Why do you think people getting a UBI would just sit on their asses? If I didn't have to work for a living, I'd be writing or making music all day or something like that.
Clearly the answer is no, and it will result in the ghettoization of those that choose to take only UBI for income. This already happens with Section 8 housing, retirement havens (eg Florida), and so forth. There would be an even starker contrast between the haves (who perform "useful" work) and the have-nots (who subsist solely on UBI for whatever reason).
So what's your solution? With the upcoming automation wave coming, UBI is way better than the status quo. What is better than UBI?
This is something that London (at least) does well. Council housing is available across the city and you will often find amongst some of the wealthiest parts of the city alternating blocks of council housing.
It might indeed be a pain point for those who bought their £1M town houses to then have to deal with the consequences of a whole council estate across the street but it has (so far) prevented the ghetto-ization of swathes of our capital which seems to affect Paris for instance which has less of a mix of housing.
Not quite, we are post-scarcity on the production of those items, but the economy hasn't caught up with it yet, which is why so many in the US severely lack one or more of those necessities .
As William Gibson put it, "The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed"
>Many of the poor in the US live more comfortable lives than many in less developed countries.
I would be surprised if you mean the US can't or shouldn't strive to provide better for its citizens ~300 million citizens until all other countries are caught up for the rest of the 7 billion people on Earth, which leaves me unsure about what you're trying to communicate with this.
>It's unclear why they are entitled to a particular standard of living that is rather generous by global standards just by virtue of their living in the US.
Clarity here depends on your perspective. From the perspective of humanity as a whole you are absolutely correct. From the perspective of citizens within a country the government's (ostensible) purpose for existing is to provide for their quality of life either directly by use of collected taxes or indirectly by facilitating socioeconomic activity.
I'm unaware of any significant number of US residents suffering from malnutrition due to lack of access to healthy food or exposure due to insufficient clothing or shelter. That is not to say there are none, but most are due to factors other than the lack of access to basic necessities.
>I would be surprised if you mean the US can't or shouldn't strive to provide better for its citizens ~300 million citizens until all other countries are caught up for the rest of the 7 billion people on Earth, which leaves me unsure about what you're trying to communicate with this.
What I am saying is that I question the assertion that everyone deserves a particular quality of life even if it must be attained at the expense of another.
Even if I were to accept that, the complications of such a position are legion. What constitutes the appropriate quality of life? What happens in an economic downturn when that minimum quality of life is no longer sustainable? Etc.
We say that noone should starve, and we redistribute wealth to food stamps.
We say that noone should die of preventable disease or injury, so we redistribute wealth to medicare and medicaid an emergency care.
We say that everyone should have an education, so we redistribute wealth to provide free public schools.
I'm not saying this country is doing a very good job of the above, and I'm not saying there's no opposition even to these measures, but we commonly accept this redistribution of wealth with no regard given to the value-adding abilities of the people receiving it.
So UBI is not some brand new thing we have to justify, it's more of the same, and the justification is the same.
I guess the real mental switch is instead of allocating these subsidies to specific buckets like "food", "health care", "housing", and having massive programs to administer and oversee the spending, can government actually get its head around the concept of just writing a check to be spent however? Maybe the problem is... who are the special interests greasing the wheels in congress to get the subsidy passed, when no industry in particular is benefiting from the subsidy?