r/Glasgow Tools

My fundamental belief is that everybody should be born into a life with a good standard of living i.e. making life worth living which isn't the case for many people coping on the breadline. It's not 'lazy' to wish that everybody had a decent standard of living without being exploited.

UBI would be the baseline 'wage' for everybody and any work people do on top of that would be supplemental income, so anybody wanting to work would be able to. Working should be a choice, not a necessity.

The problems you mention, while personal troubles, are highly linked with social issues that need to be examined and tackled from a wider social perspective. From your phrasing, you're making it sound like the individuals are the problem as opposed to the circumstances surrounding them that cause it. These underlying issues need to be solved rather than the blame being placed on the individuals suffering from them.

People use services such as hire purchase to gain these items and can't actually really afford to purchase them outright. This is a result of the aspirational consumerist lifestyle that we're constantly bombarded with. As for gaining the luxuries in the first place, these are things that make life enjoyable: why should they only be available to those fortunate enough to get a well-playing job?

Why can't people being given the money to pay those bills also become a normal part of life?

We disagree on it being an issue. I see it as a massive one, where people should be able to have a life without being exploited by to work in meaningless, low-paid jobs purely to subsist. I believe UBI would not only increase quality of life for many people, it would also increase attraction to the workforce and contribution to the economy.

> Surely the answer is to make sure there is a significantly sensible level of minimum wage and to ensure corporate tax frauds are pursued?

I completely agree, but what is the likelihood of that happening under the current UK government?