You're expecting UBI to also fix the lack of democracy? That's a separate problem, that definitely also needs to be addressed. UBI is just to prevent poor people from starving while rewarding working your way up out of poverty. It's not the magical supercure for all society's ills. Those need their own solutions.
Like proportional representation, approval voting, banning corporate money from politics, etc.
UBI is just to prevent poor people from starving while rewarding working your way up out of poverty
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've been poor. Even homeless. It definitely changes your mindset, but I'm not sure in the way you think it does.
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.
How long were you poor for, and how did you get out? And what was your prior educational history? I think it's awesome that you were able to do so and that you have and had a resilient mindset about it. I don't think everyone in that boat necessarily fares so well. But I'm open to being educated.
True. I've had an expensive education, and always saw it as a temporary setback. I didn't use that education to work my way out of it (that was manual labouring on a construction site for cash in hand). But I also didn't immediately spend that cash in hand on beer and smokes like many of my contemporaries.
Surely you believe that some percentage of the poor are that way as an avoidable result of their choices? If you believe that, reasoning about whether UBI will have a general propensity to improve or degrade that outcome seems a sensible part of the conversation to me. (If you don’t believe that, that’s ok, but then we disagree.)
You are ignoring how those choices come about. It is a complex issue.
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".
Thank you for the thoughtful response that was partially responsive to my question “are some percentage of the poor that way as an avoidable result of their 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.
I indeed missed "some percentage" when replying. Sorry about that. You can view my response as an elaboration of my original complaint above, which is basically what it became anyway.
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.
Having been homeless and having made some drastic choices to get to where I am now, what a tremendously offensive thing to say.
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.
What I am saying is that expecting UBI to transfer power to the employees while these problems still exist might not go too well. I don't expect UBI to be perfect from the get go, and I don't expect these other problems to be solved within the next decade - so what now? Do we condone poor people (that have absolutely no way to fight back) to the whims of a corrupt government for a decade or more because it might get better sometimes in the future?
They already are. It's not something that's changing because of UBI. And if it's truly a UBI, then it will be a lot harder to deny people that basic income than it currently is with welfare and social security.
IMHO it's a lot harder to deny a concrete, targeted entitlement than a super-wide payment for everyone without a reason/need that might just get reduced to nothing over time.
It's much easier to deny that people meet a very specific set of criteria required for such a targeted entitlement, than to deny that they are citizens and alive.
Like proportional representation, approval voting, banning corporate money from politics, etc.