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This is nuts. Basic income is not to provide extra spending money for 100% of americans. It's help 10% of the most poor while everyone else ends up paying back
by cat_plus_plus 10y ago
This is nuts. Basic income is not to provide extra spending money for 100% of americans. It's help 10% of the most poor while everyone else ends up paying back the money in taxes. So we are talking about 300 billion. This is half of US military budget and will be instead of, instead of in addition to, current aid programs.
It is true that basic income will not directly improve lifestyle of the middle class. It can well result in indirect improvement by poor becoming more productive and government bureaucrats currently running the program getting more useful jobs. But we probably need to other things as well to improve lifestyle for the other 90% of the population.
- fixermark 10y agoOne of the points the author proffers is that displacing more targeted, conditional aid with UBI may not actually be better. The question of whether---if you just give people money---they spend it wisely enough to maintain their needs is an open question. It's sort of the formalized version of "Don't give that wino a dollar; he's just going to spend it on more booze." (The sense I get is economists lean towards "Yes, people generally look after themselves given the money to do so," but I believe this is an open question policy-wise).
- cat_plus_plus 10y agoSo just give money in small daily deposits. If someone spends all money in beer one day, he/she will be hungry the next day and make better choices.