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Universal Basic Income is Stockholm Syndrome

I am against every situation where property is taken by force from the one who earned it and given to someone else, but being more pragmatic and understanding, that for the foreseeable future, there will be handouts, I would argue that getting rid of a every single government handout program and going to a very low paying UBI would be an improvement. It would get rid of the majority of government employees, reducing cost and people who benefit for voting for bigger government. It would be fair. Everyone would receive the same benefit. It would be easier to eliminate fraud. Of course this only works if the level of UBI meets the most basic needs, but makes the receiver very uncomfortable. If people are given enough to be comfortable, there will be little motivation to work. I agree with Benjamin Franklin who said (paraphrase), "The best thing we can do for the poor is to make them uncomfortable in their poverty."

Realistically, the chances of eliminating all other handouts (especially long term) and keeping UBI low are unlikely, but that would be the best option, assuming there has to be redistribution.

I will reiterate, that I don't want UBI or any redistribution scheme, but I try to be realistic about the near term while working towards long term freedom.

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Discussion

deleted 1y ago

thats well said, agree 🤙

Low Information Voter 1y ago

What LibertyGal said, but I'd like to underline:

- What a toxic, self-perpetuating, power-tripping clique the social welfare bureaucracy is

- How much money they waste / pay to middlemen/lawyers instead of intended recipients.

- How they use their "discretion" to exclude unfashionable and disfavoured demographics, and extract "submission displays" to themselves / to Wokeness from the rest.

UBI puts the social welfare bureaucrats ALL out of work. Which is why UBI won't happen.

But, tactically, publicly supporting UBI "wedges" Left Establishment politicians hard at their weakest point - they expect votes from both the bureaucracy/middlemen and the poor, and those two hate each other. Offer the poor a future without the bureaucrats, and the Left Establishment coalition blows apart.

sms 1y ago

In a system where #UBI is possible, it’s unrealistic to expect that any other handouts can be stopped.

As implied, if that were implemented, that would take the power and source of comfortable livelihood from too many “stakeholders” in the status quo.

5dcd8ebc... 1y ago

That "getting rid of existing programs" is indeed the stumbling block. As mentioned in my lengthy post, I would consider converting individual govt handouts to UBI as progress (e.g. Food Stamps). But govt has tricky ways to pretend they have removed a program - but really just hidden it.

Liberty Gal 1y ago

I find it unlikely they will remove all of the other programs (or maybe they do it briefly and start adding them back). I also find it unlikely they would make UBI low enough to be truly painful. Without doing both, it is just adding to the problem.