In a piece published in Equites, business writer Joel Anderson analyzes how a UBI might be feasible — “in three acts.”
Anderson begins (in “act one”) by asking why it is desirable to adopt a basic income. In answering this question, he highlights the potential of a UBI to enhance the bargaining power of workers. When people live in poverty, they might feel compelled to take any job — even a terrible, low-paying job — out of necessity. Furthermore, as long as there’s a pool of such impoverished would-be workers, workers who do want to bargain for more than a paltry wage are risk of replacement by someone willing to work for less. This would change drastically under a UBI.
Further bolstering the case for a UBI, Anderson examines the changing nature of the American economy. Due to advancements in robotics and IT, he says,
[W]e’re now living in a world where a large section of society is searching for a role to play without a clear sense that there will be one.
Instead of continuing to subdivide what work still needs actual humans into a series of low-wage, low-skill jobs that few people actually want to do, why not embrace our changing future and try to empower people to find how they can contribute value that’s unique to them? A UBI would hypothetically give every citizen the flexibility to make choices about how they use their time in a society that increasingly doesn’t need them to spend it working.
In his “second act,” Anderson asks how a basic income could be afforded in the United States. (To illustrate, he considers a UBI of $15,600 per adult per year, with an additional $5,000 per dependent.)
He provides a comprehensive look at savings due to elimination of current welfare programs, anticipated reductions in spending on crime and security, and anticipated increases in tax revenue due to economic growth. After this, he admits that the US would still need to raise taxes considerably to fund a UBI — but to a level that is still modest by global standards.
Finally, in the “third act,” Anderson presents empirical evidence that a UBI would work — including a brief summary of results from past basic income pilots.
Now, these studies were all relatively small, so it’s likely a mistake to simply extrapolate out their results, but they do seem to indicate a basic truth: people mostly want to do something with their lives. Overall, when freed from the need to work simply to fulfill basic necessities, most people in these studies tended to still find ways to be productive. Not everyone, to be sure, but a pretty solid majority. In many cases, they pursue things like a better education or job that will greatly increase productivity over the course of their lifetimes.
Reference
Joel Anderson, 10 May 2016, “Money For Nothing and Your Checks for Free: Why the Basic Income Makes More Sense than You Think,” Equites.
Image Credit: badgreeb Records via flickr
