In Defense of a Universal Basic Income (Guest Post at Bet On It)
I’ve got a guest post up on Bryan Caplan’s Bet on It defending a universal basic income. I argue that a UBI is, at a minimum, an improvement over the status quo.
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Thanks for this post. If there’s going to be a debate on this, I wonder if the question could be better clarified. In asking whether a UBI is better than the status quo, what exactly would change in the UBI scenario? Would everything be exactly the same, except for the addition of a UBI? Or would the UBI replace or shrink some existing welfare programs? If the latter, which programs would be replaced / shrunk by how much, and how much UBI would there be? E.g., I bet people would have very different preferences about the following two scenarios, both of which qualify as replacing some existing welfare programs with UBI:
(A) Shrink social security payouts by $1 annually per person. Add $1M annual UBI for everyone.
(B) Eliminate all redistributive welfare programs, but add $1 annual UBI for all.
Or maybe the debate you want to have is more theoretical, about the most effective strategy to redistribute resources. Maybe something like: given a fixed amount of welfare you want to redistribute, is the best way to achieve that via UBI vs more targeted payments.
One problem with this latter debate is that it seems like it doesn’t really touch on why a lot of (right-)libertarians are against UBI. Even if we all agree that UBI is the most effective means of transferring wealth, the biggest objection (rights violations) still remains. And second, as you said in a reply above, this question seems practically irrelevant, as replacement of existing programs with UBI will never happen.
Chris, I tend to agree with all these arguments you make (and that Munger has made). One remaining concern I have, though, is whether the existing programs that UBI is meant to replace would actually go away, or if they'd find a way to persist. (David Henderson has raised this objection.) If they do, then that's actually worse than status quo. What are some arguments that that wouldn't happen?