Over the past few years, I’ve moved from lean-against UBI to lean-for UBI. But I think the case for UBI as a response to automation (or really any acute economic problem) is pretty bad, while the case for it on utopian grounds is pretty strong.
Let’s say the robots leave 10% jobless in the coming years. I’m skeptical, but assume. Then say those jobs make $65,000 on average. A UBI like the Yang freedom dividend replaces them with roughly $12,000, while spending the same on everyone whose jobs are untouched.
If you want to help the jobless, the UBI wastes resources you could spend *really* helping them on people who don’t need the help. As @DylanMatt has said, it simultaneously does too much and too little.
That said, I find the argument that we shouldn’t force people to work to attain an extremely basic standard of living right. A UBI would give workers more power to choose jobs that fit them, leave jobs that don’t, take time to care for parents, children, school, etc.
UBI could be the core policy in a shift towards a different societal attitude towards work, "deservingness," etc.
That case is harder to make — you're swimming upstream against very powerful ideological currents — but I think it's ultimately the only one that holds up.
That case is harder to make — you're swimming upstream against very powerful ideological currents — but I think it's ultimately the only one that holds up.
Also, @mattyglesias and I talk about this + the broader question of whether automation is/will cause mass joblessness in our post-debate Weeds — dropping into your podcast feeds soon!
