Universal Basic Income, or UBI, is a darling of the Left these days. But UBI has a long history, dating back centuries, and crosses political boundaries. Recently, a friend forwarded me via e-mail an article about Republican President Richard Nixon’s 1969 push for an unconditional UBI for all poor people (however “poor” could be defined), and how he came to abandon the idea. Nixon was ready to go with his UBI plan until his advisers used a study of a type of UBI from 19th Century England to convince him to abandon his idea. The study showed that the scheme didn’t work, because it discouraged individual initiative.
Rutger Bregman, the author of The bizarre tale of President Nixon and his basic income bill, debunks the study, which analyzes the Speenhamland welfare system, to urge a universal UBI.
My friend, who generally opposes welfare statism and socialism, nonetheless said this along with a link to Bregman’s article,
Mike - interesting read, a concept I would never have thought of. I would imagine that you would have at least some familiarity with this concept. Guaranteed income certainly does not fit into the libertarian perspective, but nevertheless this piece warrants at least a read.
In The bizarre tale of President Nixon and his basic income bill, Rutger Bregman, also the author of Utopia for Realists: The Case for a Universal Income, Open Borders, and a 15-Hour Workweek, tries to make the case that UBI would not discourage work.
Here is my reply to my friend,
Hi Clay. Thanks for the article.
There’s a lot to unpack, too much for this e-mail. But I’m not buying Bregman’s argument from practicality. Furthermore, and much more fundamentally, I oppose forced government “redistribution” of wealth—more accurately, transfers— in any form, on moral grounds.
Transferism begins with theft, which is the action of any burglar. A government that “secures our rights'' protects us from theft. It does not engage in burglary, and passing laws to make it legal doesn’t make it any less wrong. The great revolutionary innovation of the Founding generation is to subordinate society, and thus government, to the same civil and moral law as the private citizens it governs. Theft is properly forbidden to you and I as private persons, and is properly forbidden to you or I as government officials. Granted, Americans never fully achieved these ideals. And today a horde of pseudo-Americans are busy hammering ever more nails into the coffin of Americanism. But I for one will never lose sight of those ideals.
Second, such schemes are rooted in an insidious collectivist premise -- that wealth belongs to “society,” and it is for the government to “distribute” society’s wealth “equitably.” Underpinning that premise is the twisting of individual rights into a master/slave undertaking. Rights are guarantees to freedom of action to pursue personal happiness, not an automatic claim to material benefits that others must be forced to provide. Society is made up of individuals. Wealth is produced by individual effort, and shared through trade, and belongs first and foremost to the individuals who produced it and/or traded for it—before any burglar or government steals it to fund some utopian scheme. “A life without poverty is a privilege you have to work for, rather than a right we all deserve” is no fallacy, as Bregman asserts. It is a fact of nature -- there is no “escape” from the fact that there is no way to rise above poverty without work, someone’s work. If some people are guaranteed “a life without poverty,” then others that must provide it are condemned to slave labor to enforce that guarantee. There is no way other than the master/slave premise to ensure a guarantee of that kind. Nature will not allow it.
Having said that, I generally favor any reform that moves in the direction of freedom. As such, I support such things as personal Social Security accounts and universal school choice, even though I oppose Social Security and government schools. I will acknowledge that a guaranteed basic income scheme, if it’s only for the poor a la Nixon’s plan, can be a marginal improvement to the welfare state, but only if it is coupled with the elimination of the entire hodgepodge of existing welfare state programs, including Medicaid and food stamps. Basic income would have the virtue of simplicity, and would leave more spending choices in the hands of the recipients. But this would only be a step, not an end.
I don’t know if Nixon’s basic income scheme, or Bregman’s UPI scheme, does or does not “fit into the libertarian perspective,” whatever that is. But it doesn’t fit with a free society.
Finally, I noticed that Bregman takes a potshot at Ayn Rand, equating her philosophy to utopia. His false choice is, her utopia or mine. Critics almost ALWAYS misrepresent her ideas. There is nothing utopian about a free market or of the broader aspects of Rand’s philosophy, because they are consistent with, not opposed to, human nature. Her thought is part of a line of thinking that stretches back to the Enlightenment, including natural rights theory and republican government checked by individual rights. As to Rutger’s book, in which everyone [UBI], not just the poor [Nixon], in effect get all of their needs covered in exchange for giving up to the state control of the proceeds of their labor: Well, isn't that the same basic premise of the slave plantation of the Old South -- which in fact the South’s intellectuals defended as “the beau ideal of Communism?” Yes. The difference is only a matter of degree, not essence. The master is simply replaced by the state. Evil ideas never seem to die. They just morph, because greed, powerlust, and envy are ever-present. Whose ideas, then -- Rand’s or Bregman’s -- are utopian?
As an aside, I voted for Nixon twice, first because I believed he was an advocate of a free market, which it turned out he was not, and the second time because the alternative was McGovern.
I will add one observation that favors UBI, as opposed to Nixon’s scheme targeting only the poor, as well as the broader welfare “War on Poverty” approach. The New Jersey Star-Ledger, in a rare fit of candor for a Leftist mouthpiece, put it well. In an editorial, Obamacare's collateral damage, the editorial board put it well, all italics are mine:
A new report on President Obama’s health reform from the Congressional Budget Office, the closest thing Washington has to an impartial referee, points to a fundamental problem in America’s approach to its welfare state.
The report predicts that the Affordable Care Act will reduce the hours worked by the equivalent of 2 million full-time jobs by 2017, rising to 2.5 million by 2024.
The reason is not that this reform adds massive costs that will cause businesses to scale back or go bankrupt, as Republicans routinely charge. The main reason is that low-wage workers will lose subsidies as their earnings increase, giving them less incentive to work hard and climb the income ladder. Much of what they gain in earnings, in other words, they will lose in subsidies.
This is a problem liberals need to face squarely, especially as calls for greater economic justice grow louder. As we expand means-tested programs such as Obamacare, food stamps and the earned-income tax credit, this effect will be magnified. The attempt to help low-income families eventually creates a perverse effect.
We can find a middle ground by tweaking means-tested programs so that benefits phase out more gradually and extend to higher incomes. But eventually, as efforts to help low-wage families increase, any means-tested approach will hit the same wall.
A Universal Basic Income paid to all Americans, without conditions, no questions asked, would fix that “fundamental problem in America’s approach to its welfare state.” But at what practical and moral cost? A UBI would lead to calls for universal this, that, and the other thing, just as the Star-Ledger calls for universal health care (socialized medicine) in response to the “fundamental problem” it highlights in Obamacare. Ultimately, we would end in full-blown socialism, with its inevitable economic paralysis and collapse, and loss of freedom to tyranny.
LINKS:
Obamacare's collateral damage by the New Jersey Star-Ledger editorial board
Ayn Rand Anticipated Obama's "You Didn't Build That" Outrage
From ‘You Didn’t Build That’ to ‘The Nation's Wealth’
How Universal Basic Income Could Be Used to Suppress Free Speech: Such a system could not possibly remain universal.
Finland To End Its Experiment with Universal Basic Income: The Finnish government has decided to stop handing out requirement-free money.
And in a report on basic income last year, the OECD poured more cold water on the idea.
The bizarre tale of President Nixon and his basic income bill
Joe Biden is Right about Universal Basic Income: THE DIGNITY OF WORK AND SELF-SUFFICIENCY IS VERY IMPORTANT
Our current welfare system is a dysfunctional mess. It’s bad for taxpayers and recipients. Replacing it with a universal basic income probably would make the system simpler, but at a potentially very high cost in terms of cultural capital.
The Slippery Slope of Wealth Redistribution by Donald J. Boudreaux
Once you start redistributing wealth, there is no principled stopping point other than strict, universal equality.
The Basic Income Is the Worst Response to Automation
"Yes, automation is going to disrupt the economy, just as technological progress has always disrupted the economy, continually, since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. But helping people to adjust by putting them on a permanent welfare subsidy is the worst and cruelest response, precisely because it pays them not to adapt to the new economy."
The Worst Thing about a Basic Income: You'll Never Get Rid of It
by Preston Cooper
Welfare that targets specific groups is easier to reform than universal programs.
"The basic idea of UBI [universal basic income] is that instead of a complicated system of welfare programs — TANF, EITC, Medicaid, CHIP, Food Stamps, Section 8, unemployment insurance, etc. — every citizen in the country will receive a check from the government, no questions asked."
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