One of the best posts I’ve ever read. Why is it so hard for people (Americans) to realize we can have this? Instead, we’ve lost what the labor movement fought and died for back in the days of Eugene Debs, et al, instead of building on those gains and arriving at a guaranteed income, as you’ve suggested, and so much more.
I have a friend who’s quality of life would improve infinitely with GNI, single payer healthcare, etc. She lost her home due to health problems, is legally blind, but refuses to sign up for medicaid and social security because she refuses to accept “welfare.” I tell her she earned those benefits by working her whole life, but she gets irrationally angry whenever I bring it up. Her heroes are Margaret Thatcher and Winston Churchill.
Instead, she keeps trying to pull herself up by her bootstraps, or whatever that cliche is that capitalists use to turn their crimes back onto their victims. The brainwashing in this county is so powerful.