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Comment by nnfy | Hacker News Reader

>because it allows us to legitimatze our individual struggles

Please. Have you ever lived in poverty? The people who climb out will tell you what other poor people are like. And I'm not just talking about poverty. Look at what former Soviets have done in NYC, especially Brighton beach. They live out of the projects but stereotypically drive BMWs. The average poor person is not your aspiring PHD father, its someone who wants a quick buck for the immediate future.

UBI is textbook ivory tower politics. Poor people aren't just poor because they have no money, and by and large throwing more money at them won't solve anything.

Now if you want to argue that the waste is worth it because of people like your father, thats plausible, but acting like UBI is the answer to poverty is absurd. Not to mention that you're essentially setting a demand floor which will "unnaturally" interfere with the economy. Another potential can of worms.

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> Please. Have you ever lived in poverty?

Yes, yes I have. I grew up in it. And most of my friends are struggling to make ends meet, working at restaurants, nail salons, and cafes. There's no glory in realizing that you can't make rent this month and you need to beg your landlord, or that after rent you have $50 leftover for a month's expenses. I've been there.

> They live out of the projects but stereotypically drive BMWs.

So you're using a stereotype to make your argument? Come on.

> Not to mention that you're essentially setting a demand floor which will "unnaturally" interfere with the economy. Another potential can of worms.

And you're arguing that supply is finite, which is the same fallacy that proponents of command economies often fall into.

I am not arguing that supply if finite, I am arguing that extraction of supply is finite and if you deincentivise millions of people from working while throwing money at them, you further reduce supply and exacerbate long term economic problems.

>So you're using a stereotype to make your argument? Come on

The argument could have been made without the stereotype, I agree. But it is an open secret in NYC that people, especially in Soviet neighborhoods, abuse the welfare system. I'll drop it though because I only have anecdata.

If you lived in poverty, surely you at least caught glimpses of all the people who were not quite as noble as your friends? I do not deny that there are truly hard working poor who need a little extra to climb out. I merely argue that there is a much higher proportion of poor who dont care to learn or work than you are acknowledging, and those are the people who will ruin any UBI experiment.

> The argument could have been made without the stereotype, I agree. But it is an open secret in NYC that people, especially in Soviet neighborhoods, abuse the welfare system. I'll drop it though because I only have anecdata.

I'd take those ex-soviet commonwealth welfare abusers anytime over welfare non-abusers any time.

These projects are one of the nicest and the most well maintained projects in the city. They bribe the city housing dept to win the lottery, and take the money they would have to spend on purchasing the property to maintain it.

Its almost like giving UBI to those who don't need it, give you a better society, and giving UBI to those who need it, you get more 'needs'.

open secret...people abuse the welfare system

I found one of them for you https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2017/07/15/fb...

thanks for trying but HN doesn't want to hear anything but socialist apologia these days.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15307091,

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13110004

You don't seem to grok the point of UBI because you seem to fetishize work. UBI is the solution to a world where work isn't an essential due to automation, there is more to being human than getting money for labor, we want people to be happy not working, that's the goal, so those people aren't ruining the experiment, they're proving it correct.

> Poor people aren't just poor because they have no money, and by and large throwing more money at them won't solve anything.

No, poverty is all about the lack of money. You cannot pull yourself up by your bootstraps if you have no boots. A relevant article about "the psychology of scarcity": https://thecorrespondent.com/4664/why-do-the-poor-make-such-...

You cannot pull yourself up by anyones bootstraps if you dont care to, or are so far removed from functional society that you dont know how a job works, and there is no one in your family or circle of acquaintances to teach you to learn because your community is as unortunately poor and ignorant as you are.

UBI is not the answer to the modern ghetto. Regardless of race. We much first address problems with culture and education. Or at the very least do that in conjunction with UBI.

> there is no one in your family or circle of acquaintances to teach you to learn [how a job works]

Sounds like you're having the wrong discussion. It shouldn't be about "UBI" or "not UBI", it should be about educating teenagers and young adults from poor families how to make a living and climb up the social ladder.

(I'm going to make a guess and say that this part of the discussion is ignored because it's evident that there's only limited space in the upper and middle classes of society.)

I do agree that you describe the crux of the issue, I'm point it out because I believe it is the reason UBI will do more harm than good, until we address the problem of education first.

But, consider this: when we say education in the U.S., we imply westernization. Who are you to decide for someone else that their culture of ignorance is inferior to your own?

Life is complicated. I personally feel that, historically, these kinds of interventions do more harm than good. If you really want to solve a problem, you dont need to add regulations, you need to get more people on the same page, in general.

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