[Consultant32452]

>I believe the wages would end up rising but less people overall would be employed.

Interesting, what are your thoughts on the minimum wage?

>If you remove welfare then the people who end up without a job are going to be without anything and homeless/starve to death.

I feel like if your options are working or death, there will be many more people working, not less as you suggested above. But I also think the imagery of people starving to death is unrealistic. Over 70% of the world's population lives on less than $10/day. The American poor is very wealthy by global standards and they have a loooong way down to go before they start starving to death. The worst case scenario of the American poor losing welfare while simultaneously somehow not being able to demand higher wages looks more like the American poor inching ever so slightly closer to the global average lifestyle than starving to death. I don't want that situation any more than you do, but let's not be overly colorful in our language.

I understand why UBI is more economically efficient than our current welfare systems. Anything that moves towards giving the poor money they can spend on whatever they want is a bonus in my opinion. I'd start with Medicare and Medicaid. Instead of paying directly for healthcare we should just cut a check to the elderly/poor and let them spend those funds on whatever they wish. However, I don't understand why you feel it would behave differently than welfare with respect to its "subsidizing the shareholder class." Unless you expect UBI to be high enough so that nobody would have to work, and then I'm not sure how the economy doesn't collapse on itself with so few people doing work and so few taxpayers.