Universal Basic Income Has Been Tried over and over Again. It Works Every Time
Universal basic income repeatedly shows positive outcomes in small-scale or targeted trials, improving recipients’ health, security, and ability to seek better work. Commenters, however, argue that these experiments sidestep the hardest questions: how to fund a truly universal program at national scale, how it would interact with inflation, housing scarcity, and existing welfare systems, and whether broad cash transfers ultimately benefit landlords and asset owners more than workers. Many suggest that reforms like universal services, negative income tax, or stronger labor protections might address similar problems with fewer macroeconomic risks.
Scope and definition of “UBI”
- Many argue UBI has never truly been tried at scale: most cited examples are small pilots, time-limited, targeted (low-income/unemployed), or funded from natural resources (e.g., Alaska), and often only “partial” income.
- Critics say pilot successes don’t reveal macro effects once payments are truly universal and permanent.
- Some highlight Alaska’s dividend and European cash programs as evidence that small, permanent, unconditional payments can reduce poverty and crime without obvious disaster, but amounts are far from full income support.
Financing and tax tradeoffs
- Core unresolved question: who pays?
- Options debated: higher corporate and top-bracket taxes, wealth or land-rent taxes, cutting other welfare/military spending, or “printing money.”
- Back-of-envelope US math: redirecting all federal welfare, Social Security, and Medicare still yields only modest per-person annual amounts.
- Some propose UBI combined with a flat tax, replacing many means-tested programs and phase-outs to simplify the system.
Inflation, money creation, and COVID comparisons
- Strong concern that large-scale UBI would be inflationary or even hyperinflationary, especially if financed by monetary expansion.
- Others counter that:
- Inflation depends on balance of money sources/sinks and real output, not just “printing.”
- COVID-period inflation also reflected supply shocks, corporate “greedflation,” and data artifacts (e.g., M1 redefinition).
- Disagreement over how much recent US and Polish inflation was driven by cash transfers vs other factors; evidence in thread is anecdotal or contested.
Labor supply and work incentives
- UBI opponents fear reduced labor supply, citing pandemic-era worker shortages and enhanced unemployment.
- Proponents note:
- Experiments generally do not show mass withdrawal from work.
- Pandemic payments were temporary and conditional (unemployment), not true UBI.
- A basic floor can improve bargaining power and let people refuse exploitative jobs.
Distributional and sector effects
- Multiple comments argue extra cash will be captured by rent-seekers, especially landlords, given constrained housing supply.
- Others question why only landlords, not competitive goods providers, would capture gains; answer given: housing supply is uniquely inelastic.
- Several emphasize that dollars at the low end have far higher welfare impact than the same dollars at the top.
Political and structural concerns
- US political culture is seen as hostile to anything “socialist,” making UBI implementation unlikely.
- Worries about permanence: once implemented, politically hard to scale back; also fear of weaponization (cutting payments to dissidents).
- Some see UBI as a potential tool of tyranny; others see it as a necessary “hack” in a world where land and commons are fully enclosed.
Alternatives and complements
- Suggested or preferred approaches:
- Stronger worker protections, sectoral bargaining, minimum wage increases.
- Universal healthcare, housing allowances, or “universal basic services” instead of income.
- Negative income tax, expanded earned income tax credit, or universal food stamps.
- Public equity funds / universal dividends from collective ownership of productive assets.