UBI and what has to happen
- What is a UBI?
Universal Basic Income is a program that in recent times globally has gained a lot of traction. Since Andrew Yang’s Campaign took off in social media, we have seen it being talked about on many different news channels and news sites. In Yang’s plan, it would be universal taking the word as mean everyone receives it no matter how much you make. While not all plans have to be universal according to research done by Hoynes and Rothstein “The first term, “universal,” is more ambiguous. In our reading, universal refers to a program that is available to everyone, without targeting based on family structure, presence of children, age, or disability status; provided to those without earned income, and even without any effort to find work; and provided to those with relatively high earned income, not only those in deep poverty”. While it does not have to mean everyone, and it can be more of an ambiguous term and be taken as making sure everyone makes a certain amount of money. Basic Income is a harder marker to make since it can mean a lot of different things while generally it is considered what a person needs to survive while others use it to mean as a supplemental income along with other income to live. Yang’s plan calls for 12,000 dollars a year per person over 18 regardless of money a very generous plan that would cost a substantial amount of taxpayer dollars. While Andrew Yang was not the first American politician to support passing a UBI in American history. An interesting proponent of UBI was Richard Nixon tried passing it 1969 following a few experiments all over the country.
2. Passing UBI
While getting this bill passed would be near impossible because no politicians would greenlight a bill that would currently cost 75% of our current expenditures costing more than the big three social programs Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. As we can see during this crisis, we can do it, and if something gets enough support government will pass almost any bills. However, we can also see that it cannot be universal because it would cost too much, and it would not get support from lower-income people if they believed even the billionaires were getting this money. To get support to pass this bill from opponents who would argue that it is not cost-effective you would have to narrow down who could receive it. One way is eliminating the people who qualify by making it need-based and only a certain group could get it if they made less than an agreed-upon amount by politicians. An argument always made is that it would promote not working because you are guaranteed money no matter what. While there is no evidence for it and quite a bit in opposition to it. Iran the first country to implement a UBI shows no decrease in workforce labor and the test run in Canada also showed the same. Even in the United States while Nixon was running test of a UBI it didn’t show a significant drop in workforce labor with even 9% reported being suspected of exaggeration.
3. What would it look like?
If we ever did see a permanent UBI in the United States it would not look anything like what Andrew Yang has proposed. To be able to see something like this passed there would be many compromises and it would turn out to look more of supporting the poor or an excuse to cut other social programs. Since a truly universal basic income cost more than the big three programs we could see politicians argue that we should do this instead and cause the country to be in a worse state. While a UBI can help solve inequality in a country it can be used to perpetuate income disparities and with both sides competing to get the best “deal” it would probably not help as many other social programs that could be implemented in its place. This is due to negotiating until what you have negotiated doesn’t even look like what you started with because of so many compromises.
