I think the point is if you reach a certain level of wealth your money starts working for you, and you really don’t have to do anything to get increasingly wealthier.
For the majority of people reaching a certain wealth point, they leveled up their knowledge with their incoming cash flow. For lottery winners and sports stars, they got plopped in the middle of level 20 among the sharks.
You are assuming everyone is sensible with money
Good mangers are not cheap
Rich people are rich because they see money as capital to create more opportunities with by investing it.
Poor people are poor because they see money as something to be spent buying more things.
That mentality doesn’t necessarily change just because you suddenly come into money.
For years of my life I was, if not precisely "poor," simply not making enough to save a material amount of money. I was nearly 30 before I got the first job that paid me $25K a year. I was not, IIRC, in serious debt then, but savings had never been an option before then -- and what I used those newfound riches to do was move out of the apartment I'd been living in, in an area of Tampa known as "Suitcase City" due to its transient population. (It was also known for high levels of crime.) I still wasn't able to save until that same job's salary was "readjusted for the market" to a whopping $36K.
There are things I didn't know then, sure; the company I was at had a 401(k) plan and I contributed to it, but I wasn't contributing at any higher level than the company matched. When my salary hit (gasp) $50K, that was almost certainly a mistake, but I didn't know that. When I was laid off I had maybe $10K in savings and another ~$15K in investment. By some standards I was still poor, but it was not because I "saw money as something to be spent buying more things" -- it was in part because I didn't know much about the best ways to save for retirement, but in part because I just wasn't making a whole lot of money. Rich people certainly "see money as capital to create more opportunities with," but heartwarming anecdotes about grocery baggers who became multimillionaires notwithstanding, statistically speaking, rich people also tend to hit relatively high incomes pretty quickly in life. (They also are likely to come from similarly rich families, which matters more than we often like to admit.)
This is one argument against UBI - money increase alone isn't enough, the knowledge increase needs to come from somewhere as well, and that's not something you can get in the mail.
For example: https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nba/2017/08/15/nba-tra...
I recalled Google also did a similar session before they went IPO. They hired someone to teach their employees how to manage the money.
I have to say though that Personal Finance is one of those "must-have" skill that school SHOULD HAVE taught in the first place. I still don't get WHY they did not. Even the basic (more than just "save your money" advise) such as life+health insurance, retirement, budgeting (let's leave out mortgage and investment).
Personal Health should be next. I know, I know, they have PE. But I'd like to see some basic Personal Health knowledge from "sleeping" to "eating-well". How to read ingredients from those junk foods.
The _truth_ about UBI is that a lot of poor people's UBI is going to get completely eaten by predatory opportunists and then they will be in the same situation they are in. What they lack is mentorship. Without mentorship from people good at managing money, UBI (I predict) will not help the poor as much as you think - it will mainly help the educated middle class.
For example, there is a (poor, uneducated) lady in my church receiving the equivalent of UBI from the state of Maryland. However, despite "having money to manage" she has not spontaneously gained knowledge in managing money. I sat down with her once to help see if there was something more she could be doing to stop being in crisis mode all the time, and it was insane how many "bills" she was paying that weren't even real bills. There's this dark network of predators out there that send out mail with a red stamp that says "Payment Due by 1/22/2020". It looks like a bill. But if you read closely, it's actually not a bill but some home security service they are trying to trick you into buying. An educated person tears it up and throws it away. An uneducated person thinks it's a bill to pay and loses a fraction of their UBI. Another fraction of her UBI was going toward utilities she wasn't even using. One bill was nearly $70 from Comcast for cable TV, but I pointed out that she didn't even own a TV. We freed up nearly $200/month that day just by cancelling services she wasn't using and throwing away fake bills.
> Unless you teach that in school, but that would be way too sensible
Schools didn't used to have to teach you every basic skill needed to thrive in society. You could pick those up on your own if you are motivated, or through your parents.
That lady was lucky she knew you. But what should have happened is her sister, or friend, or neighbor, or grocery store cashier, should have been able to smack some sense into her long ago.
Some protections will be necessary for sure. I think there are some anti-gouging laws on the books already, and that fake bill should be classified as fraud if it is not already. Bigger potential money stream for organised crime will motivate enforcement, I'm sure.
Schools teach about traffic lights and using microsoft word. Somewhere between those some budgeting and compound interest lessons would fit right in. Society change and will keep changing, schools might as well keep up.
It is a shame that scammers can exploit people that easily. But I think that just giving money to people wouldn't solve all problems anyway. Work, for example, is more than just a means of income. It is also a source of recognition, and missing recognition would make many people unhappy.
But again: what's the alternative to UBI?
Up until my mid-30s, "savings" meant building up enough of a cushion that when my current wobbly job collapsed, I'd be able to make it to the next wobbly job without going into serious debt. I understood about retirement savings at that point, but there were years I not only didn't have a 401(k) accessible to me but couldn't even fully fund my IRA. If I'd had a UBI of, say, $1K a month like Andrew Yang's proposal -- or even $750 a month -- it would absolutely have changed my relationship to savings. My IRA contributions would easily have been $50K or more than they are now, which would likely put me $100K+ ahead of where I am in savings by now.
Exactly my point - who is going to be doing this in the case of UBI? Written instructions that come with the check? Charitable middle class mentors? Paid gov't employee?
It's probably not why they're poor in the first place!
I used to work a minimum wage job at a supermarket, and I didn't have any spare money to "create more opportunities with", even if I'd wanted to. The highest ROI thing I could do was invest in my education, but that would have been nearly impossible without the generous scholarships and grants I eventually received.