I will be upfront about it - I am a staunch supporter of the Universal Basic Income for everybody unconditionally. This was my gut response the moment I heard about the concept. My emotions kicked in immediately and it took me some time to realize that I needed to approach this issue a bit more rationally and find and examine the pros and cons. So I will be making this series of posts to explain to myself and to others perhaps why we should (or shouldn't?) support the idea of UBI
Photo by rawpixel.com from Pexels
But first definitions:
UBI - universal basic income is a sum of money paid regularly to people without any reservations and limitations. Everybody alive at a given moment qualifies unconditionally just by the virtue of having been born.
The above definition is the broadest definition I could come up with and which takes into account the global understanding of UBI. I will tackle local versions of UBI at a later time.
Here are some burning questions:
I intend to devote separate posts for each of these questions; these here are just for reference and brief orientation about my position on these issues
- who pays the money?
- The governing bodies of countries and territories.
- where does the money come from?
- It would replace the current welfare schemes and personal tax allowances as well as from saving the money on government bureaucracy. More on this here
- how much money should be paid?
- Enough for the person to meet his or her basic needs of survival in a given place / country.
- how often should it be paid?
- Monthly? Weekly? or maybe annually? There are pros and cons of each.
- can you lose the privilege of UBI?
- That is another difficult question: if you are a criminal, should you retain your UBI?
- do we exclude some people from receiving UBI?
- if yes, then on what conditions (see the point above)?
- do I realize that 'having been born' is an arbitrary condition?
- Yes, I do. I know that we could argue that if a woman is pregnant she needs more money (see: doctor's appointments, perhaps being unable to work etc) but this is a line I draw. The moment she gives birth to a baby, her son or daughter will receive UBI.
- who will be in charge of the money paid to under-age people. Parents or guardians? Or should there be a fund in the bank to be paid out when they reach legal age?
- It seems to me the money should be paid to parents/guardians as they have much more expenses when they have children. And one of the ideas behind UBI is to eliminate welfare, so they wouldn't have money for children from any other source. But what to do with parents who abuse the money that belong to their children and spend them on drugs etc? Introducing institutions like social welfare into the cycle will again multiply the costs.
Roadmap for the future posts
In future posts on UBI I will try to tackle the above questions and outline the following issues:
- Why is global UBI a good idea?
- Why is global UBI a bad idea?
- Global UBI + blockchain = manna
Erinaco67
Have some manna:
https://www.mannabase.com/?ref=22370a5574
Some excellent questions!
I've been a big supporter of UBI since I first heard of the concept, it seems like the perfect solution to the kinds of problems our society is and will be facing.
At the moment, it's all a bit unknown but from my research, the positives far outweigh the negatives.
The question of whether criminals should lose their UBI is an interesting one. There are some people who say that crime itself would dramatically fall, so for example, those who are addicted to drugs and currently have to steal or whatever to support their "lifestyle", wouldn't have to steal anymore.
I love the mannabase project, and there's another similar one too called SwiftDemand that's worth signing up to if you aren't already.
It's great to see others writing about UBI, it's definitely something that deserves more attention and debate.
Thanks for your comments! I will be looking more into UBI and writing more about it as this way I explain it better to myself and hopefully to others as well.
You're very welcome. It's a fascinating topic, I've still got so much to learn though.
I wrote a couple of posts on the topic a couple of months ago in case you fancy reading them:
https://steemit.com/economics/@johngreenfield/liberal-agenda-universal-basic-income
https://steemit.com/economics/@johngreenfield/liberal-agenda-universal-basic-income-a-follow-up
Thanks for the pointers!