Anon OpinAs yet another UBI trial rolls past showing that it works really well, it's hard not to conclude that the main reason nobody adopts it is because bad employers don't want to give up their leverage over the desperate and poor to work in shit conditions for pittance.
Mike Taylor 🦕@anon_opin I don't think it's that. I think it's just so counter-intuitive that it would work, that people find it hard to believe all the accumulating evidence.
Proto Himbo European@mike @anon_opin "Give people who need money the money they need instead of trapping them in a system that guarantees they will remain poor and possibly die from medical debt if they dare quit their jobs" is only counter-intuitive to people who have been acculturated with a particular worldview, reinforced by other people like them.
"Counter-intuitive" is culture.
@guyjantic @anon_opin I don't think that's true. Most people, however fair-minded and generously inclined, when they first hear the idea "Let's have the state give absolutely everyone a fixed monthly payment that is enough to live on", will immediately think "Nice idea, but it would never work".
@mike @anon_opin That's why we keep talking and keep publicizing the research that shows it has a pretty high likelihood of working1
1 "Working" is also not a binary concept, but it's faster to say that than to say "high likelihood that the resulting sociopolitical-economic situation would in result in significant reduction in suffering and increases in many important outcomes, including economic ones, in the short and medium terms, and would likely have synergistic effects in the long term, though of course it would require oversight and a willingness to change tracks if this stopped being true, which incidentally are features of the current system that seem to be lacking."
@guyjantic @anon_opin Yes, and rightly! I love seeing these studies turn on on Mastodon; I will love it even more when I start seeing them in the Guardian and maybe one day the Telegraph or even the Mail. That's when we'll get the political will that we need.
(Agreed on the summary "working"! 🙂)