Ruslan Sent Me a Video on Universal Basic Income

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Okay, well, quick video today. I've got 20 minutes, so why not? Yeah, I hope you had a good weekend.
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I definitely did. I had a great weekend. I was able to lead singing at worship again this past Sunday, and that was a lot of fun.
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I sang two psalms, which if you are not on the psalm singing bandwagon at this point, you should definitely jump on.
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We do psalms and hymns. We don't do any spiritual songs, though, so are we really being obedient?
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I don't know, but in any case, mixing some psalms with hymns has been just such a blessing to everybody.
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It's just such a good reminder to know how God has dealt with grace and kindness towards His people all the way from the
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Exodus and before that to today. It's just so amazing to be on the Lord's side.
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What a great time to be on the Lord's side. Today's video is actually inspired by Ruslan KD.
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Ruslan texted me a while ago, and he's actually texted me a couple times over the past year or so.
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He always catches me when I'm on vacation. For whatever reason, he texts me when I'm on vacation so I don't get to his thing that he says right away, and then
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I forget about it. A while back, a number of months, he said that this video reminded him of our conversation that we had, and he wanted to see why
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I would be opposed to this. So let's watch this. It's a five -minute video. It's called
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An Alternative to Welfare, and it's about—well, we'll just let you figure out what it's about.
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So remember, Ruslan KD was interested in my thoughts as far as why I'd be opposed to this. Let's continue.
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Oh, no, hold on. Let me get the audio set up. Man, I should have done this before. I'm in a little bit of a rush, so—oh, man.
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Hold on, I gotta pause the video. All right, we're back. I got my audio set up. Let's do this. There.
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Very winsome music. David Rubin, very winsome guy. So I think—
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What? Commercial? What about if someone was non -binary? You know,
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I've never seen this movie. I've heard it's good, but— Non -binary? Universal basic income is a better solution than the hodgepodge of different intrusive programs that we have now.
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And let me explain briefly why. So what we have is a system—and
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I wrote a pretty interesting paper— So this is about universal basic income, and I've obviously opposed universal basic income on principle.
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I think it's ungodly, unbiblical, and I said so in my conversation with Ruslan. And so this guy is presenting universal basic income as a solution to the disaster that our current welfare system is, which
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I definitely agree. Our current welfare system is a complete disaster. There's all kinds of perverse incentives that are created with our current welfare system.
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Like, so many times, like, you get someone that if they go to work, they lose all their benefits, and so they actually end up with less than if they don't work, and so it creates this perverse incentive to not work, because you'd be irrational to go to work if you end up with less than you do if you don't work.
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I totally get that, and I feel for people that are in those situations. I know many people in situations like that.
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So our current welfare system is a complete joke. It's a complete disaster. It's ridiculous.
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It hurts poor people. All of that. I'm opposed to that, but I'm also opposed to universal basic income.
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So let's hear why this guy thinks universal basic income is a better system than our current welfare system.
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...about this. The state is a bad polygamist. So if you're a single mother and you have three children, if you do one of two things, you'll lose your support from the polygamist.
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If you get a job or get married, if you actually do something that achieves some independence for yourself, your husband, the state, will, oh, we're getting a divorce.
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I don't care. I mean, you can have more children. You can have affairs, but you have to be committed to me. You can only get support from me, which means that you can't do any of the things that normally we would expect.
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And this is a conservative position, I suppose. Family and jobs are good things. Being married and having a job is a good thing.
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We have what many people, even on the left, have called the cliff effect.
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This is what I'm talking about, the cliff effect. ...benefits. It's unreal. If I'm in Section 8 housing and I get subsidies for food,
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I get subsidies for school, the first $10 ,000 that I earn costs me $12 ,000 in benefits.
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So the poor aren't lazy, they're rational. Right. So they're really, it's just a realistic game.
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I can't stand it. They're not playing a game, but they're making calculations. It's a game in the technical sense.
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They have choices, they have strategies, those have payoffs. It's unsurprising they pick the ones that make them better off because they're desperate.
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They can't afford to lose this money. So what he's saying is exactly what I just got done saying.
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I think every rational conservative acknowledges this. And this is the thing, poor people aren't stupid.
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They do what benefits them. And so often it benefits you to not work according to the way our system is set up.
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Our system is set up to create a subservient underclass.
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It's set up to create a permanent underclass that's just completely dependent on daddy state and all of that.
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He's 100 % right about this. People are making rational choices. Look, if I work my tail off 40, 60, 80 hours a week and I have a family and all this kind of stuff,
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I will end up with less opportunities to feed my family than if I just let the daddy government take care of me.
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And so they're making a rational choice, at least in the here and now. Because of course we know with a longer time horizon, eventually the government's not going to be there.
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Eventually they're going to cut your benefits. Eventually you're going to get screwed by this awful, awful state that we have because that's just how it is.
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And so there's not enough money to go around. And so eventually you're going to get screwed. By the way, that's what this inflation is as well.
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All these programs and all the spending that we do with money we don't have, it ends up creating inflation, which ends up screwing you over because your benefits don't actually rise as high as inflation is in reality.
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They lie about the inflation numbers too to keep benefits low. So they say we have 8%, 9 % inflation.
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Really we have like 18 % or 20 % inflation. So your benefits are being cut in a very secretive kind of a way.
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So you end up getting screwed by the person that you trusted to provide for you. So in the short term, poor people often are making very rational choices when they choose not to go to work or choose not to get married or whatever it is.
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In the long term, it's a very bad choice, but they're desperate. They're living hand to mouth.
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They can really only think about the next six months or a year or stuff like that. So it's a very difficult situation that poor people are in, and it's our horrible, horrible, evil, upside -down system of charity that puts them in that position.
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And so I completely agree with everything he's saying. Let's continue. For example, if you're living through subsidized housing in a decent area with a decent school, and even if you don't want those handouts, well, then you realize, well,
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I'm going to have to work a third job now, and then they're going to force me to move to a much worse place to live.
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I can't afford child care. So the state is a bad polygamist. Let's stop doing that.
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I agree. Let's stop. So to me, universal basic income that's given without strings, we take the money that we're spending now, which is enough to give at least $12 ,000 per poor people.
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So you take the amount that we spend, divide it by the number of people. Where are we taking that from? Well, all of these different subsidy programs.
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Oh, so all of the subsidy programs then go to... Including Social Security. So we eliminate all those.
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Use that money to give everyone a universal basic income. And if they get a job, they don't lose it.
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If they get married, they don't lose it. They can use it for child care. One of the problems that people have now is it's very specifically tied to a location.
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So I can't go somewhere where there's a job because I won't be able to establish myself. Universal basic income, if it's federal, means that if I'm living in Cleveland, Ohio, I can't find a job, and there are jobs in Texas or North Carolina.
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When I get there, I get universal basic income. I can establish myself. I can pay for child care.
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I can look for a job. And there actually are jobs in those places. Yeah. Do you find a conflict between your libertarian self and your economist self on this?
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Because it seems like the idea of a libertarian going, the state should give people money probably seems like there's some fight there, right?
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Sure. If you're a destinationist. If I'm a directionalist, I say, dude, we're giving them the money now.
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Right. We're already doing it. We're already doing it. Let's just give the money in a way that's cheaper and increases liberty.
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That's the basic directionalist argument, which is why Milton Friedman and Charles Murray are both in favor of universal basic income.
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But it has to be a directionalist argument. We're already doing that. Now you're saying we shouldn't do that.
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Great. Good for you. A lot of people were upset that he said that Milton Friedman was for universal basic income. Milton Friedman, in my opinion, he was.
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He had this idea for a thing called the negative income tax for people that make under a certain amount.
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You pay income taxes if you make over a certain amount, but you get income tax, so you pay negative income taxes.
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You get money if you make under a certain amount. It's basically the same thing. It's not exactly the same, but I could see why someone would just call that a universal basic income.
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I'm not too uppity about it. I like Milton Friedman, so I'm not too uppity about it. But I'm not too uppity about saying he was for universal basic income.
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I think the negative income tax, in many ways, is just a universal basic income. Anyway, let's continue.
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We are. And unless you have some plan to end that and improve things, I'll listen to that.
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Right. That's not what they say. They just say, well, the government shouldn't be giving out any money. It already is. Let's do it in a more efficient way.
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And in a way that increases liberty. Because I can then spend that money on what I actually want.
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We give these vouchers for food. Which, I don't really want to buy that. I want to buy something else.
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I sell my food stamps for 50 cents on the dollar. If I get money, I already have 100 cents on the dollar.
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Now, the one objection that people on the left make is, Well, those poor people, you know how they are.
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They'll spend it on the wrong stuff. Is that the argument that people on the left make? Isn't that usually from the right where they'll say they're going to spend it on booze?
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Of course some people, a surprising number of people on the left believe that. Of course they believe that.
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The people on the left think that poor people are essentially barbarians. They don't know anything.
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They don't get it. And that's just, I'm here to tell you, I know a lot of poor people. There's a lot of poor people in my family, and I know a lot of poor people.
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They're rational, just like you and me. They make rational decisions all the time. Now, they have vices, just like you and me.
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And they have different vices than so many times what we have. Whereas rich people might have a vice of,
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I don't know, drinking or spending money on Amazon, poor people would have a vice of doing something totally irrational, which would be the lottery.
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Spending money on the lottery. That's irrational. Just like being addicted to alcohol is irrational. Anyway, let's continue.
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It sort of divides the usual political split by how paternalistic they are.
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There's a whole bunch of people on the left that really think experts and, honestly, rich white people should be saying, here's how these people should be spending their money.
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They're real racists. The people on the left, they're the real racists. Did you see that meme?
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Oh, man, I wish I had it up. Let me see if I can find it. Hold on one second. This one right here.
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This one had me dying. You are racist. No, you are racist. You guys are gay.
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So good. So good. All right, so Ruslan, you wanted my opinion on this, and I will give it to you.
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I completely agree with the man on the right that if the two options we have are do welfare the way we currently do it or just give people cash like in a universal basic income kind of way, if those were the only two options, of course, universal basic income is far superior.
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Far superior. The current welfare system is a complete disaster. His criticisms of it are exactly right.
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That's correct. Universal basic income is far superior. So eliminate all the
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Medicare, Medicaid, health plan, food stamps, all that stuff, Social Security, all of it, and just give people cash.
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That would be far superior. 100 % totally agree. And so if those are my only two options,
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I'd sign up for universal basic income today. I think negative income tax makes a lot of sense.
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Compared to the current welfare system, of course it does. It makes way more sense than the current welfare system.
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100%. But Ruslan, the thing is, those aren't our only two options. Those aren't our only two options.
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So I guess what I'm saying is, and I'm not mad or anything, my opinion is that these guys are right.
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If those are the two options, either spend money the way we're currently doing it or change to a universal basic income,
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I'll sign up on change to universal basic income every day of the week. But the thing is, those are not our only two options.
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I think that we have to actually go for the right thing here. And the thing is, the government doesn't have any money of its own.
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Every dollar that they have, they take from somebody else. They take from our neighbors. They take from my neighbors, your neighbors.
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They take from me. They take from my family, and all of this kind of stuff. And they need to stop doing that.
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They need to stop doing that, stealing money for purposes that they were never intended to have.
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And so my position, Ruslan, is that the civil governing authority is a deacon of wrath.
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That's what the scripture says. It's a deacon, a servant of God, and it's supposed to be executing vengeance upon the evildoer.
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It's a revenger of God. That's what the Bible says. That's what it's for. It is not an organization that's intended to be charitable.
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It's not an organization. It's not an instrument of grace. It's an instrument of wrath.
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And the thing is, we need to make sure to keep that. The government needs to stay in its lane.
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The church ought to have more money. The individuals in the church ought to have more money to be charitable than they currently do.
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Now, quite frankly, even though we get taxed out the yin -yang, we still are very charitable, and we would be even more charitable if we didn't get taxed to kingdom come.
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But the thing is, so we need to stay in our lanes. The government is not an instrument of grace.
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It is not a deacon of grace. It is a deacon of wrath and vengeance. That's what it's for. The church and the individuals, that's where charity needs to come from.
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It needs to come from private locations. We need to empower people to have even more capital at their disposal to give even more to the poor than they already do.
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That would be the ideal situation. And the reality is that universal basic income, I agree with this guy, would probably eliminate some of the perverse choices that poor people have to make.
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Like he said, that cliff, the benefits cliff, where if you get married, that's a negative. If you get a job, that's a negative.
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Stuff like that. That would be good. But universal basic income creates its own perversions. We'd be foolish to think that let's say you made $50 ,000 the cutoff point.
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So if you make $50 ,001, you get taxed. But if you make $49 ,999, you get a negative income tax.
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And that's the line, right? We'd be fools to think that all the people that are making just slightly above $50K wouldn't strongly consider, you know what,
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I'm not going to work that hard. I'm not going to work that hard at all. Because really, if I get a raise, it's going to be like a 1 % raise.
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And honestly, if I don't get a raise, it's fine. I still get the negative income tax and all of that kind of stuff.
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There's all kinds of perversions that would go into universal basic income as well.
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And because it's not the rightful role of the government anyway to be doing this, it's always going to lead to perversions.
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You can't get blessings from God by disobeying him. That's not how it works. God doesn't bless countries or nations that disobey him intentionally and pretend that it's good, right?
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In any case. So that is my opinion. Thanks for sending me this video,
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Ruslan. Again, honestly, I'm with you. UBI would be way superior to what we currently do, but it still would create all kinds of perverse incentives.
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It would still be a problem. It's still not ideal. It's still not the role of government. And it still won't be blessed by God.
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Private charities, churches, that's the people.
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Those are the people that are dispensing God's grace, God's blessings, and things of that nature.
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I hope you found this video helpful. Yeah, I guess that's really it.