"Universal basic income," under any label, means you work for the State and the State owns you. Politicians have no reason to fear voters who depend on them for food.
The idealistic model for universal income is a small, homogenous country with a very modest government and a small political class. In THEORY, such a state could implement UBI as the ONLY government welfare program. It would still be dangerous, but the danger would be limited.
Why is a homogenous population important? Because the lack of serious internal conflicts means the State would be less inclined to use UBI as political weapon. Why is a small population important? Because big governments are INEVITABLY more corrupt.
The human race should have long ago learned that there are no big, honest governments. Corruption becomes inevitable as the State grows, and the more divided the people are, the more opportunities politicians see for profit by pitting factions against each other.
But every argument for UBI assumes a fairyland setting of a small nation, with few severe conflicts between racial, religious, or ideological factions, implementing a universal income policy as the sole government welfare program. Needless to say, that isn't America 2021.
The UBI system that is being forced upon us under the guise of "pandemic stimulus" doesn't even pretend to replace the rest of our titanic welfare state. It's ON TOP of that. The goal is to eliminate the middle class, which the Left and its Democrat Party hate and fear.
UBI is an even more advanced weapon against the middle class than socialized medicine, which was already the nuclear-tipped ICBM of social engineers. UBI makes you dependent on the State for EVERYTHING. It's a bottomless pit of class envy and dependency.
This is especially true when programs like UBI and socialized medicine are combined with "progressive taxation." That's the combo that turns them into a two-stage thermonuclear bomb against middle class independence. Everybody gets "free stuff" financed by "taxing the rich."
The really poisonous thing about these socialist schemes is that they eradicate the relationship between work, prosperity, and income in the public mind. EVERYBODY is on welfare now. Nobody is allowed to think of themselves as independent or sovereign.
Nobody really controls their own capital or determines its value any more. The State commands everyone's time and labor. It generously allows some people to moonlight on the side and earn a little extra through private employment if they're feeling super ambitious.
The insane policies pushed by Democrats today - vacuuming up America's money with confiscatory taxation and blasting cash across the landscape with a firehose of welfare spending and "stimulus" programs - have the net effect of government controlling more of our capital.
In a huge, fractious country ruled by a titanic mega-State filled with ravenous politicians, legions of untouchable bureaucrats, and huge masses of dependents, UBI will be the death blow against middle-class capitalism. Only the rich and powerful will control meaningful capital.
The State already controls far too much of your labor through taxation and regulation. Under UBI, that relationship will be formalized. The person you see in the mirror each morning? That's an employee of the State - fed, clothed, housed, and medically insured by government.
That person in the mirror no longer has executive control of their capital - their labor. The State has first call on it. Politicians will use their economic control over us to make that clear. It's ludicrous to think they'll have any further concerns about the "wrath of voters."
The biggest sucker game ever perpetrated against Americans was tricking them into thinking votes are more important than dollars - that your minuscule influence over the State in a few elections is more valuable than day-to-day control over your own capital, your own life.
Once everyone is on welfare, there will never again be a serious debate about the size of the State. You might be permitted to make a few suggestions about how the State spends a tiny percentage of its money, but you have no further say in how BIG it is - or how small YOU are.
Lincoln said the core principle of tyranny is: "You work and toil and earn bread, and I'll eat it." He was thinking of divine-right kings lording over peasants, but it's true of any system where work and toil are seized by rulers and bread is dispensed at their pleasure. /end
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