[alex_smart]

Please spend some time in a city in a third world country. I can't imagine a better way to cure for that level of inaccuracy of worldview.

I suggest Kolkata. The sight of frail old ladies barely covered by a single tattered sheet of cloth living on the footpath and begging for your alms has a way of communicating the reality of the world that nothing I can write could ever possibly match.

[mkr-hn]

I can't possibly afford the trip, so I'll have to take your word for it.

[alex_smart]

The minimum wage in the USA is $7 an hour. In India, 10% of people live below $2 a day. In the state where I come from (population >100 million), that number is over 33%.

Even if you find yourself less fortunate compared to other people in your country, please have some empathy for the scale of problems in other, less developed countries.

[mkr-hn]

You're reading too much into what I said. Nothing in it suggests a lack of empathy. I made no qualitative statements beyond the bit about rich people needing to pay back into the system that made their wealth possible. There is absolutely no judgement of any people in developing countries.

[alex_smart]

> It's probably not as important in places where it's still cheaper to hire humans than it is to install a robot in most cases.

Can you clarify what you meant by this? To me it seemed that you are implying that somehow the poor in third world countries are better off than the poor in first world countries because they still have their 2$ a day jobs.

[mkr-hn]

Nope. Not saying anything of the sort. Your read is qualitative.

My comment was quantitative, strongly implied by the math. If I were going to make a qualitative statement, I would say life sucks for almost everyone on this godawful planet in different ways. You're trying to parse out a judgement of those relative conditions in me saying UBI might not be a universal solution to the hell-sphere theory of life on Earth. I don't know why.

[alex_smart]

Like I said, my objection was based on the way you had phrased that last sentence in your comment.

> It's probably not as important in places where it's still cheaper to hire humans than it is to install a robot in most cases.

The reason universal basic income does not work in India is not because people here still have their $3/day jobs. It doesn't work because there is simply not enough wealth here to restribute, so the problem here is still one of creation of wealth.