For the record, I'm still torn on UBI but as you'll see below I can see the benefits.
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Socialist? I don't think it's very socialist in the context it is in. $1,000 is hardly enough to buy anything but possibly enough to make the difference between not being able to live and being able to live. If you define "socialism" as "anything where you use some tax dollars to help people" I guess your definition is vague enough that we should probably get rid of the VA as well. Veterans are a huge drain on tax dollars with all the benefits we promise them
for free yet no one screaming socialism seems to bat an eye when we offer them cheap housing, loans, free school, or anything else. If we're going to hate socialism we
need to be consistent! We should therefore also stop giving tax dollars to churches, defund public schools, and defund public services! All of these are forms of "wealth redistribution" yet everyone on both sides of the aisle seems to support them - so perhaps we can let go of the "socialist demon" and accept we aren't stepping into marxist communism by helping people out with some tax money.
Assuming that you support and use public services you've already invalidated the crux of your feeling with some cognitive dissonance. So let's step back and take the concept of
minimum wage.
Currently, there is no state where minimum wage allows you to afford a 2 bedroom apartment. You might rightfully say "but that's too luxurious a one bedroom is fine!". To that I'd say you're wrong. Assuming your "total labor ability" amounts to some minimum wage job this would mean you couldn't afford to start a family. That's a hit on birth rates considering around
1.7 million people are minimum wage workers. By supplying them a UBI it could allow these people to produce more for longer.
Consider too the
working poor. These people do not fit into the normal bin of "lazy good for nothing leeches" that the alleged "anti-socialists" use as a reason to not help your fellow citizen. For these people, the UBI could dramatically improve their lives. $1000 could be the difference between making rent and utilities and not. Come to think of it, welfare and housing assistance is sort of a UBI but is easily abused. What if we got rid of welfare and housing assistance and just issued a blanket UBI? We could increase the prosperity of the nation.
Finally, consider the strength of a nation. A nation is built by strong people, and strong people are not raised with the boot of poverty on their neck. Is anyone trying to get rich? No. In my opinion no UBI should afford anyone the ability to get rich. However,
with the effect of globalization and wage stagnation a simple way to raise profits is to just not pay your workers enough.
While
the trend in income on capital gains earners
has increased, there has been no such increase for your average Joe.
Shouldn't we be looking out for the average Joe instead of the people that can afford to make a lot of money through capital gains?
If our goal is to build a strong nation we first must look after our people.
So where do we get the money? Well for starters we can cut back on military spending and federal spending by getting rid of the
use-it-or-lose-it budget policy. This could really clean up some spending and improve the overall quality of federal projects. A VAT-type tax could be a useful way to collect additional spend to create such a program without stifling success or wealth (this would directly address the problem of the ultra-wealthy business owner avoiding tax liability). We could even marginally increase short term capital gains tax for the highest earners and at the worst case an inheritance tax on estates of more than say $50 million. We'd need a hefty triple-digit billion to single digit trillion in taxes to make it work. We can collect most of it by improving the efficiency of our government spending. The average tax payer (the only one that matters) probably won't even feel it.
But what about refugees and illegal immigrants? Make the UBI only available to American-born citizens. That was simple.
We need to move away from this idea that we're all just temporarily embarrassed millionaires and accept that for most of us our lives will be average at best. As such, we should be voting for our, and our fellow citizen's, best interests. This would be one of them.
Remember the French Revolution. The further we stray from keeping people able to be alive (DO NOT confuse this with "income equality" - I mean literally keeping them housed and fed), the closer we get to really, really bad times.
