UBI Basics
From iGeek
UBI is the idea that if you can't solve a simple problem like Minimum Wage, we should pick a bigger problem like UBI.
~ Aristotle Sabouni
Created: 2022-09-04 |
| 🗒️ Note: |
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| Same day as I was writing this, we go this article about the California fast food council -- that shows some of the incompetencies around just minimum wage, which is a far simpler problem than UBI. |
Problems[edit | edit source]
- While UBI could be more fair than the cluster fuck of social programs we have today (if it displaced them)… what are the odds that the left wouldn’t have another good idea in the future, and start the system over again, just with the millstone of UBI payments on top? Even if it was a brilliant idea in the moment (it isn't), it will entropy into something else because it's political.
- So you say $25K is a perfect UBI? How is that fair in NYC and BF-Idaho at the same time? It isn’t. There’s no one measure that is fair everywhere at once. And thus you set up a fight for every area against every other.
- Even if you could solve for geographic diversity, how do you solve for demographic diversity? Is the same wage fair for a single teenager as it is for a single mother of 4? How about a 20-something layabout living in his mom's basement, versus someone struggling to pay off student loans, or 20 something struggling to support his infirm parents bed-laden with cancer, or a 20-something trying to help his little sister while his drug-addicted parents are on a bender somewhere? Once the government gets in the fairness business, we find that situations are individual -- and bureaucrats are bad mediators of fair.
- If we pretend that you could solve geographic and demographic diversity, what about time? How do you make it work over time? If it’s a fixed amount, you fight over raising it every few years, and by how much. (Otherwise people on it, are getting more stressed with inflation). If you peg it to inflation, then we fight over how to manipulate inflation. It can’t be fair for everywhen at once. It’s only suitable for a picosecond, then we’re back to fighting.
Anything that’s run by the government is politicized. So do you think politicians and bureaucrats should have the power to choose the quality of life for others? Why? Why Not?
If you can’t answer all those questions and get everyone else to agree, you can’t have UBI. And no two people can agree on how to handle any one of those.
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Tags: UBI
