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Universal Basic Income

Discussion in 'The Dungeon' started by ryoung57, Feb 13, 2019.

  1. nigel smith

    nigel smith Well-Known Member

    I would like to see a financial breakdown of this plan. Add up the entire cost of all welfare programs, including administration and overhead, and divide that figure by the entire population. If the result is enough to rent a crappy apartment and eat rice and beans, go for it. What we are doing now isn't working, so why not? We would lose some productivity as lower end workers elected to stay home, but the market would adjust. Those who wanted more from life would continue to work. Those who didn't might stay home and play video games instead of holding up convenience stores.
     
    SuddenBraking likes this.
  2. HPPT

    HPPT !!!

    The French socialist candidate got his ass handed to him in the first round of the last presidential election with this bullshit in his program. Granted, he had other issues, but that idiocy certainly did not help his case. In France! Process that.
     
    cav115 and sheepofblue like this.
  3. Spang308

    Spang308 Well-Known Member

    Nails done, draped in gold, designer cloths swipes EBT card for a cart full of soda and potato chips...pushes cart out to relatively modern SUV. See it every trip to the store.
    Yup...poverty sucks.
    What people consider poverty in this country is a complete joke. They act like anyone without a mansion and Ferrari is poor. Meanwhile, there are people starving and without clean water elsewhere in the world. Reports of people eating their pets in Venezuela, so I guess we can rule out government controlled wealth distribution as a solution.
     
    Banditracer likes this.
  4. Pittenger5

    Pittenger5 Well-Known Member

    Everyone has the same opportunity in this country.
    Not everyone is going to have it at the same level of ease. Never will. Sucks for a lot of people, but thats the hand that was dealt. Play it or shut up.
     
    TurboBlew, Banditracer and Spang308 like this.
  5. R Acree

    R Acree Banned

    One of my favorite scenes from Crazy Rich Asians..."Don't you know there are children starving in America?”
     
  6. ryoung57

    ryoung57 Off his meds

    I'm more or less the same as you. We started off POOR (single mom and all that) but wound up solidly middle class. I'm not bragging, but I'm a pretty smart mofo so school was always super easy for me. I'm where I'm at despite some of my best efforts to derail myself through poor choices, but I'm mostly happy with how life has turned out.

    The thing I struggle with is what I've bolded from your post. Both of these things are at the root of the problems we have, and depending on how you look at it, they're there for similar, or wildly different, reasons. I believe they are the same. I believe it's about control. The wealthy and elite do not want competition. They do not want a free, unburdened, educated populace. Kings and Lords need serfs, not other Kings and Lords. People are constantly bombarded with what they're led to believe is quality, accurate information about how they should lead their lives, what choices they should make, who they can trust, and so on. More often than not, that information is tainted and ultimately leads them in a negative direction.

    College is a perfect example. Starting in the early 90's, the movement to send everyone to college gained a lot of traction. Financial aid was made available, then it was pushed, then virtually forced on every kid with a highs school diploma or ged. In turn, tuition rates went through the roof. But the jobs weren't there, and because there was not a glut of "educated" candidates for the jobs that were there, wages stagnated. Now we have an entire generation (more like two generations) of people with massive student loan debt and no way to pay it off. Literally 1.5 TRILLION dollars! Did these people make poor decisions? In hindsight, yes they did. But at the time, they were taking advice of people they trusted (who were probably misled themselves). All these kids were told that if they wanted to be successful, if they wanted to be rich, just borrow this money, get a diploma, then pay it off quickly with the extra income it provides. People got rich alright, but it sure wasn't those kids.
     
    ricracer16 and ducnut like this.
  7. Motofun352

    Motofun352 Well-Known Member

    Given time, all it does is re-establish the baseline. Prices will escalate to consume the base and it will soon mean nothing at all. Then the chant will start to raise the baseline, much the same as the way the minimum wage works. It's a foolish concept meant to offer a false benefit to those unwilling or unable to grasp basic finances.
     
    speeddaddy likes this.
  8. ryoung57

    ryoung57 Off his meds


    That's kind of what I have been thinking, but I'm open to explanations of how to prevent that. My fear is that at some point in the not too distant future we're going to reach a critical mass. There will be too many people, consuming/demanding too many resources. These people will be so far overextended on debt that they'll never be able to pay off their medical bills, iphones, student loans, and 100k SUVs. Factor in a rise in automation and AI tech, and job opportunity and wages will fall. Then what? Do we let millions starve in the streets? Do we have a world war to cull the herd?
     
    ricracer16 likes this.
  9. Spang308

    Spang308 Well-Known Member

    And you picked the greatest boom the American economy has enjoyed in 5 decades for these worries to surface?
     
  10. ryoung57

    ryoung57 Off his meds


    Don't fall for the headlines. This boom is just another bubble. That's part of the problem. The way things are reported gives a false picture of the financial health of the average American. The whole system is arranged to keep the serfs spending as much money as they can.

    Want some reality? Make Dave Ramsey Secretary of the Treasury :D
     
    crashman and Britt like this.
  11. Spang308

    Spang308 Well-Known Member

    Record low unemployment is a pretty good indicator of economic success.
    A better one is consumer confidence which is a pretty good snapshot of the well being of the general public. There are more jobs available than people to fill them. But yeah, let's hand people free money for doing nothing.
    Economies are cyclical and no doubt we are on an upswing. It will plateau and likely ebb, but that's a natural cycle. Not sure what government mandated anything would or could possibly fix in that regard.
     
  12. ryoung57

    ryoung57 Off his meds


    Like I said in the intro, I'm not here promoting UBI, just discussing. It's not necessarily a bad idea, but it would have to be implemented in a very particular way to be successful. And like most government programs, it'll be done in the most screwed up way possible so it'll surely fail.

    On a side note, look at all of our future/sci-fi type movies. Have you ever noticed that in all of the movies that are positive (not dystopian), everyone just kind of exists, doing their jobs for some non-monetary reason, with all of their needs just "provided" by some general basic welfare?
     
  13. jrsamples

    jrsamples Banned

    Law tries to establish equality. Nature does not provide and doesn't care. Some will always be poor and others who have ideas and determination cannot be held down.

    Yesterday I dined at a 3rd generation restaurant (which is hard to do anyway), that was started by a Greek immigrant who had $50 when he arrived in NYC. He speaky no inglaze. He and his family didn't build an empire, but they didn't require assistance either. They built a middle of the road lifestyle through hard work and enough intelligence to fill a consumer demand. These cats are very pro USA.

    I believe that the USA is going through a time of divergence, where the extremes of potential accomplishment are getting furter apart. There is an equal expansion of the technically savvy and an expansion of the morbidly stupid, a divide in capabilities that the country has never seen.
     
    cav115 likes this.
  14. In Your Corner

    In Your Corner Dungeonesque Crab AI Version

    Movies don't have to withstand critical analysis, real life does.
    UBI is a horrible idea. Life is risk, you can't remove it.
     
    tl1098 likes this.
  15. Spang308

    Spang308 Well-Known Member

    How old are you? Just curious. Not being negative toward you.
    This is a fact: Giving control of anything to the government is a mistake. They fuck up everything. Government is the most corrupt, inefficient, ineffective entity ever. If you or I could accomplish a task in an hour for a dollar, it will take the government 3 years and a hundred dollars...and that ratio is probably being kind to the government.
     
    brex likes this.
  16. ryoung57

    ryoung57 Off his meds


    Well, you have a lot of things contributing to that. Mostly, complete denial of the laws of natural selection. We've eliminated failure from the lives of most of our youth for a good 20-30 years now, and it's left us with hordes of idiots in the position of making adult decisions.
     
    ducnut and badmoon692008 like this.
  17. ryoung57

    ryoung57 Off his meds

    Why?
     
  18. Spang308

    Spang308 Well-Known Member

    You kinda just made the arguement against your initial idea in this thread...
     
  19. Motofun352

    Motofun352 Well-Known Member

    There is no free lunch, that's why.
     
    TurboBlew likes this.
  20. ryoung57

    ryoung57 Off his meds


    I'm 40. And for the record, I have a very strong disdain for most government. But at the same time, there is a need for an organized system of law to keep things in order. Otherwise every petty dispute would ultimately degrade into the threat of violence.
     

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