You would have to start at the most vulnerable. Then eventually, you would have to target the adults who make 70k or less which is about 70% of the adult population. Then, taper it down up to 100k. This would be app. 2 trillion. I think what a lot of people are missing is, we may not have a choice to not have some kind of UBI with robots taking over quite a few jobs in the next 50 years. We have to get corporations and billionaires to pay more taxes as well. The bottom 80% are paying most of the taxes. Don’t forget that trump paid $0-$700 in taxes for quite a few years and I’m sure that’s more common than not.
The benefits of UBI would be:
More people living in rural areas because they don’t have to go to the city to get jobs. They could work in a grocery store and live a decent life.
Have the opportunity to develop new businesses.
More people going to school because they could afford it.
More money being spent and more taxes received from that.
Right now, our money is being funneled up to the rich shareholders of these huge companies instead of going to Americans who aren’t even getting by.
Are you reading a different article or do you have different sourced information? They were the most vulnerable and a lot of them living on the streets.
That’s the premise of a social experiment in Denver, where for the past few months several hundred of the city’s most vulnerable people have been given cash with no strings attached.
Edit: grabbed the wrong quote:
At the start, fewer than 10% said they were living in their own home or apartment, while at the six-month point, more than a third said they lived in their own housing.
Because you were rolling in checks or because it was unhealthy to do so? Having worked full-time and part time as a freelancer, job burnout and needing recovery isn’t laziness.
What you wanted to do and what you did are 2 different things. You’re overworked and probably not doing a job that you want to do. That isn’t laziness, that’s job unsatisfaction.
This isn’t directed at you, this is for the other dude, but also answers your question a little. The entire US was given checks during the pandemic, did it make you lazy?
You’re going to have to source that. There is no cycle of dependency, lol. Everyone making it above survival level probably won’t even spur them to vote. These aren’t people rolling in money, it’s 12k per year.
I mean, let’s not stop there. Our DOD could cut back, go after high income tax cheats and dodgers. There is a list for sure. FYI, Alaska has had Basic Income for awhile now. They call it something else and it fluctuates, but that’s generally what it is.
This is a fantastic article and incredibly interesting:
Last October, more than 800 people were enrolled in the basic-income plan, but they didn’t all receive the same stipend. There are three groups: One receives $1,000 a month for a year; another receives $6,500 up front and then $500 a month from there; and another gets just $50 a month.
While cautioning that this was only an interim six-month follow-up for what is a yearlong program, the researchers nonetheless found stark and encouraging changes in participants’ material conditions. Those who received $500 a month or more had seen the biggest gains. At the start, fewer than 10% said they were living in their own home or apartment, while at the six-month point, more than a third said they lived in their own housing.
Edit: The results make me think of all of these programs that are trying to get people out of homelessness should cut way back and just do a basic income with that money (with life help classes and guidance of course).
America has become so low on the taking care of our own scale that we have nowhere to go but up. I think this opens up the possibility of us putting in more programs at a local level. We all have to do our part and not expect people to swoop in and take care of us. We also have become numb to nothing happening with our federal government, we can’t give into that. It’s our local levels that make the difference, that’s why the nazis, evangelicals classists, and/or racists go after those first.
There are currently 47 active guaranteed income initiatives across the country, almost half of which target mothers and low-income people. Policymakers have also recently greenlit guaranteed income pilot programs in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Harris County, Texas, and Rochester, New York. While some of these programs are income based or target those impacted by racial inequity, others target different marginalized groups, like Durham, North Carolina’s cash assistance pilot for formerly incarcerated people.
Advocates across the board say guaranteed income programs uplift their participants and provide them autonomy. Research suggests that these programs, including the expanded child tax credit, enhance participants’ well-being, self-determination, and financial stability.
The lemmy.world politics posts and feels like the one at Reddit but also includes all of the trolls. I’ve seen it be successful at Reddit when it’s heavily moderated but that’s a lot of work. It’s too bad that the news stations or agencies don’t get together and put up their own instance. On Mastodon they have an aggregator that posts from all of the most reliable sources but no one uses it to talk really. I think there is a solution that hasn’t been thought of yet.
Someone (maybe you?) is going to have to be the place to go to as a place to trust to not alter headlines and aggregate. This issue here now is moderation, one person can’t do it all but no one wants to do it either