DustyBin
Established Member
Because if, and I stress if as I'm not convinced that this will ever arise, we do end up in a situation where there just aren't enough jobs for people to do we have the choice of either consigning millions of our fellow citizens to misery on benefits which barely cover their living costs with no possibly hope of ever escaping that or we can look at something like UBI as a way of ensuring at least some minimum standard of living that isn't utterly precarious.
I certainly don't think we need UBI right now, I'm not sure we'll ever need UBI (for reasons of both history and those that you've outlined yourself) but I can certainly foresee a future in which we do need something like it so we might as well toy with the idea now and try running experiments to see if our assumptions are borne out in reality. Better to have it as tool in our locker and never need it because, as has always been the case, new jobs arise to replace those that are lost than the reverse of having millions out of work, with no prospect of finding work and no ideas what we can do with them other than consign them to misery.
Interesting post!
My instant reaction when I heard about the trial was that it's a ridiculous idea. However, after thinking about it further I'm not so sure. Firstly, there's the question around AI, and completely agree with your final sentence in particular. Then there's the fact that the current benefits system isn't exactly efficient, and nor does it deliver value for money for the tax payer. The main questions for me at this stage are how much would a UBI be, will it encourage or discourage entrepreneurism and/or work, and could it affect inflation and how would this be controlled? The trial may go some way to answer the second question, the others probably not so much.
Inevitably(!) I absolutely would not support this becoming some kind of wealth redistribution tool. We all know that those who really can afford to shoulder the biggest burden (or however they want to put it) aren't the ones who would actually do so....