Prime age male labor participation is already at all time lows in US, lower than other similar countries, and lack of participation has doubled over last 50 years. We don't know for sure the drivers or what they're doing instead, but don't be so sure that people aren't willing to not work.

> People derive their sense of self-worth

I 100% agree with this, but I'm not so sure that everybody would act correctly to maximize this for themselves. I think we do need to be careful to intentionally craft society that incentivizes us to do activities that build genuine self worth.

> I think we do need to be careful to intentionally craft society that incentivizes us to do activities that build genuine self worth.

Incentives can be carrots, they don't all have to be the specter of death. I think lack of social mobility and not seeing any meaningful achievements materialize from your hard work, seeing retirement and property ownership move further away all play into this.

> specter of death That seems a bit hyperbolic. :)

We can have social support/nets besides UBI right. I can agree with the negatives you point out. I'm just skeptical of UBI as the best solution.

One thing I've never heard addressed is how you'd scale it. We see this with COVID payments. You either give enough to live like a king in rural areas or give enough to live like a pauper in urban areas. The US is a huge country with many diverse populations/needs. UBI seems overly optimistic and poorly targeted.

Not a popular opinion, but I think it should be enough to survive in the cheapest area. Then if you can't get a job, you move to the cheap area and survive rather than wasting valuable real estate in a city and forcing up rent for the actual workers that the city is for.

But somehow people feel that those supported by social welfare deserve to live in whatever place they prefer, no matter how expensive it is while people who pay for their own housing are forced to choose somewhere cheap enough they can afford.

On the other hand it is important to make cities move-to-able. And huge discrepancies in housing costs doesn’t help. One point I’ve heard is cities were more affordable when there was less regulation. So if you require certain sq ft or kitchen amenities, you reduce supply. Or if you prevent certain shared living options, you reduce supply. If the permitting takes years to complete, you reduce supply. These things need fixed so that minimum costs can go down. Sure luxury can still exist, but the floor needs accessible beyond living in the street in tents!

Those regulations exist specifically for the purpose of keeping property prices high. That's what people actually want because they already own property and want to profit by restricting the supply to others as well as keeping the riff-raff out which will devalue it.

There are neighborhoods in my city with required minimum house construction costs. You're not allowed to spend less than a certain amount to build your house!

Ya there was an article on HN in the last year that called out “housing cannot be both an investment and affordable.” Nice and succinct. It’s obvious once you think about it.

> "If I offered you just over your rent to stay home... would you... stay home?"

I'll take you up on that; my health is deteriorating.

In which case, I'd say more power to you. That'd be a huge plus in favor of the program.

That has nothing to do with the question you originally asked.

Such a program would be indeed beneficial to me and, if that were my sole concern, I'd be all for it. However, it seems likely sufficiently deleterious to society that I don't support society being required to pay for my subsistence.

I don't think they're mutually exclusive, but I also think underpinning my previous post is an un-stated assumption: we have too many people doing jobs that don't matter.

IMO we don't need gas station attendants, we don't need grocery store clerks, we don't need manufacturing jobs. We need more robots. When robots inevitably replace these menial jobs, we're gonna have to do something with those folks. Over time the birth rate will decline and the population will even out, and there won't be more people than jobs, and that UBI is an elegant stop-gap measure.

Otherwise, keeping people in these jobs is just some sort of Rube Goldberg-esque make work project.

Folks like yourself can stop working, folks doing menial work will stop working. Those who want to get ahead and do crazy new things will always be motivated to do so.