this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2023
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We also have to be careful of how people define this sort of thing, and how the wide range of our current wealth inequality affects how something like UBI would be implemented.
In the rich's eyes, UBI is already a thing and it's called "welfare". It's not enough that people on welfare can barely survive on the poverty-level pittance that the government provides, but both the rich and slightly-more-well-off have to put down these people as "mooching off the system" and "stealing from the government", pushing for even more Draconian laws that punish their situation even further. It is a caste of people who are portrayed as even lower scum than "the poors", right down to segregating where they live to "Section 8" housing as a form of control.
UBI is not about re-creating welfare. It's about providing a comfortable safety net while reducing the obscene wealth gap, as technology drives unemployment even higher. Without careful vigilance, the rich and powerful will use this as another wedge issue to create another class of people to hate (their favorite pastime), and push for driving the program down just as hard as they do for welfare.
Yeah, modern welfare isn't remotely enough to match the spirit of UBI. It's structured so that you have to have a job. It's not enough to live by at all. And bizarrely, there's some jobs where they'd actually be worse than welfare because min wage is so crazy low in many parts of the US.
And even if you're on disability, you're gonna have a hard time. It pays barely enough to maybe scrape by if you cut every possible corner.
No form of welfare is close to being livable for the typical recipient. At best, they usually give you some spending cash while you live with friends or family. Maybe if you're really lucky you can find that rare, rare subsidized housing and manage to just barely make ends meet.
By comparison, most proponents of UBI want it to be livable. Nothing glamorous, admittedly, but enough to live a modest life. Enough that if there's no jobs available you qualify for (or none that will pay a living wage, at least), you'll be okay.
The differences between UBI and "welfare" are perhaps subtle but very important IMO.
In Australia there's an entire industry around punishing and humiliating people that need welfare. It's just absurd and unnecessary. UBI avoids any of that by just making the entitlement universal.
We have "job network providers" which IMO do not provide any value to anyone. Suppose in a particular region there are 4,000 unemployed people and this particular week there are 400 new jobs. To receive welfare you need to be working with a job network provider to find a job. However, those job network providers aren't creating any jobs. One way or another 400 people will probably get a new job this week. They might help a particular person tidy up their resume or whatever but they're not actually finding jobs for people. Their only purpose is to make receiving welfare a chore, it's absurd.
There's also people stuck in the welfare trap. As in, if I don't work at all I get $w welfare, but for every $1 I earn I lose $0.50 from $w, so why would I work a shitkicker job flipping burgers for effectively half the pay.
Slightly different systems, but in the US, welfare is a lot like that as well, especially punishing people by removing welfare or food stamps when they make X dollars.
The welfare trap is a feature of all means-tested social security systems.