On Thursday, July 7, President Obama’s head economic adviser, Jason Furman, created a stir when he dismissed universal basic income (UBI) in a speech delivered at New York University, as part of a workshop on automation co-hosted by the White House.
Furman presented UBI as a potential response to technological unemployment but rejected the strategy, declaring that “We should not advance a policy that is premised on giving up on the possibility of workers’ remaining employed.”
Writing in Medium, University of Chicago law professor Daniel Hemel dissects Furman’s arguments against UBI and replies to each.
Hemel emphasizes that, at base, UBI has nothing to do with the fear of robots taking our jobs; instead, “all it takes to support a UBI is to believe that low-income individuals are entitled to some level of state support — with no strings attached — in the form of cash.”
Read Hemel’s full reply here:
Daniel Hemel, “The Case Against a Universal Basic Income That Isn’t,” Medium, July 10, 2016.
Photo of Jason Furman (Feb 2016) CC Brookings Institution (flickr)
By providing a basic level of economic standards we could solve many a domestic problems too by allowing people to make the decision to leave abusive relationships rather than stay in the face of someone who keeps hurting them for the sake of money. Standardised income to all means unemployed people, sick people, disabled people, old people, and unemployable people alike all have sufficient income to meet needs without any possible discrimination or tendious applications to fill out. At the same time because UBI is not means tested it means there is real intensive for these people to actually do their absolute best to find and maintain employment as their would be no actual economic loss from doing so. Seems like a no brainier to me that we can achieve so much by raising taxes and then providing a UBI.