Hell, man. $12K a year out here? You can find decent apartments for $300/month and although not eating steak and caviar, you can live, have heat in winter, food on the table and tons of free time. What happens if/when we make it so comfortable to barely live that people have no ambition to do, well, anything? If everyone has that security floor, would the way people with ambition but previously no means pursue their goals in life change. The cynic in me sees more wanna be musical artists, avant-garde painters, terrible fan fiction etc. This is a great topic, and I am still wrapping my head around the long term consequences.
But the people without ambition are not going to pursue their non-existent life goals anyway. Giving them a basic income at least ensures they live like human beings, have health care, and aren't a further burden on the system by becoming homeless, etc. "But think of the FREELOADERS!" is what we all want to grasp on to, but... there will always be freeloaders, regardless of whether they get a UBI/MBI or not. (Right now they have phenomenally huge and byzantine and expensive government bureaucracies supporting all the programs they need for support. With UBI all that goes away and they just get a check. Or maybe just a deposit into the Federal Government bank account.) And, how long can someone really be passive and bored? They are going to eventually start cooking. Or playing guitar. Or writing poetry. Or picking up a job at the Circle K to have something to do for 8 out of the 24 hours of the day. Or they might walk down their local park or beach and pick up trash. Who knows what they will do? I don't. But I know they won't starve. They won't place an undue burden on our systems due to homelessness, or whatever. And we can ditch oodles of stupid and ineffective government programs. And yeah, someone may freeload. For a long time. And maybe die without having produced anything of meaning. So what? There is zero impact on you, because you have the same UBI, and on top of that, you have a job you LOVE (because you don't have to make $x/mo any more, so you do what you want to do), and a life in which the monthly panic of balancing the books and making sure you can make rent and buy food is eliminated. Does it really matter if someone else doesn't take the opportunity and run with it like you did? If everyone has that security floor, would the way people with ambition but previously no means pursue their goals in life change.
It is not so much that they are going to freeload. To go back to childhood religious programing for a moment, "idle hands are the devil's tools." If they want to waste their very brief existence watching TV and not doing anything, that is on them. But not having people starving and homeless has other benefits, which you went into. One of the reasons, and man, there are reasons, for the suicide epidemic is that there are a lot of men out there that have lost their purpose. They have no direction, or have been shoved aside due to the massive changes in the economy, society etc over the last 25 years. There is a reason that the two biggest triggers for suicides in men are loss of job and divorce. Some people cannot handle that, and to show this is a human thing, women in the US and Europe are now starting to kill themselves in increasing numbers. Look at Belgium and Finland, nations with some of the best social safety nets and welfare programs out there. They have double the suicide rate of the US, and ours is not anything to be proud of. If nations with some of the best social programs, guarantees, housing allowances etc can't keep people content enough to not off themselves, is this something we need to correct before a UBI? This is my mental hurdle. We all have one, and it will be different in each of us. And I really love this debate because the world where a UBI is needed is coming faster than most realize. But what happens when there are not enough jobs for all these guys who now have a basic income? We can't all be artists and musicians. We can't all be WalMart greeters. Hell, I have people in my extended friend circle that do fuck zero all day, only work enough to keep the lights on in the shitty apartment and play games and get fatter every year. I hate to see that happen, but they are only hurting themselves, so... yea. Idle people tend to not be happy people in my experience. And despite leaving the church multiple decades ago, that programing of a Puritan work ethic and fight against sloth is there in my head. I said this in other posts on Hubski: men are programed to build things. We build families, friendships, communities, nations as well as the physical things like buildings, roadways, cars, water delivery systems, computers, etc. If some sort of purpose is not put into the bargain that a UBI brings to the table, what are the mental impacts of that? Maybe we will have to have a draft, but instead of military, you need to do 2-3 years of national service. Drag young men and women out of their family, put them to work building the nation (monuments, tour guides, rangers, infrastructure, even teaching and medicine and the government kicks in for your schooling). This builds social circles, builds the idea that "hey, I helped build this place!" and shows you a world beyond the tiny little space you grew up in. SOMETHING of the like is going to be needed to create an ownership of the country otherwise you get a class of people who demand entitlements and none of the responsibilities related to receiving them. Some men die at 25 and are not buried until they are 75. I've abandoned friendships due to this sort of attitude. It exists, but how prevalent/rare is it? I have no idea. Absolutely not. And those are the words I should have used, I think. But I would like to not see so many people waste away and contribute something to the place we live in. And that may be my bias showing in this debate.And yeah, someone may freeload.
And, how long can someone really be passive and bored?
Does it really matter if someone else doesn't take the opportunity and run with it like you did?
We are having all the same thoughts, and on the same page. There are big questions and big issues that need to be thought about in a big way. And our public discourse is down to 140 characters and two-second sound bites. How/where does this conversation happen, if not here?
The neat thing about here is that although we are a left-leaning circle jerk, we are all in different places and bring something unique to the table. Stuff like this helps me process thoughts, so when I get the chance to talk to someone in the local Dem. party I have a concrete pro and con argument that I can use to engage. I've also been telling a few smart people here and there about this place. Hopefully they sign up and become a part of the community.How/where does this conversation happen, if not here?