zlacker

The whole UBI thing has always seemed absurdly naive. What do you think a junky is going to do with that money? That's a rhetorical question. I really seriously doubt having a few extra dollars in the first place is going to either slow mental illness or people picking up drugs, and frankly having a bunch of people out of work with money, for the vast majority of people in my experience, only leads to them picking up bad things like drugs in the first place. One of the most myopic views I read on sites like this, that are obviously heavily biased in their readership, is that if we give people some amount of money for nothing, they'll magically pick up art and entrepreneurship and other productive outlets spontaneously.

What's going to happen, if we're foolish enough to try UBI, is we're going to bleed a bunch more money that immediately gets vaporized (or at least put in the pockets of pushers and alcohol distributors), and then we still will have the same problems for at least 50% of the people that needed the focused benefits like SNAP or Medicaid anyways. We'd be much better served getting very medieval on anyone and everyone selling drugs, and then going from there.

>>rpcope+(OP)
> We'd be much better served getting very medieval on anyone and everyone selling drugs, and then going from there.

Ironic, isn’t it? Right back to where we started. Portugal has tried the “empathy” approach too and is now going through the slow and long process of rolling it back

>>rpcope+(OP)
We've been "foolish" enough to try UBI. Studies show that it doesn't tend to increase spend on alcohol or tobacco.

>>rpcope+(OP)
>What do you think a junky is going to do with that money?

Go to a mental institute if we tie the UBI to some basic factors. UBI isn't just some altruistic factor that gives money to everyone without condition. They at least want to make sure you're a citizen and not going to fund the destruction of society with it.

>if we give people some amount of money for nothing, they'll magically pick up art and entrepreneurship and other productive outlets spontaneously.

Talking about non-homeless, it has shown to increase recreation. Not necessarily businesses, but it's nice having time to breathe when you aren't spending half your like just to make sure you can pay rent.

>What's going to happen, if we're foolish enough to try UBI,

You can speculate or you can actually read studies done. Domestically and worldwide.

>>johnny+Xg2
https://basicincome.stanford.edu/research/ubi-visualization/ is a pretty good place to start on reading studies.