I linked to some objections in another article. In principle, helping poor people out is probably the most justifiable purpose I can imagine for "public funds." And simple, unconditional cash transfers appear to be a very effective way of fighting poverty. But the objection to Argument 3 in that article is compelling: "we do not have any way of setting up mechanisms for income transfer that can only work in the way we would want them to." Government will administrate the program. And government has an unfortunate tendency to assist the well-off at the expense of the poor. Giving everyone with a pulse an annual stipend sounds too simple to mess up. But the devil is in the details. For example, surely felons will be excluded, and a majority of incarcerated felons are in for non-violent offenses, many of them drug offenses. An annual sack of cash will be an irresistible carrot for politicians to wave around and threaten to modify every election year. There will be, as always, unexpected consequences: · This will be a new incentive to have children. I think having children is great, but perhaps we should think twice before giving people who don't want kids a financial reason to. · There will be greater pressure to slow immigration. I believe that immigration is one of the greatest moral and economic wins for the country, and it should be expanded rather than reduced. · There will be greater incentive to keep suffering, terminally-ill people alive longer, making horrific tragedy more likely. · There is no way to avoid the fact that you are reducing the incentive for people to work. Most people work for money. Some people who now work for their basic income will simply stop. Others will work less, or put less effort into finding work, just like many people getting unemployment benefits now. Less work means less production and less wealth to go around. There is also a moral objection I can't talk my way around. People paying lower taxes will be getting their own money back, and perhaps more. The money will come from those with greater wealth. These wealthier people already have the option of giving to poor people. Many do. With some exceptions, most people do not condone forcibly confiscating wealth from a person even if the purpose is to give it to someone with less wealth. Even if I recognize benefits of providing a basic income, I don't see it as an automatic justification for an unjust action.
that is because you are stuck in the past and are still tied to the worn out old premise of exchanging our bodies/labour for wages and an economic system that has no more relevance than we accord it. . A UBI is about personal freedom, the freedom to choose how to spend the limited time we have in this life without worrying about destitution and homelessness and a job/career that insists you place it ahead of family, community and self and any other endeavour a person finds meaning and purpose in.
.
You have mentioned the successful Apollo program as evidence of our ability to accomplish great things. When Kennedy announced the goal of sending men to the moon in 1961, he was a visionary. But Jules Verne was also a visionary when he wrote From the Earth to the Moon in 1865. Both men were, like us, "stuck in the past" which was their present, a time before lunar travel became a reality. What made one vision a fantasy and the other a reality? Timing was part of it. The moon shot was simply unfeasable in 1865. But it also took a lot of planning, calculation, and work to make the Apollo program a success. It was far easier for Kennedy to say we should go to the moon than for thousands of engineers, machinists, chemists and other scientists and manufacturing workers to make it happen. (Side note: such professional workers relied on an army of secretaries, janitors, office suppliers, painters, and drivers to support their work. Would they all have continued working if they had the option of staying home and collecting a basic income?) I suggest starting by calculating how much $15,000 times the population of the United States is. It is quite a large number, far larger than the 109 billion in 2010 dollars the Apollo program cost. It is far larger than the "$600 billion military spending increase" (which is actually pretty close to the total U.S. military budget, not a spending increase). It is in the ballpark of the total federal budget of the United States. I am not saying a basic income is impossible. But I suggest that calls for UBI will be more effective if they are based on a plausibly realistic plan rather than simply accusing the doubtful of being "stuck in the past."
The immediate incentive completely depends on the implementation of Basic Income, and whether parents of children are given a full, partial, or no Basic Income for each child or the first X children, and in a more macroscopic perspective, flies in the face of consistent evidence that educating and bringing families our of poverty is the best way to get them to have fewer children. First of all, most Basic Incomes plans require citizenship as the only condition, but cash transfer programs in developing countries show that immigration to an community receiving cash transfers increases even if immigrants don't receive the transfer themselves, because the program increases the economic activity in the area. I have to say, I think the misaligned incentives would be less warped than the opposite ones that happen today, in which the chronically-ill may have not enough financial support, and the incentive is to cut their life short instead of trying to take care of them. This is in part because an asymmetric difference exists between taking care of one's own day-to-day needs themselves (much harder to do) and willfully taking one's own life (much easier to do) as a chronically sick person. The other way to look at this is that it would act as a subsidy for automation, as labor costs are purposefully pushed up. The immediate effect might seem to be a loss of productivity, but the long term effect might be the acceleration of the development of automation technology, and longer term gains in productivity.This will be a new incentive to have children. I think having children is great, but perhaps we should think twice before giving people who don't want kids a financial reason to.
There will be greater pressure to slow immigration. I believe that immigration is one of the greatest moral and economic wins for the country, and it should be expanded rather than reduced.
There will be greater incentive to keep suffering, terminally-ill people alive longer, making horrific tragedy more likely.
There is no way to avoid the fact that you are reducing the incentive for people to work. Most people work for money. Some people who now work for their basic income will simply stop. Others will work less, or put less effort into finding work, just like many people getting unemployment benefits now. Less work means less production and less wealth to go around.
Jobs and human employment are an increasingly archaic concept in an age where robotics, automation, technology and science are replacing the human component in the workplace at an ever increasing rate. Time to move forward or be left behind. Try thinking of a UBI as freedom to choose who to spend the limited time life accords us.
Agreed on children. With immigration, I think the established residents will protest (with reason) that newcomers are coming to snatch benefits that they (the residents) paid for. Hurdles like citizenship could reduce the snatching, but many countries provide paths to citizenship for immigrants, and the U.S. offers birthright citizenship. I would prefer not to see immigration opponents have any more ammo. People are less likely to be concerned if the cash transfers are coming from a source outside the country; in that case the boosted economic activity is a win for everyone. On the terminally-ill, of course you are right. Given medical costs, it's hard to imagine it would be profitable to keep someone on life support just to collect a basic income. Your point on automation is interesting. Perhaps this points to a future in which automation (which sounds less farfetched than "robots") provides so many of our needs so cheaply that we will spend most of our time in leisure, pursuing hobbies and consuming entertainment. We have certainly been moving in that direction since the days of the washboard.