[xienze]

> Personally, I want people on the high end of earnings (such as myself) to be taxed more so that a basic income scheme like this can be available for anybody who wants it. Charge me an extra $300/month and give it to some random 24 year old so that he can smoke weed and play his guitar. He'll get more use out of it than I will.

You know you CAN donate money to the government any time you want, right? Do you do that? Practice what you preach, don't hide behind "oh if only the government made me do it."

> One day, that kid will decide that living in a crap shared apartment is getting a bit old and he'll grow some ambition, get a real job, and eventually start earning enough to help sponsor the next round of deadbeats.

This is the critical problem you and others like you make: assuming that everyone is a reasonable, honest, ambitious person just like you are. Many people -- not all, but a big enough proportion to be a problem -- aren't. And when we make it possible to actually make "do drugs and play videogames all day" a viable lifestyle, there's loads of people who will take the government up on the offer. And remember, they can vote themselves UBI raises.

[jmye]

> You know you CAN donate money to the government any time you want, right? Do you do that? Practice what you preach, don't hide behind "oh if only the government made me do it."

You know we can also advocate for higher taxes, given that it's astronomically more meaningful for everyone to give ten cents than for me to give a few dollars, right? Or did you think this was an insightful, valuable addition to the discussion that no one has ever suggested before? Is this the comment section of a local newspaper? Good god.

> there's loads of people who will take the government up on the offer.

Prove it. How many are loads? What, specifically, do you think UBI actually amounts to?

[xienze]

> You know we can also advocate for higher taxes, given that it's astronomically more meaningful for everyone to give ten cents than for me to give a few dollars, right?

And you can ALSO voluntarily pay more in taxes while doing so. It's called leading by example. Warren Buffet and Bill Gates get called out on this and they do the same thing; "oh I'm just one person, my extra tax money is but a drop in the ocean, so why bother." If you and everyone else saying "tax me harder" actually put up, it might amount to something! And at least it would make people respect your position a bit more.

> Prove it. How many are loads?

Well let's see, anyone who's lived their entire life on welfare (we have families of multiple generations who have done so at this point) would qualify. So would all the homeless people more content to live on the street and do drugs than go to rehab.

> What, specifically, do you think UBI actually amounts to?

Enough for people with low ambition to live on! And their vote counts just as much as the productive members of society paying for them.

[jmye]

> And you can ALSO voluntarily pay more in taxes while doing so.

You're just repeating the same fundamentally silly thing I argued against like saying it louder will make it somehow less childish and silly. Did you have an actual point here, or do you think "people's respect" has any slight value in the context of the discussion?

> Well let's see, anyone who's lived their entire life on welfare (we have families of multiple generations who have done so at this point) would qualify. So would all the homeless people more content to live on the street and do drugs than go to rehab.

So you have no actual clue, but you think hand-wavy bullshit that feels good will suffice for numbers. Fantastic. I'm glad you have such strong opinions on things you clearly know absolutely nothing about.

> Enough for people with low ambition to live on! And their vote counts just as much as the productive members of society paying for them.

Is "low ambition" angry-posting on social media? Do you think vibe-coding React bullshit, or whatever, is "productive"? Do you think engineers at Meta, busily finding new ways to make teen girls depressed are "productive"? Or is this just more stuff you have convinced yourself is true because it makes you somehow "better" than other people?