My local debate club recently held a debate about a specific Universal Basic Income (UBI) proposal. The motion: This House Supports a Basic Income for All US Residents
Motion Summary: Basic income recipients would include children and adults; the employed and unemployed; and citizens, permanent residents, and all other residents who could prove a residency duration of at least three years. The amount given would start at $1,000 per person per month and be pegged to GDP growth going forward. No programs in the existing social safety would be replaced by this policy.
The proposed UBI was presented as a cure-all for chronic poverty, erratic income streams, and stalled social mobility. Problem is, these are afflictions of specific US subgroups, not the population as a whole. They are best addressed by interventions that target those particular groups.
Some government programs have already been shown to reduce chronic and transient poverty. One multi-year study found that the following government benefits (combined) reduced the chronic US poverty rate from 10.8% to 2.1% and reduced the transient poverty rate from 23.9% to 18.9% (Kimberlin, 2016):
Earned Income Tax Credit, Child Tax Credit, SNAP (food stamps), housing subsidies, TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families), LIHEAP (heating subsidy), school lunch, WIC (Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children), SSI (Supplemental Security Income), Social Security, unemployment insurance, and worker’s compensation.
What more can be done? Lots! Just a few ideas:
- Provide low-income recipients with a refundable renter’s tax credit designed to reduce rent burden to 40 percent of after-tax income.
- Provide a basic income for adults up to age 65 participating in approved post-secondary education and training programs to keep skills current as needed, for up to six years total. This conditional BI benefit would help workers adjust to technology-driven changes in the labor market, as well as improve the social mobility of individuals with limited English or education.
- Provide relocation vouchers for people on unemployment, to help them move from high unemployment to low unemployment areas. This would be especially helpful for high school dropouts, who move much less than college graduates.
- Provide stronger incentives for SSDI/SSI beneficiaries to work part-time without jeopardizing or reducing their benefits.
Ok, that’s it for this series. Summary of arguments against the proposed UBI: it would be a disaster and there are better ways to help people. See Posts 1-10 for details*. Not even mentioned in the series (because I ran out of steam and want to move on to other topics): such a massive entitlement program would be near-impossible to walk back. Just imagine government leaders saying: "Sorry, folks - we're going to stop your checks 'cause we made a mistake." Uh-huh, that would go over well with the voting public.
As for the result of the debate: it was a tie.
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Links to Posts 1-10 of this Series:
Revisiting The Universal Basic Income: The Debate Continues, Part I
Revisiting The Universal Basic Income: The Debate Continues, Part II
Revisiting The Universal Basic Income: The Debate Continues, Part III
Revisiting The Universal Basic Income: The Debate Continues, Part IV
Revisiting The Universal Basic Income: The Debate Continues, Part V
Revisiting The Universal Basic Income: The Debate Continues, Part VI
Revisiting The Universal Basic Income: The Debate Continues, Part VII
Revisiting The Universal Basic Income: The Debate Continues, Part VIII
Revisiting The Universal Basic Income: The Debate Continues, Part IX
Revisiting The Universal Basic Income: The Debate Continues, Part X
Reference:
Sara Kimberlin, "The Influence of Government Benefits and Taxes on Rates of Chronic and Transient Poverty in the United States," Social Service Review 90, no. 2 (June 2016): 185-234. https://doi.org/10.1086/687306