Universal Basic Income

My brother likes to say that the difference between "no money" and "a little money" is far greater than the difference between "some money" and "a lot of money". It might be the difference between taking on second (or third) job and staying home with the kids or staying home and studying.

Is your brother on the dole as well?

Odd nickname for your mother. Did she work in the tinned fruit industry?

Also, I know I sound like a broken record on this, but this is not a UBI.

this was a pretty good approximation.

there's been some contention over some people being told they have to pay more than the taxable portion back, but nobody who got it and actually needed it seems to have.

it gave a lot of people the means to take care of themselves far more independently than current welfare or disability benefits provide (probably because it was more than double what they get), and at a literal fraction of the administration costs.

Canadian effort calling for UBI.

It used to be a Republican talking point in the Great Society days that it would be more cost effective to just distribute the money spent on programs instead of building the bureaucracy to administer the programs.

given the cost of commercial real estate and the available info on what welfare workers get paid, yeah... we could triple welfare rates in Ontario and still be saving money.

we literally proved it during CERB.

San Francisco launches guaranteed income program for transgender residents

And suddenly everyone will become transgender.

Yes, because living as a gender you don't actually identify with and being shit on by bigots all the time is so appealing.

People do a lot of stupid shit for free money or even a promise of free money. One only has to look at the midterm results.

Let the record show that FF is willing to cut his dick off for

Or, does he think that he's a beautiful and unique snowflake who couldn't be persuaded for less than the average monthly rent of a studio apartment in SF? And everyone else would fall for such a thing.

Who said anything about cutting your dick off? All you have to do is claim you’re transgender and everyone is supposed to accept it without because if you question it, you’re transphobic, a bigot and probably a Nazi. This is the world that liberals have created now.

Well, for starters, you don't seem to be concerned about people getting their tits cut off because they're trans. Next, aren't you the guy who gets upset every time someone calls you a Fox News watcher/Trump supporter? Why is it okay for you to object to someone identifying as trans, but not okay for folks to object to you claiming you're not a Trump-thumper?

See my signature.

"Kings owe their origin to war"? So does the United States of America. Oh, do you mean

So, you agree that no matter what your objections might be, we have every right to say you support Trump. And you have no right to object to it in the same way no one has the right to object to being misgendered. Good to know.

I'll admit to still finding Chappelle funny despite a lot of the stuff he's said, but that quote from him is stupid and so are people who agree with it because it all boils down to politeness.

It costs you nothing to refer to someone by their preferred name/pronoun/gender. Nothing.

To do otherwise just shows that you're an asshole.

He goes on to say, and I quote, “ nigger is a pronoun.”
I have no problem calling @Amaris a she. I’ve done it ever since she transitioned. Some rando, that’s a little different. Don’t push your politics on me and I won’t push my “religion”, if you can call it that, on you.

"Push."

Except, it isn't. It's a noun. And not only did Richard Pryor stop using the word but even Zombie admitted that it was such a loaded term that nobody ought to use it anymore. Yeah, yeah, I know, I know, there's variations of it that are considered somewhat acceptable and Mark Twain was being radically opposed to the mindset of the era when he created the character of Jim but without the recognition of the status of how awful that word is, one cannot appreciate what Twain was doing with the character of Jim. Because in an era when people of color (regardless of if they were Black, Native American, or some other group that wasn't from a small sliver of Europe) weren't considered human, by having Jim being a father figure to Huck, Twain was doing the equivalent to having someone like Divine be a positive role model for kids.

You know why I'm alive today? Because when I was in college I found people who accepted me because I didn't fit the norm of what a cishet white male should be. I wasn't interested in nailing any woman I talked to and I liked geeky things like Star Trek and Star Wars. The vast majority of those folks were individuals who weren't cishet white males. they were the ones who stepped up when I was about to get my ass beat by some bully because I didn't conform to his idea of what a man "should" be. You're a decade younger than I am (I'm 54 in a couple of days) and the world changed dramatically in that 10 years of difference between us. And today? Well, the odds of you getting your ass beat because you like Star Trek or Star wars are vastly smaller than when I was a kid. You seen the movie Heathers? Made in 1989, where if you drank bottled water and you didn't wear an OSU shirt you were a fag? Yeah, that's exactly what it was like there in the 80s. I speak from experience.

Why is a rando different? If someone you've never met before is wearing a suit and tie, do you demand that they say what their pronouns are? Or do you address them as male because that's how they present themselves?

Oh, what the hell, I think it's time to go all


On the idiot boy. If @spot261 returns, he can confirm from a professional standpoint, but @Ancalagon can confirm that I've mentioned this to him well before now, but I know what it is like to deal with someone who is mentally ill. In the middle of the pandemic lockdown I had an old friend of mine show up at my door asking for a place to live because she was about to be homeless. Within a few minutes of talking to her I realized that she had developed schizophrenia and if I didn't take her in, the odds of her getting professional help were less than nil.

So I did. Later, I discovered that because I wasn't her lover or a relative, it was impossible for me to force her into the treatment she desperately needed. I did everything I could to ensure that she at least had a roof over her head. My hope was that I'd be able to either convince her family to have her committed or get her family to admit that she needed help and get her into treatment. Turns out that her family was hot garbage and thought that she was just "going through a phase." So they wouldn't take the steps necessary to get her committed.

While dealing with her, I tried my best to pretend to accept her claims that she was a supernatural being who was battling various demons, etc. My reward? She quite literally ripped the door to her bedroom off of its hinges and beat me with it. (No, I didn't call the cops because they would have assumed that I was lying and that I was beating her.)

Objectively, anyone who knew her, as I did, 10 years ago, and encountered her now, would know that she has a severe mental health issue and needs to be in treatment. I have, for a variety of reasons, a number of trans friends. Some of whom I've known before they were willing to state that they were trans. In not one of those cases have I thought that they were mentally ill by declaring themselves to be trans. Because the essence of who they were didn't depend at all upon their gender. My schizophrenic friend? Oh, yeah, there were radical changes about the things they talked about before the disease hit them and what they said after. My trans friends also never tried to beat me with a door.

So eat dick. When I described my friend's behavior to @spot261, do you know what he told me? He said that her condition was so bad that if she showed up at any doctor's office in the UK for something like needing a COVID vaccine they'd automatically admit her to a mental health facility so that she could get treatment and be a functioning member of society. Thanks to so-called "liberty-loving" pricks as yourself, not only can't I get my friend into treatment for a condition that impacts more Americans than gender dysphoria (and related conditions), but you're actively supporting things that would put my friends in the trans community (none of whom have tried to beat me with a door) at risk.

Actually, let me rephrase that. Eat necrotic dicks and contract some horrible disease like gangrene and be denied the treatment you need to survive. Because healthcare in the US is expensive, so people can't exactly pick and choose who they see or what treatment they get, assuming that they can afford treatment, even with insurance, so they have to take what they can get (assuming they can get anything at all). You want to prove that being trans is some kind of mental health issue? Then let people have cheap access to mental health care. Regardless of if they have insurance or not. You won't because of "freedom" or some other bullshit you throw out. But how can someone be free if they don't have the means to seek out the medical care they need, regardless of if it is mental or physical, and if they're insured or not?

Aww, I'm sorry @Bill Carson. I forgot that by writing something more than a few sentences long it would add proof to the idea that you can't be bothered to read. Would it help you if I uploaded a video of me saying the same things? Or would you just ignore that as well since it conflicts with your view of reality being controlled by space aliens?

You could start with eliminating the straw man’s, condense your point and do away with the bloviating. Don’t worry, I’ll get back to this when I have more time.

Sure, just as soon as you point out the straw man in my comment.

"straw man's"
this is possibly the most grammatical mistakes ever made in a single word.

‘It helps with my stress’: US basic income project shows signs of success

I feel like a broken record, but that isn't a UBI, it's a BI. (Or maybe a TBI -- Targeted Basic Income?) And at this point I think there's no question that those can be valuable tools.

For those who's world view is built around the idea that "socialism" is evil and especially the government helping anyone is especially awful, it's a closed question that is impervious to any kind of argument.

Alternate title: "Not worrying about dying homeless in a ditch from starvation and exposure because I lost my job reduces my stress levels."

This is where my senior advocacy comes into play. No senior citizen should be homeless, without food, water, or medicine. A society can be easily judged by how it treats those who can no longer contribute on the same levels as their 20 year old counterparts. A society that throws old folks away because most of their "value" has been extracted is an evil one.