It is always different. I was born because times before I was born were different, my parents’ friends were being drafted and sent to Vietnam to die, or worse: come back mentally or physically screwed up. Apparently, being a new parent was just enough consideration to keep a college enrolled man from being taken - so they did that and here I am.

If it’s any consolation, there was a nuclear sized crater of a job market for all engineers (software and otherwise) after Reagan’s 8 were up. The .com aftershocks were pretty huge, and the 2008 housing crisis hit everything really hard too. Then in 2012 I got laid off due to the end of our Afghanistan debacle, then there was that pandemic thingy…

So, yeah, the current foolishness is going to make a hell of a mess, but there has always been a huge mess either cleaning up, or coming soon for the past 35 years, and longer I’m sure, those are just the ones I’ve been hit by.

Does no-one remember the image-magick anymore?

All in all UBI would be a huge win, the poor could do more with a STABLE small income than they do with the unreliable sources most of them operate off of now. The whole needs testing bureaucracy can just die, saving Billions in administrative costs. Services and stores for low income people could do much better when their clientele has reliable income instead of being flat broke most of the time.

In my view, if UBI is good enough, there’s no more need for minimum wage, let people volunteer if they want to, pay to work in some highly desirable jobs, that’s fine.

I believe the primary objection comes from the people who hire the poor, they can’t imagine people working without the imminent threat of starvation and homelessness. If that’s how your workplace operates, that needs to change. With UBI I believe a lot of workplaces would self-regulate better, because if they don’t their employees will just quit.

Florida is making some progress on the early childhood side, they’ve been funding “Free VPK” for 20+ years now, and unemployed parents get automatic “Florida KidCare” insurance (basically Medicaid) for their children. Still, could be better.

https://youtu.be/aLhWzMOccTg

Friend of ours is a well educated psychologist, she does drug counseling in lieu of jail. Convicts in her program have 4x better outcomes and her program (including her salary) costs the county less than 1/10th what they pay to keep drug charge convicts in jail. Still, the county refuses to expand the program and pays far more to send the majority of their drug cases to jail, because that’s how the judges want to handle it.

Rent by the hour does tend to be more expensive…

Taking a tangent: with reliable UBI the homeless and poor would have enough of their own money to reliably pay for whatever type of shelter they desire, whether that’s a standard apartment, or a bed in a big shelter dormitory for less per night, but either way: they would have a reliable source of income to pay for it with, instead of having to scrounge needs-tested welfare + whatever else they can scrape together.