6d ago

Do you have strong opinions about universal basic income?

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I think that currently a job guarantee is much more practical and doable, and would have much the same benefits. Why would a company get away with treating you like shit or paying like garbage when you can easily get a government job?
- Problem there is that this sort of thing tends to end up with make-work projects - digging holes and filling them back in again. You are wasting people's time and energy, and taxpayer money, by making people do work that doesn't need to be done instead of just handing them a check
  
  In my idea of this at least it would be paired with free education and the creation of big infrastructure projects like rail systems and dams or whatever, so that the government jobs are actually doing something.
  It could also result in more teachers in classrooms and better road maintenance for instance.
  Obviously it's a bad idea if it's handled poorly.
  
  If UBI enables people to not have to work, I would rather have nine people playing video games, and one passionate creative person starting a society-benefitting business, than make all ten do make-work. Many would hate the video-game freeloaders, but I'm fine with them if I get new great services and technology from the unleashed passionate people.
  
  Do you think the CCC & WPA were makework?
  
  make-work projects - digging holes and filling them back in again.
  what about building houses and public transport, as china has been doing?
  
  Building necessary public works projects is great. Building them for the sake of giving people something to do isn't
  
  what if it's not necessary, but nice-to-have?
  
  In that case, I err on the side of no. While I'm not a fan of make-work, there are a lot of necessary public works projects for the docket. These should be prioritized over those that are just "nice". And beyond this, most infrastructure problems require some kind of maintenance - something we are already far behind on. Adding to that maintenance backlog by building additional things which are unnecessary seems ill advised.

176 comments