Attempts to answer this question also need to deal with human beings as they are, not as they could be if we were all just really good and pure and all motivated by selfless interest only in the good of humanity as a whole or something, because presumably this is being proposed as a real policy for real people and not some fantasyland.
(Also, I do not consider "well we already have some programs like that today" to be a defense... I'm not entirely convinced that's just going to turn out peachy keen in the end either. I'm personally pretty convinced we've already passed a threshold at which a significant chunk of our government is actively pursuing government dependency as a conscious policy, and that's not going to end well either, as the same mechanics take sway... there is always a reason to grow benefits, it's always evil to cut them, and there's no feasible way to bound the growth of promised benefits to real growth, other than the really, really hard one of simply running out of resources.)
While this is a criticism of mine, and I am not trying to hide my general skepticism as seen in my second paragraph, I am posting this also in a genuine spirit of inquiry about what answers to this question may have been developed. I acknowledge the problems the BI idea is trying to solve, and I acknowledge that I have no answers (including, alas, BI, unless someone can convince me here).
The parent idea reminds me of a certain system advocated by Thomas Paine, the famous American revolutionary who came up with a more liberal ideal of Social Security which offered every child a natural inheritance on coming of age. He suggested this in addition to subsidies for old age. Ironically, this is the same guy Tea Party members love to quote when they disparage taxes.
His pamphlet, Agrarian Justice, is well worth a read.
Because a non-trivial percentage of the population wants them, whether or not you agree with them. Who's going to vote to receive less money?
On balance it seems like a better risk than the current welfare and disability systems that dehumanize people and create a perverse incentive not to work in order to survive. If efficiency and automation trends continue some sort of wealth redistribution will become strictly necessary whether that is done through government policy, charity, or revolution. BI for its potential flaws doesn't look so bad compared to the alternatives.
OK, yes, but what's going to keep it a tiny fraction of the GDP? The BI's natural "lobbying organzation" is the entire public... not even the entire voting public, but the entire public. No current structures have that characteristic. For almost the entire population, $10,000 is a lot of money. Even people making $150,000/year are going to still appreciate $10,000, and we're now talking well above median.
If there was a lobbying force large enough to actually countervail the entire public's interest in voting themselves more money, I'm pretty sure it would not be hard to drum up a mob against them.
As I understand it, Basic Income's distinguishing characteristic is that everybody gets it. You can't use our experiences with things that well less than half the population gets to judge the effect it will have on voting patterns.
You can't just think about the first year of Basic Income's implementation. You have to think about the second year. You have to think about the tenth year. You have to think about the 18th year, when people who have never lived in a regime other than having BI exist start voting themselves. Are they going to understand that it's a bad idea to listen to the politicians promising to make it larger? Because there will be such politicians. Probably all of them, honestly.
Er, no, its not. The natural lobbying organization is the people whose have an expected positive net utility from an increased BI. That's not the entire public, as both increased public debt and increased taxation have negative consequences for members of the public. (And as, empirically, its been shown that increased income has a declining, and beyond a certain point, immeasurably small contribution to experience utility.)
> You have to think about the 18th year, when people who have never lived in a regime other than having BI exist start voting themselves. Are they going to understand that it's a bad idea to listen to the politicians promising to make it larger?
Sure. They'll probably understand the effects of BI level changes a lot better than people in the first year do.
Then why couldn't we get universal health care passed through decades and decades of attempts?
I think you are assessing the human psychology factor incorrectly. The US population is not a lobbying organization. Just because something is in their interests does not make people rally behind a cause. A lobbyist has an agenda, but the very existence of BI does not make it everyone's agenda to increase it. The person making $150k has better things to worry about than exerting pressure to increasing BI, and in fact, will likely be a business owner and someone that is very receptive to the argument that raising taxes will hurt production. Similarly, raising BI is not a cause that fuels people's competitive spirit and drive for meaning. Certainly there will be a socialist contingent that does have that agenda, but I don't see why you are so convinced that it will inevitably become a runaway train.
> You can't use our experiences with things that well less than half the population gets to judge the effect it will have on voting patterns.
Exactly what I said previously—we're both speculating.
Those seem some pretty strong assumptions to me, and they deserve to be further justified.
Why do you actually think that making the BI larger is a bad idea? And why do you think that people will disagree / not add one and one together?
If you think that increasing the BI requires tax increases, well, there will be people complaining about the tax increases, and your argument goes poof.
If you think that increasing the BI causes higher inflation, then either people will decide that having a higher BI is worth it, or there will be people complaining about the higher inflation, and your argument goes poof.
I think you're misunderstanding the nature of lobby and power in the United States. It doesn't matter the size of your lobby, only the size of their wallet. An entire public who are only getting BI are going to have virtually no financial power to wield.
Also, your speculation ignores the fact that the "red states" are also the largest benefactors of welfare. It wouldn't surprise me at all to see a large percentage of the public saying that they themselves should be getting less BI because it's "socialism" or some such nonsense.
There are no democracy on this planet in this century and the last where people could vote _directly_ for any kind of numbers regarding money matter.
On the contrary, nowadays the elected leaders vote their own salaries (I live in Europe)... and force austerity upon the weakest.
The same reasons that people vote themselves lower taxes every year, though they do vote themselves lower taxes sometimes: 1. We don't have a direct democracy, so people don't vote for policies directly; 2. Quite a lot of people, even if they can't analyze all the implications, can see that voting yourself a lower net contribution to government (either via lower taxes or greater benefits) has consequences that may be undesirable.
> How can you both have the (modern conception of the) vote, and a basic income at the same time?
The same way you can have the modern conception of the vote and have taxes at the same time. Mostly, this involves relying on an electorate that is largely composed of at least modestly responsible adults, rather than infants that gorge themselves on candy without limit given the opportunity without thought of the consequences.
Sometimes I'm not very confident we have that; but that's not really an argument against BI specifically as democracy in general...
If you have well-enough educated, hopefully reasonable people I don't think this will become an issue. Swiss recently voted down to get more holidays ( http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/switzerland...) and it wasn't even close of getting through. Now this of course doesn't prove anything (we also voted to ban minarets for instance, which definitely wasn't very rationally based), but it shows that people will not just take the short sighted approach only thinking of immediate rewards and instead try take the whole economic outcome into account.
Of course it was. The law itself was stupid, but it highlighted a real issue. Notice that after that vote France, Sweden and a few others looked at the Muslim integration problem (i.e. a large portion of the Islamic community simply don't) as well.
There is an issue here that needs to be addressed, it was just the way they chose to do it was silly but the people didn't let that stop them from using it to voice their opinion.
My quite tentative, back of envelope analysis:
If it grows at a fixed rate, then when inflation outpaces it we will see the real value shrink. Since a larger BI is likely to be inflationary, this shrinkage would lead to some deflation (or at least reduced inflation), which will grow it again. Hopefully this would act as some stabilization and give the Fed a hand at targeting a particular rate of inflation, and a predictable rate of inflation seems to be what's best.
To expound on the point, absent other economic factors, an inflation-adjusted UBI pretty much guarantees that next year's inflation will be greater than this year's inflation.
Some rational voters, however, would want to mitigate their downside risk, and therefore wish to have a basic income despite its cost.
Congress has that authority over their own salaries, and they haven't abused it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-seventh_Amendment_to_the...
It is impossible for something to be for a certain segment (defined in large part by income) of the population and for it also to be meaningfully like Basic Income.
EITC is a fairly standard limited-eligibility social welfare program, which is what BI is offered in opposition to.
> One often needs a revolution to make a constitutional amendment. I don't think we want to go there.
I don't think the facts justify that that is often the case, unless you mean "revolution" in some very loose sense that doesn't justify the "I don't think we want to go there" comment.
I mean, there are 17 amendments to the Constitution that weren't passed fairly contemporaneously with the original document: can you point to the "revolutions" which were necessary for these?
Maybe the rise of organized crime under prohibition could be considered a revolution prompting the 21st amendment, but that seems quite a bit of a stretch...
In terms of whether the US could legally establish a BI without constitutional amendment, I am inclined to agree that it's allowed.
I think there is some argument for avoiding a simple majoritarian decision for how the rate is determined; I am not certain whether it is a sufficient one, but I don't think there's reason it shouldn't be part of the discussion, and constitutional amendment is the most secure process to elevate something above majority rule in the US.
I disagree that it "often takes a revolution" to amend the US constitution - if there is enough popular support that amending by that means would be practical, amending without it should be - and indeed, only twice of the 17 times we've amended the constitution has it involved a revolution (once successful, once unsuccessful).
The article asks to get more money from corporations which I do not think is feasible. I am in the UK now and this country decided to go for universal income we would have to either close the borders or convince at least the whole of EU to do the same at the same time.
Please expand your comment if you can.
That's something of an issue of the EU being a union that is very much like a traditional state, limiting -- by design -- the ability of the subordinate elements to effectively manage certain kinds of policy on their own. That's not an issue with BI, that's an issue with the UK as the unit of analysis in considering BI.
You'd have the same problem considering BI in California, for instance.
This is assuming that the influx of population actually would be a bad thing, though, which I'm not sure of one way or the other - I see some arguments on both sides that hold at least a little water.
This could be bad. Very popular programs never get reconsidered, even if they have bad effects.
Much of the special exemptions relating to health care and insurance which effectively tie it to employment, while restricting the ability for other groups to form for pooled risk. Addressed somewhat under Obamacare.
Big Ag subsidies.
Patent and copyright laws.
Our Federal Government is not responsible for most of the major functions of governance because our states cover most functions. Also, we aren't at war with a major foreign power.
[1] http://apps.npr.org/unfit-for-work/
Edited for clarity.
Compare welfare and social security for a classic example of the difference.