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RE: Universal Basic Income as an Alternative to Higher Minimum Wages
You raised some good points @digitalfirehose. With the technological growth we are experiencing these days, UBI may actually become a feasible system. It is all about getting the incentives right and taking into account human nature.
UBI has been feasible and required IMO since the birth of private property. Even as far back as the founding of the US, Thomas Paine supported a version of it funded by essentially a land value tax for the same reasoning. Decades ago we even almost passed a version of it under Nixon, thanks to Milton Friedman himself. We could have afforded it then in 1970 when it passed the House of Representatives. Our economy has more than doubled since then, so it would make no sense at all to suggest that it was feasible in 1970 but not in 2017.
As for "getting the incentives right", the incentives of UBI are better than any form of conditional assistance that is pulled away with income. As described in this post, conditional welfare creates welfare cliffs. The highest marginal tax rates of all are applied to those on welfare, which makes no sense at all to be doing if our goal is to incentivize employment. No one in their right mind would accept a job where they lose $1.20 in benefits for every $1 earned. A UBI however could be done in a way that subtracts 40 cents for every $1 earned, no matter if it's one dollar or one billion of them. That would be the flat 40% income tax method. It's not my favorite version, but it's an option.
In regards to "human nature", we greatly are a result of our environment. UBI is about improving our environments. By covering everyone's basic needs as a given, that's a guarantee of security in addition to making sure people are able to get enough to eat, stay off the streets, and live healthier lives. The evidence is strongly in favor of basic income with reduced hospitalization rates, lower crime rates, healthier birth weights, lower stress, more entrepreneurship, greater social cohesion, and more. Definitely look into the growing body of evidence. It's the data that convinced me about UBI more than anything.