Author Archive for: soomilee

Source: Christopher Weyant, New Yorker Cartoons As my book, Universal Basic Income: Essential Knowledge, discusses, the traditional approach to poverty and inequality relies on conditional programs designed to make most forms of aid to the disadvantaged consistent with mandatory participation. Programs with genuine conditions cannot eliminate poverty, homelessness, or economic destitution because they have to have some punishment for […]

Significant structural disadvantages for people of color exist in the United States. These disadvantages will not go away until U.S. citizens work together to eliminate them. UBI will not eliminate structural disadvantages, but it can help. Most people of color are workers, and half of people of color are women, and so all of the […]

Underlying the work ethic, reciprocity, and exploitation objections are two questionable presumptions: that UBI is somehow bad for workers and that there is a recognizable dichotomy between “workers” and “UBI recipients.” My book, Universal Basic Income Essential Knowledge, shows that a modest UBI system is a direct net benefit to nearly 50% of households, and a […]

The above discussion answers one of the most common arguments against UBI, the allegation that it provides something for nothing in violation of a principle of reciprocity under which everybody who gets something gives something back. The phrase “UBI is something for nothing” has it exactly backwards: property-based economies without UBI are something for nothing. […]

Editor’s note: This post is Part 4 of the series on Mandatory Participation by Karl Widerquist. Earlier parts have been also posted in this blog. — People who are introduced to UBI often ask, “What about incentives?” UBI helps fix one of the biggest incentive problems in the market today: the lack of incentive for […]