Why do you think so many people oppose a UBI even when nearly everyone can acknowledge that our current social safety net is deeply flawed?
By: @stonemasoner
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Caption says: "You can't pay people to do nothing!"
Universial basic income has become a heavily politizied topic that has been inadvently attached to the ideas of socialism. The people who oppose it usually fall under two categrozies, this is an extreme generalization. The two categories entale the wealthy who profit off of thelower classes debt and poverty, or those who have a deeply rooted and ingrained fear of socialism that believe universal basic income is one step away from full socialism. What the latter group of people do not realize is that a universial basic income would effective boost the encomoy and productively within the United States. They also have skewed misconceptions that universial basic income means that every person will be making the exact same amount no matter what their job is. However, there are other options for forms of universal basic income that allow people to still make competitive wages but have an additional aid or safety net. A universial basic income where all people are allotted an addition "allowance" or sum of money each month which can be used for any a number of things would boost the moral of the lower class and allow them opportunities to improve their situation. This can also aid the middle class by having addition saving for emergencies or even for luxury items. Either way this money would flood back into the economy in some fashion. Additionally, people have this misconception that the universial basic income is basically free money, however this money would come from taxes and other programs that is then recycled back into the average persons pockets instead of to the government that has a habit of using money in ways that do not actually benefit the people. Overall universial basic income has become a political hot topic purely because the government or lobbiests know that if they do not polorize the topic their will be a sum of money that they can no longer funnel for their own benefits but instead they would have to use the taxes for thing that they were originally meant for, to aid the people and the economy of the United States.