UBI won't work: it's almost implemented in my country (you can get 600€/month + many other welfare stuff by not working) and what's the result? Highest public deficit in the EU zone, highest tax rate in the world, rampant criminality, difficulty to get money by working because of said taxes, educated people leaving the country in mass, etc.
Reality #1: Universal Basic Income (UBI) will empower people to break free from the grind of work. They'll have the freedom to start innovative companies, create art, make music, learn to dance, and generally enjoy happier, less stressful lives.
Reality #2: Alternatively, many might find themselves stuck at home, glued to their screens. This could lead to boredom and depression, resulting in online trolling and petty arguments. Some may even resort to crime out of frustration.
What you’re describing isn’t UBI; it’s just traditional welfare. UBI advocates are aware of problems with welfare and believe that UBI wouldn’t suffer from the same issues.
Why not though? The money has to come from somewhere. Why would UBI not tremendously raise taxes and thereby undermine the incentive to work just as GP observes?
There's actually two ways that the situation described above undermines the incentive to work.
The first is that - and this is one of the key distinctions - welfare programs are means-tested whereas UBI is (as the name implies) universal: everyone gets it whether they're working or need it or not. The post above says "you can get 600€/month + many other welfare stuff by not working"; if you lose that welfare by starting to work, this hugely incentivizes not working! Worse still, it incentivizes black market labour - money earned under the table isn't going to be counted against your means-testing. This is at best productive but untaxed, at worst actively destructive or criminal.
The other is, as you've pointed out, high taxation. I believe the UBI advocate's response to this would be some combination of: 1) UBI will supersede a multitude of complex, means-tested welfare programs and will be cheaper to administer as well, so the increase to taxation won't be as substantial as you might imagine; 2) giving people freedom to pursue education/creativity/entrepeneurship, UBI will spur on economic growth that will help it pay for itself (as would disincentivizing black market labour, as described above); and 3) the extent to which taxation disincentivizes productivity is overstated, or is perhaps contingent on the particular taxation scheme, and they support one that they think won't have deleterious effects.
FWIW I personally suspect UBI would be a pretty good idea, but I'm at least a little skeptical about some of these arguments as I understand them; nevertheless, various people who've studied the issue extensively and with a stronger background in economics buy them, so I accept that they're at least worth taking seriously.
Where is that $600/month going to come from? Is it going to be printed (i.e. causing inflation) or is it going to come from taxation?
Let's try some math: if there are ten people in society, and they all get $600/month, you need to generate $6000/month of tax income. So if there are five of them working, and making an additional $1200/month, that entire sum needs to be taken by the government so it has enough money to pay all of them $600. Are you going to be working, just so someone else doesn't have to, with zero additional benefit to yourself? And I'm not talking about "I'll make myself useful doing art", I'm talking about basic jobs that are MANDATORY to keep society going at all, such as growing food, building roads, and repairing sewers.
Who will be repairing sewers, under UBI? Do you believe that people do that kind of thing for fun, and that they would continue doing that if the state takes all of their money through taxation?
Why do you think $600/month is even sufficient to live on? What about people that live in really expensive cities like San Francisco, are they also going to get $600, even though that realistically represents maybe a week's worth of rent to them?
UBI is only cheaper to administer if you look purely at administration costs. In reality administration costs are a tiny, tiny fraction of the total program cost, and reducing administration costs of existing programs would not have any meaningful impact on state finances, making the administration costs of UBI a non-argument.
There's also the matter of fairness: providing everyone with the same amount of money may sound fair, but is it really fair to give someone who has significant additional costs just to stay alive (for example, because of medical costs) the same amount of money as someone who is fully able to provide for himself already anyway?
Your appeal to authority in your last sentence does not convince, and every attempt to make the math work for UBI ends in complete failure. And don't forget: to 'try it out', we'd have to completely restructure all of society, and the opponents of UBI have highlighted the risk of complete societal collapse if it turns out that UBI is an unworkable scheme after all. Are you willing to take that risk?
Finally, UBI seems to share the incentive structure of communism wrt. human productivity. Given how communist societies throughout history have tended to result in mass starvation with millions, if not tens of millions dead, why do you believe UBI is something we should be trying?
> No true Scotsman or appeal to purity is an informal fallacy in which one attempts to protect an a posteriori claim from a falsifying counterexample by covertly modifying the initial claim.
No one has covertly modified the initial claim. UBI has a long-standing definition that’s distinct from welfare.
