Yes. Care in the Community turned out to be anything but.
Our society can’t afford it yet. Maybe in the future, I don’t know? But people who are on the dole or disability allowance now don’t seem especially motivated to create value. Some probably do have caring responsibilities, but that’s urgent in the same way as a job: you have to do it now and can’t just put it off until next week.
Sorry, which quote? There have been a few. As for whether to call it discrimination, depends what your program is, perhaps? Free school meals could be regarded as discrimination, but I’ve never heard it described as such, nor have I heard them ‘sold’ based on the racial impact. I do think people more easily accept programs based on poverty rather than race, though. The harm and how to remedy it is more obvious, and all people can imagine themselves or their families benefiting if they fell on hard times.
True. Where do the rejected applicants study? At my university it was a common icebreaker question to ask whether someone had applied to Oxford or Cambridge. With so many qualified applicants it’s always going to be somewhat arbitrary who is accepted.
The idea was to choose the best candidates though, wasn’t it? It was created to do that but subverted by the people running it. Otherwise they just wouldn’t have let common people apply. It should be easier to avoid that situation now, though, when we have independent academics who can analyse tests and entry requirements and publish what they find.
Will they, though? If they have robots that can manufacture what they need, why give money to consumers so they can spend it buying products and use up raw materials? Manufacture what they need and leave the rest of us to starve. Perhaps we should leave this for another thread, though.
I think it’s okay when you have money and a defined end date. But long term happiness is not best served by spending your time on video games. It’s kind of proverbial that kids who grow up rich and never have to strive for anything don’t amount to much as adults (though not universal, some inexplicably manage to rise to high office). Anyway, I’m not at all convinced a UBI will ever happen.
Two reasons. First, there are fewer wealthy people than there are poor. If the 1% are getting the same thing that the 99% are getting, they may not need it, but it’s still only 1% of the cost of your UBI. Trying to exclude them will easily eat up more than 1% of the program cost in overhead alone.
Second, I think that a significant amount should come in the form of vouchers. You have a housing voucher, and that pays your rent for a specific level of accommodation. You want a different accommodation, and you pay your own way. It doesn’t pay towards, it pays for.
Similarly to how a public school doesn’t have a sliding scale for who can attend, but also doesn’t give vouchers to pay towards a private education.
And the other part, cash payments that are meant to be considered disposable income, should be small enough that giving that check to everyone is a small cost.
Though, and we are way off topic and getting into the weeds here, but the cash part of the UBI should be done on a credit card. Give everyone in the country a credit card with a 20,000 limit, 0% interest (or the same interest that a bank pays to borrow from the fed), and the amount of the cash UBI is paid off every month. If you don’t use it, then there is nothing to be paid off.
That’s because they usually are not allowed to. If you are on disability, then if you make more than a mere pittance, you are taken off. Removing the cliffs removes the disincentive to be productive.
To allocate finite resources in such a way that gives them preferentially to the disadvantaged.
I don’t know that school meals is a finite resource, from a practical standpoint, we can give that to everyone. Seats in a classroom or positions in employment are the types of finite resources that I am speaking of.
In order to give preference to a disadvantaged class, you have to discriminate against those who are less disadvantaged.
State schools, community colleges, maybe they really slum it and go to Yale.
Right, but my entire point there was to show how a “neutral” test could still be discriminatory. We still have to trust the administrators to have criteria that selects for the best candidates, not for the candidates they prefer.
Like I said, it’s complex.
Retirees generally don’t like having a defined end date, but they seem to be happy enough.
I’m saying it’s not a sufficient condition, perhaps not even the most important one. It’s not so much what is acknowledged, it’s what policies are put in place to improve things.
I was thinking we’d exclude the top 10%. Or at least something greater than the top 1%. I also think that Social Security payments should be means tested as well. Yeah… I’m a bastard like that.
I agree that this would be the most fair way to distribute this money for maximal benefit to the recipient.
You can’t dismantle a structure that you don’t even acknowledge exists. And you can’t right the wrongs of White supremacy without dismantling White privilege.
I agree with that. But it is a pre-condition for the more important ones. You can’t put those policies in place without acknowledging that there’s something to improve.