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Indeed. One city nearby was spending ~$4,500 a month to feed and house families, but the conditions were fairly horrible (dilapidated shelters with communal bat

by bnralt 6y ago

Indeed. One city nearby was spending ~$4,500 a month to feed and house families, but the conditions were fairly horrible (dilapidated shelters with communal bathrooms, poor food quality). Simply handing the families the cash would have been better. Of course, then you have other issues like welfare cutoffs and people from other municipalities coming to receive such benefits, problems that would be solved by a nationwide UBI.

tachyonbeam 6y ago
UBI might seem crazy to some people, but I'd like to remind everyone that governments worldwide effectively print trillions of dollars and use that money to inflate stock prices. Governments could instead distribute the money through UBI. The advantage, if you do that, is that people will spend that money on things they need. This seems better, to me, than keeping alive zombie companies that are "too big to fail" and contribute little to no value to society. If you give people UBI, they are voting with their wallets and giving money to companies that produce something useful. As for the national debt... When the government borrows money from a central bank, it's effectively borrowing money from itself. They might pretend otherwise, but central banks are effectively an arm of the government. The national debt is an artificial construct. Governments could eliminate it with the stroke of a pen.
- phone8675309 6y ago
  > The national debt is an artificial construct. Governments could eliminate it with the stroke of a pen. Serious question: are there any modern sovereign defaults that don't have a decade or two of stagnation or regression associated with them?
737maxtw 6y ago
There's also the unspoken issue... there are probably a decent number of people who profit off the current system that who do not want their meal ticket cut off. (Of course, this is ignoring the idea that UBI would possibly let them do something better with their lives, but humans are gonna human, right?)

by bnralt 6y ago

tachyonbeam 6y ago

UBI might seem crazy to some people, but I'd like to remind everyone that governments worldwide effectively print trillions of dollars and use that money to inflate stock prices. Governments could instead distribute the money through UBI. The advantage, if you do that, is that people will spend that money on things they need. This seems better, to me, than keeping alive zombie companies that are "too big to fail" and contribute little to no value to society. If you give people UBI, they are voting with their wallets and giving money to companies that produce something useful. As for the national debt... When the government borrows money from a central bank, it's effectively borrowing money from itself. They might pretend otherwise, but central banks are effectively an arm of the government. The national debt is an artificial construct. Governments could eliminate it with the stroke of a pen.

phone8675309 6y ago
> The national debt is an artificial construct. Governments could eliminate it with the stroke of a pen. Serious question: are there any modern sovereign defaults that don't have a decade or two of stagnation or regression associated with them?

737maxtw 6y ago

There's also the unspoken issue... there are probably a decent number of people who profit off the current system that who do not want their meal ticket cut off. (Of course, this is ignoring the idea that UBI would possibly let them do something better with their lives, but humans are gonna human, right?)