Unrestricted campaign donations is a huge issue in US politics. It allows for the repeated undermining of democracy in favour of rich people's interests. It is anti-democratic to the core.<p>And I do not mean rich people who are in the upper 10% of income, it favours the ultra rich for whom a $100,000 political donation is pocket change.
UBI's critics expected these programs to have terrible outcomes, where recipients would spend their money on trivialities (or worse: drugs). Instead, what we find is that UBI recipients either spend it on essentials, stuff for their kids children or paying down debt.
UBI experiments are mostly pointless until they reach a national level. Otherwise you end up giving people a bunch of extra cash from the working economy, and surprise surprise, people are generally happier and better off with more free cash. The question is what happens when you do this on a large enough scale to affect economic production.
There's thousands of lobbyists that need similar takedown exposes. Even the "good" ones, where you may agree with their stated goals: look at what they're actually doing. Look at the parties they fund for which politicians.<p>There's <i>no one</i> stays clean in the Beltway.
The labor 'market' is totally asymetric, since workers are forced to work ... or starve, whereas companies can and do stop hiring, and even fire people, sometimes in a cynical move to suppress wages (witness the current tech scene).<p>UBI would turn it into a real, consensual market.<p>No doubt people benefiting from the status quo do not want change.
Well... okay.<p>How did concentrating extreme amounts of wealth work out for the French and Russian royalty?<p>Furthermore, how did it work out for their nations economically?
I'm all for UBI as long as the "U" is respected. The article curiously drops the word "Universal" when describing it:<p><i>First, to bring every reader up to speed, basic income (or UBI)...</i><p>Note also that the word <i>citizens</i> is used on the Wikipedia page.<p>I have a feeling the US will manage to bungle that too.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_basic_income" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_basic_income</a>