[mytailorisrich]

It illustrates, if needed be, that handing meaningful amounts of money to all or most of the population in a recurring way is not sustainable.

The responses to the covid lockdowns, which are incredibly expensive, were only considered because they were one-offs and time-limited.

If payments are restricted to a minority, the poorest, then it boils down to what already exists in most European countries and the question is then "what's new?"

In general UBI proposals are ideological solutions to ideologically-constructed problems. They are not realistic nor practical and thus thin on practical considerations and hard numbers.

[chous]

Most people are getting poorer. Their only way out is fighting for a job, but jobs are scarce, and the situation will get worse exponentially due to technological unemployment.

That's not an ideologically-constructed problem.

It's pure logic. What is ideologically-driven, in my opinion, is claiming that "other jobs will be created, so no need to worry". Which implies, on the other hand, that the poor deserve being poor, due to their own negligence, lack of education, or laziness. We don't need to care about them. We provide a capitalist system which rewards the brave and the competent, and it's meritocratic. That is pure ideology, not based on reality.

[mytailorisrich]

This not pure logic. This is a logical fallacy and a strawman argument.

You do not put forward any argument to my previous comment, and in fact illustrates my point.

At the moment there is an economic crisis due to the covid pandemic. This is a specific, time-limited issue and welfare has stepped up to help people, at an extreme cost. This is not sustainable and only considered because it is an emergency in nature.

If jobs dry up due to automation then there will indeed be scope to discuss UBI based on taxing 'robots' (so a clear and plausible way of financing it) . This is not what UBI as proposed now is about.

No-one has claimed that the poor deserve to be poor and/or do not deserve help. There are plenty of welfare schemes in Europe and quite a few of them result in effective UBI, but only for the poorer who actually need it.