The first American retirement system – available only for gun fighters – a colonist in Massachusetts picks up his arms and goes off to defend his settlement against the Indians. They chop off his arm, rendering him unable to participate in the only form of labor that existed in those days (manual). He can’t build shelters anymore, raise animals or till the soil. So the colony takes up a collection, in the form of taxes, which enables the wounded fighter to retire and continue to support himself and his family. You know who collected these taxes from the colonists? Usually the guy himself. True story. If we’re following history, our adjustment to our robot overlords, and our new jobs, may be similar to our wounded fighter. Albeit we should adjust faster than he did. We have much better modes of communication. Maybe basic incomes? Seems a natural progression of social support.
I really want the basic income wonks to be right. I really want that to be a good solution. The first problem you rarely see addressed is "where's the money come from?" 90,000,000 = working-age Americans $15,060.00 = American federal poverty level, 2017 $1,355,400,000,000.00 = poverty level basic income for working-age Americans $824,000,000,000.00 = 2017 federal defense budget $3,210,000,000,000.00 = all federal taxes collected in 2017 So. Assume we're doing everything exactly the same, except we're gonna add basic income of "poverty level" for all Americans. We're talking a 50% tax increase (and remember, we're running a $400 billion budget deficit). And yeah - clearly it isn't that simple. But also clearly, "poverty level for every working-age American" isn't what most people have in mind for "basic income." it's not a problem so obviously intractable that it should be dismissed out-of-hand, but it's a long way from simple. The next problem is that economies are based on scarcity, and UBI is based on abundance. That's not to say it won't work, but it would also upend a bunch of shit. There have been promising experiments but economics experiments in general have a bit of a checkered history when they're extrapolated out to the economy. Dunno. It seems like it would solve a lot of problems but I haven't seen too many in-the-weeds analyses on UBI.Maybe basic incomes? Seems a natural progression of social support.
I always assumed it would be something like earned income tax credit, or supplanting existing welfare models. I don't think your arithmetic accounts for that, and assumes that every working class person would receive a UBI payment, but maybe I'm reading it incorrectly. Like, why would I, for instance, with my full time job and decent income, get a basic income on top of that? The answer to your question, for me, has always been: I would get taxed and it would go to those out-of-work or under the poverty line, and I would be able to take advantage of that if I were in either of those two categories.
You can go one of two ways: You can give it to the people who can't earn enough to not need it. let's make it a nice livable number like $30k. That's half again more than SSDI, which averages closer to $1100 a month. I know a guy trying to live on $1100 a month; it ain't pretty but regardless, where does the cutoff happen? 'cuz it's gonna be a cutoff. And at that cutoff, there will be a big angry discontinuity between "low-end job" and "job not worth taking" which will of course go to non-citizens who can't qualify for UBI. If UBI gets you $30k a year, what kind of job would you take for 38? 40? 50? 70? If you can scrape by doing nothing for $30k or work 90 hours a week filing TPS reports and spending three hours in traffic for $60k, are you still going to do it? How 'bout $90k? How 'bout $120k? Or you can go like the Alaska Permanent Fund where everybody gets $2,072 a year. And where everybody pays $9 for a Big Mac combo meal. The APF basically pays the price difference of a big mac a day... much like the price of a popcorn and a coke is pretty much the price of a movie ticket. Your understanding of UBI isn't dissimilar from welfare - we make enough to not want to qualify for it. But we can all agree, I think, that UBI is supposed to be more than welfare. It's supposed to be more than the pathetic food stamp existence we expect our poor to grovel for. And if I'm an employer paying my employees $50k a year, and the government is suddenly giving them $30k to stay home, how can I not be expected to raise my salaries to $80k a year? And by the way, I'm paying tax for that $30k to stay home, both business and personal, right? So really, if I'm an employer I'm now paying an additional $60k to keep every $50k employee working. UBI is a system of wealth redistribution. I think everyone can agree on that. it's the nitty gritty that gets ugly, and that's usually where the UBI proponents start shining it on.