2) There is a bullet that needs biting here--three related ones, really--but this column fails entirely to recognize them.
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But you can fiddle with that curve without changing the middle or top of it much. $5000 to every citizen is a fiction.
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There will be a cost, but far less than NYT glurge implies. And could releasing the poor from welfare traps help them be more productive?
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Incentives matter to the poor as much as the rich, if not more so. Some can do more. Some can't. But most are trapped under what we have.
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3c) The thought of putting bureaucrats out of work and setting fire to their forms warms my heart. But more soberly...
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...obviously you can't dissolve all the other systems of aid. The severely disabled need more than $500 a month!
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But you can remove an awful lot of dead weight--people printing out forms so others can fill them in--and a lot of humiliation and abuse.
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For many, humiliation feels like a necessary part of the system--the weak need to be punished so they'll be less weak! This rarely works.
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Humiliation & the whims of a paper machine break you down into hopeless passivity. Ease up on that, and improve incentives...it might work?
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Some poor people are hopeless. Some people are awful! So what? Does it make you feel better to piss on them? Does it help? Really?
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OK, I'm done.
End of conversation
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isn't Norway experimenting with a UBI? Curious to see what comes.
@ClarkHat -
Switzerland was going to vote on a very large one, which I think is a terrible idea. Dunno if it passed.
@ClarkHat -
June 5th (sunday) apparently https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_referendums,_2016#June_referendums …
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Yeah, the proposed level (~$1600/mo) seems absurd to me, even given Swiss cost of living.
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When it collapses in flaming rubble, we get another 100 years of "well the Swiss tried it and failed".
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equally t' Internet disseminates info & discussion better than before; haters always louder, win, lose or draw.
End of conversation
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. Banned in Sweden. SubGenius, Zhuangist, white-hat troll. Defrocked mathematician. Brain problems.