The Dangers of a “Universal Basic Income”

The author makes matter-of-fact claims that are not backed by anything -- no data, no argument, no analysis, no citations, nothing. Even if I agreed with the author it's hard to believe him.

As the author progresses it's clear that he actually has a problem with all progressive taxation, social welfare, and most government regulations and actions. It's fine to take this position but it's completely useless in a discussion about regulatory policy. You wouldn't answer a public policy question like, "should we raise the federal minimum wage to $9.25/hr" with, "I deny the authority of the federal government".

Someone in support of UBI is likely fine with all of the listed 'downsides' in general -- arguments that would convince them would be an analysis or data showing that it would be ineffective. A lecture on econ 101 free market fanboyism is exactly the wrong approach to this discussion.

>"The progressive taxation that is necessary to finance a UBI means that the more a person earns, the higher percentage of their wealth will be taken from them. The work disincentives are therefore still very much present in the tax system."

I don't know if Finland does it as well, but this completely ignores how US tax brackets work. There's never a point where going up a tax bracket means you'd take home less money than you would have before your raise.

>"The struggling entrepreneurs and artists mentioned earlier are struggling for a reason. For whatever reason, the market has deemed the goods they are providing to be insufficiently valuable. Their work simply isn’t productive according to those who would potentially consume the goods or services in question."

What a huge leap to make from struggling to struggling because nobody wants to buy their product. They could easily be struggling purely because they left their old job to pursue this and now have no steady income. The article even suggests this initially, so I have no idea how they just ignored it.

>"The universal basic income, however, allows them to continue their less-valued endeavors with the money of those who have actually produced value, which gets to the ultimate problem of all government welfare programs."

Not everything needs to be about generating more wealth for yourself.

This article also completely ignored the idea that eventually there just aren't going to be any jobs left for the vast majority of people to take. What do we do then? The UBI is the solution to that. I wonder why they did not discuss that:

>"Accordingly, we seek a profound and radical shift in the intellectual climate: away from statism and toward a private property order."

Oh, that's why. This is just about generating wealth and screwing over everyone in the process for them

I'm not sure if that's true, but I think the real issue is the loss of government support, particularly in terms of direct welfare. For instance, going up in salary by $10k a year wouldn't result in a lower paycheck due to taxes, but it might result in a loss of government supported child care, and might disqualify a family from government subsidized housing, either in direct benefits or access to a required set aside of "below market rents" (common in SF). Because those benefits may be worth well over 10k a year, you might experience a net loss by working.

As a result, even if the tax rate is progressive, there is a transitional period for relatively low income people where the marginal "tax", if you include the loss of subsidies, is 100% or higher. As a result, there could be a powerful disincentive to work.

I think this is part of the appeal of the UBI - it's "universal". Everyone gets it. You get your money regardless of whether you work. Yes, that could deter people from working, since they already get their money. But it might also encourage people to work more, since they will no longer lose those benefits at low salary levels that make working a losing proposition relative to direct government welfare.

Its this philosophy that guaranteed the the information revolution dividends didn't go the people the same way they're trying to make sure the automation revolution dividends don't go to the people. I find it depressing that we will always be fighting this fight.

One thing that this also does not discuss, I do not consider this a bad thing at all. In fact, I think it is great. If someone is purely content with living on their UBI paycheck, more power to them. They are now spending money on things to contribute to the economy whereas before they were not.