@scottsantens it would protect children. A lot of parents are kinder when they are not stressed out of their skulls.

@scottsantens

Structural violence, i.e. policies that deliberately place some people in poverty, invariably leads to behavioural violence

@scottsantens
Imagine the double impact of
#UniversalBasicIncome
and
#DefundThePolice

And no, I don't mean completely abolish police. I mean pare them back to only dealing with crime response, and actual "protect and serve" - put more resources into social workers and mental health response.

Crime will go WAY down when almost nobody is desperate to feed their kids or themselves.

@scottsantens Sadly a bill for UBI just failed to pass a second reading here in Canada with 270 or so voting against it, and a mere 50 or so voting for it. 😔

@scottsantens yes, but that’s part of the purpose of America & capitalism. Keep plugging away, hopefully it’ll get some traction when whatever massive chaos event shakes the country or planet up.

@scottsantens I don't see how that will increase profit margin this quarter. Pass. /s

@scottsantens I learned something horrible this election cycle -- that some conservatives are willing to block or approve things with no regard how it hurts themselves, as long as it hurts *others* more. Their goal is to always make sure someone is below them.

From this perspective it seems unlikely that such a thing would easily pass in the US because it blurs the lines of the imagined classes. Seems like yet another reason to add to the list of "why we can't have nice things"...

@scottsantens This is no joke. Imagine how many potential Einsteins out there never we lost. Among all the various "Einstein worked in the patent office" and etc comments, we often forget he was actually fairly well to-do and had the freedom to choose the job that suited what he wanted (a boring simple job that let him think about other things while he worked.)

How many cures for cancer have been lost because the person who would have invented them works crap jobs and then collapses at night?

@scottsantens imagine if the people who end up in jail today for petty theft costing tax payers millions instead had enough basic income to eat and be sheltered costing mere thousands.