DigDoug

If the numbers make sense, do it.

I don't know why anybody would keep working if they have the option not to.

I went and it's the biggest regret of my life.

It took me 4 years to find a job after leaving because half of my prospective employers thought I was overqualified, and the other half said that completing university was no guarantee that I'd handle "real work". My first (and current) job is only tangentially related to my field and doesn't require a degree. Or any training, to be honest.

7 years before I bought my house, it sold for exactly half of what I paid for it. If I swallowed my pride and got a shitty minimum wage job straight out of high school, I wouldn't have a student loan (where I live it's interest free, but there's a minimum weekly payment which is based on your wage), I would have been able to buy a house so much earlier, for so much less money, and I would have been paying off my mortgage for so much longer.

In hindsight, my perspective is this: The actual cost of going to university isn't your student loans (which are still substantial, don't get me wrong) - it's time. Your degree has to make you so much more money than most people realise, because at a minimum you're starting your working life 3 years later than you normally would - that's 3 years you could have been working and saving, and 3 years of extra inflation to deal with.

...are The Smiths too obvious a choice?

Okay, but at least where I live, prices that increased due to covid haven't come back down. Supply is now high enough to satisfy demand, but prices aren't dropping. Of course, why would they? It turns out that customers have self-selected that they really don't want to starve or be homeless. Even if it wipes out most of their income.

Okay, why wouldn't UBI effectively get wiped out by inflation over 65 years, as has apparently happened to the prosperity in the '60s, then?

I wouldn't say it's a strong opinion, but I've never seen a convincing argument that "inflation" (read "greedy bastards") wouldn't immediately wipe out the extra income - which would be very bad if the UBI were to replace other forms of welfare.

I tried paying for something off Facebook Marketplace over the internet rather than in-person. Of course I was scammed. Fortunately it was only for about $35.