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Comment by guzfip | Hacker News Reader

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This is one of the most horrifying comments I've ever read on this website. It's practically a dare to engage in civil war or violent revolution. People fundamentally experience life as relative - as changes. You can't "deprogram" intrinsic human nature. You can just wait 80 years for everybody who's not used to the new hell to die.

Have you lived on 12k?

24k puts you near poverty level. $1k per month will cover food expenses, it won't cover transport, shelter, and certainly not medical. On 12k per year you have enough money for food and praying that an emergency doesn't happen. It's hard enough living on 40k, and I'm not even in a place where costs are expensive.

UBI will never happen in the US so it's a pointless argument. Americans will have plenty of pawn shops and short-term loan services to help them, though.

“Let them eat cake,” or whatever.

Telling a bunch of people they should accept being poorer has always worked out historically.

I've only been slightly joking about starting a company that sells rope and guillotines.

> $12k a year is plenty. You’ve just been raised above your natural standard

I get where you're coming from. But this is politically unworkable, and for good reason. If AI increases productivity, that means more wealth, which means living standards should go up.

> $12k a year is plenty. You’ve just been raised above your natural standard

> I get where you're coming from.

You do? Have you priced out health insurance lately? I have. Insurance on HealthCare.gov for my partner and I would be $1700/month for what amounts to catastrophic coverage. It had around a $20k deductible and covered nothing other than an annual physical prior to hitting the deductible.

With $2k/month to work with between us, I guess we have to somehow find a place to live and eat on the remaining $300 as we pay for our functionally worthless health insurance since there is no way in hell we could afford to pay the deductible.

Their numbers are wrong. But their fundamental argument, I believe, is degrowth. That we are living beyond our means and need to lower our expectations of living standards to live sustainability. It's a philosophically-appealing argument. It's also wrong, unless you're comfortable with the inevitable violence and likely population destruction that would need to ensue from an honest degrowth agenda.

It didn't even occur to me that this might not be sarcasm until I read the other comments. Still fighting to hold onto that assumption.

You mean 12k a year with free housing and free health insurance?

These years, knowing what is tongue-in-cheek can be very difficult.

Many of us see the current US administration as being either real life modern nazis or heavily influenced by such.

So I was wondering; are you being serious?

You basic income is 12k? Congratulations, your rent just went up 12k a year.

This is the part most people don't understand or intentionally ignore. It will accelerate inflation and 12K will be worth even less than it is now.

The natural progression of this is always government price fixing, which always ends up in complete destruction of the economy.

"lifestyle expectations"

$12k might be nice in parts of Asia, but when the average rent is $1200/month, it doesn't go very far anywhere in the US.

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