| >>you need people to decide who is eligible for welfare and who isn't. >>In an UBI society, those people could do something else I meant that the administrative layer could be used for other processes than managing welfare. Why bother how many people don't work? There are 9 billions on this world. Even if 8 billions don't work, you can still run societies with 1 billion. >we're not close, Check how many people have to work on farms to create food. We are at a point where providing basic stuff is possible. >unless you're talking about 4 square meters per person and 2500 calories of nutrious slime with no extras. Why not? It doesn't have to be slime. Fast food, cereals, sweets, people actually crave cheap food. On the other hand, offering healthy cheap slime with all nutritions, if you look at soylent, that's something people are actually paying for. Likewise, 50 square meters don't have to be expensive. With UBI, you cannot make scarce resources affordable to everybody. On the other hand, you can make UBI affordable by reducing the costs of basic goods. If people can live on $100 a month, in a society with an average pre-tax income of $3000, then one working person can take care of 10 non-working citizens. >Drop UBI and replace it with a job guarantee and you'll have my attention. There is no way that a government can create meaningful jobs. How cruel is a society where 90% of people only earn the money to buy nutrious slime after having worked on a meaningless job for 8 hours? Allow those people to stay at home and come up with better ways to spend their time. Even if they just play video games, that's less corrupting for the entire society than forcing them to shovel gravel from one ditch into another. They are essentially prisoners and a society is best judged by the way it treats its prisoners. Life will be better for everybody because the people who work, they know that it is their choice. |