Universal Basic Income found its way into the news again today. The city of Chicago is considering legislation to give 1000 families a stipend of $500 per month, no questions asked. As far as I know, the bankrupt city of Stockton, California has a similar program, and I've heard that San Francisco gives out $300 per month to the homeless with no questions asked. Finland is said to have been experimenting with this. I believe it's only a matter of time before the state of California tries to get a program going too (I'm surprised I haven't heard of them talking about it yet......but give them time!).
Universal Basic Income is not exactly a new idea. I first heard about it in 1980 while attending a political science class at San Jose State University. The instructor, who I will state was fair and lectured from the center, mentioned this. He pointed out results from a survey that had once been taken of legislators. United States Senators were more likely to favor this than United States Representatives. It should be pointed out that in 1980, the Democrats were in power, and had owned both houses since the 1954 elections. That was the first I heard of that idea, and I never heard of it again until two years ago.
The 1980 version of UBI that I heard about was everyone getting a guaranteed minimum income. It wasn't stated in the lecture that the "rich" would be ineligible for it, but it was implied that they wouldn't get a payout. If for some reason your income fell below a certain threshold, that the government would send you a check to bring you up to that minimum level that would somehow be what you needed to survive. If you couldn't find work, or didn't want to find work, you would be brought up to that level.
Now today's version of UBI isn't quite that way, which begs the question of why this is called "Universal", but I'm sure of the reason for this. For this idea to gain mainstream acceptance, it's brought in incrementally. Baby steps at first. Find 1000 families that are about to get their electricity cut off or something like that, come to their rescue, and manufacture some success stories. Those at the edge of skepticism will climb on board for the idea, after which the proponents then look to run the number up to 5000 families......10,000 families.....keep expanding it until it's too big to be legislated out of existence.
So what do we have here, really? First of all, it's a vote-buying scheme. You get a monthly check, no questions asked, and you vote back in the politician who helped legislate this for you. In other words, that politician is trying to bribe some folks into voting for him while simultaneously guilting the more well-off constituents into voting for him too.
Second, it's a means of dividing people. If you create a welfare class that's separate from the working class, you have driven that wedge between them. The welfare class will think they're entitled to what the working class earns, and the working class resents the welfare class. The elite class who created that wedge remains in power, fostering dependency and division in order to remain in power.
This suggests that an equilibrium of sorts is reached, and it is, but that point of equilibrium doesn't remain fixed. It floats. The welfare class will incrementally expand. The working class will incrementally contract. Eventually a tipping point is reached. The tax users will outnumber the tax payers, and then there isn't enough money to go around. Sure, the elite class can manufacture money out of thin air, but that inflates the currency. You get more money that is worth less and you're no better off.
It can be surmised that I am extremely critical of this idea. Yes, I know of the "tax the rich" argument, but if you tax the rich in your city more they're going to get up and leave. Yes, I know that the State of Alaska pays residents revenue of oil money, but that's intended to keep people in the state, and the money is coming out of the ground. I think if implemented, it will fail if it doesn't destroy society first.
That said, in one way, I want to see Chicago do this. Let's go ahead and have that experiment. My prediction is that the proponents will within a year or so will say that it's working, but we need to expand this to work out the bugs in the system. At that point Chicago starts losing corporations and rich folks, and they'll have to abandon it.
I sure would rather have it happen there than here in Tucson.
