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One Size Does Not Fit All: A Case Against the UBI in America - Harvard Political Review

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While it is undeniable that our current welfare system has its problems, our focus should be on fixing it, rather than implementing an expensive and less effective system like UBI.

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Why a Universal Basic Income Won’t Work | The Human Prosperity Project

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CON Universal Income May Sound Attractive, But...

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CON Universal Income May Sound Attractive, But...

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A universal basic income (UBI) is an unconditional cash payment given at regular intervals by the government to all residents, regardless of their earnings or employment status.

Pilot UBI or more limited basic income programs that give a basic income to a smaller group of people instead of an entire population have taken place or are ongoing in Brazil, Canada, China, Finland, Germany, India, Iran, Japan, Kenya, Namibia, Spain, and The Netherlands as of Oct. 20, 2020

In the United States, the Alaska Permanent Fund (AFP), created in 1976, is funded by oil revenues. AFP provides dividends to permanent residents of the state. The amount varies each year based on the stock market and other factors, and has ranged from $331.29 (1984) to $2,072 (2015). The payout for 2020 was $992.00, the smallest check received since 2013.

UBI has been in American news mostly thanks to the 2020 presidential campaign of Andrew Yang whose continued promotion of a UBI resulted in the formation of a nonprofit, Humanity Forward.

Should the United States Implement a Universal Basic Income?

Pro 1

Universal Basic Income (UBI) reduces poverty and income inequality, and improves physical and mental health.

Scott Santens, Founding Member of the Economic Security Project, says that a UBI set at $1,000 per adult per month and $300 per child per month would eradicate US poverty entirely.

The poverty level in Brazil has fallen to the lowest level in 40 years after $100 a month has been distributed to about 25% of the population beginning in Mar. 2020.

Namibia's UBI program, the Basic Income Grant (trialled in 2007-2012), reduced household poverty rates from 76% of residents before the trial started to 37% after one year. Child malnutrition rates also fell from 42% to 17% in six months.

Participants in India's UBI trial (2013-2014) said that UBIs helped improve their health by enabling them to afford medicine, improve sanitation, gain access to clean water, eat more regularly, and reduce their anxiety levels.

Mincome, a trial UBI in Manitoba, Canada, in the mid-1970s, found that hospitalizations for accidents, injuries, and mental health diagnoses declined during the trial.

Kenya's ongoing UBI trial has reportedly led to increased happiness and life satisfaction, and to reduced stress and depression.

Matthew Smith, PhD, Professor in Health History at the University of Strathclyde, stated that UBI could improve a range of mental health concerns and stressful situations proven to deteriorate mental health: "Recent research has linked the stress of poverty with inflammation in the brain... UBI could be set at a level to ensure that everyone's basic needs are met. This would reduce much of the stress faced by the working poor or families on benefits... UBI would also help people, usually women and children, to leave abusive relationships. Domestic abuse occurs more often in poorer households, where victims lack the financial means to escape. Similarly, UBI might prevent the negative childhood experiences believed to lead to mental illness and other problems later in life. These include experiencing violence or abuse, or having parents with mental health, substance abuse and legal problems. Behind these problems are often poverty, inequality and social isolation."
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Pro 2

UBI leads to positive job growth and lower school dropout rates.

The guarantee of UBI protects people from sluggish wage growth, low wages, and the lack of job security caused by the effects of the growing gig economy such as Uber/Lyft driving and short-term contracts, as well as increased automation in the workplace.

Researchers from the Roosevelt Institute created three models for US implementation of UBI and found that under all scenarios, UBI would grow the economy by increasing output, employment, prices, and wages. Since implementation of the Alaska Permanent Fund, the increased purchasing power of UBI recipients has resulted in 10,000 additional jobs for the state.

UBI would also give employees the financial security to leave a bad job, or wait until the good job comes along to (re)join the job market. People won't have to take an awful job just to pay the bills.

UBI also enables people to stay in school longer and participate in training to improve skills or learn a trade.

Uganda's UBI trial, the Youth Opportunities Program, enabled participants to invest in skills training as well as tools and materials, resulting in an increase of business assets by 57%, work hours by 17%, and earnings by 38%.

The Canadian Mincome trial in the 1970's found that participants of the trial were more likely to complete high school than counterparts not involved in the trial.

The Basic Income Grant trial in Namibia (2007-2012) enabled parents to afford school fees, buy school uniforms, and encourage attendance. As a result, school dropout rates fell from almost 40% in Nov. 2007 to 5% in June 2008 to almost 0% in Nov. 2008.
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Pro 3

UBI guarantees income for non-working parents and caregivers, thus empowering important traditionally unpaid roles, especially for women.

Guy Standing, PhD, Professor of Development Studies at the University of London (UK), says UBI makes all forms of work, including childcare and eldercare, "equally deserving" of payment. In another article, Standing noted "Almost definitionally, a properly designed basic income system will reduce gender-based inequality, because on average the payment will represent a higher share of women's income."

A UBI also allows working parents to reduce their working hours in order to spend more time with their children or help with household chores.

Reviewing the UBI trial in India (2013-2014), SEWA Bharat (an organization related to women's employment) and UNICEF (a children's rights organization) concluded that "women's empowerment was one of the more important outcomes of this experiment," noting that women receiving a UBI participated more in household decision making, and benefited from improved access to food, healthcare, and education.

The Basic Income Grant Coalition trial UBI in Namibia (2007-2012) found that UBI "reduced the dependency of women on men for their survival" and reduced the pressure to engage in transactional sex.

Mincome, the Canadian UBI trial in the mid-1970s, found that emergency room visits as a result of domestic violence reduced during the period of the trial, possibly because of the reduction in income-inequality between women and men.
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Con 1

Universal Basic Income (UBI) takes money from the poor and gives it to everyone, increasing poverty and depriving the poor of much needed targeted support.

Universal Basic Income (UBI) takes money from the poor and gives it to everyone, increasing poverty and depriving the poor of much needed targeted support.

People experiencing poverty face a variety of hardships that are addressed with existing anti-poverty measures such as food stamps, medical aid, and child assistance programs. UBI programs often use funds from these targeted programs for distribution to everyone in society.

According to Robert Greenstein, President of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, "[i]f you take the dollars targeted on people in the bottom fifth or two-fifths of the population and convert them to universal payments to people all the way up the income scale, you're redistributing income upward. That would increase poverty and inequality rather than reduce them."

Luke Martinelli, PhD, Research Associate at the University of Bath, created three models of UBI implementation and concluded that all three would lead to a significant number of individuals and households who are worse off. He noted that "these losses are not concentrated among richer groups; on the contrary, they are proportionally larger for the bottom three income quintiles."

Research by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in Finland, France, Italy, and the UK concluded that "rather than reducing the overall headcount of those in poverty, a BI [basic income] would change the composition of the income-poor population" and thus "would not prove to be an effective tool for reducing poverty."

UBIs are also less cost-effective than targeted welfare programs because many people lack more than just cash. UBI does not cure addiction, poor health, lack of skills, or other factors that contribute to and exacerbate poverty.

Anna Coote, Principal Fellow at the New Economics Foundation, and Edanur Yazici, PhD student, explain that there is " the danger of UBI entrenching low pay and precarious work. It could effectively subsidise employers who pay low wages and - by creating a small cushion for workers on short-term and zero-hours contracts - help to normalise precarity." UBI could become like another American tipping system in which employers pay low wages and count on customers to fill in the gap with tips.
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Con 2

UBI is too expensive.

A 2018 study found that a $1,000 a month stipend to every adult in the United States would cost about $3.81 trillion per year, or about 21% of the 2018 GDP, or about 78% of 2018 tax revenue.

A $2,000 a month per head of household UBI would cost an estimated $2.275 trillion annually, says Marc Joffe, MBA, MPA, Director of Policy Research at the California Policy Center. Some of this cost could be offset by eliminating federal, state, and local assistance programs; however, by Joffe's calculation, "these offsets total only $810 billion... [leaving] a net budgetary cost of over $1.4 trillion for a universal basic income program."

The UBI trial in Finland provided participants with €560 ($673 USD) a month for two years. [21] lkka Kaukoranta, MS, Chief Economist of the Central Organization of Finnish Trade Unions (SAK), says that Finland's UBI model is "impossibly expensive, since it would increase the government deficit by about 5 percent [of GDP]."

In a Sep. 14, 2016 parliamentary debate, UK Minister for Employment, Damian Hinds, rejected the idea of UBI, saying that estimated implementation costs ranging from £8.2 billion - £160 billion ($10.8 billion - $211 billion USD) are "clearly unaffordable."

Economist John Kay, Research Fellow at the University of Oxford, studied proposed UBI levels in Finland, France, Germany, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States, and concluded that, in all of these countries, UBI at a level which can guarantee an acceptable standard of living is "impossibly expensive... Either the level of basic income is unacceptably low, or the cost of providing it is unacceptably high."
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Con 3

UBI removes the incentive to work, adversely affecting the economy and leading to a labor and skills shortage.

Earned income motivates people to work, be successful, work cooperatively with colleagues, and gain skills. However, "if we pay people, unconditionally, to do nothing... they will do nothing" and this leads to a less effective economy, says Charles Wyplosz, PhD, Professor of International Economics at the Graduate Institute in Geneva (Switzerland).

Economist Allison Schrager, PhD, says that a strong economy relies on people being motivated to work hard, and in order to motivate people there needs to be an element of uncertainty for the future. UBI, providing guaranteed security, removes this uncertainty.

Elizabeth Anderson, PhD, Professor of Philosophy and Women's Studies at the University of Michigan, says that a UBI would cause people "to abjure work for a life of idle fun... [and would] depress the willingness to produce and pay taxes of those who resent having to support them."

Guaranteed income trials in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s found that the people who received payments worked fewer hours. And, in 2016, the Swiss government opposed implementation of UBI, stating that it would entice fewer people to work and thus exacerbate the current labor and skills shortages.

Nicholas Eberstadt, PhD, Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy, and Evan Abramsky is a Research Associate, both at American Enterprise Institute (AEI), stated, "the daily routines of existing work-free men should make proponents of the UBI think long and hard. Instead of producing new community activists, composers, and philosophers, more paid worklessness in America might only further deplete our nation's social capital at a time when good citizenship is already in painfully short supply."
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Discussion Questions
1. Should the United States implement a Universal Basic Income? Why or why not?

2. Should cities or states implement Universal Basic Income? Why or why not?

3. What other economic polices to reduce poverty would you enact? Explain your answers.
Take Action
1. Investigate the World Bank's report, "Exploring Universal Basic Income: A Guide to Navigating Concepts, Evidence, and Practices."

2. Explore Stanford University's Basic Income Lab.

3. Examine where a basic income has been implemented and the results at Vox.

4. Consider how you felt about the issue before reading this article. After reading the pros and cons on this topic, has your thinking changed? If so, how? List two to three ways. If your thoughts have not changed, list two to three ways your better understanding of the "other side of the issue" now helps you better argue your position.

5. Push for the position and policies you support by writing US national senators and representatives.
Sources

45.

Kimberly Amadeo, "What Is Universal Basic Income?," thebalance.com, Aug. 19, 2021

51.

Salil B Patel and Joel Kariel, "Universal Basic Income and Covid-19 Pandemic," bmj.com, Jan. 26, 2021

55.

Nicholas Eberstadt and Evan Abramsky, "What Do Prime-Age 'NILF' Men Do All Day? A Cautionary on Universal Basic Income," ifstudies.org, Feb. 8, 2021

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Universal Basic Income Pros and Cons - Top 3 Arguments For and Against

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Proponents say it'll reduce poverty and income inequality. Opponents say it'll remove the incentive to work.

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 PRO Tacoma's GRIT Income program May Help...

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 PRO Tacoma's GRIT Income program May Help...

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Tacoma's guaranteed income program 'GRIT' may help more residents over next 2 years

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TACOMA, Wash. - Tacoma's guaranteed income program 'GRIT' could be on track to help another round of participants over the next two years. - SUCCESS STORIES

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PRO The Top 1% Now Own More Wealth than the Entire Middle Class

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PRO The Top 1% Now Own More Wealth than the Entire Middle Class

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The top 1% of American earners now control more wealth than the nation's entire middle class, federal data show.

More than one-quarter of all household wealth, 26.5%, belongs to Americans who earn enough money to rank in the top percentile by income, according to Federal Reserve statistics through mid-2023.

The top 1% holds $38.7 trillion in wealth. That's more than the combined wealth of America's middle class, a group many economists define as the middle 60% of households by income. Those households hold about 26% of all wealth.

Low-income Americans, representing the bottom 20% by income, own about 3% of the wealth.

The top 1% overtook the middle class in collective wealth in 2020

Thirty years ago, America's celebrated middle class commanded twice as much wealth as the upper 1%.

Over the years, the rich have grown steadily richer. The top 1% caught and passed the middle class in collective wealth in late 2020, Fed data shows.

The wealth lead has changed hands since then, but the 1%-ers have it now, and their margin is growing.

"The number of deca-millionaires has more than doubled since 2000, and the number of centi-millionaires has quadrupled," said Owen Zidar, a Princeton University economist, referring to people worth more than $10 million and $100 million, respectively.

And who are the top 1%? The category includes flashy billionaires Jeff Bezos and Elon Mus k, of course. But many 1%-ers are low-profile multimillionaires, living quietly among us.

"As you go up the wealth distribution, it's more and more these private business owners," Zidar said. "And a lot of them are boring businesses. Auto dealers. Beverage distributors. People who own seven Jiffy Lubes."

Why the rich keep getting richer, compared to everyone else, is a topic of recurring debate among the nation's economists.

"If there were a good answer to that question, I think the policymakers in Washington would be all over it to fix it," said Scott Hoyt, senior director for Moody's Analytics.

Instead of one answer, there seem to be several:

Real estate: The upper 1% controls 12.9% of real estate wealth in 2023, up from 8.1% at the start of 1990, Fed data show. The average home price has more than tripled in that span.

Stocks: The top 1% holds close to half of all corporate equities and mutual fund shares in 2023, according to the Fed. As recently as 2003, their share of the equities pie fell below 30%.

Owning a private business: The upper 1% owns nearly half of all private-company wealth today, up from about 30% in 1990, the Fed reports.

Stocks and home prices soared in the low-interest years that followed the onset of the Great Recession in 2008.

"People who owned homes, who owned stocks, who owned retirement accounts, they did very well," Princeton's Zidar said. "And a lot of people don't own homes, and a lot of people don't own stocks, so they missed out on that opportunity."

Is the concentration of wealth bad for America?

Just as economists don't all agree on what is causing the rich to get richer, there is no consensus that the concentration of wealth is bad for the rest of America.

The middle class isn't necessarily getting poorer, income data shows: They're just not getting richer as fast as the rich.

Between 1979 and 2021, the wages of Americans in the top 1% grew by 206%, after adjusting for inflation, according to an analysis by the nonprofit Economic Policy Institute. In the same years, wages for the bottom 90% grew by only 29%.

"If a rising tide is lifting all boats, but just lifting some boats more than others, that's one thing," Hoyt said. "If the playing field is tipping, and some people are getting more wealthy, and some are getting less wealthy, that's another story."

Nonetheless, many economists say the growing concentration of wealth bodes ill for the nation as a whole.

The stagnation of wages and wealth among middle-class Americans, experts say, feeds a growing sense of economic ennui. Middle-class Americans have reason to fear for their economic future.

"When people feel like they don't have a chance, or perhaps even more dangerously, when they feel like their kids don't have a chance . . . that inequality of opportunity is what really gets people upset," said John Friedman, chair of the economics department at Brown University.

Stagnant wealth hinders middle-class Americans from getting a top-drawer education, starting a business, or landing a high-wage job, said Zidar of Princeton.

"It's really bad for the growth of the country if a small number of people whose parents happen to be rich are the ones who do well," he said.

What, then, is a middle-class American to do?

Middle-income Americans may not have millions of dollars to invest, economists say, but they can still reap some of the economic opportunities available to the top 1%.

One tool is homeownership. The middle class still owns nearly two-fifths of the nation's real estate, an asset group that the super-rich have leveraged to get richer, federal data show.

Another strategy is stocks.
Depleted savings: Worried about running out of money in retirement? These tips can help
The middle class owns only about 12% of all corporate equities and mutual fund shares.

Yet, because people can build a 401(k) or trade over a phone, "it's kind of easier than ever to invest in a broad swath of assets," through mutual funds and other pooled investments, Brown's Friedman said.

The last and best economic tool available to the middle class, Friedman said, is education.

The modern economy rewards high-skilled workers, who cannot be easily replaced by a machine or algorithm, Friedman said.

"The returns from investing in education have never been higher," he said. "If you ask what can really make a difference in a child's trajectory, it's having more education."

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The top 1% of American earners now own more wealth than the entire middle class

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More than one-quarter of all household wealth, 26.5%, belongs to the super rich, and their wealth is growing.

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PRO How $750 a month Helped Bay Area Homeless people off the street

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PRO How $750 a month Helped Bay Area Homeless people off the street

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How $750 a month helped Bay Area homeless people off the street

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The program providing provided guaranteed, no-strings-attached monthly incomes - PILOTS & EXPERIMENTS

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PRO & CON Should we get free Money from the Government?

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PRO & CON Should we get free Money from the Government?

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Should We Get Free Money from the Government? | Above the Noise | PBS LearningMedia

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When the robots come to take our jobs, what are we all going to do to keep a roof over our heads and food on the table? That’s the question that the universal basic income (UBI) hopes to answer. The government gives everyone JUST enough money to afford the basics so that no one falls into total, abject poverty. Supporters think a universal income is essential to fight financial inequality and help the millions of people who could lose their jobs to artificial intelligence. But opponents think it would be WAY too expensive and could hurt the economy by stripping away the incentive to work. Where do you stand? Is the universal basic income a good idea or bad idea?