1037
Words matter.
You aren't writing an academic paper. Always use simple direct language.
- Help the poor
- Healthcare for everyone
- Good treatment at work.
Don't use complex words.
this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2025
1037 points (99.6% liked)
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UBI is pretty naive unless there are checks in place to prevent landlords and consumer goods from increasing costs by the same amount.
-- https://ubiadvocates.org/universal-basic-income-faq-all-about-ubi/
I think it would be helpful - in addition to UBI - we had systems in place to prevent the gouging by the rich and powerful.
Universal Basic Healthcare, Universal Basic Housing, Universal Basic Food/Water, Universal Basic Education.
If we have these covered, then the UBI could be modest, and there would be less danger of gouging by the rich.
I'm not opposed to those ideas, but I think UBI need not wait on them and is a lot easier to implement. We could do UBI now, and let state/collectively provided services be a provider-of-last-resort type thing, start with pilot programs and scale based on demand.
I agree that UBI can be less when there are more universal services, but I think there are a lot of "basics" that aren't universal or at least aren't uniform. Some people consider meat a basic foodstuff. Housing is rarely truly one-size-fits-all, primarily due to sleeping preferences. Healthcare has genetic components all over, so those vary from person to person. (Broadly you might think of menstruation supplies, or sickle-cell treatment, but there are much subtler genetic aspects.) Etc. UBI has a flexibility to incorporate capitalist providers into universal coverage as needed.
But, yeah, we absolutely need more controls on Capitol to deal with abuses like gouging. We need to enforce the ones we have on the books, but we also need more.
increasing penalties for predatory loans and banning shit like klarna would probably do a decent job at preventing that
And updating regulations to promote building denser housing in locations people want to live!