[tathougies]

Most Americans who are 'barely surviving' are still surviving. Surviving means you have all your immediate needs met. That means your life is exceptionally easy. Most of the world cannot have their basic needs met. That is the typical state of humanity. Most Americans can not only have all their immediate needs met, they are also able to pay off the debts they have taken, which puts them lightyears ahead of most of the world.

[sybarita]

Well yeah that's survivorship bias, many Americans die every day from direct results of poverty. Most Americans I know barely have their needs met, I've lost many friends to suicide and drug overdoses etc. Of course there are places that are still worse off, that doesn't excuse in any way the horrible inequalities in our current system. It would honestly only require simple things like m4a, higher min wage, to make life moderately livable for the working class. UBI would be a lot better. The only real argument against it is that it would cost rich people money.

[tathougies]

> The only real argument against it is that it would cost rich people money.

If that is your characterization of the arguments against UBI, you are not paying attention, and I am someone who is rather favorable to UBI (or a negative income tax). Your characterization of your opponent's argument is extremely disingenuous.

[sybarita]

I mean I'm seeing stuff about the velocity of the dollar being affected and causing inflation but I don't even really see it increasing that much when people are so strapped for cash already. The idea that businesses will raise prices to match is ridiculous, we hear that about minimum wage as well; are these businesses not charging the most they can already? 1k/month isn't going to make anyone flush, it'll just be helping them make ends meet.

I shouldn't have spoken so absolutely there, I'm totally open to hearing any and all real concerns about this. We should really be pursuing it seriously though and trying to find solutions to these concerns instead of just identifying and using them to write it off. It really can't be overstated how amazing this would be for working class people, and it really can't be overstated how much they deserve it.

It'll have untold positive ripple effects in our society, and as I understand it all we really have to overcome is maybe some inflation. We should experiment and run simulations and research the hell out of this because we owe it to the people who make our food, deliver our packages, etc