Gigi Foster, “Universal basic income: the dangerous idea of 2016”
Credit to The Conversation
Universal basic income (UBI) has gain traction in the developed world. Some citizens in Australia support it. Gigi Foster, Associate Professor in the School of Economics at University of New South Wales, said, “…while good in theory, it’s no panacea for the challenges of our modern economy.”
That is, UBI is gaining traction in the developed world, but, according to Foster, is not a cure-all for the Australian economy. Foster notes this would replace some social security and welfare programs. “In the developed world, Canada is trialling a UBI scheme,” she said, “Finland also just rolled out a UBI trial, involving about 10,000 recipients for two years.” In short, there are UBI experiments.
“The present Australian welfare system (excluding the Medicare bill of A$25 billion) costs around A$170 billion per annum,” Foster said, “Our GDP is around A$1.7 trillion per year, so this welfare bill is about 10% of annual GDP.”
Read the full article here:
Gigi Foster, “Universal basic income: the dangerous idea of 2016“, The Conversation (Australia), December 26th, 2016
