this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2025
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[–] underline960@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I think it's less the interaction with currently established economies and more that it would never pass without ~~lobbyists~~ Congressmen sabotaging the law to make it fail and then using that to say, "See!? UBI doesn't work ~~(when you set it up to fail)~~!"

[–] Jax@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

I mean, yes — but the reality is that universal basic income dictates that everyone gets the money.

For instance, let's say Congress allows the perfect UBI bill to be put forth. For whatever Bizarro World reason you can conjure, because we both agree that they would never agree.

What happens next? We've already seen what regulatory capture has done to sectors like real estate. Corpos buy up shitloads of land, whether it's individuals looking to be land barons or alongside corporate interests.

How would true UBI result in anything other than higher prices? Seriously, in the current markets that exist within the United States — how, without some kind of serious societal and economic shift prior to it's introduction, would this actually play out?

Maybe it's better in other democracies, I actually can't really argue for any other nation — I can only apply this concept to what I already know. I just think UBI is a concept that can only exist in a place entirely separate from corporate greed, and that is definitely not the United States.

[–] gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

So you're saying that UBI would lead to higher costs of living, because companies can charge more because people can spend more.

Then, explain to me, how did it come that in the 1960s, Americans were wealthy? How could they afford so much stuff back then? Corporate greed already existed back then; why didn't it just eat up the wealth of the citizens?

[–] Jax@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Oh, don't get me wrong — my position has never been that UBI can't work under the right conditions.

My position is that UBI cannot work without very major changes first. I don't doubt that UBI can inject a lot of good into an individual's standard of living — without some kind of regulation associated with it, which requires those regulatory agencies to not be inherently corrupt, UBI seems impossible.