UBI is a terrible idea. Anyone who thinks that the government handing out money to everyone is a good idea needs to snap out of the propaganda machine. Those who fund you, control you. There is no way around that. When the people funding everyone is the government, and the people do nothing in return, that places huge amounts of power in the hands of a single entity, and removes all power from the people.
Large companies are getting larger. There are only a couple of choices in any category, and single companies own many different markets. When you combine that with UBI, you have the government handing you a check, and then you have a choice of a couple of companies to spend that money. The difference between this world and communism is almost nothing.
I have never heard of any group of people who were happy on government welfare. Whatever the supposed problem this is supposed to address, it is not a solution. People who are not working at all are not happy.
If I were to guess, I would say the real problems that need to be addressed are:
too many extremely large companies, often supported by laws they lobbied to create.
corrupt government that has no interest in its own country
population increases.
I mean, many of these people proposing UBI are living in countries where they are actively increasing the population. If you have an unemployment problem, why are you increasing the population?
You are just replacing one leverage with another (employers with government). In most places, the employers own the government anyway as they provide the revenue.
I don't know what your first point means. Your last point, you are just repeating what you have read somewhere. Population increases do not change the aging population. The new people also age believe it or not.
Also stop being childish with your "wat" bullshit.
> You are just replacing one leverage with another (employers with government).
> I don't know what your first point means.
This I believe is the misunderstanding. UBI is designed so nothing you do will affect your basic income; there are no conditions. Yes, on the meta-level the UBI policy itself could be changed, but assuming it won't the government has no extra leverage over the citizens.
> Population increases do not change the aging population. The new people also age believe it or not.
I meant:
- Slowing population growth and longer life expediencies (Europe, Japan, US might catch up a little bit) together result in more old people as a portion of the total population. Some argue this is dangerous for the welfare state.
- More population growth crates more demand and helps economy grow.
You can similarly argue growing economies are bad for human and environmental health because more economic activity conventionally means pollution. For example, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/10/14/resea... (sorry for the sensational headline). But growing economies are also very good in other ways.
It would be great if we could have "barber poll" economies and populations that always grow yet stay the same size, but calculus does not allow for this.
Large companies are getting larger. There are only a couple of choices in any category, and single companies own many different markets. When you combine that with UBI, you have the government handing you a check, and then you have a choice of a couple of companies to spend that money. The difference between this world and communism is almost nothing.
I have never heard of any group of people who were happy on government welfare. Whatever the supposed problem this is supposed to address, it is not a solution. People who are not working at all are not happy.
If I were to guess, I would say the real problems that need to be addressed are:
too many extremely large companies, often supported by laws they lobbied to create.
corrupt government that has no interest in its own country
population increases.
I mean, many of these people proposing UBI are living in countries where they are actively increasing the population. If you have an unemployment problem, why are you increasing the population?