It was cooked up by Milton Friedman, one of the grandfathers of American free market libertarianism.
The whole impetus of UBI was to eliminate traditional social services because, it is argued, there’s no way that a government institution could be as efficient or effective as a free market.
And make no mistake, even modern proponents of UBI such as Andrew Yang propose funding it by hollowing out existing social services.
Like, yeah, UBI is better than having literally no social support at all, but the fact that its seen as this ultra-leftist idea, to the point that we apparently can’t even conceive of how it could possibly “not be left enough”, is an indication of how far right mainstream politics has shifted.
The UBI I support is only a replacement for unemployment benefits and all the welfare state social safety nets would still be provided for I.e. single payer healthcare, social housing
Implemented like that it would probably be a step in the correct direction. I’m not trying to say you’re a monster who wants to turn the world into a capitalist hellscape. But let’s use an analogy:
There’s a country with a public library system that’s been suffering from chronic underfunding and dysfunction. The buildings are falling apart, the catelogs are outdated, and many people don’t even have a library near them.
Jeff Bezos proposes to eliminate public libraries, says it would be more efficient and effective for the government to give citizens a stipend to buy off of Amazon. Its called universal books.
Years later someone says “leftists will infight about anything, someone would probably say universal books isn’t left enough.”
Someone points out who came up with universal books and why they wanted it, then there’s a reply saying “the version of universal books that I support would still fund the public libraries but have the Amazon stipend in addition to that.”
Maybe adding the Amazon stipend to the existing public library system would be great. After all not every library can carry every book, and sometimes its not feasible to put a library in every tiny rural community.
I’m just trying to make the point that its not completely insane to get a little defensive about such an idea in a situation like that.
If we were smarter than an idiocracy we would understand that “UBI is higher than conditional social benefits received, and without any administrative overhead that makes the programs more expensive than what we receive”… I like more money is where your thinking could successfully stop at.
Well there yah go, we didn’t even need to introduce it and it’s already not left enough.
It was cooked up by Milton Friedman, one of the grandfathers of American free market libertarianism.
The whole impetus of UBI was to eliminate traditional social services because, it is argued, there’s no way that a government institution could be as efficient or effective as a free market.
And make no mistake, even modern proponents of UBI such as Andrew Yang propose funding it by hollowing out existing social services.
Like, yeah, UBI is better than having literally no social support at all, but the fact that its seen as this ultra-leftist idea, to the point that we apparently can’t even conceive of how it could possibly “not be left enough”, is an indication of how far right mainstream politics has shifted.
The UBI I support is only a replacement for unemployment benefits and all the welfare state social safety nets would still be provided for I.e. single payer healthcare, social housing
Is that still a capitalist nightmare?
Implemented like that it would probably be a step in the correct direction. I’m not trying to say you’re a monster who wants to turn the world into a capitalist hellscape. But let’s use an analogy:
There’s a country with a public library system that’s been suffering from chronic underfunding and dysfunction. The buildings are falling apart, the catelogs are outdated, and many people don’t even have a library near them.
Jeff Bezos proposes to eliminate public libraries, says it would be more efficient and effective for the government to give citizens a stipend to buy off of Amazon. Its called universal books.
Years later someone says “leftists will infight about anything, someone would probably say universal books isn’t left enough.”
Someone points out who came up with universal books and why they wanted it, then there’s a reply saying “the version of universal books that I support would still fund the public libraries but have the Amazon stipend in addition to that.”
Maybe adding the Amazon stipend to the existing public library system would be great. After all not every library can carry every book, and sometimes its not feasible to put a library in every tiny rural community.
I’m just trying to make the point that its not completely insane to get a little defensive about such an idea in a situation like that.
I agree with you. There is legitimate criticism of UBI especially of the Yang flavor.
I’ve just always seen it as increased unemployment payments with fewer conditions rather than a replacement of the welfare state.
If we were smarter than an idiocracy we would understand that “UBI is higher than conditional social benefits received, and without any administrative overhead that makes the programs more expensive than what we receive”… I like more money is where your thinking could successfully stop at.
It never was.