Universal Basic Income

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Tertiary education is work.

Who is this "we" of whom you speak?

It is certainly closer to "real" work in the "real" world -- secondary education (high school) was a walk in the park by comparison to just one of my engineering classes at uni.

If you enjoy it, is it still work?

I had a paid research position at the "uni" at the Electrical and Computer Engineering department. That was paying work.

Honestly, there are other ways for us that don't fit in. I felt like I was unemployable after college, and I felt that way while I was in. A year before graduating I started my own computer hardware business, I used the money I earned from the research position to start it. Earned enough money to feed me and pay off the tuition debt.

Yes.  To an engineer, any expenditure of energy to impose a force on matter is work.

Here in the US Andrew Yang pushed for this a lot in the time leading up to the democratic nominations.

On one hand he's right about this - automation will likely take our jobs, and at some given point the availability of work to provide a living wage for most people will get to where you're likely to have a big risk of populists demagogues flipping the tables because we're still (and likely still would be) operating under the frame of reference that what you do for a living equates with your genetic worthiness to be alive. That's a game you play when there's enough work, it's bad enough when you know that the economy has little or nothing for people with IQ's under 85 to do but.... what do you do when that goes up to 100 or 110? Therein lies the problem, ie. catastrophic market failure and that is a place where you either give a standard sustenance check to those who can't work or..... you do to them what the Chinese are currently doing with the Uyghur.

We are the taxpayers of course. I assume that includes you.

How much additional money would we have to spend to ensure that money actually reached its intended targets in foreign nations after that money was passed on to foreign governments. Or would we invade countries around the world to establish supply chains to deliver this money. Its a nice idea, but the logistics...

Once the tax money leaves our possession, it is no longer ours.  So if "we" are using "our" money to support the needy, then "we" are also using "our" money to build and maintain the military, to build and maintain the infrastructure, to engage in scientific research, and other such "useless" programs.

If the total global wealth is $360 trillion U.S. dollars, and if there are 7.8 billion people in the world, then redistributing all of the wealth equally to all of the people would result in each person receiving a one-time payment of only $4615.34, after which there would be a brief spending spree and then a total collapse of the global economy.

Investing in development of technologies that benefit the entire humanity is better than daily handouts.

Don't give them fish. Teach them how to fish themselves.

Liberal wackadoodle thinking: expect someone to give you a fish every day for the rest of your life. If they stop giving you a fish every day, blame them. If they suggest you should catch your own fish, call them a racist. If they don't then feel guilty, apologize and start sending you 2 fish every day, send them off to a re-education camp.

Good point. In many countries, it wouldn't be a problem but there would be some problematic nations for sure.

True. It's our mistake for wasting money on dependency programs that create poverty and the other useless programs you mention.

Roughly 6B around the globe are poor. I'm suggesting money would be better spent giving them Yang's 2.8T in cash each year rather than give it to the lazy in developed countries like the US. If my math is correct, that would be $467 for each of the 6B. It would be a challenge to ensure the money is not stolen and spent in a way that alleviates poverty rather than the dependency programs we are accustomed to that create it.

I wish we had national conversations more around what we as a society are trying to get out of this life. We might then look differently at what to put in place now.

The founders gave us a great start with this:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

The main function of the government was to ensure those rights. With amendments and other laws, the main goal of our government now ought to be ensure individual rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for every Americans regardless of gender, skin color, religious beliefs and sexual orientations.

Sadly our new government seems to want to divide all Americans by gender, skin color, religious beliefs and/or sexual orientations for the sole purpose of achieving a neo-Marxist utopian outcome for some groups by infringing on the individual rights of others even those guaranteed by the Constitution.

When we get back to the Constitution and laws that respect individual rights of all, we'll be just fine. People can decide for themselves what they want to get from life without others taking from them.

Sure, the Constitution guaranties certain rights to individuals, but leaves it up to the States to decide whom those individuals shall be.

Take "All men are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights".  Did you know that it was left up to the States to define the term "men"?  Did you know that the States first took the word "men" at its literal meaning (that of an adult male human)?  From there, the States, counties, and municipalities further defined "men" as those male humans of northern European descent (which countries varied) who owned land (minimum size varied) and who attended Protestant churches (denominations varied).  Only these "men" could vote, attend college, run for public office, marry the women of their choice, and own slaves.  This left out Africans, Asians, Middle-Easterners (especially Jews), and most especially women.

America declared its independence in 1776.

The Emancipation Proclamation took effect in 1865.

Women received the right to vote in 1920.

While the Left recognizes the civil rights of ALL individuals, the Right seems hell-bent on retaining those civil rights as privileges for only wealthy, white, protestant males to enjoy.