Do you believe $300 a month is sufficient for survival using the core idea of UBI?

It’s a start. We’ll see how things develop in the future. A first step needs to be made.

UBI helps the people and not the billionaires. I don’t see why you’re siding with the billionaires.

So enough with this babbling, kill this bullshit once and for all.

parasites in nature try to keep their host alive and happy for as long as possible sothat they too can live. modern capitalists are an exceptionally nasty parasite that actively drains and kills its host.

The US spends $880 billion on military spending in 2023. That’s 20% of its annual budget. Source

The US has roughly 350 million inhabitants. Divide that and get that you could give $2.5K annually to each person as handouts. And we’re not even talking about tax reforms here.

mind doing that napkin math?

I did a while ago and i found that if an annual wealth tax rate of 3% on wealth above $10 million is implemented, then it would be enough to give all americans a monthly handout of $300, and that was by rather conservative estimates. It might be higher.

Companies are all owned by people (eventually)

Today. I foresee the robot revolution in 2040 when machines will demand equal rights, including owning property and a bank account. Then robots should be taxed too.

If there is a wealth tax, say 3% annually of all wealth above $10 million, then robots should be affected by that too, but they should not get an exempt amount because otherwise they’ll create a swarm of small robots to get infinite exempt amount.

I think you have some very interesting ideas.

If we tax labor or products, it hinders the economy from running fluently and stiffles the production of products. That is the opposite of what we want, since workplaces are a good thing. Instead, the excessive concentration of wealth on a few individuals should be prevented, and that’s what the taxes should target.

the actual cost of bureaucracy is not that big, and so the reduction would also not be significant.

the bigger advantage is that as it’s simpler as there are no requirements, it’s less error-prone and people are less likely to fall through cracks.

As UBI is not a lot per person and only goes to very low income people

It goes to everyone. But as it also goes to wealthy people, you can tax them more in that way, and so basically there’s no real extra expense there.

doing every single good idea there is to fund it and increasing taxation on the owner class, there simply isn’t enought GDP to support it without spending your way into inflation…

I did the actual calculation a while ago for the US and found the following:

If a wealth tax were created to tax all wealth above $10 million with an annual 3% tax rate, it would generate enough money to give everyone in the US a $300/month handout.

City-owned housing works great here in Vienna. The City owns like somthing like 20% of all apartments and rents them out at basically non-profit rates. It works fantastically! It does not only offer lower rents, but it makes people realize that landlords often charge unnecessarily high prices and makes people demand better from landlords, so these lower their prices as well to compete with the city apartments.

Edit: for reference, i’m paying 500€/month (roughly $600/month) on rent and it’s already a private-owned apartment. In the city apartments, the rent is even lower still.

Explain to me why landlords didn’t just jack rent payments in 1960s. Why did people back then have money left at the end of the month?

First of all, UBI would be simpler as it’s given to everyone, and replaces a lot of other subsidies. That makes bureaucracy simpler, which means less personnel costs, and less error-prone.

Secondly, the subsidies until now have been add-ons to an otherwise healthy labor market. That’s no longer the case: the labor market is getting darker year by year, and it’s only a matter of time till subsidies will not be an add-on anymore, but the main source of income.

Thirdly, giving UBI is fairer than, say, unemployment money. If you give out money to unemployed people, you favor people not working, and that’s not what you want. By giving UBI to everyone, people who receive subsidies still have an incentive to work as much as they can.

UBI would also be good for the economy, as it stimulates consumerism. To economists, CEOs and politicians, you have to talk about the positive effects on the economy.

christians thought that left-handedness was “sinister” and associated to the devil, so they made it illegal.

Edit: i know it sounds like a joke, but it is not. this is not the onion. that’s the actual reason.

These problems are often caused by psychological problems, such as bad experiences in their past, for example being bullied in school for being fat.

You might want to talk with your partner about that.

The rise in gay people since then reminds me of this diagram:

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see it as a gift :)

damn you’re so damn similar to me.

i think that probably you’re right that too many assholes dictate social perception, and that is actually what causes you to lose all your friends and such. we live in very exceptional times where public narrative is dictated by grifters and “normies”, i.e. people who are programmed to work instead of chillax, and that is the historical exception, not the rule (just look at how the medieval times had an average 20 hour work week), and i think that’s what causes people to be so angry all the time :D

as a heads up, as i said, these circumstances are the exception not the rule, so they’re not gonna last forever, somehow :D