Proposals for such giveaways go back at least 500 years, when Sir Thomas More proposed a UBI of sorts in his famous book, Utopia.
In the 1960s, economist Milton Friedman proposed a variant of the UBI in the form of a "Negative income tax," though Friedman's formulation would preserve work incentives.
Y Stern, former head of the Service Employees International Union, sees UBI as the only way to compensate for capitalism's tendency to widen income inequality.
According to Commerce Department calculations, UBI would cost the federal government between $2 trillion and $4 trillion a year, amounting to about a 50 percent increase in current federal outlays, or more than 10 percent of last year's gross domestic product.
In the same way, substituting a UBI for Social Security and Medicare would constitute a transfer from the old to the young, and using it as a substitute for disability insurance would constitute a transfer from the disabled to the able-bodied.
Though recent polls show more public support for a UBI now than in the past, it's far from apparent that such support will endure once the nature of these transfers becomes clear.
Whatever the motivations UBI advocates press on for a scheme that will erode people's self-worth and sever the ties between work and income.
https://www.city-journal.org/universal-basic-income
In the 1960s, economist Milton Friedman proposed a variant of the UBI in the form of a "Negative income tax," though Friedman's formulation would preserve work incentives.
Y Stern, former head of the Service Employees International Union, sees UBI as the only way to compensate for capitalism's tendency to widen income inequality.
According to Commerce Department calculations, UBI would cost the federal government between $2 trillion and $4 trillion a year, amounting to about a 50 percent increase in current federal outlays, or more than 10 percent of last year's gross domestic product.
In the same way, substituting a UBI for Social Security and Medicare would constitute a transfer from the old to the young, and using it as a substitute for disability insurance would constitute a transfer from the disabled to the able-bodied.
Though recent polls show more public support for a UBI now than in the past, it's far from apparent that such support will endure once the nature of these transfers becomes clear.
Whatever the motivations UBI advocates press on for a scheme that will erode people's self-worth and sever the ties between work and income.
https://www.city-journal.org/universal-basic-income
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