No it isn't. That isn't their personal project. That's all they have the choice of doing. Most people do those things because they're tired after working hard all day for a wage that doesn't give them enough money to do anything but sit in front of the television. If people had the opportunity to work a bit less in their job so they could do something worthwhile and fulfilling in their spare time, most people would take that choice.

Just look at people who inherit or win large sums of money - a few of them end up just enjoying themselves, but most use the money to follow a cause that they think is something worthwhile. There's no reason to believe the same wouldn't be true (on a smaller scale) for a minimum income.

Exactly this. After 8h+ of work for little pay, 2h of commute, doing dishes, dinner and cleaning up, you'll have little energy to do anything creative and constructive. Grabbing a beer and turning on TV is a way to relax before turning in and beginning another day of work. I don't know of a person who doesn't have dreams, hobbies, things to do and create. Many just put it off until they can buy a house, until they can have children, until they can give children education, until they retire...

I think it's even more than necessarily being tired: people who struggle to get by are in a constant state of alert and stress that precludes developing their creative dreams (they will have them, but can't advance on them). When you're stressed you'll turn to addictions to relieve yourself: chocolate, TV, MJ, and some will even become workaholics through some basal twisted work ethic.

That's true, and I know this from first-hand experience. Having an unstable financial situation, constant worrying about how to support 4 people and pay off debts pretty much shuts down your ability to do anything creative. It didn't stop me from having ideas, it didn't even stop me from starting to work on them - but it always stopped me from advancing on them - either because lack of money for required components, or being too stressed out worrying to focus on doing the theoretical/software work. So in the end I ended up opting for watching stuff and reading books as a way to tune down before another day of struggle.

And yes, I am a programmer. You can end up in shit as one too. I made some bad work choices before and ended up pretty much not being paid for half a year.

I think especially because us programmers can get high salaries early on, divorced from both having to save and from the experience of handling money well, we can fall hard. I also speak from personal experience :)/:(

I wish there was a translation of this article into English: https://decorrespondent.nl/511/waarom-arme-mensen-domme-ding...

Basically, the argument is that "poor people do stupid stuff" because their "intelligence bandwidth" is being sucked up by worry about where to find the next meal/rental payment/etc. leaving no brainpower for what we well-off and spoilt folk would call "constructive pursuits".

> Just look at people who inherit or win large sums of money - a few of them end up just enjoying themselves, but most use the money to follow a cause that they think is something worthwhile.

Can you link to the source you're talking about? I'd like to know more about what you're referring to.

"a few of them end up just enjoying themselves"

The studies about people that win money that I've seen paint a different picture: 75% lose it all within 5 years by not spending wisely. It's the same with professional sports players and it's gotten so bad, they have started getting them mandatory professional money managers. I believe there is a Netflix documentary about it called "broke".

People that inherit money also end up losing their money at crazy rates unless they already had good money management skills/work for a living/were taught these skills by their parents.

I don't see how this would be any different with a basic income. Not to mention the inflation caused by it. For starters, all businesses will have their prices raised automatically to pay for the new taxes imposed on them.

In the very beginning, it might be okay in terms of economics. However, as the years go on, more and more people will start relying on this basic income and we will have entire generations of people depending on it to live.

Costs will only increase and there will be less people actually contributing to the tax base, so the only way to continue to pay for it is tax increases on the middle class and everyone else making a living. It's basically just another wealth transfer scheme to people that never earned it.

The sad fact is that the vast majority of people never really appreciate things they haven't earned and although a basic income sounds nice in theory, it's a flawed idea that is doomed to fail.

With all due respect, I think you're really confusing two arguments here; that of wealth distribution and the concept of basic income.

The idea of a basic income does not imply a transfer of wealth from the middle class to the poor or indeed anyone. You could set up a basic income system tomorrow in your country of choice and set the level of basic income and tax levels so that everyone, at least in the beginning, was receiving the same amount of cash they were before.

One advantage of the idea is that the poor would be more likely to find work because the marginal reward is so much better, leading to more wealth overall and sharing out the tax burden more. At least in theory.

"With all due respect, I think you're really confusing two arguments here; that of wealth distribution and the concept of basic income."

With all due respect, you are only thinking about basic income at step 1. I laid out what will happen at step 10..which is essentially a wealth distribution system.

"You could set up a basic income system tomorrow in your country of choice and set the level of basic income and tax levels so that everyone, at least in the beginning, was receiving the same amount of cash they were before."

Where do you think the money comes from to support a basic income? Who do you think pays for it?

"One advantage of the idea is that the poor would be more likely to find work because the marginal reward is so much better"

How so? Many poor people will be content with not finding work and just living on basic income. Minimum wage will also need to be well above what they are getting from the government, further contributing to inflation.

"leading to more wealth overall and sharing out the tax burden more. At least in theory."

You are only looking at it from one very small part of it.

> In the very beginning, it might be okay in terms of economics. However, as the years go on, more and more people will start relying on this basic income and we will have entire generations of people depending on it to live.

The problem here is the rate of job automation vs. job creation right now. There's a lot of indicators suggesting we're reaching - or have reached - the tipping point here. We need a strategy for giving people breathing space to adapt to job destruction. That might be a basic income, or a government backed re-training program perhaps. But the latter supposes that there are enough jobs to go for when they re-train. And the one big growth area, IT, is really limited to those with some some degree of innate talent. Think about all those truckers and taxi drivers who are going to see their jobs eliminated by maybe 2030.

I know one single person like that. Wanting this is very rare and is a symptom of mental illness. Most people want to be proud of something. Granted, MacDonald's will have problems finding workers, but is that so bad?

Living in Norway it is perfectly possible to slack off on the taxpayers' bill if you want to, but society doesn't collapse. People would rather avoid the low status associated with living on the dole than avoid work.

I don't think the point was saying that Norway is better than the US. The point was saying that in Norway, it's already possible to live with tax payers money, but most people choose to work. So based on the assumption that US people are as good as Norwegians, most US people would still choose to work even if they didn't have to.

> It's enough for you to have a few immigrants here and there to become extreme right.

If you refer to the current government, consider that the junior partner in the current government that is considered "extreme right" by Norwegian standards would mostly be Democrats by US standards. E.g. a substantial proportion of them are in favour of continuing most of a welfare system that would get even many Democrats in hysterics over socialism.

By Norwegian standards, the majority of the US Congress is "extreme right" and threatening "US conditions" is a well established way of scaring people.

...in which we learn the real reason you're against UBI—dirty immigrants.

I really fail to see how this can be anything other than an argument for more fair/equal wealth distribution in the world. If most countries had similar schemes, then why would the "good for nothing immigrants" go to supposedly scrounge in the US?

If all the world wealth was distributed to everyone on the planet, we'd all get about $51,000.

I'd be drastically better off.

Yeah, at that rate, I'd only be very slightly worse off than I am now. Maybe I'd lose... $10k-$20k to Horrifying Socialism. But hey, I could restart my life from a capital base of $51k.

You can take all our money, we'd still have plumbing, fiber, and college degrees.

If everyone is equally worse off, won't it lead to lower prices?

That's a lie and you know it. Isn't the refrain parroted here all the time something about bootstrapping your own company? Self funding and all that? While a couple people like you might throw a tantrum and decide not to participate, I imagine there would be 5x that many in poorer places in the world who would be able to more than make up for it and start amazing companies.

It's less socially destructive than many of the jobs I know.

No it's not. That's what they do to try and escape the stress from having a shitty job. Which they have to do in order to have a roof over their heads.