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Comment by Slippery_John | Hacker News Reader

If a crisis exposes a weakness in a system and you're making a good faith suggestion is that really a bad thing?

The US government's attempts to keep people afloat have pretty clear major issues, for instance. Is it really a bad thing to suggest that we should have a system in place to handle these sorts of events, even on smaller scales, rather than trying to rush something out when every day counts? I'm not arguing for UBI per se, but if somebody thinks it's the right solution then is it a bad thing to argue for it when an example of its usefulness is fresh in everybody's mind?

Obviously there are plenty of bad faith suggestions going around too, but I can't help but think platitudes like this do more to shutdown good ideas than bad.

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Stimulus cheques handed out at an actual time of crisis is not the same thing as an unending flow of such cheques during times of low unemployment and economic stability. I think that distinction is being lost in this discussion.

A lot of people who are in favour of some kind of intervention right now aren't necessarily going to want to turn this permanent.

Is low employment meaningful in a low wage environment?

> Stimulus cheques handed out at an actual time of crisis is not the same thing as an unending flow of such cheques during times of low unemployment and economic stability.

A regular flow of such cheques compared to crisis stimulus cheques has a couple of advantages though:

- you don't have any ramp-up time, not even if you decide to up the amount in crisis time, as the system already exists

- you don't need to coordinate with multiple levels of governments, insurances, ... to hand out the checks

- regular UBI could offset/replace many struggling programs, from food assistance over child support to other financial aid, thus leading to less overhead costs

Most importantly, they provide a level of economic stability to the working poor that wouldn't happen with emergency measures.

... which is probably the reason so many wealthy-ish are against UBI. A lot of jobs would have to be paid their actual worth and in improved conditions (farming, nurses, education, trash/sewage, "nannies", cleaning, meatpacking) if those working the jobs would do it out of passion instead out of the need to survive.

An awful lot of the wealth in Western states is based on this exploitation.

> Stimulus cheques handed out at an actual time of crisis is not the same thing as an unending flow of such cheques during times of low unemployment and economic stability. I think that distinction is being lost in this discussion.

For people who can't gain sufficient employment* this is an ongoing problem. The people who won't want to make it permanent are people who do not experience this type of instability on a regular basis.

It is interesting how our first thought to say "obviously this is temporary" rather than taking an empathetic look at what it must feel like all the time for a segment of the population (I'm just as guilty here).

* i.e. 1 job, 40 hours a week or less, that allows one to live a fulfilling life

I don't think it's so much a question of bad faith, as that there are times when people are more receptive to taking drastic measures. I don't think there's anything inherently immoral about seizing those opportunities if one's proposal is moral. That doesn't mean that it's not being done consciously in many cases.

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