I understand that you are saying that even a single resource lacking for one to “thrive” is poverty, that poor people are not thriving today because they lack some resource that they need to thrive. This resource was not provided to them even after the society became much more productive, and hence probably would not be provided to them if we implement UBI. You try to show this using a counter factual country where the critical resource is oxygen.
I think this is a false equivalence. The ‘equilibrium’ that enforces poverty is actually people themselves. I think the resource lacking is not something essential to simply survive. Simple survival, after all, can be taken care of at a minimal cost if people can just move to some minimal remote place and raise chickens to eat or something. But they don’t, because they have needs that take money to fulfill. These ‘needs’ are not present before, but are present now, simply because it takes a lot more now for one to be happy.
I understand that you are saying that even a single resource lacking for one to “thrive” is poverty, that poor people are not thriving today because they lack some resource that they need to thrive. This resource was not provided to them even after the society became much more productive, and hence probably would not be provided to them if we implement UBI. You try to show this using a counter factual country where the critical resource is oxygen.
I think this is a false equivalence. The ‘equilibrium’ that enforces poverty is actually people themselves. I think the resource lacking is not something essential to simply survive. Simple survival, after all, can be taken care of at a minimal cost if people can just move to some minimal remote place and raise chickens to eat or something. But they don’t, because they have needs that take money to fulfill. These ‘needs’ are not present before, but are present now, simply because it takes a lot more now for one to be happy.