Comments by "XSportSeeker" (@XSpImmaLion) on "Andrew Yang Wants To Give You $1,000 A Month (HBO)" video.

  1. Well, if people understand that giving money upfront to alleviate multiple problems that stems from commercialization/exploitation of several basic services that should be universal, free and public is a good route, why not? It's at the very least something, and kind of an imperfect shortcut to stabilize things. But ultimately, relying on UBI for me personally sounds like a stopgap solution, while the underlying problems should be resolved. Education, healthcare, jobs, security and a bunch of other things needs to be pulled back to basic human rights status. I actually don't buy the argument that robots will steal all our jobs. I can accept that this could happen far far faaaaar in the future when we have absolutely solved a whole ton of humanity's problems in a period where the entire planet is facing problems around negative birth rates and whatnot. But right now? Nope. A period of instability, sure, but automation has been here for a long time now, and robots are not all that much different from it. People will move to other sectors, and robots will gradually take some areas, but not overnight, and not uniformly. I guess it does connect well with libertarian principles, but it just doesn't connect well for me personally. I'd rather see strong politics towards resolving the underlying problems instead. Problem I see with UBI is for the long term, and for the prolonged health of a country's economy. Because ultimately, money is just a tool - it can be used for good or bad, and if I'm being honest, I've just seen too many examples of money, power and time being wasted on.... crap. Perhaps I'm a bit biased on this, but it just seems that sometimes the people who needs help the most are also the people with the worst control of money, worst spending habits, and least prepared to deal with an influx of cash. And to be clear, it's often not their own faults - it's because some societies have created all sorts of trappings and all sorts of strategies to keep exploiting them. It is often a problem with capitalist societies. The people who needs basic human rights the most, the people who are living in poverty, that are going day by day, that cannot save for emergencies, that have to pass days without eating much, that have a hard time finding a job, that are the most abused and most exploited in society, are also the ones least equipped to handle money well. Because scammers, advertisers, psychological predators, and all sorts of people willing to take that money out of them as soon as they get it will likely target them the most, rather than people who already have a good ammount of money and will likely put the extra money in something more secure. So it ends up that giving this ammount of money for people no strings attached, could really go both ways. Much like the next guy (I'm not an US citizen), I'd friggin love to have that kinda guaranteed cash on hand every month. 1000 USDs would cover most of my monthly basic expenses. Boring as it may sound, I'd probably just stash it into a savings account and consider it emergency money. As a general rule for any society though, I think countries would prosper more if they had all basic human rights guaranteed by the government as best as possible in comparison to any ammount of money the government could give with no strings attached. Because ultimately, the collectivism that is behind this sort of support is the real reason why we live in societies. It unifies people under a flag, it protects people from individual bad decisions, it eliminates potential threats, and it dedicates a portion of a country's unified power for the benefit of all citizens.
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