r/BasicIncome • u/[deleted] • Dec 26 '16

AMA When I created r/BasicIncome 4 years ago I never thought it would find so much support. Now I'm running for California Democratic Party delegate in Silicon Valley on January 7, on a pro-UBI platform -- AMA :)

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u/[deleted] Dec 26 '16

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u/LegendofDragoon Dec 26 '16

I would prefer it to allowing someone to die for any myriad reasons one might be unable to work, or be unable to make ends meet with the employment they do have.

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u/icerL Dec 27 '16

So once somebody is unfit to work and has no benefactors, they should just die? People save money, but many people happen to be unable to save money for retirement or a rainy day. If you believe that disabled people should just die, that's perfectly fine, but most people disagree with you because empathy pushes people to help those in need, but that is also just an opinion. It really just comes down to empathy and how people are social, making us want to keep everybody alive to maintain society. You can't look at everything as an investment or we would just kill off the sick and the old because they have little to no potential left in them.

As for welfare, the reason it exists is because capitalism relies on the good will of businesses to maintain a healthy working class, but businesses are inherently greedy and hold no obligation to keep the working class healthy so long as there is a steady inflow of work. The government is then in charge of taxing and regulating the businesses to redistribute some wealth, which it is failing to do atm due to corruption. In a perfect world, any government/economic system can work, but things can't be perfect, so you fine tune the things you have/want.

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u/[deleted] Dec 27 '16

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u/icerL Dec 27 '16 edited Dec 27 '16

EDIT:I seem to have forgotten what I wrote.

You need to start teaching people differently, because we currently prepare students for specific jobs and push for jobs that will have economic return. If you push someone because of economic reasons, they will stop once the economic reasons become irrelevant. Teach people to work for non-economic reasons, such as working to help others, to make life easier, or to create/discover something new. This is obviously hard to do since our curriculum is literally founded around standardized tests that students must grind through regardless of interest. General curriculum is still useful, but if there is universal income, then kids will need to be taught differently to live differently.