[Schlagbohrer]

When Nirvana first moved from their small Washington town to Seattle, they were able to pay their rent + everything else from working minimum wage jobs for 2 weeks a month. They had time to practice music and pursue their art.

In an era where working a full time job is not enough to pay the cost of living, arts and culture no longer exist except as hobbies for rich kids. Seattle successfully exterminated their entire arts, music, and culture scene by raising the cost of living sky high.

[closewith]

> In an era where working a full time job is not enough to pay the cost of living, arts and culture no longer exist except as hobbies for rich kids.

In Ireland _today_, we are in an era where working as a nurse, paramedic, firefighter, teacher, etc have become unable to pay the cost of living, leaving them to exist only as hobbies for the rich kids who can be subsidised by their parents or immigrant labour willing to be exploited to avoid deportation.

Is health not wealth? Education? Safety? Or does only the arts deserve this subsidisation?

[kiba]

The problem with a UBI is not the UBI itself, but the fact that landlords could just raise their price.

You need to solve the contradiction within the economy in order to make UBI works.

The current way our taxation policy work is to tax labor and capital, which is the basis of our economy, while flinching away from taxing land, which derives much of its value from the surrounding economic activity rather than an owner's effort.

By the way, the UBI is an old idea. In the 19th century, it was known as the Citizen's Dividend.

[jimnotgym]

> Is health not wealth? Education? Safety? Or does only the arts deserve this subsidisation?

Isn't that a false dichotomy? We can only afford health or the arts?

[bugglebeetle]

Ireland’s affordability problems are almost exclusively centered around its housing crisis and they need to just commit themselves to over-supply induced wealth destruction for the landlord class and older generations. Thankfully, there demographics also support such a move.

[dahart]

> does only the arts deserve this

Baby steps. Everyone deserves it, but getting there in one step is politically impossible almost everywhere in the world. Nobody’s saying only the arts deserve subsidies. It’s just easier to justify. But if we want everyone to have basic income, we need to applaud whenever it happens, even if it’s a small subset, and argue they deserve it and that we should have more of it. Complaining about the unfairness of artists being subsidized demonstrates and adds to the political difficultly. If we accept that it’s unfair for a subset, then we might never get basic income since the rich don’t need it and many don’t want it.

[CGMthrowaway]

Citation needed. "Cobain thought Seattle was too expensive a place to live. He couldn’t even afford his Olympia apartment, and was evicted for not paying rent while he was recording Nevermind.”[1] "They supported themselves through food stamps, sleeping on porches."[2]

[1]https://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/music/that-magic-...

[2]https://www.livenirvana.com/interviews/9307rh/index.php

[maccard]

I live in a fairly expensive city in the UK. Working minimum wage for 2 weeks will pay for a room in a flat share, plus my households food and required bills.

It’s not much of a life but the same still stands in many cities.

[ace32229]

That's what, £1100 per month? How can you survive on that in an expensive city?