basquebromance
Diamond Member
- Nov 26, 2015
- 109,396
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- #1
a UBI would be cheaper and more effective than what we do now, economically. If you take the total amount we spend on anti-poverty programs and divide by the number of poor people, there should be no poor people!
Poor people aren’t lazy, they’re trapped in the current system. A UBI is not contingent on staying poor, so it would both lift people out of poverty and flatten out the benefits cliff. Of course, this means that the new UBI would be instead of existing programs, rather than a supplement, and not everyone agrees with that.
Finally, there is crude "realpolitik." Plenty of very wealthy people already live in the US, and the new economy is likely to create inequality on steroids. In a democracy, the poor and middle class have many tools to “negotiate” redistribution at gunpoint.
Poor people aren’t lazy, they’re trapped in the current system. A UBI is not contingent on staying poor, so it would both lift people out of poverty and flatten out the benefits cliff. Of course, this means that the new UBI would be instead of existing programs, rather than a supplement, and not everyone agrees with that.
Finally, there is crude "realpolitik." Plenty of very wealthy people already live in the US, and the new economy is likely to create inequality on steroids. In a democracy, the poor and middle class have many tools to “negotiate” redistribution at gunpoint.
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