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Re:Moving Forward on Basic Income by Mz on Tuesday May 31, 2016 @04:52PM (#11810124)
I hope BI just never flies because financial problems grow out of real problems. You cannot solve human problems by cutting a check to all the poor people. Poverty grows out of very real problems like chronic health issues, learning disabilities, abusive relationships, etc. These are not going to be magically fixed by giving all poor people a check. Furthermore, I have my fears that both poor people and the rest of society will put less effort into helping people with very serious, intractable problems to actually resolve them because "Hey, you have your UBI." And I think that is likely to cause far worse problems than we have currently.

I just hope to god UBI never is real. Pilot programs often go well. People who have the proverbial rich uncle to draw upon tend to do better than folks without such a resource. These pilot programs are more like that. When you actually try to guarantee universal support (a la communism), historically, it has always failed to work out well. It is a fundamentally broken model.

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