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Until we live in a post-scarcity world how is it a choice? There simply are not enough resources. You can forcefully confiscate and redistribute every penny the

Until we live in a post-scarcity world how is it a choice? There simply are not enough resources. You can forcefully confiscate and redistribute every penny the "rich" have and nothing would change.

DoreenMichele 5y ago
Not everyone is going to be a billionaire, but that doesn't have to mean some people can't access basics like housing. Our high rates of homelessness are rooted in housing policy and most people don't want to hear that. The narrative that gets promoted is that it's their fault and homeless people get labeled as "junkies and crazies." Which doesn't even hold water, logically speaking, because most addicts don't want to be addicts and trying to break an addiction is quite challenging and if insanity boiled down to a personal choice, people would choose to be sane. People don't want to be mentally ill. That's not how that works.
makomk 5y ago
That's one of the more interesting things about this article: although it starts out along the same tired, bogus blame-the-super-wealthy lines as a lot of these arguments, it does kind of admit that the cost of what it's calling for will come out of the quality of life of relatively ordinary people: "But those in the economy with the power to do the dictating profit from the desperation of low-wage workers. One man’s misery is another man’s quick and affordable at-home lunch delivery. ... Most Americans don’t think of themselves as benefiting from the poverty of others, and I don’t think objections to a guaranteed income would manifest as arguments in favor of impoverishment. Instead, we would see much of what we’re seeing now, only magnified: Fears of inflation, lectures about how the government is subsidizing indolence, paeans to the character-building qualities of low-wage labor... ... Nor would these costs be merely imagined. Inflation would be a real risk, as prices often rise when wages rise, and some small businesses would shutter if they had to pay their workers more. There are services many of us enjoy now that would become rarer or costlier if workers had more bargaining power." “Ultimately, it’s about us as a society saying these privileges and luxuries and comforts that folks in the middle class — or however we describe these economic classes — have, how much are they worth to us?” Jamila Michener, co-director of the Cornell Center for Health Equity, told me. “And are they worth certain levels of deprivation or suffering or even just inequality among people who are living often very different lives from us? That’s a question we often don’t even ask ourselves.”
michael1999 5y ago
There are degrees of solidarity, and state redistribution. France is not North Korea.

Until we live in a post-scarcity world how is it a choice? There simply are not enough resources. You can forcefully confiscate and redistribute every penny the "rich" have and nothing would change.

DoreenMichele 5y ago

Not everyone is going to be a billionaire, but that doesn't have to mean some people can't access basics like housing. Our high rates of homelessness are rooted in housing policy and most people don't want to hear that. The narrative that gets promoted is that it's their fault and homeless people get labeled as "junkies and crazies." Which doesn't even hold water, logically speaking, because most addicts don't want to be addicts and trying to break an addiction is quite challenging and if insanity boiled down to a personal choice, people would choose to be sane. People don't want to be mentally ill. That's not how that works.

makomk 5y ago

That's one of the more interesting things about this article: although it starts out along the same tired, bogus blame-the-super-wealthy lines as a lot of these arguments, it does kind of admit that the cost of what it's calling for will come out of the quality of life of relatively ordinary people: "But those in the economy with the power to do the dictating profit from the desperation of low-wage workers. One man’s misery is another man’s quick and affordable at-home lunch delivery. ... Most Americans don’t think of themselves as benefiting from the poverty of others, and I don’t think objections to a guaranteed income would manifest as arguments in favor of impoverishment. Instead, we would see much of what we’re seeing now, only magnified: Fears of inflation, lectures about how the government is subsidizing indolence, paeans to the character-building qualities of low-wage labor... ... Nor would these costs be merely imagined. Inflation would be a real risk, as prices often rise when wages rise, and some small businesses would shutter if they had to pay their workers more. There are services many of us enjoy now that would become rarer or costlier if workers had more bargaining power." “Ultimately, it’s about us as a society saying these privileges and luxuries and comforts that folks in the middle class — or however we describe these economic classes — have, how much are they worth to us?” Jamila Michener, co-director of the Cornell Center for Health Equity, told me. “And are they worth certain levels of deprivation or suffering or even just inequality among people who are living often very different lives from us? That’s a question we often don’t even ask ourselves.”

michael1999 5y ago

There are degrees of solidarity, and state redistribution. France is not North Korea.