale experiments are for wimps. I, the ruler of the democratic country, declare an experiment shall be run at national scale! The economy of region X with will not be comparable to that of the rest of 90% of country!
Uh, the key issue is that it’s very unclear whether the results will hold at scale, since you’re suggesting a modification to society. There’s no (or very little) social component to the effectiveness of a vaccine or a new tool. Money is fundamentally a social construct and so what works in isolation or very small groups might not work the same way at large scale.
If a country with a population of around a million (or even as small as 100k) enacted UBI I would take those results to be representative of a societal change. So far I’ve only seen studies where a few people embedded in a larger society are given money, and that’s not the same thing.
You have to remember that industrialized countries already have a systems where people get money for “nothing,” but those quotes do a lot of psychological heavy lifting. Disability, unemployment, retirement, food stamps, etc. The difference being that it’s not universal and each payout is either “earned,” temporary, or a pity case. As such, the psychology behind that money just isn’t the same.
I’m interested in UBI, I just want to see results that can actually be reasonably transferred to a population the size of my country (350 million) before I make hard statements about its effects.
If a country with a population of around a million (or even as small as 100k) enacted UBI I would take those results to be representative of a societal change.
I honestly doubt you would. The typical arguments of:
- it’s not comparable to a country of 350M, they’re barely as big as $cityWithOver1Million
- their society is very different from ours
- their implementation is different from what we could ever manage
- the circumstances were different
would come around.
You’re making exemplary conservative arguments to stalemate progress by creating a chicken and egg problem.
- Won’t accept results of change in a small environment because they aren’t representative of change in large environment
- Demand results of change in a large environment before applying them to large environment
- Won’t apply changes to large environment because results of change in large environment don’t exist
You just made up a bunch of arguments I would never make. Please don’t put words in my mouth. I can’t help it if my current stance is an argument made by people who have no interest in UBI at all. Fuck, I want UBI to work as advertised, it would be a very simple and easy solution to a lot of problems (though it obviously wouldn’t be a 100% solve for all of them).
If we can get a small economic zone that’s in control of its own currency to run UBI, those results would be likely to transfer to any other larger economy. Really the only requirement is that the country must be in control of its own monetary and fiscal policy and the program must actually be universal.
How can a society built on capital work towards the betterment of society rather than the accretion of capital?
Exactly. If organisations (private, public and other) had to maximise for social betterment, they would release annual reports measuring it. There might even be entire industries dedicated to auditing measurements of social betterment.
But no, we’re stuck using a system of ‘value’ based on the prestige of owning shiny rocks and control of the areas where those shiny rocks are found. And finding new uses for things and people that aren’t the desired shiny rocks so that you may demand and acquire more shiny rocks as others in the same time duration.
If a majority of countries can successfully ditch the gold standard and allow fiat currency - as they did a century ago, that means the world is also able to redefine what fiat currencies measure. There’s nothing actually stopping us from requiring social and environmental impact to be included in the calculation of financial valuations, except the people who have a vested interest in keeping the current equations.
Stop measuring people’s networth. Start measuring their societal value.
I agree with not measuring net worth but how are you planning on measuring individual societal value? That just sounds ripe for discrimination and elitism.
Tbf, it’s difficult to break programming. If your whole life you’re raised in a society that measures your worth by your “hard work”, then accepting that you don’t need work to be happy is difficult for most. Most will continue voting against their own interests until there’s a watershed moment. My bet is on unemployment hitting >30% due to AI.
If 30% of the population has to be on social security and can’t be hired anymore, it would surprise me if nothing changed. Unless of course they blamed immigrants and minorities. They always serve as good scape goats.
The problem is the definition of “work”. There’s lots of things a person can do that both require a lot of effort and produce real benefit to society that are difficult or impossible to make money from, and therefore they aren’t “work”. Raising children being the most obvious example.
Indeed, work is defined by most people as “employment”, but there’s a lot of different work out there that is beneficial to the person and society as a whole, that isn’t remunerated.
You mentioned unemployment due to AI. There’s a short story from a while ago that outlined this step by step. It’s a good read if you have the time.
If people aren’t forced to work to live then how can I get cheap labor for my shitty business that my dad gave me?
If people have UBI, you can get away with paying less though. That’s how walmart does it; just encourage your workers to get welfare so they stay alive enough to work more
And that’s honestly my proposal for it. Basically, create something like UBI (my preference is NIT) that ensures everyone is over the poverty level, eliminate minimum wage, and have benefits phase out for some reasonable definition of “living wage” (say, 2x the poverty level, maybe 3x).
Working would never make you worse off, and people wouldn’t feel obligated to take crappy jobs if the pay isn’t there.
We could also eliminate many other forms of welfare at the same time and just increase benefits accordingly.
The only benefits that I think would have to stay, are those with “unlimited” downside, like healthcare.
UBI can potentially replace specific benefits for housing or general living expenses, but it can’t really replace healthcare.
Agreed, I certainly wouldn’t touch Medicare or Medicaid. I’d also probably leave unemployment insurance as is, and this would kick in afterward.
But I think it could replace Social Security, food assistance, housing assistance, etc. And I think we could fund it by lifting the income cap on Social Security, but I’d need to run the numbers to be sure.
I’d say some disability benefits as well. Simply getting by can be more expensive when you can’t do basic tasks yourself, even if you have the best universal health care possible.
Raise their rent
Which we all know would happen IMMEDIATELY in lockstep with any widespread rollout of UBI, and any complaint would be met with half the country screeching “FREE MARKET REEEEEE”
Guess we better institute rent controls first then
That alone would be better than UBI.
Rent Control can only have one outcome. Decreased amount of available new or renovated rentals which coupled with an ever increasing demand for housing, creates some of the housing shortages we see in larger cities today.
UBI can be an effective way to fight poverty, and would be an even more effective way to combat poverty if we implemented a Negative Income tax whereby all welfare programs are rolled into the funding.
More 👏 Empty 👏 Houses 👏 Than 👏 Homeless 👏 People 👏
The maoist uprising against the landlords was the largest revolution in history and led to an almost entirely equitable distribution of land ownership
Shut up baby I know it
Too bad 80% of the country would call us commies for suggesting it.
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To be clear here, while they advocate for UBI this isn’t really a study on the topic as much as it is on direct cash payments to the homeless. Which has been supported by tons of different research in Canada, London, so many places I can’t even remember them all.
the Pew Charitable Trust wrote in a recent analysis that research had “consistently found that homelessness in an area is driven by housing costs.”
Well, yeah, and we can thank investors, landlords and capital funds for that. Housing in Denver is ridiculously expensive currently… and it was bad but not to this extent a few years ago. A house next door to me that was $250k and $1000 a month a few years ago is now $450 and $2100 a month.
Houses in the Netherlands have increased on average like 33% since 2018. Not made up numbers. They’ve gotta go down this is so unaffordable for starters.
Who would pledge 10% of their income to distribute as basic income? There is no need to wait until politicians implement it. We can start immediately.
Don’t be absurd. Systemic change is needed. Not individual charity.
What’s your plan for systemic change? If you have none, why not try systemic individual charity?
The average citizen will have to pay for UBI with taxes. Why not do it voluntarily?
What’s your plan for systemic change?
Tax the rich, redistribute wealth, stop treating basic human needs such as shelter and healthcare as profit generators.
If you have none
I did. Stop making stupid assumptions.
why not try systemic individual charity?
Please learn what words mean. There is no “systemic individual” anything.
The average citizen will have to pay for UBI with taxes. Why not do it voluntarily?
Because it doesn’t work, you walnut.
You don’t have a plan, you have a wish list. How do you want to achieve your list?
Using insults doesn’t refute my points. Why not coordinate as citizens?
You don’t have a plan, you have a wish list. How do you want to achieve your list?
I’m sorry, you expect anyone who disagrees with you on social media to write you a thesis on restructuring society, or you just ignore them?
It’s obvious that you just want to disregard what people have to say.
You haven’t actually written anything of substance, but I have to effortpost for you? Lol, bite me.
Using insults doesn’t refute my points.
You don’t have any points.
Why not coordinate as citizens?
Why do you think it hasn’t already worked? Why do you think charity hasn’t already accomplished what you say it will accomplish?
Perhaps because it doesn’t actually achieve systemic change. Because the people hoarding wealth do not voluntarily distribute it.
Maybe because the people who hoard wealth are like everybody else and too few want to share? Why expect the billionaires to share if normal people don’t share?
Right now is the first time in history since city state times that the citizens can talk and vote together.
If people choose to share their income, they can do it now. The debate hasn’t happened yet.
Maybe because the people who hoard wealth are like everybody else and too few want to share?
So then why are you suggesting voluntary charity if you know it doesn’t actually work? Are you being deliberately dense?
If people choose to share their income, they can do it now. The debate hasn’t happened yet.
It has happened, just because your head is wedged so firmly up your own ass that you haven’t seen it doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened.
I wonder if rent would go up if ubi became a thing
That depends on the housing market. If you have a surplus in housing, rent will remain stable because tenants will move if their landlord increases rent.
If you have a deficit in housing and more people look for a place to stay than there are available places, then tenants cannot move. Landlords and other businesses in deficit markets like healthcare will take all additional income.
The Maoist uprising against the landlords was the most comprehensive proletarian revolution in history, leading to almost totally equal redistribution of the land amongst the peasantry.
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The cruelty is the point, so this isn’t likely to be expanded.
“Those damn homeless and injuns get EVERYTHING for free”
-my racist and jaded ass coworker
OK, so you’re telling me that giving money to people who need it, is better than giving it to rich people?
I am Wage Slaves inner shocked pikachu. Same thing, just more sarcastic and massive eye brows.
I think my biggest problem with these tests (not the idea of UBI) is that they go entirely based on what the recipients say. There’s not really any indication that fact checking is done to confirm they actually are living somewhere now, or they did get their cars fixed, etc.
I’m confident that the money helped, because obviously it would, but I wish we could get some actual solid data on how much it helped. The cynic in me believes that desperate people getting 1000$/mo will embellish how much it helps in order to keep getting the money, when in reality they need 1500$ or 2000$ to afford housing in Denver.
Isn’t that like… Objectively wrong?
Dear Faust, even in Soviet Union idea of studio apartments were so cringe, that they were not built at all.
I’m not sure what definition of UBI you’re using, but not all forms of UBI need to cover the entirety of living expenses. UBI is just having income without strings attached. This very study is showing that even small amounts of money can help people get out of shitty situations.
Also as someone who lives in Dever, it’s not that expensive. Sure $1500+ is what you’ll pay around LoDo, but there are plenty of cheaper places.
