PROS Reduces Poverty: UBI can help lift people out of poverty by providing a guaranteed income, ensuring everyone has enough to cover basic needs.
Improves Health: Studies have shown that UBI can improve physical and mental health outcomes by reducing stress and anxiety.
Simplifies Welfare: UBI could replace or streamline complex welfare systems, reducing administrative costs and eliminating the stigma associated with receiving benefits.
Encourages Entrepreneurship: With a financial safety net, individuals might be more willing to take risks and start new businesses.
Supports Unpaid Work: UBI can provide income for non-working parents and caregivers, recognizing the value of traditionally unpaid roles.
CONS High Cost: Implementing UBI could be extremely expensive, potentially requiring significant tax increases or reallocation of funds from other programs.
Potential Work Disincentives: Some argue that a guaranteed income might reduce the motivation to work, although studies suggest this effect is minimal.
Inflation: There is a concern that UBI could lead to inflation, as increased purchasing power might drive up prices.
Political Feasibility: Gaining political support for UBI can be challenging, as it requires a significant shift in public policy and mindset.
Implementation Challenges: Integrating UBI with existing social programs and infrastructure could be complex and difficult to manage.
Here are excerpts from the Scientific American (11/2024) issue. The article discusses the “Pros” without addressing the Cons, which I will do at the end of this post.
Basic Income Gives Money without Strings. Here’s How People Spend It Pilot programs across the U.S., including new research funded by OpenAI, offer a glimpse of how a universal basic income could improve lives By Allison Parshall In 2020, amid widespread layoffs and economic turmoil brought on by the COVID pandemic, 1,000 low-income people in Texas and Illinois were selected to receive $1,000 per month—with no strings attached—for three years as part of a study on guaranteed income by OpenResearch, a nonprofit research organization funded in part by OpenAI and its founder, Sam Altman. Sara Kimberlin, executive director of the Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality said Founding father Thomas Paine advocated for it in The Rights of Man. Martin Luther King, Jr., called it the solution to poverty. Even economist and free-market capitalist Milton Friedman suggested basic income in the form of a “negative income tax.” Kimberlin says, pointing to a “large body of research” that participants increased spending to meet their basic needs and to help family and friends. A separate study published online in July in the Journal of the American Medical Association also found that cash benefits reduced emergency room visits. Evidence suggests that when people’s most basic needs are met, they start to build a firmer financial foundation for themselves and their family. If you don’t have access to stable, safe housing, health care or food, that interferes with your ability to be a productive workeror to take care of your family. And if you’re a child, that interferes with your ability to concentrate in school. When food stamps are introduced in a particular area, the outcomes for the families improve. Children whose families received the Earned Income Tax Credit when they were young had more positive long-term educational outcomes. Why provide cash, as opposed to food stamps or rent assistance? Cash is flexible. People can use it to meet whatever their most pressing need may be. It’s an efficient way of addressing people’s needs, and it also gives people a lot of dignity and autonomy in deciding how they’re going to use it.Rather than having a Washington bureaucrat determine the needs of strangers living far away, trust the people to understand their needs and address them if they can.
It helps to avoid situations where someone may already have resources designated to pay for food but needs, for example, emergency child care. If they don’t get it, then they can’t get to their job, which could cause a lot of disruption down the line by making them miss a paycheck, then miss the rent. You can look at unconditional cash as a potentially very promising way of approaching social support because it streamlines the administrative costs and makes it easier for people to access the support they are eligible for. The most common uses of the funds were to cover basic needs such as housing, food and transportation. (There) was a significant increase in people spending money to help their friends and family.There are some effects of this program that are not fully captured in the results. There’s a ripple of positive effects that are going out beyond the direct recipient. Is just giving people money really a viable solution to poverty?One factor that could change results is the amount of money given as basic income. I suspect there would be vastly different results if everyone was given, say, $10.000 a month rather than $1,000. ADDRESSING THE CONS Every support program has been criticized for supposed high Cost, Potential Work Disincentives, Inflation, Political Feasibility, and Implementation Challenges. Franklin D. Roosevelt faced these objections when he instituted Social Security, and Medicare has faced the same objections. These objections were why Social Security was unnecessarily tied to the FICA tax, which doesn’t fund the program but limits it. High Cost: The federal government has infinite money to pay for infinite benefits. This is Monetary Sovereignty. In fact, the higher the cost, the more growth dollars the federal government will pump into the economy, benefitting the entire nation, not just the poor. Potential Work Disincentives: The rich love to ascribe this to the poor. You never hear about someone making $100,000 a year not getting a raise because it would disincentivize him from working. Only the poor are accused of being so lazy that no longer faced with grinding poverty, they will decide to quit work, perhaps loll about, sleep late, and take drugs. It’s a phony insult that has had no basis in fact. It has not been the result of other anti-poverty measures. Inflation: We have discussed this many times before. Contrary to popular myth, inflation is not caused by too much spending. Inflation is caused by shortages of crucial goods and services, mostly oil and food. The most recent inflation was due to COVID-related shortages of oil, food, computer chips, shipping, metals, lumber, labor, and other essentials. As these scarcities end, so does inflation. The notorious Zimbabwe hyperinflation was a food-shortage situation. (The government stole farmland from farmers and gave it to people who didn’t know how to farm.) Political Feasibility: The rich hate any program that narrows the income/wealth/power Gap between them and the rest of us. So they bribe the politicians (via campaign contributions and lucrative non-political income), the economists (via university endowments and jobs with think tanks), and the media (via ownership and advertising revenue) to spread disinformation about anti-poverty efforts. The solution is to know the truth, tell the truth, and to find an effective leader to promulgate the truth. Implementation Challenges: There are no challenges. We already know how to administer Social Security and Medicare (which is a huge challenge) and have already sent checks to the public.
- COVID-19 Pandemic (2020-2021): The government issued three rounds of Economic Impact Payments to help individuals and families cope with the financial impact of the pandemic. These payments were part of the CARES Act, the Consolidated Appropriations Act, and the American Rescue Plan Act.
- 2008 Financial Crisis: Under the Economic Stimulus Act of 2008, the government issued tax rebates to stimulate the economy during the financial crisis.
- 2001 Economic Stimulus Act: The government issued tax rebates to boost consumer spending in response to the economic downturn following the dot-com bubble burst.
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The Sole Purpose of Government Is to Improve and Protect the Lives of the People.
MONETARY SOVEREIGNTY
#Monetary Sovereignty - Mitchell 
A UBI, in every proposal, is a Neoliberal gift to capitalism. A standalone UBI is welfare for capitalists that allows for even lower wages subsidized by that monthly stipend. In that respect, UBI is an economic precarity enhancement. Why do you think UBI is favored by billionaires (Musk, Dorsey,Altman, Bezos, etc.)?
It is the “U” in UBI that is problematic. Providing a monthly stipend that requires another income stream for those at the middle and bottom of the income scale signals employers that they can justifiably deny wage increase requests. Knowing that Bezos and his ilk will be receiving the same stipend without a price anchor signals landlords that they can increase rents up to the amount of the stipend (as if they need another excuse to increase rents today).
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That is perfect logic for never helping the poor.
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That’s a horrible response. A UBI doesn’t address poverty, like present capitalist welfare programs it would allow the poor to be consumers for corporate profits while remaining poor.
A Federal Job Guarantee, a public option for involuntary unemployment, and paying a socially inclusive living wage plus benefits, directly addresses poverty and so much more.
I sent a link to the Job Guarantee site. If you would go through the FAQs, you will see that the FJG would accomplish all that any UBI can only promise.
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Congratulations, Mark, we, the government, have just found you two jobs. You have your choice of working in a deep coal mine or sweeping the street with a broom. Sorry, we can’t get you a more fulfilling job, but you know our motto, “Beggars can’t be choosers.”
By the way, why do you insist we find you a crap job rather than us giving you money without strings? And how does one remain poor while receiving money? What is your definition of “poor”?
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That is a gross misrepresentation of what is proposed by the Job Guarantee. If you are going to criticize something, it’s always best to learn about what it is you criticize.
The Job Guarantee is not workfare. It would be residents in each community determining priorities by participatory democracy – which has far reaching benefits of its own – that have been neglected due to limited local government budgets and by private businesses for lack of profitability.
The jobs would, primarily be care work. Care for the community. Care for the environment. Care for the people.
Many examples are presented in the Job Guarantee we site I linked and you chose to ignore. In my community, there is a large population of the elderly who can no longer climb up and down the steep terrain to use public transportation and can no longer afford personal vehicles. They have become involuntarily shut-in. The Job Guarantee could provide drivers for neighborhood shuttle service to get those Seniors to and from local businesses and trolley stops.
Musicians could be hired to perform weekly concerts and to work with local grade schools that have had to cut music from curriculums and teach their art to a new generation.
Community parks that have been seriously neglected could be transformed into community food and flower parks and beekeeping could be taught to provide a needed supplement to the food being grown.
Many who are doing volunteer work in education, business, and care work right now from the goodness of their hearts would earn a socially inclusive livable wage and benefits in the Job Guarantee program.
Because of the intentional neglect dictated by Neoliberal austerity over the past five decades, the community work needed is vast.
Unlike a UBI, the FJG is anchored to real labor and, because its numbers would expand during business downturns and contract during the upturn of business cycles it would be an automatic economic stabilizer. That means it would not be inflationary.
The FJG, unlike a UBI, would become the de facto federal minimum wage. It would mean private employers would have to exceed what is guaranteed to hire labor out of the FJG.
Most important is the mobility it guarantees. People now trapped in blighted communities could pack up and leave knowing that a guarantee of a decent job and benefits is wherever they choose to live.
People in abusive relationships have the economic power to leave without regard to any financial constraints. Workers in toxic workplaces can leave those jobs and be hired in the FJG the same day for an unbroken income stream. That empowers all labor. It would even support labor strikers now hampered by inadequate strike funds imposed by corporate unionism.
Roger, over the years I have learned a lot from you. For that I am grateful. But your hard-headed support for this Neoliberal plan and criticism of the FJG with straw man arguments is beyond disappointing.
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Sorry to disappoint you, Mark, but your belief that the poor should receive money ONLY if they perform the labor a community deems worthwhile is beyond disappointing to me. It demonstrates the abject ignorance of, and disrespect for, human desires and needs. Obviously, you have not read my many, many posts about this cruel joke called JG.
Personally, I would be unhappy if forced to take a minimum wage — correction, “slave” — job of any kind, especially one that required me to drive a shuttle service, play music in grade schools, and farm in the park. Southern slave owners would approve, however.
If you look online, you will find millions of open jobs. Why are they open?
Because people don’t want them. Forcing someone to accept a low pay, demeaning job, because they are poor, is beyond disgusting — typical of the ivory tower mindset of someone who would not take such a job themselves, but wants to foist it on a poor person. Hey, beggars can’t be choosers, right?
It would be far better to give the person enough money so they could spend their time looking for a good job and/or go to school to improve their marketable skills.
And by the way, attaching the “neoliberal” label to giving people money shows you have no idea what “neoliberal” means– free-market capitalism, deregulation, and a reduction in government spending — which sounds an awful lot like JG to me.
Just give people money and stop trying to run their lives by handing them a mop. What superiority you must feel making such a terrible recommendation for someone else.
If your community needs drivers or musicians, offer the jobs on the open market and pay for them. Don’t try to get by on the cheap by shoving them on the poor.
Finally, if your mom runs out of money, tell her to go dig in the garden or chauffer her neighbors, because you don’t believe in people receiving money without labor.
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Again, you misrepresent the Federal Job Guarantee with a straw man. What is the price anchor when just doling out dollars that prevents seller’s inflation? What would prevent the rentier class from increasing rents to gobble up what it knows EVERYONE is getting from a UBI? In any form, UBI is a Neoliberal answer to a problem caused by capitalism that benefits capitalism.
If the UBI is a $1000 stipend and your health insurance is $1100 per month, you can’t afford healthcare. If the UBI stipend is $1000 and your rent is raised by $1000, you can’t afford rent.
Your criticism of the FJG proposal only proves that you continue to learn what is the FJG and criticize it with your false opinions. The very definition of a straw man argument.
The FJG is a public option to unemployment. That means it’s voluntary. No one would be “forced” into the FJG. The FJG proposes a ‘socially-inclusive livable wage.’ That means it lifts everyone out of poverty with no hint of inflation, due to it being an automatic economic stabililizer and without the “universality” of a UBI.
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What’s wrong with trying to help people who by no fault of their own are broke and humiliated? Capitalism and Socialism are inherently, structurally, poor (non)systems of trying to care for people. Unfortunately, we think it’s a personal, not the system’s, fault.
Whole Systems thinking is absent from politically controlled higher learning. The rich don’t want you(th) to know about general systems design or whole systems theory or how to make the world work for everyone. The rich rely on fingerpointing, blame, and political control to maintain their status.
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This comment says it all: “The FJG is a public option to unemployment. That means it’s voluntary. No one would be “forced” into the FJG.”
It’s true. No one would be forced to accept a crap job, in an inconvenient location, under lousy working conditions, without transportation, while a sick relative at home or a child needs care.
So rather than solving a problem, we put out a “solution” that may help only a few, and pat ourselves on the back for “doing something” about unemployment. Bravo.
First folks, you can’t solve a problem if you don’t know what it is. You think the problem is unemployment. Wrong!
I’m not employed, and I have no problem. I know many people who are not employed, and the lack of “something to do” is not their problem.
The problem, when there is one, is LACK OF MONEY.
Does your minimum wage job solve it? No, it extends the problem so that the person spends all his time working for pennies and not looking for a good job.
What about:
Look online. There are thousands of jobs being advertised, yet people are not taking them. Have you asked yourselves, why?
Have you even considered the size of a government organization that would solve all the problems involved in matching jobs to people — in every town, village, neighborhood and hamlet in America.
No, you fob it all off with, “It’s not mandatory,” and pat yourselves on the back for “doing something” about a problem that doesn’t exist.
I have written tens of articles about JG and have discussed them with the MMT gang. For every objection they come up with a different “solution,” i.e. a different JG, desperately trying to fit their round JG solution into the square peg of unemployment.
My solution: Just give the people money, so they have the freedom to look for a job if they wish, or get a car, or find a babysitter, or do whatever the hell it is they want.
Stop the “Big Brother Knows Best” bullsh*t and just give people what they want, not what you think they should want.
The poor are not lazy. Quite the opposite. They just need a helping hand to get going.
A generous Social Security for every man, woman, and America would do it, and we could begin, tomorrow. It’s that easy.
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Scott, clearly you never have hired anyone, and possibly never been hired. I personally have hired hundreds of people, and my companies have hired thousands.
If any of my HR people asked whether someone was receiving outside income, or even adjusted a salary based on someone’s outside income, I’d fire their ass on the spot. It would be beyond stupid.
I never heard of such idiocy regarding Social Security or any other form of outside income.
“Hey, prospective employee, do you own stocks, bonds? Is your dad rich? What is your wife’s income.? Do your kids have jobs? What are they paid? Lemonade stand, maybe?”
Of all the ridiculous arguments for JG, that comes near the top. You already want a plan that pays minimum wage, and suddenly you’re concerned about wages????? Yikes!
What is it you’re trying to accomplish? Apparently, you don’t care about people receiving money. So, your concern seems to be making them labor, and if so, why? What the heck business is it of an employer what outside income a person has?
If you won’t read this one short post and attachments, there is nothing more I can tell you. Your desperate arguments to save a nonsensical idea range between humorous and even more humorous. You have potential for Jimmy Kimmel.
Thanks for the good laugh. I am pleased to share this online, since I usually don’t publish humor.
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Scott, you just proved my point that simply giving people money via Social Security for All is superior to the incredibly foolish, altogether nutty idea of the federal government establishing a national employment agency that finds jobs paying minimum wage, and the equally asinine idea that employers will consider an employees’ side income when calculating wages.
As for your meaningless Walmart example, it still leaves open the question of why would someone choose Walmart vs. some other employer. That is a company’s primary consideration when determining wages. I’m surprised that you, with our vast hiring experience wouldn’t know that.
Since I have used my best adjectives to describe JG, I find I have a few left over, which you may use when defending the indefensible (or describing me, your choice): Dimwitted, dense, ill-informed, deranged, dense, and my favorite, numb-nuts.
All perfectly describe the arguments defending JG.
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I don’t resort to name-calling for two simple reasons:
1 It doesn’t further truth-finding.
2 It just invites ad hominem arguments right back at me, which doesn’t advance truth-finding either, plus it stirs bad feelings pointlessly.
You are free to use any appellations for yourself you desire, however. That is free speech.
Walmart is or was one of the largest employers in the world at the time. They got rightly castigated at the time for giving classes basically in how to get the government to offset their low wages for things like: food stamps, rental allowances, and all sorts of other things that their corporate head supported from government, while simultaneously not wanting to be taxed for them! At one point Walmart even “helped” their employees budget themselves, but they stopped that too when outside media sources pointed out they hadn’t left enough money for people to heat their homes. They would have had to give raises for that.
I have no problem making Social Security universal; Thomas Paine suggested starting it when people turned 55, but of course, that was considered pretty old back then. I also have no doubt that businesses will figure out that working age people have this extra cash, and ratchet down their wages accordingly. Business will always pay as little as they can get away with. Some people will walk, but others, unable to find a better job as competition from other newly available job-seekers join them, or just lacking the ability to be entrepreneurs, will take those jobs.
Some people want to use a UBI – or would use a de-facto UBI in the form of extended social security – to get rid of other benefits, maybe even throttling Medicare (which probably should be universal too, depending on if it’s extended to cover what private insurance does now too). The gig economy continues to grow already, making people on their own through all sorts of vicissitudes in life.
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Excellent article as usual, Rodger! Very well-said. Those who oppose a genuine UBI / Social Security for all are either stupid, ignorant, insane, brainwashed, or corrupt. Or patronizing, paternalistic control freaks. Or sadists. Or greedy oligarchs who benefit from the status quo. Either way, there are really no good arguments against it.
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And we still hear patronizing and paternalistic BS like this from people who claim to support “progress”:
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/the-case-for-a-working-family-tax
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/the-case-for-a-working-family-tax
Who the hell is he to play God and decide that only those who make the “right choices” should get it?
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Agreed. He seems like another ivory tower professor, who thinks he knows what people should do with their lives, and who wants to use his superior knowledge to direct people in the “right direction’. Supercilious, all-knowing perfect prigs make me want to vomit. I say, give people money and let them direct their own lives.
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Well-said, Rodger. “Supercilious” is indeed the best way to describe these ivory-tower types. Nose in the air, elitist academics (or quasi-academic bloggers) that are hopelessly out of touch, don’t think things thing through, and think they know better than the hoi polloi how to steer them in the “right” direction. BLEEECCCHHHH! They make me wanna vomit as well.
Indeed, just give people money and let them have the dignity of deciding what to do with it.
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