If you think of universal basic income as just "more money," you aren't understanding it and what makes it so different and effective. The fact it comes at a regular frequency is a key factor. When you know that whatever happens next month, you can still buy food, that's a huge deal.
It's STABILITY
Well said
It also allows people to think beyond the immediate survival, to plan and be creative / invest creatively, to experiment - pulling them out of a cycle of despair and crushing inevitably
Just the lifting of the emotional burden provides so much that is far beyond just the "money part"
Which is like the reason it's so opposed.
@scottsantens
Oof dat timeline
@scottsantens would it not help people get out of the 'survival' stage of maslows and in to the generative, 'self-actualization'? Like, if people dont have to worry about losing their house or eating for the day, that frees up SO MUCH MENTAL SPACE OMG and then we can actually use our brains to think and create and do what humans do best
@scottsantens it’s very very obvious that many people have never missed a meal (through no choice of their own) or been worried about where they would sleep. Do I pay bills or buy food? How much longer can I stay on a friends couch? Can I afford to use a laundromat to get my clothes clean for work or am I washing them in a sink and hoping they dry?
I would recommend reading the natural economic order written in 1916 by Silvio Gessell. Some of it might grate a bit, but if you read patiently, you understand how spun up this guy was..
The sections that are most interesting are the ones on his description of the money system as it is versus the money system he designed along with all the argumentation in it, which is very rich reading.
@scottsantens Kind of like defined benefit pensions.
@scottsantens I’m retired military, so I have basic income.
And, yeah. It means that even if things change drastically, I can pay the mortgage.
Which… makes me really hard to exploit, for employers.
So, yeah, billionaires hate it.
@scottsantens also drive up inovation, because when you want to inovate, knowing that a failure will not make you homless is already good too.
@scottsantens Sadly, the main thing that universal basic income would be, is cancelling of the entire currency-tax system that creates markets. The governments release money, and demand from you to pay some of those money back, under threat of violence, thus forcing you to trade whatever goods or services you have to offer for the money. UBI would effectively cancel that, letting you pay the taxes and grow your own food and trade outside the official markets, effectively secesing from the state.
@scottsantens everyone should be forced to be without a stable income for some period of their lives so they will understand this.
@scottsantens
Hey, so when we had a first home buyer thing the price of houses went up by roughly that amount... What protects ubi money from just getting eaten by hikes in rent/groceries/utility bills?
@scottsantens @EndlessMason Well initially a lowish level UBI may not actually provide many families with a much larger income - the immediate aim as Scott says is to *stabilise* lower incomes. But anything eventually making poor folk richer needs measures against being predated: specific taxes that target wealth (LVT), controlling rents, regulating utilities etc can all play roles. UBI doesn't fix inflation or rent-seeking on its own, that's true, it's an important tool not a solo magic bullet.
