| I wrote a longer rebuttal to this (it's in the responses section of Colin's original piece), but here's an excerpt on the issue of political vulnerability which is his main line of attack. "It is broadly true that the more people who benefit from a government program, the more popular the program usually is. Social insurance programs that benefit the middle-class and the poor are usually politically durable. American social security, for example, is less politically vulnerable than food stamps, in part because food stamps will never benefit most middle-class people. UBI, however, is more like social security than it is like food stamps. The middle-class may not need UBI, but UBI would still benefit them. A comparable case is the status of single-payer health insurance programs in countries that have them. Most middle-class and rich people in these countries don’t need single payer healthcare — nearly all of them would have employer coverage if single payer didn’t exist. And yet there is broad support across classes for single-payer in these countries, in part because it (like UBI) benefits the middle-class. Universal healthcare is in these countries what conservatives would malign as “a sacred cow”. None of this is to say that UBI would be politically invulnerable. Even the most durable social insurance programs are often put at risk. [...] But Colin appears to think UBI would inevitably become means-tested to only benefit the poor. Financial pressures, he says, would cause voters to limit the program. But Colin doesn’t make it clear why middle-class voters would react in this way, stripping themselves of a direct cash benefit. This is certainly not typical voter behaviour, and I am skeptical that a popular turn against UBI is inevitable or likely." |