UBI works. The rich despise the idea emotionally.
When they run out of ways to rebut the math, they’ll trot out moral arguments. When those are rebutted, what they are really thinking might finally come out: “Please just die. That’s nature.”
UBI proponents (self included) spent a lot of time laying out the numbers, to address the “who’s going to pay for it” question, as if there’s even an option to letting people starve, but fine.
The problem is, once you show the “feasibility,” all that’s left is the desirability for or against.
At some point we have to start forcing the truth to the surface, the unmentionable thing they are really thinking: death before UBI.
Most of the rich and powerful don’t want it. Even after all the numbers are laid, and feasibility is proven, (it can be done without making anything worse for anyone) they’ll grasp for moral arguments or say “people need purpose,” as if forcing “purpose” on people in the form of labor when it’s not absolutely necessary makes any sense whatsoever.
They might just say it robs dignity, but it’s not their dignity, plus they’re wrong. It creates freedom and stability within which to finally build some dignity.
Bottom line? Social Darwinism. They’d rather cull the non-workers than give them money to farm their bodies like worthless plants.
Because that’s how warped some rich people are. They see non-working people as wasted space. They don’t want to pay for them to live. Unless they are heirs or spouses, of course.
When all the arguments have been hashed out, and if no paths of avoidance or deflection remain, the answer is: let them die.
Or, let them compete for scraps and the resourceful will live and define what tradable value means in a brave new hellscape, and the weak will die.
That’s the truth under the surface.
They don’t want to say it.
We don’t want to hear it.
And around we go.
Until it’s too late.