The Case Against a Basic Income

Faced with these facts, we should question UBI’s rationality; as Luke Martinelli put it: “an affordable UBI is inadequate, and an adequate UBI is unaffordable.”

This is a faulty explanation of what’s at stake with the question of work. There’s something deeper at play: work is more than a means for earning money. That’s not just due to “pro-work ideology,” but also to the objective conditions of a society based on a large-scale division of labor in which everyone contributes individually to collective prod... See more

This fact is even more striking when we consider that the cost of eradicating poverty in any developed country is around 1 percent of GDP. An individual unemployment benefit set at the poverty line (around $1,200 a month) and granted to all jobless individuals regardless of their place in the family structure would not only pull everyone out of pov... See more

Martinelli highlights “the danger that basic income ‘would aggravate the problem of low pay and subsidize inefficient employers,’ leading to a proliferation of ‘lousy’ jobs.” In this scenario, those with good jobs will continue to lead fulfilling lives, now supplemented by universal income, while others will have to combine their UBI with one or mo... See more