I didn’t know what the middle income trap was. I just looked it up and Brazil is one of the 2 examples used on Wikipedia. It appears from a little bit more Googling that Brazil’s GDP is much higher than it’s average income, suggesting that it could afford a UBI, no? (Edit: South Africa is the other one, and it too appears to have higher GDP than income in comparable adjusted PPP dollars.)

I might contend that all countries might be able to afford universal healthcare, that universal healthcare is actually less expensive than private for-profit medicine regardless of the size of the economy. While people do contend that publicly funded healthcare might be more expensive, it seems like the main argument these days is that the quality of public healthcare is lower than free-market healthcare. Unfortunately, the US is one of the biggest and best examples of being both more expensive and worse quality than a decent sized list of countries with public healthcare.

Yea I would like to learn more about a 2nd or 3rd world take on UBI because it doesn’t even seem in reach in first world countries. Same goes for the 4 day workweek!

There’s a lot of countries that provide free healthcare, like Cuba. So UBI should be possible in places like Cuba?

At the same time, the robots haven’t taken people’s jobs in Cuba yet.

Another question. Shouldn’t some sort of Universal Healthcare come before UBI?

> Shouldn’t some sort of Universal Healthcare come before UBI?

Good question, I don’t know, but maybe yes, especially if it takes longer to implement UBI than healthcare. OTOH, if a UBI was enough money to cover both healthcare and living expenses, and if it was achievable and could be implemented just as quickly, then there’s nothing wrong with that. Realistically UBI is probably much more difficult politically, and more expensive, so you’re probably right.