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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   17182 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026

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For most government benefits, you have long, messy, expensive processes to prove that you are actually eligible. UBI would thus cut down on a lot of caseworker load for social security for able-bodied persons.

I'm not sure I believe this. I am skeptical that you can replace the vast majority of the current welfare system with UBI if people find ways to burn through their UBI and have starving kids, etc. If anything has been learned in the past decade or so it is that crying children and women (especially the non-white variety) lead to infinite think pieces and action by NGOs, media apparatuses, etc. to ensure they can receive as much as possible from the government coffers or legal changes.

That just means that UBI is incompatible with ochlocracy, not that it's impossible to implement.

One can simply disconnect political power from the people who would vote themselves more largesse from the treasury, through cens or some other mechanism, and vast amounts of good governance suddenly becomes very possible.

All that's required is a system sane enough to recognize that dependents are not the equals of providers. The historical norm, really.

Hot take: if a parent is unable to spend a child's UBI on the child's needs, we have a fix for that. It is CPS. Anyone who can not be trusted with cash but only food stamps lest their kids starve is patently unqualified to raise kids.

I have come around to this thinking: "My UBI isn't enough to afford rent and food" is an evergreen opinion article, and can paper over your gambling and drug habits pretty easily. "I can't afford rent and food" in the current system (discrete section 8, SNAP) is a lot easier to counter with "you got $1000 for rent and $200 for food this month."

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