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I agree with you. People need purpose. Ever owned a Border Collie and spent a couple days without giving it something to do? It's bad for the dog and dangerous to your home.

So yeah, even if no one ever really enjoying being a gas station attendant, getting up and going to a job to earn money and pay rent gives people a sense of purpose. And UBI definitely risks robbing people of that purpose. The alternatives to UBI soon though might be creating fake jobs or letting people starve.

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Why would the billionaires do UBI instead of Running Man (latest one)?

Not a joke.

All the folks talking about it, it sounds like some sort of fantasy cope to get people going along willingly into the void.

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Because if there's one thing billionaires should be scared of, it's billions of people suddenly becoming estranged from the economy. Having governments pump money into the consumer demand side becomes a no-brainer once you're faced with deflationary depression and mass unemployment. Your investors then get taxed to give UBI to workers to spend money to keep your sales up. It's probably the one form of wealth redistribution that on balance would actually benefit billionaires.
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That assumes a degree of forethought and worry about consequences that the current set of billionaires seems to be studiously avoiding - along with half of everyone else, near as I can tell.
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