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The Economist has really gone down hill in the past few years. I expect them to publish numbers, not vaguely Marxist reflections lamenting an age of supposed i
by api_or_ipa 8y ago
The Economist has really gone down hill in the past few years. I expect them to publish numbers, not vaguely Marxist reflections lamenting an age of supposed increasing hardship, although I was amused by the idea of social inheritance.
- tathougies 8y agoThe economist is self-avowed libertarian. UBI is a libertarian idea.
- johndevor 8y agoHow exactly is redistributing income a libertarian idea? Seems like the exact opposite to me.
- pknopf 8y agoFrom another commenter... > Universal basic income is an old libertarian idea. It's greatest advocate is probably Milton Friedman. It's seen as more equitable than welfare programs, which libertarians view as too highly regulated and thus an infringement on individual freedom. That's the libertarian argument against welfare. You add that to the libertarian argument for welfare (that people can't be truly free if they're having to pay for things like health emergencies, etc) and you invariably conclude that the way to maximize individual freedoms is to provide a universal basic income, if you're going to have any kind of welfare program
- danyboii 8y agoI don't think he ever supported a UBI. He supported a Negative Income Tax which is different.
- tathougies 8y agoIt depends on how you taxonomize terms. Negative Income Tax (which is what Friedman supports) is a type of UBI. As I've said elsewhere in this chain, the policies being proposed today are not really what the libertarians had in mind, since they co-exist with other forms of welfare, which libertarians would be wholeheartedly against. That being said, it's not surprising why the economist would run a story on this... it is still a libertarian idea. Also, the comment quoted above was made by me... the same guy you responded to, ha! :)
- rukittenme 8y agoNo one can answer that question with any certainty. Ideas are very fluid. But if I can attempt an answer. I believe it is libertarian in the sense that it does not require a large bureaucracy with onerous rules and regulations controlling the funds distribution and use. The money is available to everyone for any use. The government may just serve as a pass-through entity.
- nickthemagicman 8y agoIt empowers the individual vs let the govt decide.
- RandomTisk 8y agoIt's all in how you define your terms. Cutting off the head of a poor man with no job, an 80 IQ and 100k in debt is technically setting them free, in one specific sense.
- closeparen 8y agoRedistribution income unconditionally, rather than according to a popular notion of deservingness, is as libertarian as it gets.
- tathougies 8y agoI dunno man, but Milton Friedman, the saint of libertarinism that he is, was a huge proponent [1]. It's a topic of frequent interest in libertarian publications, such as the economist and reason. Gary Johnson (libertarian nominee) was also in support. To say that it's not libertarian is easily dismissable, considering the number of traditional libertarians who support it. Of course the corollary is that all other welfare programs are immediately ended, but this is not typically included in these modern implementations. [1] http://reason.com/archives/2017/06/03/the-indestructible-idea-of-the http://reason.com/archives/2017/06/03/the-indestructible-ide... More libertarian resources: [2] https://www.libertarianism.org/columns/libertarian-case-basic-income https://www.libertarianism.org/columns/libertarian-case-basi... [3] https://basicincome.org/news/2016/08/us-johnson-supports-basic-income-libertarian-principles/ https://basicincome.org/news/2016/08/us-johnson-supports-bas... [4] https://www.cato-unbound.org/2014/08/04/matt-zwolinski/pragmatic-libertarian-case-basic-income-guarantee https://www.cato-unbound.org/2014/08/04/matt-zwolinski/pragm...