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  • Well, the idea of a basic income is that the government provides some sort of standard

  • payment to pretty much everybody, every month, and it's enough to live on.

  • What's the broader social and cultural effect of having this kind of program in place?

  • What's the effect of raising people in a society where they know that, as they reach adulthood,

  • they won't actually need to start working to make ends meet if they don't want to?

  • While a lot of the basic income debate focuses on very technical questions of how you design

  • it and who would get it, underneath it is a much more fundamental debate about what

  • the role of government is in society.

  • There are a few different arguments for having a basic income.

  • One is that it's just a better way to do the safety net that we have now.

  • It's a very clunky system, doesn't always meet peoples' needs.

  • And so, one thought is that if we took all of that money and all those programs and threw

  • them away and just had a basic income instead, it might be a better way to meet peoples'

  • needs, and certainly a more efficient way.

  • The other big argument in favor of a basic income is that you don't have to phase it

  • out the way our welfare programs phase out.

  • One of the biggest problems with the way that welfare tends to work is that as you start

  • to earn your own money, your eligibility for benefits declines.

  • If you use a basic income that's universal instead, then you say, you're gonna get this

  • money if you don't work, and you're gonna get this money if you do work.

  • One of the huge challenges for a basic income is its cost.

  • If you imagine actually sending $1,000 a month to everybody in the country, you get to a

  • program that's three or even four trillion dollars in size.

  • That's just not what we spend on our safety net today, which is maybe $1 trillion, but

  • that's everything our government spends today.

  • And so, when you're talking about still needing the government to do what it does plus adding

  • a basic income on top of it, you start to get in to- to the idea of nearly doubling

  • the size of the government or-or needing to double all the taxes that we collect to pay for it.

  • If you truly wanted to fund a basic income out of spending we do today, you'd have to

  • use not just our safety net, but all of Medicare and all of Social Security as well.

  • We already provide to each elderly citizen more support in Medicare and Social Security

  • than we would offer through a basic income.

  • So, if we actually want to replace all of those programs with a basic income, among

  • other things, it would be mean dramatically slashing the support we provide to the elderly,

  • dramatically slashing the support we provide to the disabled.

  • The best argument in favor of a basic income is that the United States truly has become

  • wealthy enough as a country that we could, in theory, send everybody enough money to meet their basic needs.

  • And for people who see that as an attractive vision, that people don't need to worry about

  • supporting themselves anymore, that's something to be celebrated and something to be pursued.

  • If you had this support that you could count on whether or not you worked, you might choose

  • to spend more time on your education, you might take a risk to start a business, you

  • might stay home to raise your kids, and all of those things you'd still be able to do

  • because you were still earning the basic income.

  • The best argument against a basic income is that it represents a really fundamental redefinition

  • of peoples' obligations in society and the role of government.

  • What we define as the obligation of the individual, what he or she is expected to do, what he

  • fulfills when he performs work and contributes productively to a community, those kinds of

  • things are foundational to how we organize our society, how we raise children, uh, and

  • how we define success in life.

  • A basic income shifts so much of that to the idea that actually providing for basic needs

  • is no longer the individual's responsibility.

  • It's now the government's responsibility.

Well, the idea of a basic income is that the government provides some sort of standard

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