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> just do some smallish UBI Smallish UBI is an oxymoron; I'm assuming by "smallish" you mean something that's insufficient to cover basic living expenses (the
by prottog 3y ago
> just do some smallish UBI
Smallish UBI is an oxymoron; I'm assuming by "smallish" you mean something that's insufficient to cover basic living expenses (the B in UBI).
I agree that we should do away with market-distorting interventions in places that aren't strategically critical to the nation as a whole (like food production), but politicians are woefully inadequate to the task of resisting the urge to meddle.
- LegionMammal978 3y ago> Smallish UBI is an oxymoron; I'm assuming by "smallish" you mean something that's insufficient to cover basic living expenses (the B in UBI). Like it or not, the term UBI has been overloaded in common usage to refer to both forms. (Wikipedia notes that sometimes a "full basic income" vs. a "partial basic income" is used to disambiguate the two forms.) "Basic" in this sense just means that there is a set "basis" from which income can only increase; it does not necessarily have anything to do with "basic" living expenses, although many proposals do tie that particular connection.
- prottog 3y agoThank you; I was unaware of this common parlance. I understood that UBI implicitly meant something that one could live off of. In that case, I prefer something like a Friedmanesque negative income tax, versus the absurd scenario of, say, a pauper and a millionaire both receiving the same basic income; or indeed over the existing absurdities of the means-tested welfare system, with all of its perverse incentives.