1. It’s highly inflationary.

I think this is a great example of what rich people think of us. This user would prefer that people stay homeless rather than cut back on their own luxuries so that others could have a more decent basic standard of living. Those with stable basic housing feel like they’re living the normal life they have earned, while a homeless person is someone that doesn’t want to put in the work to carry themselves. The wealthy think the same way about the middle class: we want vacation days, adequate healthcare, a proper justice system, and decent wages/fair business market without earning it. However, a person with a 1 bedroom apartment they can call home is a king to a homeless person.

2. It fosters dependency, and it’s an economic-political death spiral. People on UBI vote for those who support higher UBI.

Here, we see the privilege. They argue that it would foster dependency because the poor would vote for better standards of living rather than contribute to society. To think this way, we have to ignore that someone cannot meaningfully contribute to society without adequate housing and stability. We would also have to ignore our own hypocrisy in that we argue that our standard of living is dependent on the exploitation of the homeless.

These are the very same arguments that the wealthy elite use. If they pay more taxes, then the poor will slippery slope the vote by electing politicians that continue to increase taxes on the rich, while also becoming dependent on that revenue.

I am in no way attacking this user. It’s a common mentality across the world. Instead, I’m using their comment to point out how this mentality works regardless of social class: 1) my efforts have created my wealth, while everyone else that is poorer just doesn’t work to earn it, and 2) helping the lazy poorer people makes them dependent on my work. Repeat these arguments in some fashion all the way down to the poorest person on Earth 🔁