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There is a segment of people who would choose a crappy free life over a nice work life. Do you think that number of people will go up - or go down - if you offer UBI?
My, that's a mighty fine straw figure, there. Quite handsome. Pull it out of some dark orifice and then go on a ridiculous rant about how much it will cost. Why not make it easy and say... $8k? $10k? I mean, if you're going to do inflationary math until you bust a vein, may as well make it easy.
C'mon back when you understand that UBI is not some welfare supplement to be dropped on our existing condition... and thus waving your hands and screeching about social security etc. is quite meaningless.
Thought I'd have a little fun with it.
Guess you didn't laugh.
Actually a true UBI could be done, but as this thread shows, it will have to navigate a landmine of opposition and a world of unknown and unintended consequences.
But it could and should eliminate a host of other state supports. Which ones, who knows.
You would want to keep them all though, right?
Firstly, Spain has persistent structural economic issues like freakishly high long run unemployment and poverty. Ergo using Spain as an analogue for The US is faulty.
Secondly, no less an authority than the great conservative economist Milton Friedman used to rally for a UBI. He didn't like the idea of a UBI but insisted that a UBI with clear metrics was preferable to labyrinths of programs that coy people could easily game a further negative being the average guy simply wouldn't know how much people on the dole actually glean from the .gov.
Thirdly, we should take a look at what France has done the last 20 or so years vis a vis endless social welfare spending..................IT DOES NOT WORK. France is the only country in the world that spends more on social welfare as a percentage of GDP than The US (we are roughly tied with Denmark FWIIW). As France falters more and more every year on things like child poverty metrics.
Give them $1,000 per month, and soon they will complain for more.
Correct. It’s called the hedonic treadmill.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BornintheSprings
Source? Or make believe?
The source is common sense but here you go
Quote:
The hedonic treadmill, also known as hedonic adaptation, is the observed tendency of humans to quickly return to a relatively stable level of happiness despite major positive or negative events or life changes. According to this theory, as a person makes more money, expectations and desires rise in tandem, which results in no permanent gain in happiness
So by your logic anything that is done to improve human happiness and well being is a fools errand? I don't accept your faulty reasoning or your cherry picked example.
You don't accept 500 years of philosophical / psychological research and evidence? Or worse - you, yourself, have never noticed this among your peers? It's not something to "accept" - it's just...the way it is.
No one is saying that improving happiness is a fool's errand. They're saying that some humans are never happy. Do you accept that?
Another way you could see it is as "money can't buy happiness." People THINK it does...but then it doesn't. But if they had a little tiny bit more...then it would. (Except it doesn't.)
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