this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2024
922 points (97.2% liked)
Political Memes
5506 readers
1764 users here now
Welcome to politcal memes!
These are our rules:
Be civil
Jokes are okay, but don’t intentionally harass or disturb any member of our community. Sexism, racism and bigotry are not allowed. Good faith argumentation only. No posts discouraging people to vote or shaming people for voting.
No misinformation
Don’t post any intentional misinformation. When asked by mods, provide sources for any claims you make.
Posts should be memes
Random pictures do not qualify as memes. Relevance to politics is required.
No bots, spam or self-promotion
Follow instance rules, ask for your bot to be allowed on this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Because no matter how low priced something is, someone who has no job still can't afford it.
So, provide the necessary things. Provide housing, medical care, and clothing to anyone that wants it, doing so will probably be necessary for price controls anyway. I'm not saying those things should be unobtainable. I'm saying UBI is a dumb way to go about providing them.
So all food should be free? Or should poor people only be allowed to have certain foods for free but rich people can have anything they want to eat?
I think basic needs should be met, and if you want something better than that you'd need to pay for it.
Ok, which foods should people with no money not be allowed to have?
Anything that is outside of basic needs? I thought that was fairly obvious. You need a certain number of calories each day, and those should come with decent nutrients. Outside of that there's literally no reason to say because we can't even get that right yet.
Fix the actual problems, don't just slap a stupid band-aid over the problem and pat yourself on the back.
Buddy you're waisting a lot of energy debating someone who already mostly agrees with you.
So your UBI-free solution is actually worse than the food stamps program?
I don't know that you do agree with me if you think rich people deserve better food than poor people.
Are you being obtuse on purpose?
Obtuse?
I asked you what sort of foods they should have. You said only their basic needs should be met in terms of food.
Me:
You:
Again, the current food stamps program allows impoverished people to buy any food they want to buy as long as they have enough in their EBT account.
Your solution would make a two-tiered system where some people can only get very basic survival food and others can get any food they want. That is worse than now.
So in what way am I being obtuse? You are saying rich people deserve better food than poor people.
Kinda agree, People should get necessities for free. A small apartment¹, access to public healthcare³, should get fresh food each week² (that way you also learn to cook and eat healthy), get all the clothing they need, plus I'd say a small amount of money each month for leisure (but nothing matching the spirit of UBI) It might be a unpopular opinion, but the freedom of choice is luxury, which, yes, you would have to work for to get. It would also be somewhat mitigated by the small amount of money you get each month, but it's main purpose is to keep some amount of independance from state aid⁴.
Now, you can image that if everybody earned suddenly much more per month, the prices would very quickly adapt and it wouldn't make much difference for the people who had nothing to begin with. Price regulation could be a possibility, but it is very much against the current economical ideology⁵ (aka communism), which we will probably have to stick with it for a while. So for now it seems to be the better option.
1: https://mymodernmet.com/housing-first-finland-homelessness/
2: [fr] https://www.cartonsducoeur.ch/
3: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Germany
4: https://www.erudit.org/fr/revues/ae/1997-v73-n4-ae2752/602240ar.pdf
5: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_market