I think that government assistance should come universally. We should establish a minimum standard of living.
Everyone should get food stamps - enough to survive. If you want, you can eat cheap store brand food for free year-round, or you can spend your entire balance at the beginning of each month at restaurants and artisan grocers because you make enough to afford to buy what you want with your own money when it's gone.
Everyone should get healthcare, full stop. Going to the doctor should be free. Public health is massively important to a healthy society, we should treat that as core investment in the future of our nation.
Everyone should get some form of housing. If you want, you can use a voucher to get a tiny studio for free, or you can apply the voucher to a larger rental that you can afford with the money you make. If you own a real estate, you can forfeit the rental voucher for a tax credit.
Everyone should get some sort of universal basic income. With food, healthcare, and housing covered, it would just need to be enough to fill in the gaps for everything else. Enough to put gas in your car every once in a while, or to buy clothes, or anything else you might need.
At this rate, you could just sit at home eating Great Value brand canned food and wearing clothes from Goodwill indefinitely, but it would be a boring life. The majority of people would seek something profitable to do with their lives, and the "profit motive" of capitalism would finally be realized for every American when people actually work for a better quality of life, rather than for survival.
We could finally be free to pursue our careers or the sake of contributing to the world, rather than for the sake of "making a living". We could dedicate ourselves to noble yet unprofitable causes without relegating ourselves to poverty.
The issue is that the social safety net has been set afire and left to burn. We need a new narrative of a social structure. I have been calling it the 'social base case' instead of safety net.
there's significant evidence that this is due to corporate price gauging.
though it is fair to point out that this type of system does require a few other changes in the corporate incentive structure. shareholder primacy for one, would have to go. you can't really be a shareholder profit maximalist and provide a consistent standard of living for everyone in your society, because every possible penny is supposed to end up in the shareholders pocket. even if you could technically build more long-term wealth by investing in things like education, infrastructure, and affordable housing.
I don’t think it is. The price increases due to additional cash would not be addressed by restructuring corporate profits. Unless you want to do away with corporations all together and go full communist.
If people have more money, they will spend it. Since things are fixed, then prices will go up. That’s what happens when you increase money. You get inflation. You didn’t address how to stop that.
Everyone should get food stamps - enough to survive. If you want, you can eat cheap store brand food for free year-round, or you can spend your entire balance at the beginning of each month at restaurants and artisan grocers because you make enough to afford to buy what you want with your own money when it's gone.
Everyone should get healthcare, full stop. Going to the doctor should be free. Public health is massively important to a healthy society, we should treat that as core investment in the future of our nation.
Everyone should get some form of housing. If you want, you can use a voucher to get a tiny studio for free, or you can apply the voucher to a larger rental that you can afford with the money you make. If you own a real estate, you can forfeit the rental voucher for a tax credit.
Everyone should get some sort of universal basic income. With food, healthcare, and housing covered, it would just need to be enough to fill in the gaps for everything else. Enough to put gas in your car every once in a while, or to buy clothes, or anything else you might need.
At this rate, you could just sit at home eating Great Value brand canned food and wearing clothes from Goodwill indefinitely, but it would be a boring life. The majority of people would seek something profitable to do with their lives, and the "profit motive" of capitalism would finally be realized for every American when people actually work for a better quality of life, rather than for survival.
We could finally be free to pursue our careers or the sake of contributing to the world, rather than for the sake of "making a living". We could dedicate ourselves to noble yet unprofitable causes without relegating ourselves to poverty.