This is the best summary that I've seen about the differences in state finances. It makes sense. I noticed most of the large states are conservative in general except California, I assume for the same reason as FL since their industry is Ag based. I don't understand how Kentucky got so bad. Maybe talking Conservative but the same spending as other states. I live in ground zero of liberalism (SF Bay Area) and the crazy salaries they pay City workers is so they can live in SF which is simply unaffordable for anyone not a millionaire. Even here the people pulling huge pensions just leave for NV, AZ & FL when they retire. They only like CA for getting pensions not when it gets time for being taxed. The user taxes & fees in the SFBA is crazy high -- sales tax where I live is 10.75% and the crazy bridge tolls go up every few years. I think it is now $6. When I first got here in Oct 1981 it was $0.25 and t was supposed to be fazed out to zero. They even have "toll roads" now for the wealthy to bypass the Proles.
I know, there are plenty of trust fund babies out there living on daddy's money when they did absolutely nothing to earn it. And in fact a good chunk of it is courtesy us taxpayers thanks to step-up basis and trust rules that ensure it comes to them tax free. So you're right to question those worthless sacks without jobs getting money they don't deserve. But we're not talking about those scofflaws in this conversation, we're talking about poor people who don't have many chances is life. Heck, 20% of the homeless people in Chicago have a job but not enough money for a place to live. Those are the kind of people the UBI conversation is about.
I'd rather engineer and build communities of structure and guidance than write them a no-strings-attached check, even if it costs a bit more. A lot have made bad decisions in the first place.
Again you're right, those trust fund babies shouldn't be allowed to get away with bad decisions and should all be one bad decision away from being cut off from all their funds. Your concern about laziness, tax burden on the rest of us, and punishment for bad decisions on this group of lazy layabouts is laudable, it's great that you're concerned about these things and especially about how this group gets away with these behaviors you disagree with consequence free while poor people don't. But again, UBI doesn't concern them, it concerns poor people. I have an interesting experience in "structure and guidance" that I've observed in firsthand, it may at first seem off topic but is actually highly related. Government employees used to have to submit detailed travel claims after every trip with a receipt for every meal and incidental expense they incurred. After all, we wanted "structure and guidance" on how they spent the government's money while traveling, right? In a flash of uncharacteristic brilliance, someone did an analysis of how much it cost to collect and review all this information. It turns out, just giving an employee a set amount of money each day of travel, even if they hadn't spent a dime and didn't "deserve" it (sound familiar?), cost the government far less in total than the previous system. The reimbursement is based on the location you are traveling, i.e. you get more for a day in Chicago than in Liberal, Kansas, but has nothing to do with what each employee actually spent. And it's still far cheaper than the structured system that ensured only legitimate costs were reimbursed. This is exactly the underlying concept of UBI. And incidentally something I would think my small government conservative friends would fully support. It may very well be that we're wasting tons of money for the various bureaucracies required for "structure and guidance", and simply taking all that money and distributing it instead, while initially counterintuitive, is actually cheaper and more effective than what we're doing now (and don't claim you can make the bureaucracy more efficient if you haven't ever worked in one). And as a useful side benefit, poor people get to be treated with the same humanity as rich trust fund kids given the same behavior sets, which you surely support?
It's a concern about decision making capacity, not laziness. Reducing the crime rate should also be a major objective.
OK, substitute "decision making capacity" in place of "laziness" in everything I just typed. What does it change?
I'm not sure what I am asserting has anything to do with character or not. Here, let me do this for you and let me know what specifically in it you disagree with. Again you're right, those trust fund babies shouldn't be allowed to get away with bad decisions and should all be one bad decision away from being cut off from all their funds. Your concern about decision making ability, tax burden on the rest of us, and punishment for bad decisions on this group of people with poor decision making is laudable, it's great that you're concerned about these things and especially about how this group gets away with these behaviors you disagree with consequence free while poor people don't. But again, UBI doesn't concern them, it concerns poor people. I have an interesting experience in "structure and guidance" that I've observed in firsthand, it may at first seem off topic but is actually highly related. Government employees used to have to submit detailed travel claims after every trip with a receipt for every meal and incidental expense they incurred. After all, we wanted "structure and guidance" on how they spent the government's money while traveling, right? In a flash of uncharacteristic brilliance, someone did an analysis of how much it cost to collect and review all this information. It turns out, just giving an employee a set amount of money each day of travel, even if they hadn't spent a dime and didn't "deserve" it (sound familiar?), cost the government far less in total than the previous system. The reimbursement is based on the location you are traveling, i.e. you get more for a day in Chicago than in Liberal, Kansas, but has nothing to do with what each employee actually spent. And it's still far cheaper than the structured system that ensured only legitimate costs were reimbursed. This is exactly the underlying concept of UBI. And incidentally something I would think my small government conservative friends would fully support. It may very well be that we're wasting tons of money for the various bureaucracies required for "structure and guidance", and simply taking all that money and distributing it instead, while initially counterintuitive, is actually cheaper and more effective than what we're doing now (and don't claim you can make the bureaucracy more efficient if you haven't ever worked in one). And as a useful side benefit, poor people get to be treated with the same humanity as rich trust fund kids given the same behavior sets, which you surely support?