Headlines latch on to the term UBI, and people largely are parrots so they argue about UBI specifically as well, but at the end of the day the question is whether its a good and sustainable idea for the government to decide what our basic necessities are then pay us so we can buy them.
> then pay us so we can buy them.
If a government pays out money then people can buy whatever they chose, not just food, clothing, and shelter.
Some governments have implemented schemes that issue variations on constrained cards (not generic money) that can only be used to obtain "necessities"
I often see people in my area chest that program. I know when food stamps were sent out or refilled because multiple people are at Walmart with a cart full of sodas. They buy as many as they can and sell it to friends or family to have the cash instead.
A variation of.
> We already have that in the US.
Dandy. It's different to cash.
> because multiple people are at Walmart with a cart full of sodas. They buy as many as they can and sell it to friends or family to have the cash instead.
Some do that, yes - not everybody can (eg: small communities, limited travel, few people with cash that want to buy basics)
I believe that governments have an obligation to their citizens beyond simply taxation and violence, and that the social contract goes both ways. I understand that I'm in the minority of Americans in this belief.
I can't justify more debt spending because we already waste money on stuff I disagree with.
In practice every time someone goes to Washington to "clean house" the first things to get gutted are welfare and funding for science and research, because unfortunately a lot of Americans consider all of that to be waste. Never the military, never the police, never the pork.
But for everything else - anything with the stink of "empathy" on it - every penny has to be justified. We cut USAID and destroyed a useful source of soft power and intelligence and killed hundreds of thousands of people because the program helped gay and transgender people in some way. We cut funding to HHS, welfare, science, education, infrastructure and the environment. And then we approved the biggest military budget in history. Netanyahu makes a phone call and we burn $3 billion dollars a month on a war with Iran without a second thought or an end in sight.
So I respectfully disagree. Under a fair and impartial system you would be correct, but American politics is neither. Every program isn't on the table. Every attempt to balance the books is nakedly partisan and punitive.
The US also has by far the lowest taxes (fed + state + local) among them too; in fact, the US could have raised taxes by more than 15% and still been lowest. [2]
Regardless, if someone does believe spending should be cut:
A) What specifically should be cut, and
B) What % of the 11.5T/y [3] gov spending does it add up to?
[1] https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/weo-database/2025/Ap...
[2] https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/weo-database/2025/ap...
[3] https://www.bea.gov/data/government/receipts-and-expenditure...
I also don't really care how much other countries choose to spend, that's their choice and I shouldn't have a say in that.
I wouldn't begin to say I have the answers or prescriptions to what should be cut, there's plenty of data I don't even have access to. From my experience with both local and federal governments, though, there is plenty of waste in the US that could be handled without even impacting the end result our programs are intended to deliver.
2. Regardless, is there any national politician who has named and quantified the items that they would cut that you support? As this seems to be a large, long-running problem within the right ('news', politicians, etc.) where they will make significant claims about wanting to cut gov spending without ever actually naming the programs they want to end and what % of the ~11T/y spending it adds up to.
3. You pointed to how when the US was set up in the 1700s that the government had different goals, and that there were wildly different expectations of what government provided for its citizens. Do you think the expectations of what the government provided in the 1700s are still relevant for what US citizens expect (or demand) of government services in the 21st century?
4. Every program will have some waste and abuse, and organizations typically then spend money to combat the waste and abuse. Sometimes the cost of fighting the waste and abuse, and/or the increased bureaucracy and overhead to prevent the issues in the first place, even exceed the costs of the waste and abuse that is being combatted. But my point is that even if waste exists, the 'cure' might be worse than the 'disease' in terms of increased costs, increased bureaucracy/oversight, etc. I'm not even necessarily opposed to those increased costs, bureaucracy, etc. in order to combat the possibly-smaller-costing waste and abuse, but it's certainly not as simple as "___ exists, so we can spend less by just not doing that."