• Flying Squid
      -1•6 months ago

      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:

      Ok, which foods should people with no money not be allowed to have?

      You:

      Anything that is outside of basic needs?

      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.

      • Uhrbaan
        1•6 months ago

        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