A variant of Universal Basic Income that can work
I've written a proposal for a variant of UBI that I believe solves the primary criticisms while maintaining all of the benefits and more. I'm searching for serious people to critique it. Please comment.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Uc_xQpLLEmxY1-6GIFerrzMVAFwgVQz66wdDUjHJi4M/edit?usp=sharing
If you had included a summary at the start, I might have read it, but not knowing if the document will be of interest to me makes it hard to find the will to read through 14 pages.
My advice is to include a summary at the start.
There is a summary at the start...
"The following document is an outline of a variant of Universal Basic Income that I believe resolves its primary criticisms and is more politically achievable, while maintaining all of its benefits.
Simply put, it is a reward system that ties income to social exchanges, such as cutting someone's grass, teaching maths, learning a new language from someone, learning to weld or lay blocks, visiting a sick person in hospital, teaching someone about gardening, learning to programme with someone’s support or mentoring a young entrepreneur.
People would register exchanges on a government run website and welfare officers would administer the system. Credit would be given via cash payments or tax breaks, which would initially be relatively tiny while the system is tested and refined.
Universal Basic Income is often criticised, correctly, for being “money-for-nothing”. This is not that. This is a “money-for-something” concept, but the “something”, is something anybody can do with equal difficulty. Therefore this system is still universal, even if only people who opt-in receive the money. The thing they are asked to do will be something that justifies the payment without encroaching on the normal labour market, and people at all income levels will opt-in.
I have no doubt you're feeling sceptical, as this proposal may seem on face value as naive in the extreme. But I am confident that I have thought of most of your initial criticisms & contrary instincts already, and that this concept is worth serious consideration.
That said, there may still be a fundamental flaw that makes this unworkable, and if so, I would appreciate your support in finding it."
That's an introduction, an outline or description, but, ok, I shouldn't be arguing semantics.
By summary I meant a list of the basic points to be discussed with a one or two line summary for each. In this context, something which tells us "how" before we have to read the whole document. Just my personal view. If other people are reading it without the need for this, fair enough.
UBI doesn't work, period. Sorry. Central planning guarantees waste and abuse due to the economic calculation problem and the inherent problems in public choice economics. Decentralized markets are the only solution that distributes income most evenly. That's why the megacorps fear it and cling to government protectionism, after all.
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