Mandatory Participation Series Contents Rather than referring to a hypothetical social contract, some critics of UBI argue that taxation, regulation, and redistribution of income and wealth violate a natural right to private property and supposedly make people less free from […]
Mandatory Participation Series Contents UBI skeptics might point to psychologists who say humans have a strong, deep-seeded desire for a meaningful life, to work and contribute to their fellow humans. People who fail to find such meaning tend to be […]
Mandatory Participation Series Contents Not all of the arguments above challenge the belief that a mandatory-participation economy is the ideal if, when, and where it is possible. Working for others is not always a bad; very often, it’s a good […]
Mandatory Participation Series Contents Most of us, of course, don’t view ourselves as using the threat of homelessness to get people to accept bad jobs, low wages, and poor working conditions. The ideal of the conditional safety net is an […]
Mandatory Participation Series Contents Programs with genuine conditions cannot eliminate poverty, homelessness, or economic destitution because they have to have some punishment for people who fail to fulfill their conditions. Either the conditions are phony, meaning that they are so easy no […]
Mandatory Participation Series Contents 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 disadvantage, but it can help. […]
Mandatory Participation Series Contents All or most of the arguments in part 8 apply to women as much as they do to men. Women make up about half of the workforce, and women are disproportionately subject to harassment, low-wages, poor […]
Mandatory Participation Series Contents 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 […]
Mandatory Participation Series Contents The exploitation objection to UBI, which goes hand-in-hand with the reciprocity objection, is essentially the following. Most of the goods people might buy with UBI require labor. Therefore, people who receive UBI benefit from the labor […]
Mandatory Participation Series Contents 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. […]