@Lauren B.
"Penises" -- WOW!
First of all, while several posters did say that the money would be squandered by some people (which is certainly true beyond a shadow of a doubt), only one poster specifically mentioned mothers. I went back and searched every single post for the word "mom" and "mother."
Here's the post:
@Alvin Sylvain
"And who can really blame the politicians? They'll haul out all the wheelchairs and one-legged war veterans and the crying mothers with babies sobbing about losing some benefit, and the moron media will cover it with relish. The politician will be made to look like the worst villain since Attila the Hun, and he'll cave like a week-old souffle."
I believe what Alvin was referring to was the optics that politicians would use in order to keep a welfare system in place. He believes that politicians will try to earn voter sympathy by showing all the personal stories of disadvantaged receivers of this benefit, and asking how are they supposed to live once this money is taken away because they now rely on it.
While UBI would certainly help these disadvantaged people, we already have welfare systems in place for that (which could be improved), and the vast majority of recipients will be every day people and a good percentage of them probably won't think long term and probably will spend the money poorly.
As another poster said, "being good with money" is a skill, and without that being developed giving people handouts isn't going to help. It's just going to give more money to ultimately go back into the hands of people who are good with it, just like Monopoly.
Second, you should not assume that all of us who do not hold your same political opinions had advantageous childhoods without suffering.
I come from a home with a single mother, who to this day has not received a single cent of support from my father, and came from a poor family and never earned a college degree herself either.
But you know what I DID see my mother do? Get a job commuting out of town so she could earn more income and save up enough money so she could buy her first house and we could stop moving from apartment to apartment or constantly be living with family members.
After she bought the house, there were certainly some scares. I remember when there were cutbacks in the California budget and my mother worried about losing her job. I remember her crying at the kitchen table afraid that we were about to lose the home she had worked so hard for. I remember having holes in my clothes and not telling my mom I needed new ones because I knew she didn't have the money and I didn't want to feel like a burden.
And it all worked out. My mother is now selling that same home, the first home she ever bought, and is retiring. She never pulled money out during the bubble, and kept working and paying her bills while all our neighbors got foreclosed on. All for me. And I can't thank her enough.
So despite growing up poor with a single mother as a parent, I turned out ok too. Why?
Because despite those disadvantages I pulled myself up by my own bootstraps and improved my life by my own efforts. And I'm willing to bet a majority of the posters in this thread have done the same.
Yes, we all see the posts where some 30 year old's granpda just died and he's wondering how he should invest the $2 million dollars he's about to inherit. But that's the exception, not the rule.
I remember when I was fresh out of high school working at a waiter while going to the local community college. I was waiting on this table where a kid my age was wearing a yuppie sweater tied around his neck like he had just come back from the country club.
He talked about how he wanted to go out of state to a major university, but his parents wanted him to stay local and offered to buy him a house if he did.
MAN I wanted to be that guy! I remember going back into the kitchen and realizing that I'm working a job I hate begging for tips just to try and get by, and this kid is getting a free ride wherever he wants to go with the largest safety net ever.
But then a few years later when I started bartending, I met one of the regulars who was my age and his parents owned the local bank. He was a trust fund baby without a worry in the world.
And you know what he was? A degenerate drug dealer. Same for his best friend Mike who's father was co-owner in the restaurant I worked in.
His father was LOADED because he owned a household product you've certainly heard of and had recently sold it. Yet despite having all the opportunity in the world, his son was a total pothead and spent his 20's pursuing a music career as a rapper. And you haven't heard any of his songs on the radio either.
Some people get advantages early in life, while others don't. But at the end of the day all an individual has is his own efforts.
THAT is what is important. That individuals learn from their parents to work hard and apply themselves to the best of the efforts. That's all anyone has. Because even if you hand someone a check for a million dollars, it's not going to mean a thing if they don't spend it wisely.
