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Comment by luckylion | Hacker News Reader

The parent comment said "spend it all on an addiction or just make a bad investment". What do we do with the person that gets e.g. their 1000€, spends it on a night with champagne and then has nothing to eat or pay their rent? Too outlandish for you? How about if they spend it on a new TV instead of rent, a new smartphone or a couch?

There's a reason why some people get into debt because of consumption: they don't plan reasonably. What do we do? Do we not pay them UBI but give them pocket money and keep the programs in place to cover their rent etc because they can't be trusted to take care of that with money we give them? Do we just ignore their fate and watch them go hungry and eventually homeless? Do we keep the programs in place, give them UBI and then pay their rent when they spend the UBI but didn't include the rent?

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If a person consistently chooses to buy TVs instead of food, I think that strongly speaks for mental problems. I don't think it is really expedient to micromanage people, so if they spend their money unwisely and don't see a problem, that's tough luck. At the same time, having infrastructure to help them get back on their feet is important.

Again, I'm not sure about the situation in the US, but here we have public services that can help people go through debt restructuring or private insolvency in the worst cases, as well as offering classes for money management and centres for addictive behavior. This isn't done purely out of humanitarian concerns either, addiction and lack of education are problems that keep people from being productive citizens - and this is expensive for society at large.

>If a person consistently chooses to buy TVs instead of food, I think that strongly speaks for mental problems.

That's not right. We're living in a world like this. When people cite stats that show x% of people living paycheck to paycheck that is almost guaranteed to be due to over-consumption and consumer debt if your household income is above, say, $50-60k/year. At that level, you have over-consume to have nothing left over.

60k household income is 47th percentile

https://dqydj.com/household-income-percentile-calculator/

Most of the people struggling are below this figure and not because they spend too much on TVs.

Simple problem to solve. Give them their 1000€ a month daily at 33€ a day. If they blow it all, they are hungry that day but eat the next. With a debit card it shouldn't be too hard.

Most of the people who are poor are more careful with their money than you are. The poor aren't poor via consumption. They are poor because they lack the skills needed to earn a better living.

Citation needed. Financial illiteracy is a large driver for poverty, many people have a hard time understanding compounding interest and what that means for the idea of consuming things with credit card debt.

That just means that UBI does not replace a welfare system. You still need to have programs that provide a safety net for people who are irresponsible with their income, or just fall on hard times to the level that UBI isn't sufficient to dig them out.

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