Right! So everyone would choose to pursue passions/interests/leisure. We would be going into debt with no meaningful benefit to the taxpayer. Direct malinvestment.
This is drawing a line between "us" (tax paying citizens + the government) and "them" (people on benefits). I don't think it's that simple.
I imagine just like with existing benefits, the majority of people wouldn't feel great about being on UBI doing nothing, and they would pursue something that gives them a better social standing, a better sense of purpose, a good challenge, whatever motivates an individual. It's why lots of people do volunteer work, work on important open source software, and so on. Sure, there's outliers that actually proudly slack off, but you don't address specific problems with generic solutions.
But more importantly, having the _option_ to fall back on benefits means people need to take fewer risks to pursue their talents and likely be of more value to society than if they did whatever puts food on the table today. Case in point: People born into a family that can finance them through college are more likely to become engineers than people born into poor households. On the flip side, some people do white collar jobs vs something like being a medic to uphold their standard of living from the higher salary, not out of preference.
I think it would need careful management, but I believe there's every reason to be optimistic.
UBI isn't even needed if there's just universal housing, medical care, food and education. People will find enough work to get the rest, even if it's through barter.
Okay…now that we agree that UBI won’t produce any meaningful labor. What benefit do we get out of the trillions of dollars of debt we’d be accumulating?
It’s a classic economic blunder that dictatorships love to make:
1. Create money & rack up debt.
2. Produce nothing.
3. Create inflationary crisis and exacerbate wealth inequality.
4. Highlight your good intentions and relish your new position as champion of the people.
Isn’t the investment to avoid a revolution? To avoid those that cannot find work from dismantling and tearing down everything around them so they can get what they need. Some might consider that to be a benefit to taxpayers and not a poor investment.
Free money never works. It’s been attempted countless times. In fact, it exacerbates the wealth gap as the rich own assets that scale with inflation while the poor do not.
No, you just live in a bubble of smart and really driven people.
The vast majority of people's passions are partying, sex, alcohol/drugs, watching sports, gossiping, generally wasting time. Things that mostly
This whole line of thought to me is embarrassingly clueless, naive and basically childish.
It is just mind blowing to me how smart people can't see what a bubble they live in.
I almost suspect, the higher a person's IQ, the more susceptible they are to living in a bubble that basically has nothing to do with the majority of people with an IQ of 100.
