User talk:DannyBIGjohnny
Universal basic income[edit]
Addicted to the basic income? (since you can't possibly believe everyone would turn into a drug addict if they had a UBI) There are people who can't stop working even if they had a universal basic income. My uncle worked 63 hours a week for 12 years for peanuts without even national holidays off before being laid off at the traditional retirement age, and he could've lived off savings for 2 years to get a bigger government pension while barely making a dent in his savings. Even if he didn't wait to collect Social Security the government would've given enough to live on till death. He has no dependents, lives stingily and wouldn't mind if his savings were burned with his corpse. He also knew it was nearly impossible to get a job in the Great Recession. Instead of retiring he trained for I think months on the only job he could get in the Great Recession (training included things like catheters, cleaning feces, emptying bags of shit for patients who have no colon anymore and sponge bathing 90 year olds knowing full well that he was wanted to retire after 2 years of this. He had no seniority and got the worst locations, was assigned to neighborhoods where hot food is only sold at the sidewalk through bulletproof glass and he could've gotten killed. And only made $7-$10 an hour.
Alaska gives about $600-$2,000 a year to every Alaskan right now (citizens get a share of the profit in return for allowing drilling in part of the wildlife refuge) and the world didn't end. It helps reduce inequality. Does that make many Americans or even me want to move to Alaska? Hell no.
Most workers probably wouldn't want the cut in their standard of living if they just got a basic living. And some people are prideful and want to keep up with the Joneses. Would you Mr. OP really stop working if it meant you had to live in a 300 square foot apartment that's 55°F at night* and can't fly, can't take vacations, can't pay cable, had to use public transport and maybe can't even afford Internet? (*that's the legal limit in New York City)
Hardworkingness isn't everything, either. My uncle worked hard in the US since his twenties and is so frugal he barely uses light bulbs but he's still poor because he only trusts bank accounts. Trust fund kids on the other hand would need to be monumentally stupid to need to work a day in their life. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 20:17, 17 January 2016 (UTC)