I guarantee you every single person who is struggling day-to-day, and doesn’t have some kind of reality-altering mental illness, wants to improve themselves
I can 100% guarantee you this is false. You are dramatically underestimating the number of people who are happy living with nothing if it means they don't have to try hard.
I'm literally in favor of paying these people money just to spend, and totally supporting their life of uselessness, but we need to accept that a shitload of these people exist or there cannot be any serious discussion about reforms.
Most poor people want to not be poor anymore. However millions of poor people are poor because they don't want to work at all, and only work as much as they have to in order to pay core bills.
You can't "save" those people because they don't want to be saved. Their quality of work sucks, too, so the best thing for everyone is just to have a gov program give them cash and let them contribute to the economy through spending.
See, I think those people are living their best lives already. There's no saving them because there's nothing to save them from. But I bet they're still improving their lives in other ways. Everyone wants better for themselves, we just don't always agree on what better IS.
I agree that there is nothing to save them from. They absolutely get to choose how they want to live their lives.
I simply disagree with the idea that they want to better themselves at all. That doesn't match my experience, having worked with thousands of people like this.
I wasn't really big on UBI until I really learned about this entire subclass. They're what sold me on the concept.
Again, I think they're still working on improving their situation in their own way. They don't WANT what we see as improvement. For us, improvement is comfort, money to live, a better home, etc. For some people, it could be achieving an altered brain state. Or reading a book. Or spending a day walking the streets. All of this would, in my view, be "trying to improve your situation" - they all make you more comfortable. They may not be long-term viable, or what the broader society may define as improvement, but that's kinda irrelevant.
Or reading a book.
While I agree with you philosophically, this made me laugh out loud.
I can 100% guarantee you this is false. You are dramatically underestimating the number of people who are happy living with nothing if it means they don't have to try hard.
I'm literally in favor of paying these people money just to spend, and totally supporting their life of uselessness, but we need to accept that a shitload of these people exist or there cannot be any serious discussion about reforms.
Most poor people want to not be poor anymore. However millions of poor people are poor because they don't want to work at all, and only work as much as they have to in order to pay core bills.
You can't "save" those people because they don't want to be saved. Their quality of work sucks, too, so the best thing for everyone is just to have a gov program give them cash and let them contribute to the economy through spending.
See, I think those people are living their best lives already. There's no saving them because there's nothing to save them from. But I bet they're still improving their lives in other ways. Everyone wants better for themselves, we just don't always agree on what better IS.
I agree that there is nothing to save them from. They absolutely get to choose how they want to live their lives.
I simply disagree with the idea that they want to better themselves at all. That doesn't match my experience, having worked with thousands of people like this.
I wasn't really big on UBI until I really learned about this entire subclass. They're what sold me on the concept.
Again, I think they're still working on improving their situation in their own way. They don't WANT what we see as improvement. For us, improvement is comfort, money to live, a better home, etc. For some people, it could be achieving an altered brain state. Or reading a book. Or spending a day walking the streets. All of this would, in my view, be "trying to improve your situation" - they all make you more comfortable. They may not be long-term viable, or what the broader society may define as improvement, but that's kinda irrelevant.
While I agree with you philosophically, this made me laugh out loud.