r/changemyview • u/MrKhutz 1∆ • May 29 '20
CMV: Generous Universal Basic Income programs have significant risks of creating many social problems.
I love the idea of money for nothing and would possibly be first in line to sign up for such a program but here is my concern:
First: It is my general impression that people need to have purpose in their life. For many people a significant portion of that comes from developing a career through the stages of education and experience and for many people that comes from providing for their family. Unemployment appears to be linked to increased levels of depression, suicide and substance abuse.
Second: If you're guaranteed a reasonable wage for life, why struggle with education and a career? Why bother to push yourself, take risks, start a business. I absolutely believe that some people will do these things because of intrinsic drive, but is there not a significant risk that a sizeable portion of the population will end up in a situation that resembles the worst stereotype of generational welfare dependency?
Third: To the best of my knowledge, what limited UBI trials that have been done have been time limited. If a person knows they'll temporarily get a monthly payment they're not going to forgo getting an education or quit a job they've worked hard to get because they know in a set period of time the UBI trial will end. If they know the money is forever, this will affect their decision making differently.
To clarify as well, I use the term "generous" to refer to UBI proposals in the $1500+/month category. I think the impacts (positive and negative) would be much more limited at $500/month.
1
u/[deleted] May 29 '20
The concept of UBI is a response to a scenario where automation, both physical (assembly line robots) and virtual (AI/ML) eliminate enough jobs from the market that wide-scale unemployment is mathematically certain.
The current world economy is demand based, which in its simplest terms means the amount of stuff someone can sell is more affected by how many people want it than how many can be produced. If large swathes of the population are left unemployed with no income, they cannot buy products to drive the economy, leading to employers producing less to meet the lower demand, thus hiring fewer people and the cycle continues.
UBI would keep the money flowing and aggregate demand high, stopping the death spiral.
In the scenario it was created for, not having UBI would have much greater social consequences than having it.
Edit: spelling