| Dismissing complex ideas in terms of cliches from popular fiction is not a great way to make policy. Based on the last year, you can conclude nothing because people, countries, and politicians were just panicking and trying to survive on incidental handouts which don't allow for planning a future. That's not basic income. Universal basic income would be living in the certainty that no matter what you will always have enough to take care of yourself and your family without obligations to do anything that you don't want to do. This is why libertarians like the idea because they don't agree being told how to live their lives by governments. UBI leads to different life choices; including maybe not spending your career working double jobs cleaning and flipping burgers in double jobs while still not making enough to cover rent, insurance, or the ability to retire. This kind of poverty exists in some places that are filthy rich (i.e. the US). But it is kind of an anomaly among other similarly wealthy (and even a lot less wealthy) countries. Elsewhere, it's basically what a lot of us already have except it's still surrounded in rules and morals that dictate that you have to live a "productive" life. IMHO UBI could just be formalizing that status quo. We're basically taken care of anyway and now we simply take care of everyone unconditionally. It's not that massive of a change once you accept that there's a cost per person in each country for sustaining them that these countries are basically already paying for. But just in a really convoluted way. Making that less convoluted would probably result in some savings and allow some of the poorest people in our society to get a grip on their life or make some different choices. Some people would qualify that as fairness. It could be as simple as if you don't work you receive X; no questions asked. If you do work, you also receive X and you now urn Y-X, where Y is your total income. If you get unemployed, you get X+benefits from your (optional) unemployment insurance. If you get sick, basic health care is part of your basic income but you can insure for benefits (optional). The hard part is establishing a value for X that is high enough that it matters and low enough that we don't destroy our economies. It would basically mean labor gets a lot cheaper and simpler for companies. Of course UBI has to come from somewhere. Like for example corporate, income taxes and part of what used to be separate insurances for e.g. unemployment, state pensions, etc. We can still have those insurances except that they would now be about insuring the difference to UBI so the cost would be lower. And we can also make those optional since UBI would be enough, thus making everything extra something you'd opt in for. For, many countries, this is effectively what they have already except that they tend to have these hugely inefficient bureaucracies to try to get you back to work. Which in the case of e.g. Spain with double digit unemployment numbers tends to be a bit futile. Hence, the discussions on UBI are a bit further there. |