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Here’s another: the suicide rate for Americans aged 15 to 24 years old
Or: Lung cancer incidence in India.
- no mention whatsoever of any existential threats e.g. climate change. full faith and credit in Mr. Market to get us out of that rut, i guess
- some definitions of "efficient" involve avoiding policies in one country (say worker and environmental protections) by moving to other countries where those same protections don't apply. so efficient seems to also mean unlawful, to some extent
- we'll trust these UBI recipients to "do the right thing" and goose up the economy immediately, instead of say, investing in infrastructure (education, health, science) that we know is a far better investment in the long term future of the country (but can't really be done by a couple grand per month, more like... i dunno... a government thing)
There are schemes for UBI which don't actually cost much more than we are spending. It can just be reallocation with more clawback in taxes. If one wants to.
The fact is less people suffer every year, the economy in the west had its biggest expansion every, and there more fruit especially in america than ever.
Every single thing we know about redistribution of wealth does the exact thing he said. Where is his proof.
The fact is suicide rates are higher in wealthier neighborhoods and in richer countries.
https://business.time.com/2012/11/08/why-suicides-are-more-c...
Not to mention the fact that you believe giving more money to someone who is addicted to alcohol or drugs will be better instead of worse. The only thing you've given them is money money to buy alcohol and drugs with no extra motivation or responsibility so they'd stop doing those things.
And all of this defiantly ignores the enormous impacts of globalization and automation on the "getting better" metric.
Random side note: Here is a snippet from a Lincoln speech -> https://pastebin.com/quzZqbiK
My unsubstantiated opinion would be that Marx probably would of changed his mind at some point about making it some sort of collectivist movement.
Its still capitalism and you still benefit from seeking a higher paying job but once most jobs have been automated it lets people easily train for better jobs without having to constantly report back to some defective government department and randomly getting their payments cut off.
UBI can exist in a capitalist structure. It can exist in another structure. It is not mutually exclusive to capitalism.
And when the day comes where job demand far exceeds supply, it becomes an inevitability.
Basically.
> Its still capitalism
No, the modern welfare state is not capitalism, it's a socialist reaction to capitalism. Now, you can argue that it's “bourgeois socialism” that tends to reinforce the class relations of capitalism and which inevitably reverts to capitalism, as Marx—before it actually became the thing that completely displaced old-school capitalism in the developed world—did. But it's not, itself, capitalism. And the longer it is the dominant system of the developed world without a wholesale reversion to unmitigated capitalism, the harder to pure form of the Marxian charge against bourgeois socialism is to defend.
You have this completely backwards. The welfare state is a bourgeois reaction to socialism. It is capitalism with a bulwark against revolt.