UBI, or universal basic income, is a form of direct cash assistance to help the most vulnerable get back on their feet. A new study in Denver suggests it works.
  • spiderplant@lemm.eeEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    Its usually cheaper to give everyone a small amount of money than it is to set up and pay a whole department of civil servants to figure out who qualifies and who doesn’t.

    Also the poor and disabled suffer disproportionately when you start putting strict restrictions on financial aid. Just look at universal credit in the UK, in trying to save money/protect against the boogyman of welfare queens, they government has unqualified assessors trying to fail people even if they have serious disabilities.

      • spiderplant@lemm.eeEnglish
        21·
        1 year ago

        It’s not charity if everyone gets it, it’s levelling the field and making society fairer.

        For the people who need it most it could mean life or death or being able to stay in their home or not have to choose between heat or food.

        For those in the middle it might be a nice excuse to treat yourself.

        For the richest it would be such an absurdly tiny amount of money they might not be able to spend it.

        All we should care about is making sure as many people in the first group get the support. For basic income payments the most effective way to do that is to give it to everyone. By the government giving you that money instead of doing what I talked about above, more people were helped.

        Also has the added bonus of countering slightly the siphoning of wealth from the poor to the rich that’s been happening the past while.

        • Chunk@lemmy.worldEnglish
          11·
          1 year ago

          It’s not charity if everyone gets it, it’s levelling the field and making society fairer.

          I like ubi a lot.

          But I think this statement is not true actually. Removing UBI from the argument for a second, if we are children and we go find easter eggs and afterwards we take eggs from everyone and redistribute it so it’s more equal that’s charity.

          Big Bill didn’t get as many eggs because he struggled with childhood diabetes.

          Fast Francine got a lot of eggs because per parents put her on ADHD meds and she’s laser focused.

          So if we take eggs from Francine and give them to bill now we’re doing charity.

          • spiderplant@lemm.eeEnglish
            11·
            1 year ago

            Nah that’s not how the world works.

            It’s closer to a school with 1000 students.

            1 kid got 10000 eggs from their parents and refuses to share. Ther rest have 0-2 eggs each.

            Maybe the students do chores but the pocket money they get only allows them to get 1 extra egg.

            UBI is the school giving 2 eggs to every student. Now the egg distribution is more even since most students now have double the eggs or more but the richest students eggs only went up by a tiny percentage.

            Is it really fair that one student has more eggs than they could possibly need and many kids have nothing just because they were born into a different family.

            If you want to talk about really being fair you probably want to talk about proper wealth redistribution. If you took 5000 eggs off that one student and split it between everyone, every kid would be up 5 eggs. The kid with all the eggs would still have 5005 eggs which IMO is still more than any 1 kid should have to themselves.

            I still wouldn’t call any of this charity since 99.9% of people benefit from it.

            • spiderplant@lemm.eeEnglish
              2·
              1 year ago

              It gets even better when you ask where the parents got the money. Since its a closed loop you can’t really create money from nothing.

              Let’s keep things simple, say the rich parents own all the shops and services in the town. All their money comes from the other parents of the town. The poorer parents have no choice where to buy things like food that they need, they can’t not pay their water bill or their heating. Buying their kids clothes and toys means giving more of their money to the rich parents. Now most of the parents can only afford a couple of eggs and the rich parents can afford a ridiculous number.

              The ability for some to make large profits off humans basic needs is wrong and if you say any of this is fair then you should try and figure out why you think like this.