this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2025
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Ok just answer me what you will cut then. If you're saying this will be balance sheet neutral and no new taxes will be raised then your going to need to make cuts to fund it. It'll cost $4 trillion, let's say part of that is existing deductions so bring it down to $3.5 trillion.
A large majority of the federal budget is defense(war) (~$1T), Medicare ($1T), social security ($1.5T), and medicaid ($0.9T). Food stamps are pocket change $0.1T. Even if you completely eliminated defense any sort of major new spending/tax cuts of this magnitude will require major cuts / elimination of those programs. This is why the Republicans went after Medicaid even though they knew it would be unpopular, there was nothing else to cut that would give them the money for there tax cuts.
Medicare / medicaid costs $2 trillion and you aren't getting out of that with universal Healthcare. Yes universal Healthcare would be cheaper for those currently paying into the system but the people on Medicare and Medicaid aren't paying into the system, it is supported by the tax revenues of working people.
How is it more difficult to cut UBI as opposed to other programs? If the fascists are in control of the government they can pass/repeal any law they want to further there war aims. Doesn't matter if it's food stamps or UBI. They can also purge you from the UBI roles just as well as they can food stamps for un-American activity or whatever. Ultimate power still lies with the state to tax and distribute funds, UBI won't change that.
If that's the case then we need to take away there actual power which lies in there control of capital / the means of production. After UBI the billionaires will still have there money which they can use to fuck up the planet and our democracy. Seriously you need to read some Marx, you understand class conflict and that increasing worker power is good but you fail to understand capitalist power and the ways we can actually take it away.
UBI of any amount always costs 0 at most. Any cuts to any programs means negative costs. This doesn't mean that no one's tax rates go up, but collectively, the discretionary government collects less from us, where UBI counts as a negative collection amount. UBI does permit getting rid of basic exemption without being regressive. That some investment income gets tax breaks now, like the basic exemption, can be calcuated as no tax break, but a cash cheque exactly equal to the tax break just for those who receive it. The optics of giving cash cheques just for the investor class would seem like bad optics compared to cheque amounts spread out to entire population/citizenry.
The guideline for program cuts is whether everyone, 90th percentile, or 80th percentile of program benefactors are better off with UBI instead, or with program adjustments, or program has ultra narrow oligarch benefits at great social/pluralist costs.
SS is close to UBI for seniors. Not only did 8 years of GOP threats to SS solvency not happen, latest tax bill gave a "tax free" boost to SS benefits. The prequel to our current political reality is the movie American History X. The core complaints are that lazy negroes get a larger share of social benefits. And Rodney King incident is also a a key historical marker. Everything was still right with America when the Rodney King verdict occurred. Our political timeline exists as a reaction to the George Floyd murder verdict. UBI is unassailable because there is no reason to hate it, and no one getting "undeserved" extra benefit. Demonic fanatical hatred supporting fascism comes from some plausible manipulation vector.
Rich people employing you to make useful stuff that makes you both richer than not having that opportunity, while again, making useful stuff that people want, is not the problem with free and fair markets. Rich people corrupting markets through political sponsorship/control is the problem. Democracy has never resulted in freedom. UBI is more important freedom. Instead of trolling concern over UBI getting cut, you should be worried that genuinely needed/useful road maintenance still gets budgeted. UBI prevent corruption through an obvious individual cash sacrifice for any corrupt proposal, but even useful programs face an uphill battle when you are taking cash away from everyone to accomplish it.
Marx, by advocating for labour supremacism, is not much different than con artists (Ayn Rand, OG) simping for Oligarchism. There is not a more deserving supremacist class to the wrong question of which class should that be.