This came from a self-reddit on basic income.  

What is sad is this person's reaction is very common when many hear about universal basic income.  The knee-jerk reaction is that people who advocate it are just freeloaders looking to do nothing all day long.

>A year or two back I stumbled upon a thread in some finance sub, probably /r/personalfinance. Someone was advocating for a basic income.

>I immediately lashed out with "oh piss off freeloader" or some such but with time to sit with the idea, time to reflect on the idea, time to see that automation might drastically hurt my own job in the next decade, time to truly ponder the implications of an automated society and a mass disparity of wealth... I've come around some.

>While I'm not thoroughly sold on the idea, I'm far more inclined to think it is something worth pursuing. I think it has great potential but might require a new generation to be raised with it in mind so that they might be good stewards of the resources they are provided.

>To anyone that might be like I was, seeing those supporting it as a bunch of lazy freeloaders that don't want to work, I urge you to seriously contemplate the amount of poverty in your own country. The amount of poverty in your own city. Look at automation, look at how much wealth the tiniest fraction of a perfect of the population holds. Something needs to change one way or another, consider being more open minded to some form of basic income like I now am.

>Edit: autocorrect fail: 'so that they might be gotgood'

https://www.reddit.com/r/BasicIncome/comments/8njq95/id_like_to_apologize_to_supporters_of_basic_income/

It is good that this individual maintained enough of an open mind to consider the changes that are taking place in the world around us.  Poverty is everywhere.  This is something that is not going away.   Holding onto the ideal that capitalism, at least as we have it now, is a system worthy of defending needs to go away.  This system harms most of the people who are under it.

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Universal basic income is about providing the basics in life.  It is not giving people an exotic lifestyle.  Some proponents say that individuals in western countries should get $1,000 a month.  This gets the opponents up in arms.  Have you ever tried to live on $1,000 a month?  Anyone who is doing that is maintaining a meager existence in a country like the United States.  It provides for the basics but not much else.

We understand this.  Our goal is to give everyone in the Manna project $1,000 a year.  We realize that is not going to have a major impact in the first world nations.  On the other hand, $1,000 a year in a some of the 3rd world nations is a major economic boom.  This is where it all starts in our opinion.

Supporters of UBI really need to push the conversation forward.  Automation is not slowing down.  The corporations are going to continue with their quest to eliminate costs (labor) at quickly as they can.  We see the process is taking place already.

The clock is ticking.  Manna is an operational universal basic income that went out to over 125,000 people this week.  We realize there is no time to waste.  Our mission is to get as many people into this program as possible.  Our next major goal, in terms of recipients, is 1,000,000 people.  To reach this level, we need everyone putting it in high gear.  Many are saying that the first job eliminating wave of automation could happen in as little as 5 years.  That is not a lot of time.

We love to read articles where people are opening their mind up to the concepts contained within UBI.  This is one of the most important issues facing humanity over the next decade.  As automation takes over a larger portion of the economy, how do people survive?

To get your weekly distribution of manna, go to https://www.mannabase.com to sign up.