Like proportional representation, approval voting, banning corporate money from politics, etc.

I don’t think most people in poverty will work their way out of it. It’s a mindset and a lifestyle, in addition to a reality. UBI probably won’t change that.

It’s an interesting thought experiment: can you have a society without impoverished people?

Not starving, though, is something that can be directly impacted with UBI.

I'm less afraid of poverty now. More able to take risks. Less afraid of "losing what I worked so hard to get".

I think what you're talking about is "the underclass" - people who have no experience of earning a wage and have lived off government benefits for multiple generations. They definitely have a different attitude to life.

The way "it's a mindset and a lifestyle" reads is very harsh and diminishes the complexity of why poor people stay poor.

The relevant analogy is people telling those struggling with depression and anxiety to just stop being depressed and anxious. It doesn't work that way. There are other problems and barriers in the chemical imbalances in the brain that lead to these disorders. Yes, people with these conditions can have mindsets and make decisions, caused by both the disorders and potentially their natural psychology, that are not conducive to getting out or that got them in in the first place, but those are not the cause. The thinking and mindset is more of a multiplier or a catalyst to the underlying cause of chemical imbalances.

The same thing goes for those in poverty and in the lower class. Yes, mindset and decisions can lead to worse off poverty or a situation where you can't climb out of it. But those are not the primary causes in the general case. (Of course there are always exceptions and edge cases.) What are the causes? In my opinion, it's rampant consumerism (buyers don't just make the choices independent of other influences, they are heavily influenced and emotionally hacked to make the choices they do), a poor educational system, a poor support structure such as the problems with health insurance, racism and many other -isms, general socioeconomic inequalities and segregation, monopolies, capitalism, the credit system, city infrastructure and the requirement to own cars, the movement of jobs into cities, etc. And all of these have secondary effects that all feed into each other. It isn't clear how UBI solves these and doesn't just shift things around. I get the idea of UBI, but it seems to place all the blame on poor people.

So like I said, the situation is complex and can't be summarized by "poor people are poor because of their mindset and lifestyle choices".

I’m not saying all or even a majority, but I believe it’s a substantial subset and understanding the likely effects of UBI on a substantial subset of the targeted population seems wise.

Regarding UBI, I currently can't understand its potential effectiveness when more comprehensive reforms seem to be also missing. People are not being educated, employed, fed, given healthcare, etc., and I almost feel that UBI is going to blossom into this excuse to forget about those problems and thus the people facing those problems while minimally giving them chips to still play and lose at the table.

There absolutely are people who can't currently, or may never be able to, steer their life in a useful direction.

But most people? I'd say instead that most people are stuck in a poverty cycle because society is constructed that way.

When people are given enough money to be able to afford helpful choices, as opposed to scraping along at subsistence level, lots of people find their way to better, more stable, healthier, less stressed lives.

It's only a mindset when you don't have the means to climb out of it.

It's perfectly possible to build in security mechanisms.

> It's perfectly possible to build in security mechanisms.

Sure it is, but there would have to be someone with the power to do so and more importantly the interest to do so. That's something I simply don't see happening in the USA - check their health insurance system for a concrete example. If they're unable to copy the similarly capitalistic but freer system of Switzerland or other countries with mixed private/public health insurance, then what hope is there with the issues I listed and the UBI?

I just wanted to make clear that it's possible to implement UBI. There are many reasons against UBI, but not the ones you gave.

Personally, I'm against UBI for two reasons. First, it does not solve the fundamental problem, which is capital accumulation an ever increasing gap between the rich and the poor. The more money you have, the more money flows to you, and the gap has grown insane. Unless this trend is addressed and reversed, even UBI cannot prevent massive social unrest in the long run. Second, UBI makes it mentally and morally easier for employers to fire people and to lower wages even further. In the end, it will lead to a grossly impoverished class of UBI recipients who will work 6 days a week for $3.25 an hour to supplement their meagre UBI.

In my opinion a classical welfare state, maybe with a negative income tax, strong worker protections, tax-funded education and health care, and strong means to prevent wealth accumulation are the only ways to tackle the problem in the long run. Reforming hereditary laws and stopping almost all "financial products" would be a good start. Right now, once you have reached a certain threshold you can just live off by speculating on Wall Street and juggling around virtual money without ever producing anything of (non-monetary) value. That shouldn't be possible at all.

A deeper problem is that the whole model of existing economy is flawed, because it's based on permanent expansion, which leads to fast exhaustion of natural resources. It is simply not maintainable on Earth for more than 200 years from now.

I don't know how to break this to you, but surely you know there is already a grossly impoverished group of people working 6 days a week for $3.25 an hour without UBI.

If you add the UBI to their income they'll be hugely better off and they might even be able to choose between working those 6 days or staying at home and looking after their children, or caring for an elderly relative without the risk of being made homeless, or being unable to afford food for their family.

Maybe, maybe not.

For clarity, I am a fan of UBI. But I'd like to run through a hypothesis about an adverse effect.

If you add the UBI and costs go up accordingly, the real, marginal benefit they can obtain by working for $3.25 an hour will actually decrease.

This means someone who is in circumstances where they can currently earn a meagre income to tip the balance to being able to make ends meet in that circumstance, will find their ability to work the same amount in a UBI world will not tip the balance to being able to make ends meet.

In other words they will be pushed to change circumstance, towards more work and/or lower cost. E.g. move somewhere cheaper, work more hours.

This does not sound like a net benefit for the already impoverished. It sounds like a trap, because low-wage working will provide less marginal benefit to change what people can afford when they are stuck.

If someone is making ends meet by working at your (illegally low) wage, then having that wage _plus_ UBI means that they are UBI rate / existing wage times better off.

The wage's percentage of total income dropping is a red herring.

No one will be pushed to work more when they have _more_ resources at hand.

That's why I wrote "real", as in adjusted for inflation.

If you want to help poor people, start with radically capping and reducing rents per m^2 everywhere. And by "radically" I mean radically, not just halving them. That's one of the biggest problems in almost every country and it will get worse and worse if current trends continue.

US population is what, 300 million, ~75% of that are adults, multiplied by something like $35,000 is what, 8 trillion? The top 1% have a wealth of 35 trillion, US GDP is around 24 trillion - is it acceptable to spend 1/3rd of your GDP on eradicating poverty and creating a more equal society?