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As always, I'm firmly of the mind that none of this has to do with balance sheets or what things cost. There's a type of person who just has this image in mind

As always, I'm firmly of the mind that none of this has to do with balance sheets or what things cost. There's a type of person who just has this image in mind that everyone struggling is a drugged up loser who refuses to get a job and lives on benefits, thanks to decades of propaganda saying as such. The fact that UBI would save us astronomical amounts of money versus the current piecemeal, ineffective and constantly under seige social system we have doesn't matter, because the point isn't to keep people fed, it's to keep poor people in line. The fact that housing assistance and other such things would clean up the streets of the same people while giving them the help they need, and at a lower cost than rolling the cops on them to beat them with batons and shove them into coach busses to other cities doesn't matter, because the violence is what they want. There's a substantial slice of this country that legitimately hates poor people, whether they want to admit it or not, and they will die on the hill of spending a thousand taxpayer dollars making their life a living hell, before they will willingly accede to giving them a hundred bucks to buy food. This is not a reasonable position and as such, you cannot reason with it. As they say, "The cruelty is the point."

Aurornis 11mo ago
> There's a type of person who just has this image in mind that everyone struggling is a drugged up loser who refuses to get a job and lives on benefits, I wasn’t talking about people struggling. I was talking about the actual, visible drug users on the streets. The struggling people looking for temporary housing would be intermingled with these people and suffer the most.
- bryanlarsen 11mo ago
  The Y and religious shelters have a zero-tolerance policy. You get kicked out immediately for drugs or alcohol. So no, they're generally not intermingled.
- roguecoder 11mo ago
  Living on the street sucks. It is painful. It is a lot harder to stop using pain killers when one is in actual pain.
- ToucanLoucan 11mo ago
  Those people are also struggling. The fact that you refuse to empathize with them doesn't change that.
rpcope1 11mo ago
> The fact that UBI would save us astronomical amounts of money versus the current piecemeal, ineffective and constantly under seige social system we have doesn't matter, because the point isn't to keep people fed, it's to keep poor people in line. Big citation needed there. If UBI in the United States were $10k a year per head (roughly what SSDI pays out, which I find it hard to believe even an individual can get by on), and we have 300 million people, that works out to 3T in UBI payments alone give or take, and there's nothing stopping people from blowing their UBI money on drugs or alcohol or whatever and still going hungry or needing healthcare. UBI is more of a "well we'll just give them a little money and then we can just ignore all the other problems" copium; you'll never be able to do away with SNAP or Medicaid without people going hungry or going to the ER for everything. Definitely not going to be saving any money at all doing UBI.
- danaris 11mo ago
  There have been plenty of UBI pilot programs. They didn't have the problems you describe. Most people, including addicts, when presented with the money to get their lives together in meaningful ways, do just that.
- ToucanLoucan 11mo ago
  > If UBI in the United States were $10k a year per head (roughly what SSDI pays out, which I find it hard to believe even an individual can get by on), and we have 300 million people, It's impressive you managed to be this wrong right out of the gate. Not everyone gets UBI. UBI pays you up to an amount, based on your other income. So if we set UBI to be $35k a year, and you make $30k a year, you get $5k a year in UBI payments. The vast majority of employed adults wouldn't get anything, because they don't need it, so saying we're paying out $3 trillion in benefits is flatly ridiculous. > and there's nothing stopping people from blowing their UBI money on drugs or alcohol or whatever And there shouldn't be. It's a Universal Basic Income. You can spend it on food, housing, a car, a model train set, hard Nicaraguan cocaine, prostitutes, or whatever else tickles your fancy. Poor people do not need to be shepherded: study[0] after study[1] after study[2] has proven that when you give people who are broke money that actually has the ability to change their circumstances, shock of shocks, they use it to change their circumstances. If somebody wants to take their UBI and then live on the street, weird choice, but that's also completely their choice and it is not your or anyone else's place to judge them for it. And under the current system: You ARE paying for their ER visits. You're paying for their ER visits, you're paying to house them in prisons, you're paying for men with guns to beat the shit out of them and then drive them around, you're paying a justice system to move them about place to place and have hearings with judges, stenographers and guards, public defenders, and then when they do get out of jail, you're paying for the bus stop they're living in to boot. The only thing UBI changes is it gives THEM the money instead of police departments, courts, healthcare companies so they can actually DO SOMETHING about their problems, rather than being shuffled from one awful system to another on an eternal loop because being homeless is just illegal in practice in America. And better still, UBI strips a LOT of the administrative overhead involved, because it's very easy to calculate what everyone gets, it's literally back-of-napkin tier math. No means testing, no investigations. Just money to people who don't have enough so they have enough. I'm sure it won't solve EVERY social ill, of course. But it'll do a damn sight better job than the current system. [0] - https://www.jsonline.com/story/money/2025/11/08/universal-basic-income-affordability-crisis-ai/87129001007/ https://www.jsonline.com/story/money/2025/11/08/universal-ba... [1] - https://www.givedirectly.org/2023-ubi-results/ https://www.givedirectly.org/2023-ubi-results/ [2] - https://basicincome.stanford.edu/uploads/Umbrella%20Review%20BI_final.pdf https://basicincome.stanford.edu/uploads/Umbrella%20Review%2...

Aurornis 11mo ago

> There's a type of person who just has this image in mind that everyone struggling is a drugged up loser who refuses to get a job and lives on benefits, I wasn’t talking about people struggling. I was talking about the actual, visible drug users on the streets. The struggling people looking for temporary housing would be intermingled with these people and suffer the most.

bryanlarsen 11mo ago
The Y and religious shelters have a zero-tolerance policy. You get kicked out immediately for drugs or alcohol. So no, they're generally not intermingled.
roguecoder 11mo ago
Living on the street sucks. It is painful. It is a lot harder to stop using pain killers when one is in actual pain.
ToucanLoucan 11mo ago
Those people are also struggling. The fact that you refuse to empathize with them doesn't change that.

rpcope1 11mo ago

> The fact that UBI would save us astronomical amounts of money versus the current piecemeal, ineffective and constantly under seige social system we have doesn't matter, because the point isn't to keep people fed, it's to keep poor people in line. Big citation needed there. If UBI in the United States were $10k a year per head (roughly what SSDI pays out, which I find it hard to believe even an individual can get by on), and we have 300 million people, that works out to 3T in UBI payments alone give or take, and there's nothing stopping people from blowing their UBI money on drugs or alcohol or whatever and still going hungry or needing healthcare. UBI is more of a "well we'll just give them a little money and then we can just ignore all the other problems" copium; you'll never be able to do away with SNAP or Medicaid without people going hungry or going to the ER for everything. Definitely not going to be saving any money at all doing UBI.

danaris 11mo ago
There have been plenty of UBI pilot programs. They didn't have the problems you describe. Most people, including addicts, when presented with the money to get their lives together in meaningful ways, do just that.
ToucanLoucan 11mo ago
> If UBI in the United States were $10k a year per head (roughly what SSDI pays out, which I find it hard to believe even an individual can get by on), and we have 300 million people, It's impressive you managed to be this wrong right out of the gate. Not everyone gets UBI. UBI pays you up to an amount, based on your other income. So if we set UBI to be $35k a year, and you make $30k a year, you get $5k a year in UBI payments. The vast majority of employed adults wouldn't get anything, because they don't need it, so saying we're paying out $3 trillion in benefits is flatly ridiculous. > and there's nothing stopping people from blowing their UBI money on drugs or alcohol or whatever And there shouldn't be. It's a Universal Basic Income. You can spend it on food, housing, a car, a model train set, hard Nicaraguan cocaine, prostitutes, or whatever else tickles your fancy. Poor people do not need to be shepherded: study[0] after study[1] after study[2] has proven that when you give people who are broke money that actually has the ability to change their circumstances, shock of shocks, they use it to change their circumstances. If somebody wants to take their UBI and then live on the street, weird choice, but that's also completely their choice and it is not your or anyone else's place to judge them for it. And under the current system: You ARE paying for their ER visits. You're paying for their ER visits, you're paying to house them in prisons, you're paying for men with guns to beat the shit out of them and then drive them around, you're paying a justice system to move them about place to place and have hearings with judges, stenographers and guards, public defenders, and then when they do get out of jail, you're paying for the bus stop they're living in to boot. The only thing UBI changes is it gives THEM the money instead of police departments, courts, healthcare companies so they can actually DO SOMETHING about their problems, rather than being shuffled from one awful system to another on an eternal loop because being homeless is just illegal in practice in America. And better still, UBI strips a LOT of the administrative overhead involved, because it's very easy to calculate what everyone gets, it's literally back-of-napkin tier math. No means testing, no investigations. Just money to people who don't have enough so they have enough. I'm sure it won't solve EVERY social ill, of course. But it'll do a damn sight better job than the current system. [0] - https://www.jsonline.com/story/money/2025/11/08/universal-basic-income-affordability-crisis-ai/87129001007/ https://www.jsonline.com/story/money/2025/11/08/universal-ba... [1] - https://www.givedirectly.org/2023-ubi-results/ https://www.givedirectly.org/2023-ubi-results/ [2] - https://basicincome.stanford.edu/uploads/Umbrella%20Review%20BI_final.pdf https://basicincome.stanford.edu/uploads/Umbrella%20Review%2...