The Case Against a Basic Income

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

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