UBI Would Likely Increase Poverty Rather Than Reduce It (2019)

Re:UBI Would Likely Increase Poverty Rather Than Reduce It (... by paxys on Monday October 10, 2022 @06:35PM (#33157190)

In an ideal world low earners would spend UBI money and it would circulate in the local/state/national economy in the right proportions. In reality our capitalist system has near-perfected the art of upward movement of money. We saw this happen during COVID, and there's no reason large scale UBI would be any different.

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Re:UBI Would Likely Increase Poverty Rather Than Reduce It (... by _carbyau_ on Monday October 10, 2022 @07:02PM (#33157426)

^This.

The issue is that money seems to have a gravity whereby having more will get you more.

Splash a lot of money evenly around? That's simply more money to end up in the Bezos Black Hole.

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Re:UBI Would Likely Increase Poverty Rather Than Reduce It (... by jerojero on Monday October 10, 2022 @07:22PM (#33157552)

Iirc there was a pilot done in South Korea where they gave citizens of a town a kind of UBI but it was only spendable on local stores. So you couldn't use it to buy online on amazon for example.

I haven't followed up but you're right in pointing out this problem of money syphoning.

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Re:UBI Would Likely Increase Poverty Rather Than Reduce It (... by ryandrake on Monday October 10, 2022 @09:19PM (#33158348)

What about where the local shopkeeper spends it? Unless that money permanently carries around with it a "local only" bit, as soon as it is spent once, it's likely eventually getting sucked out to Amazon, Walmart or one of the world's other "wealth gravitational singularities".

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