[mostertoaster]

If we could get rid of social security, Medicaid, food stamps, and all forms of welfare, and replace them all with a UBI equally given to every citizen, the trade off might make something as inherently idiotic as UBI worth it.

[Analemma_]

You can’t replace Medicaid with UBI unless you also change the entire health care system to be single-payer, because people will still have random medical problems which need a million dollars (or whatever) worth of treatment. For the rest of it I agree, but I think you’re overestimating how much we spend on all those programs— they don’t even come close to what a reasonable UBI would cost. UBI would require a huge change to how taxation/spending works no matter how it’s implemented.

[mostertoaster]

Honestly I think UBI would be awful. And what I really mean is take the sum amount of all welfare we spend today divide by the number of citizens and give every citizen that much. Would hardly be enough still. The only people who should be in favor of it though is the billionaire aristocrats.

It would effectively take the entire middle class and make them serfs.

It would be the quickest way to bring back a feudal type system with a few people at the top and everyone else pretty much poor.

Sure they’d make sure we have enough to eat and clothe ourselves, but even the slave owners of old did that.

Just look at the experiment in 2020-2021 where we gave everyone even more free money, the result we saw companies go from less than a trillion market cap to over three trillion while wages went up maybe 25%