Objections To Universal Basic Income Debunked (Updated Re-Post)

Back in 2017, there was an article in The Week by Damon Linker titled, "The Spiritual Ruin of a Universal Basic Income".  He basically argues that it is a Very Bad Idea for the left to pursue the idea of a UBI because 1) it fails to address (and perhaps even intensifies) the psychological and spiritual consequences of joblessness, which are (in his view) distinct from and worse than the economic consequences, 2) most people couldn't handle joblessness even with a basic income, and would thus become depressed and purposeless and give themselves over to video games, porn, and/or drug addiction, and 3) the left should not concede that automation (and the resulting job losses) is in any way inevitable.  Because reasons, obviously. 

And all of these things are in fact false.  (Or to be exceedingly charitable, highly subjective at best.)

First, only a person of relative privilege could possibly see the economic consequences of joblessness as somehow entirely separate from, and less significant than, the (admittedly real) psychological and spiritual consequences of same.  The former can indeed cause or contribute to the latter in a big way, and it is very difficult to disentangle them.  Material poverty and desperation are in fact well-known to be objectively harmful to the mind, body, and spirit, and only meaningful work (as opposed to work for the sake of work) can really be said to be beneficial to same.  And when the economic consequences are resolved via a UBI, the remaining noneconomic consequences of unemployment would in fact become that much easier to tackle in practice.  Think about it. 

(Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, hello!  Only when the lower rungs of basic physiological and security needs are satisfied (which UBI does) is it even possible to even partially achieve the higher rungs.)

Second, there is NO logical reason why a UBI and the sort of New Deal 2.0 jobs program that Linker advocates would be mutually exclusive.  The TSAP, in fact, advocates exactly that combination, with both a UBI and a scaled-up Job Corps style program for everyone who wants one (even if not quite a guarantee).  We also advocate shortening the workweek as well, which would spread the remaining work among more workers, thus more jobs.  (The vaunted 40 hour workweek is literally a relic of 1938, and even then was almost going to be set as low as 30 hours.)  Thus, the noneconomic consequences of joblessness can also be adequately dealt with as well, and in any case, one can always choose to do volunteer work (and there most likely will still be plenty of that available) to get the same ostensible psychological and spiritual benefits as paid work.  So that is NOT a valid reason for the left to abandon the idea of UBI, anymore than it would be a reason to abandon the idea of a social safety net in general.

(Actually, John Maynard Keynes, along with many other futurists, predicted that with the increases in productivity due to technology, the average workweek would eventually shrink to 15 hours by the end of the 20th century.  Of course, that didn't happen, since the oligarchs took nearly all the fruits of the productivity gains since the early 1970s, thanks to neoliberalism.)

Third, the idea that UBI will cause most people or even a particularly large chunk of the population to become lazy and/or self-destructive is NOT borne out by the facts.  Numerous experiments with UBI and related schemes have been conducted in diverse cultures and locations in the past half-century, and the overwhelming weight of the evidence to date strongly suggests that this will NOT occur.  If anything, one notable effect is an increase in entrepreneurship due to a decreased fear of failure and more time and money to invest in their goals. Students and new mothers will likely work fewer hours than before since they are no longer forced by dint of economic necessity (the effect on hours worked is likely negligible for everyone else), but is that really such a bad thing?  Of course not.

No serious proposal for UBI has advocated one large enough to "live large" on that alone.  (The most common proposals, including the TSAP's, rarely exceed $1000/month per adult and $500/month per child under 18.)  Thus, there will still be plenty of incentive to work, since unlike traditional means-tested welfare programs, there is no penalty for earning more money than some arbitrary threshold.

In any case, with or without UBI, workers will work, and shirkers will shirk regardless.  Employers may (at first) not be pleased about having to pay somewhat higher wages than before to attract and retain quality employees, but them's the breaks for solving collective action problems.  In other words, it would now have to be entirely by mutual consent, not desperation or coercion.  And ultimately, even the employers themselves will benefit in the long run as well, as Henry Ford famously noted long ago.

(If we really want to incentivize work in the event of a labor shortage, we can, in addition to UBI, expand and convert the EITC to a simpler "reverse payroll tax" that automatically tops up workers' paychecks by matching dollar for dollar up to a point.  Such carrots would work far better than sticks in the long run.)

(And to all of the truly horrible and insufferable bosses out there, well, hear that?  That's the sound of me playing the world's smallest violin for you.  So go swallow your pride (and greed, envy, gluttony, sloth, wrath, and lust, while you're at it), before it swallows you whole.  And at the same time, to all of the users, welchers, leeches, dregs, and ne'er-do-wells, there's the door.  Don't let it hit you on the way out!)

Nor is there any credible evidence that substance abuse would significantly increase either as a result of UBI, and it may even decrease.  But just to drive the point home even further, Silicon Valley entrepreneur Sam Altman argues that even if 90% of the population sat around smoking weed and playing video games instead of working, a UBI would still be better on balance than not having one, as everyone would be free to pursue their passions, and the remaining 10% would innovatively create new wealth.  Not that he thinks that 90% would actually do that, of course, and nor do we, but the point was well-made nonetheless.  One can also point to the Rat Park studies as well.  It is amazing how addiction of any kind diminishes or even disappears when rats (or people) are not treated like caged animals in the aptly-named "rat race"!

(Some cynics will inevitably bring up the infamous Universe 25 "mouse utopia" experiments, but that would really be a gross disanalogy, since a gilded cage is still a cage regardless. And in any case, at the end of the day, rats and mice are not people.)

And finally, a real pragmatist would realize that automation really is inevitable in the long run.  Contrary to what the neo-Luddites like to argue, fighting against it will NOT stop it, only delay it a bit.  The best that we genuine progressives can do is admit that fact and do whatever we can to ensure that the fruits of this automation will benefit all of humanity, and not just the oligarchs at the top.  To do so, we must take the power back from the oligarchs.  And a crucial step to that goal is a Universal Basic Income, so We the People can actually have some bargaining power, no longer dependent on our employers for survivial.  No longer would anyone have to be at the mercy of the all too often merciless.  Whether we get this one right will basically be the difference between a futuristic pragmatic utopia or protopia (as Buckminster Fuller envisioned) or a horrifying technocratic dystopia straight out of 1984, Brave New World, or [insert other dystopian novel here].  So let's choose the right side of history!

After all, as the late, great Buckminster Fuller--the Leonardo da Vinci of the 20th century, famously said all the way back in 1970:

We should do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian Darwinian theory he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.

Thus, on balance, a Universal Basic Income Guarantee for all is a good idea regardless.  A win-win-win situation for everyone but the oligarchs.  And the only real arguments against it are selfish, patronizing, paternalistic, and/or sadistic ones, which really means there are NO good arguments against it in a free and civilized society.  So what are we waiting for?

For more information and a much deeper dive into this topic, see the TSAP's "Why UBI?" page.

P.S.  I realized that the above arguments are largely utilitarian or consequentialist in nature, which still leave the reader wondering about nonconsequentialist or deontological arguments.  For the latter, Immanuel Kant's categorical imperative can also be said to apply to UBI:  "Always treat humanity as an end in itself, and never solely as a means", as well as his principle of universalizability.  Or as Robert Reich says, "The economy exists to make our lives better. We do not exist to make the economy better."  And let's not forget the Golden Rule:  "Do unto others, what you would have others do unto you", per Jesus Christ, plus the more subtle Silver Rule "Do NOT do unto others, what you would NOT have others do unto you," per Confucius, as well.  Thus, even when ignoring all utilitarian arguments, the case for UBI still exceeds any case against it.

(See also some recent articles that directly or indirectly mention the concept of UBI, here and here.)

And regardless, if we make the perfect the enemy of the good, we ultimately end up with neither. 

(Mic drop)

UPDATE:  And in case anyone brings up the "original intent" of the Founding Fathers of the USA, keep in mind that one of them, Thomas Paine, actually advocated for some flavor of what we would now call UBI, what he called a "demogrant".  So UBI is actually well within the envelope of the Founders' idea of limited government, and truly transcends the usual left-right political spectrum.  Such disparate thinkers from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to Milton Friedman to Charles Murray to Nina Turner to Andrew Yang to Ellen Brown to Rodger Malcolm Mitchell to even (however briefly) Hillary Clinton have all gone on the record supporting some flavor of UBI, as has the entire libertarian-leaning red state of Alaska since the 1970s.