Universal Basic Income (UBI) is an idea that seems to unite the left and the right.

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Great idea, utopia, dystopia, inevitable, wish thinking?

I've read a number of blog posts about this topic here on Steemit, and the sentiment seems generally positive. Given strides in automation, robots, artificial intelligence, 3D printing, and the resulting disruptive technologies, it's little wonder that a guaranteed basic income is being discussed.

Truth is, you can find researched articles supporting and rejecting this idea, so there's no need to reinvent the the wheel in a blog post. But I would like to share a few things. It is interesting that the progressive Nordic nation of Finland is applying the brakes to a limited UBI experiment they began at the start of 2017. You can read a NYTimes article here for more insights, but here are a few bullet points:

The basic income trial, which started at the beginning of 2017 and will continue until the end of this year, has given monthly stipends of 560 euros ($685) to a random sample of 2,000 unemployed people aged 25 to 58. Recipients have been free to do as they wished — create start-ups, pursue alternate jobs, take classes — secure in the knowledge that the stipends would continue regardless.

For centuries, thinkers across the ideological spectrum have embraced the notion of basic income. It has gained favor with the social philosopher Thomas More, the laissez faire economist Milton Friedman and the civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., an unusual diversity of support that has enhanced the appeal of the idea as a modern-day solution to economic anxiety in much of the world.

Silicon Valley technologists have suggested that basic income could enable humanity to exploit the labor-saving promise of robots absent the fear of mass joblessness.

The NYTimes closes their article with this assessment of why the experiment didn't work, Finland's social safety net is already so generous that the basic income was superfluous:

This may be the main reason that basic income has lost momentum in Finland: It is effectively redundant.

The Investor Business Daily sees it differently:

Meanwhile, as working Finns figured out, such a system would lead to massive tax increases. Even the OECD, not known as a bastion of free-market thought, in a study of Finland found that a guaranteed income to replace welfare (the ultimate goal of all basic income programs) would have to be "financed by increasing income taxation by nearly 30% or around 4% of GDP."
So it should be no surprise why average Finns, some of the best educated people on the planet, would reject such an idea. Yet, here in the U.S., it continues to grow in popularity.

They quote this article by Mimi Teixeira:

The Government Has Already Tried Universal Basic Income. Here’s What Happened.

"In the 1970s, the (U.S.) government ran four random control experiments across six states to try the negative income tax, a similar policy proposal (to the basic income) that was popular at the time. In each test, the work disincentive effect was disastrous. For every $1,000 in added benefits to a family, there was an average reduction in $660 of wages from work."

The progressive Singularity Hub isn't concerned:

So who will fund universal basic income at a large scale? At the moment, it seems like it will have to come from taxes. Some have raised concerns that this could contribute to higher taxes for a lot of people. They point out that at its core, this makes UBI a typical wealth redistribution program. This may contribute to the disincentive to work at higher levels because of the high taxation involved. There are worries that this may also translate into higher prices of everyday products, harming the finances of poor people.
Let’s not forget how providing basic income can actually save the government money and consequently cut taxes in many different ways. We’ve also seen evidence of how in practice, it can contribute to more productive citizens.

My Brief Take on the UBI

The world has over 2,000 billionaires, and the top 1% controls more wealth than nearly four billion people. Personally, I'm okay with an individual being worth tens of millions of dollars, but how about 100 million, or in the case of the world's richest man, over 100 billion?

We are advancing toward a globalized world where national sovereignty and laws are being marginalized. This will effectively give billionaires and global corporations the final piece of the puzzle – the ability to live outside the laws and restrictions of sovereign nation states.

The fact that some of the most vocal proponents of UBI are billionaires, gives some thinkers on the left and on the right pause.

We don't live in a world of flourishing democracies, and even in the democracies we have, wealthy interests exert excessive influence over policy and law makers. A nation of citizens bound by language, history, customs, and culture has a chance, but an amorphous world population with no common values, language, history, or culture would be powerless against global elites.

World Unity

In a world of flourishing democracies, one could imagine the development of regional common markets which could eventually evolve into a global commonwealth, with some shared basic rights, the harmonization of certain laws, and freedom of movement. In such a world, I suspect a universal language would be adopted, and over time mankind would organically grow together. Sadly, that isn't the road we took.

Some see the recent push for open borders, again championed by billionaires and elites, as a further means of weakening the nation state. In the not too distant past, contiguous (neighboring) nation states were expected to assist their neighbors in the event of war, famine, and natural disasters. They were obligated to offer aid and assistance, and when necessary harbor refugees until such time as they could return home.

The world community was duty-bound to assist such nations financially in dealing with this burden. This makes sense because money spent in or around a trouble spot is vastly more effective, refugees are more easily integrated into a similar culture, and it is easier for them to return to their homeland when conditions improve.

Imagine for example this thought experiment. People tend to think of Germany as a rich nation, but Germany is threatened by a rise in elderly poverty “Altersarmut.” According to an OECD Study, an average wage earner who retires at 65 in Germany will receive a pension of 58% of previous earnings. In Austria the figure is 90%, in Italy 82%, and in Spain 80%.
So imagine a situation in which German retirees could simply throw away their identification and show up in Austria, Spain, or Italy and receive higher pension benefits and spend their golden years under the warm Mediterranean sun. Clearly, the pension systems in these nations would collapse.

Or imagine if the living standard in New Zealand were vastly higher than the EU, and it were possible for young men from the EU to show up in New Zealand, hang out on the beach, and collect more money from New Zealand than they could earn in the EU. Europe would be robbed of it's young men, and you can imagine what would happen to New Zealand. The young EU men would be crazy not to do it, and New Zealand would be crazy to allow it.

So yes, at first blush UBI sounds great, but my concern is that in an age of open borders (for elites and other economic migrants), no social safety net is strong enough to survive, much less be expanded.

Yet it might happen, and UBI might be the piece of cheese on a mousetrap of sorts. What if it were simply the first step in resettling masses of people in tiny living spaces in choked urban centers with a subsistence income – robbed of mobility and mollified by an escape into virtual reality. A UBI recipient would be utterly dependent and powerless. Meanwhile, billionaires could continue to amass vast swathes of rural land and wilderness land for estates the size of national parks. Perhaps the bleak future portrayed in many Hollywood films is a vision of things to come.

I Hope I'm Completely Wrong ;-)

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