Impact – Unemployment Unemployment will cause mass poverty – only a UBI can give the poor enough money to participate in society – pilot programs prove Siegel 2017 - President of Rain Mountain LLC an independent product development group [RP, Feb 14th, 2017 Could Donald Trump Deliver a Universal Basic Income? Acc 6/29/17 [Premier] While conservatives seem to be more concerned about the rich feeling put upon, liberal supporters tend to focus more on the benefits to the poor. UBI can help reduce inequality and provide a safety net for all Americans, they argue. Plus, being a fixed amount, it would proportionately help the poorest among us the most. Another advantage, proponents say, is that since a UBI could mean that no one is starving, our leaders might be less willing to sacrifice everything under the sun in the name of jobs. It would also fit perfectly with today’s growing gig economy. How would a universal basic income work? Writing in the Huffington Post, UBI advocate Scott Santens says the policy will make the market more efficient by allowing the poor to vote with their dollars, something they could not do before. The stipend would initially be small: He estimates around $1,000 per adult, per month, which would at least be enough to avoid starvation. Santens cites a UBI pilot study conducted in Namibia in the wake of the financial crisis. The results after one year were quite remarkable. Child malnutrition dropped from 42 percent to 10 percent. School attendance increased while crime dropped by over 36 percent. Poverty declined from 97 percent to 43 percent. Even unemployment dropped.
by the welfare state, some 16% of Americans are left living in poverty. Wouldn’t it be better just to scrap the whole system and write the poor a check? In what follows, I will make the case for a Basic Income Guarantee (BIG) as a replacement for the current welfare state. There are a number of distinct ways of arguing from libertarian premises to a BIG, some of which I have discussed in the past. In this essay, however, I will focus on what I take to be the strongest and most persuasive libertarian argument. I will argue that a BIG, even if it is not ideal from a libertarian perspective, is significantly better on libertarian grounds than our current welfare state, and has a much higher likelihood of being achieved in a world in which most people reject libertarian views.
supervision and surveillance by the bureaucracy, with the ability to get on with living their lives rather than having to waste them proving their innocence.”∂ The conditional welfare state is not only invasive, it is heavily paternalistic. Restrictions on eligibility are imposed in order to encourage welfare recipients to live their lives in a way that the state thinks is good for them: don’t have kids out of wedlock, don’t do drugs, and get (or stay) married. And benefits are often given in-kind rather than in cash precisely because the state doesn’t trust welfare recipients to make what it regards as wise choices about how to spend their money. This, despite the fact that both economic theory and a growing body of empirical evidence suggest that individuals are better off with the freedom of choice that a cash grant brings. In-kind grant programs like SNAP (food stamps) persist in their present form not because they are effective but because they are the product of a classic Bootleggers-and-Baptists coalition: well-meaning members of the public like the idea that welfare recipients have to use their vouchers on food rather than alcohol and cigarettes, and the farm lobby likes that beneficiaries are forced to buy its own products. Poor people, meanwhile, are deprived of the opportunity to save that a cash grant would give them, and they are forced to waste time and effort trading what SNAP allows them to buy for what they really want.
on jobs as a solution to poverty is a problem for at least the two reasons aforementioned. Focusing on work as opposed to jobs is what basic income proponents seek to do. A UBI won’t cause dependence – it won’t be enough to discourage work, and it couldn’t be worse than the current system Siegel 2017 - President of Rain Mountain LLC an independent product development group [RP, Feb 14th, 2017 Could Donald Trump Deliver a Universal Basic Income? Acc 6/29/17 ] [Premier] The pros and cons of a universal basic income Iain Murray is the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s vice president of strategy. He writes in the National Review that he, too, is “leaning” toward supporting a universal basic income (UBI). Murray argues that libertarians support the idea because they “see it as the least damaging way for the government to transfer wealth from some citizens to others. Either way, the UBI is an idea whose time has finally come, but it has to be done right.” Michael Strain, who is against it, lays out the following pros for the policy in the Washington Post: Far less government bureaucracy No stigma for recipients Personal responsibility for how the money is spent No penalty for supplementing income A base of economic security for all (oddly, he makes this point last) Despite these potential benefits, Strain says he can’t support it because, “In a UBI world, those who choose to work will support those who choose not to – not those who can’t work, but those who won’t. This really would be a world of makers and takers.” Strain says he simply can’t abide the idea that the wealth of some could bring comfort to the poverty of others — arguing this is somehow unfair, despite the fact that it’s already what happens, albeit quite imperfectly, in our current system. CEI’s Murray disagrees, taking comfort in the fact that the basic income stipends would be meager enough to dispel the sense of blatant unfairness: “[The] entitlement would almost certainly not give people enough money to shirk work,” he wrote. “It would avoid people starving on the streets, but it wouldn’t enable them to do much more.”
AT Tax Cut CP A UBI is better for the economy than a tax cut for the wealthy – the poor are more likely to stimulate demand. Streithorst, 2015 – Evonomics Journalist [Tom, “How Basic Income Solves Capitalism’s Fundamental Problem”, Evonomics, December 20, 2015, http://evonomics.com/how-universal-basic-income-solves/. June 27, 2017] NJT [Premier] The third problem is perhaps the most central. By stimulating the economy and pushing it towards its production possibilities frontier, the Basic Income Guarantee will be growth enhancing, but it is undeniable that it will also be redistributive. The pie will be larger, but it will be sliced differently. For the past 30 years, we have stimulated the economy by shovelling money towards rich people. A Basic Income Guarantee shovels money towards poor people. And for many in the top 1%, that is anathema.∂ Conservatives generally favour tax cuts as a way of stimulating the economy. Although they don’t like to admit it, this is textbook Keynesianism. As long as the government does not cut spending, more money in consumers’ pockets will inevitably increase demand. Unfortunately, tax cuts generally favour the richest among us, and they, unlike the poor, are liable to save rather than spend their windfall. Stimulating savings is a waste of a tax cut. Today, we have an over-abundance of saving and a shortfall of investment and consumption. A Basic Income Guarantee can be thought of as a tax cut targeted to those most likely to spend it, which is what the economy needs. The Basic Income Guarantee solves the problem of demand, stimulates the economy, increases corporate profits, gives workers more freedom, and provides a safety net to the most vulnerable. It is economically sound and politically savvy. But the very rich don’t fear unemployment, they fear redistribution and they will be the most significant force against the implementation of the Basic Income Guarantee.
AT Racism K A UBI spills over to address racial issues – it gives black activists money to focus on combatting racism Boston Review, 2017 (Undercommons, Freedom School in LA, May 3 2017, “No Racial Justice Without Basic Income”, Accessed on 6/29/17, http://bostonreview.net/class-inequality-race/undercommons-no-racial-justice-without-basic-income) [Premier] A guaranteed income would also give activists and organizers within marginalized communities more space to work on the myriad problems a basic income would not solve. Many people working for a more just world get little to no pay for their work. In a world with basic income, activists would not have to work a day job or constantly hustle to get by, but would be able to give their lives to agitating for other causes without the anxiety that comes from being financially precarious. For these reasons the Movement for Black Lives—a coalition of more than fifty black-led organizations seeking “radical transformation, not reactionary reform” for racial justice—released a six-point platform that included reparations for slavery and the institutional exclusion and disenfranchisement that followed. UBI+ alone would go a long way to improving security for all marginalized individuals and families in the United States, but a UBI+ coupled with a broader social vision of cooperative security, such as the one advanced by the Movement for Black Lives, could change the game. This vision would, wherever possible, embrace radical forms of cooperative security, from universal health care coverage to the abolition of both police and prisons.