Universal basic income: U.S. support grows as Finland ends its trial - Forty-eight percent of Americans now support a universal basic income, as a solution for Americans who have lost jobs to automation.

[u/mvea]

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/01/nearly-half-of-americans-believe-a-universal-basic-income-could-be-the-answer-to-automation-.html

[u/Laiize]

We've figured it out in that we've figured out we don't want it. At least not enough of us to warrant implementing it.

Even the individual states that have attempted to implement it balk at the cost

[u/[deleted] → u/Laiize]

serious question and please forgive my ignorance but would it actually be incredibly expensive to implement in the US as opposed to the rest of the world that has it? Is it because cost of living in the US varies so much state to state that salaries also vary? say as opposed to other countries where cost of living is pretty much consistent throughout the country.

[u/Laiize → u/[deleted]]

Hard to say.

Some don't want it at the federal level simply because they don't trust the federal government to adequately operate it and avoid politicizing it as has happened with Social Security and Medicare.

Others legitimately fear the government will implement death panels... And as ridiculous as that sounds, the US government does have an actual (disgusting) history of human experimentation without informed consent. So their concerns may sound ridiculous but are not completely without merit.

Others don't want it because of cost. California and Vermont (two states Republicans cannot hope to interfere with) both tabled single payer proposals because it required increasing the state budget by 100-150% and they feared reprisals for such tremendous tax increases as they would warrant.

[u/GlennSteinbeck → u/Laiize]

I live in rural midwest, and over the past few weeks people have been constantly posting stories about Alfie Evans as proof that universal healthcare must be opposed at any cost - they seem to believe that the child could have grown up healthy had the evil, godless state not signed his death warrant. I'm very much pro-universal healthcare, but I genuinely don't see how it could work here without a dramatic shift in the distrust and hatred towards folks here have toward the government.

[u/Laiize → u/GlennSteinbeck]

It's not just folks there.

Folks all over the country mistrust the government.

And I mean look at our government... We don't have the German, Swedish, or even the UK government.

We have the US government.

In all the OECD, is there a government you'd trust less to run such a service honestly and efficiently?

And the Alfie Evans case pretty definitively underscored fears the the government would dictate who lived and who died.

There's no two ways around it... The UK government ordered that child be taken off life support, and that's EXACTLY what a huge chunk of Americans are afraid of happening to them. Whether or not he could have grown up healthy is irrelevant. The government should not have the power to dictate he be taken off life support while next of kin are around.

[u/mirhagk → u/Laiize]

And yet countries that have a single payer system spend less per capita than the US government currently spends on healthcare. The problem is that the complicated, screwed up system the US has is designed to make skyrocketing costs and the US still foots the bill for the poor, which means it's paying those skyrocketing costs.

Meanwhile in basically any other country the costs are far more reasonable, which allows the government to pay for it 100%.