LogFAQs > #952398744

Unless we're in a post-labor society, UBI is generally a stupid idea although, pragmatically speaking, we already have some forms of paying people not to work (or to work under the table while not paying taxes). The question then becomes how drastically does UBI differ from those other programs.

All that said, when the government is forcing businesses to close down or remain at partial capacity, it's obligated to provide for those businesses and workers. And it's downright criminal if the government is forcing landlords to keep non-paying tenants WHILE forcing those same landlords to pay the government despite not letting them collect their money. There should be a non-conditional exemption from taxes, etc, for landlords who are impacted by those programs, unless the government is trying to force a cascading series of bankruptcies (which they might be doing so politicians' cronies and patrons can snap land up on the cheap, because that's the swamp for you)

CoorsLight posted...

I think Americans have a very twisted and irrational way of framing people's problems. You hear people say like "how can you even get addicted to drugs", "it's easy not to commit crimes", etc., but they almost always frame it based on their own experiences. Most of the people who have those kind of issues grew up in poverty or succumbed to undiagnosed/untreated mental illnesses at some point in their lives, they are basically raised in an entirely different world.

Which is why we need comprehensive criminal justice reform, including getting rid of ridiculous things like lifetime sentencing and the death penalty. Of course, that idea is unpopular with politicians like Kamala Harris whose justice department in California used the prisons effectively for slave labor and who was less concerned with rehabilitating prisoners than her department was with depleting that labor population.

CoorsLight posted... People just like to say "b-b-b-but America is different, it won't work here, because

Among other issues, America already has a substantial non-working population. There are only so many people you can afford to not have work although, on a pragmatic level, having non-retirees, non-disabled persons sit fallow stops our nation from progressing because we're not making full use of a potential labor force while at the same time misdirecting resources. And, generally speaking, the entitlement state kinda coincides with the US's declining world standing.

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There are precious few at ease / With moral ambiguities / So we act as though they don't exist.