Re:Universal Basic Income Is Not Feasible
by derblitzmann on Thursday April 26, 2018 @09:07PM
(#16937585)
Yeah, I generally agree. I think one thing that is often forgotten/only mentioned in comments is trade schools. A good education in a trade can bring about a good income. Due to the lack of people joining the trades as university has been in vogue.
Re:Universal Basic Income Is Not Feasible
by tonyedgecombe on Friday April 27, 2018 @06:40AM
(#16939721)
The solution to that is universities should start teaching trades or trade schools should rebrand as universities and offer degrees.
Re:Universal Basic Income Is Not Feasible
by tonyedgecombe on Friday April 27, 2018 @06:37AM
(#16939710)
But we don't have that kind of money.
You have the money to patronise the military-industrial complex, I think you could easily afford to patronise the arts more if that was your priority.
Some amount of military is good. I will not deny ours is quite large. Perhaps having the largest is also a good. But so much larger than everyone else's? I don't know. But that's not really the tradeoff I meant.
In the space of just social programs, or societal improvement programs, I'd love to see more national parks, environmental cleanup, scientific research funding, etc. There are people who are willing but unable to do work in these areas. The US provides a pretty good amount of money in these areas, even as I desire more.
tl;dr if you're a US citizen, vote for people who'll spend how you want them to spend. If you're not, oh well, it's not your decision
The arts are valuable and I'd love to have a country which could patronize the arts and artists. But we don't have that kind of money. Even if we did, there are other priorities for things we should be paying people to do.
In any case, the one argument for UBI I found somewhat convincing was that it could be cheaper than social security, unemployment, etc all combined, because there'd be less administrative cost.
I appreciate that some governments were willing to experiment.
Change can be good, but tests ought to be tried before large , even well-intentioned changes to massive systems.