Oh boy we're all shocked, shocked I tell you
It only worked every time it was tried. Nobody could have predicted this!
And it costs municipalities less money than the problems it prevents, so obviously we shouldn't do this everywhere and raise the standard of living for everybody. Because it wouldn't be fair, somehow.
Homeless folks and people in poverty vs morons rabbling, it's quite the conundrum
I had to pay off my own notably cheaper loans and work shitty jobs for my demonstrably stronger dollar at minimum wage! So the whole world should writhe in tears and agony until the end of time!
We're at the point where the reaction to this is "no shit". We know, now make our masters do it.
But muh "campaign contributions"
I agree, but one nitpick: they work for us, we don’t work for them.
Who works for who depends on how organized each one is.
100% we have 100s of similar studies now
Turns out the solution to poverty is to just give people money.
Well if you think about it, you can actually give money to those in poverty by instead just giving that money to the rich. Because it just trickles down. So I think we should start this program with the rich people, and wait for some sort of trickling down effect to occur very soon. Any day now.
Digital bill of rights.
Our data comrades.
See, I want this everywhere so bad but I worry that without some kind of control on the price of basic needs (food/housing/healthcare/etc) a broader rollout will cause providers of those things to just raise their prices across the board and result in little or no benefit to everyone else. Housing especially, since the market is already in la la land. Am I wrong about this? Or is there an easy solution maybe?
You're not wrong, no. Price controls are ABSOLUTELY necessary. Even without basic income, but of course especially with.
Corporations have demonstrated time and time again that they'll profiteer as much as they're allowed to.
In recent years, they've even stopped caring about whether people are able to afford their prices.
They cynically but correctly assume that people will spend more money than they have when the alternative is them and their families starving on the street.
Corporations are getting increasingly brazen about not valuing the lives and well-being of their customers anywhere near as highly as short term profits, and the vast majority of politicians are as spineless in regulating their own owners as always, if not even worse than they have been since almost a century ago.
Thats why the government issued rations stamps during the depression. That way food aid actually helped people instead of just linning the pockets of grocers. But the past 40 years of neoliberal deregulation has made that an absolute non-starter and most people dont even know how much the government used to regulate and manage everything.
I imagine if you had a lot of competition, prices might stay lower. But the reality is that monopolies or cartels or whatever will form
Yeah, that's how under-regulated markets inevitably work: someone who has no incentive to prioritize fairness or the common good accumulate too much power and use that power to gain more power etc until only the most powerful remain and everyone else, especially consumers, suffer immensely.
I am shocked anyone thinks the 1% will let a livable basic income alone.
Minimum wage is the OG basic income. "Everyone will have to pay a living wage now!" They said, after negotiating with capitalists.
Well how is that $7.25 treating you now wage slaves?
The 1% will corroded any government, undo any reforms... all using the surplus labor value stolen from the working class.
This is inevitable, any romanticized version of capitalism is merely on step on a stair case leading down to end stage capitalism.
See yall at the last stop. Peace.
most definitely, if you implement BUI without any safegairds, companys just amp the prices of literally everything to match.
(But I'm sure they will be nice and not do that, they whould never be so ruthless and unethical! I'm sure they are fine losing a little profit to help people. /s)
We have poverty in today's world only because the rich and powerful want it that way. The need for resource wars and allowing people to go without essentials ended about 35 years ago. The US alone makes enough food to feed the world. Western nations plus China makes enough energy to power the world.
Another strike against it.
Basic income saves capitalism from itself. Should we really put effort into saving capitalism?
Cause capitalism won't ever save you. Ever.
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