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rich person is still more efficient at doing _what_ ? if we are talking about getting money to people who need it sure doesn't sound like it, UBI/direct money g

rich person is still more efficient at doing _what_ ? if we are talking about getting money to people who need it sure doesn't sound like it, UBI/direct money gives 1000s of poor/middle class people 10,000 which can honestly be life changing vs a rich person who just shrugs and puts it in a bank account so sounds like its solving problems for people to me?

pdonis 5y ago
> if we are talking about getting money to people who need it That's not what UBI does. UBI gives money to everybody whether they need it or not. Sure, for some of them it will be "life changing", but for many it won't. So UBI is very inefficient at getting money to people who need it. Rich people, in addition to paying people directly for goods and services, which those people would not produce in the first place if they didn't need the money they can sell them for (so paying them is directly giving them money they need), can (and many do) donate to charities that do a much better job than the government does of figuring out who actually needs the things they provide.
- katbyte 5y ago
  Give poor people money they will spend it and the market will figure out what they want and need faster then any rich person. We should live in a world where we rely on rich people donating to charities nor go fund mea for insulin (that fail and people die)
  - pdonis 5y ago
    > Give poor people money they will spend it and the market will figure out what they want and need faster then any rich person. If the market will figure that out so fast, then the way for poor people to become not poor is to become part of the market. Produce things that other people want, and sell them. Giving people money as a one-time gift to help them bootstrap their way to doing that is a great idea. Rich people do that all the time; they're called "angel investors". The government can't do that; certainly that's not what UBI is. The key point you are missing is that if you just give people money, and they spend it, and don't produce anything, you haven't helped the situation at all. You've made it worse. It's not enough for the market to figure out what people want; someone has to produce those things. Money flowing back and forth between people depends on everyone producing something. If money starts flowing to people who aren't producing anything, the incentive to produce goes away, and the market will stop being able to provide the things people want, because nobody has any incentive to produce them. In fact, the arguments being made in this discussion about rich people being inefficient at spending money are based on precisely this observation: the rich people aren't producing anything to match up with all the money they have. And the argument for redistributing that money to others who will make better use of it is that those others will produce more with it than the rich people do. The fact that the others will also consume more is just looking at it from the other side. Nothing can be consumed until it is produced. So you can't just give people money for them to consume it; that's just as bad as the rich people having it. You have to figure out how to use that money to produce more. And that's something governments simply suck at doing.

pdonis 5y ago

> if we are talking about getting money to people who need it That's not what UBI does. UBI gives money to everybody whether they need it or not. Sure, for some of them it will be "life changing", but for many it won't. So UBI is very inefficient at getting money to people who need it. Rich people, in addition to paying people directly for goods and services, which those people would not produce in the first place if they didn't need the money they can sell them for (so paying them is directly giving them money they need), can (and many do) donate to charities that do a much better job than the government does of figuring out who actually needs the things they provide.

katbyte 5y ago
Give poor people money they will spend it and the market will figure out what they want and need faster then any rich person. We should live in a world where we rely on rich people donating to charities nor go fund mea for insulin (that fail and people die)
- pdonis 5y ago
  > Give poor people money they will spend it and the market will figure out what they want and need faster then any rich person. If the market will figure that out so fast, then the way for poor people to become not poor is to become part of the market. Produce things that other people want, and sell them. Giving people money as a one-time gift to help them bootstrap their way to doing that is a great idea. Rich people do that all the time; they're called "angel investors". The government can't do that; certainly that's not what UBI is. The key point you are missing is that if you just give people money, and they spend it, and don't produce anything, you haven't helped the situation at all. You've made it worse. It's not enough for the market to figure out what people want; someone has to produce those things. Money flowing back and forth between people depends on everyone producing something. If money starts flowing to people who aren't producing anything, the incentive to produce goes away, and the market will stop being able to provide the things people want, because nobody has any incentive to produce them. In fact, the arguments being made in this discussion about rich people being inefficient at spending money are based on precisely this observation: the rich people aren't producing anything to match up with all the money they have. And the argument for redistributing that money to others who will make better use of it is that those others will produce more with it than the rich people do. The fact that the others will also consume more is just looking at it from the other side. Nothing can be consumed until it is produced. So you can't just give people money for them to consume it; that's just as bad as the rich people having it. You have to figure out how to use that money to produce more. And that's something governments simply suck at doing.