Some politicians and activists want to give away money for “free.”
They call it Universal Basic Income (UBI). That means giving cash to everyone with no strings attached.
comedian dave chappelle I think UBI “will save my community almost instantly.”
UBI activist Conrad Shaw agrees: “That would eliminate extreme poverty virtually immediately.”
He said UBI would help people “start businesses, repair their homes and invest in sustainable gardens.”
Well, “sustainable gardens” may be nice, but someone still has to create something. And that requires work, and often difficult work.
When I was younger, if I didn’t have to work to support myself, I wouldn’t have worked as hard to overcome my fears, stuttering, and reluctance to speak in public. I wouldn’t have succeeded. You may have spent most of the day in bed. (Related: John Stossel: Free trade leads to economic growth – it’s a win-win)
But Shaw disagrees. “I can’t believe it,” he says. “Nobody actually wants that…People don’t find their passion just because they need to make money.”
We could debate this all day long. It would be great if someone conducted a serious test of UBI and gave lots of people lots of money for, say, 3 years. Will people still work? Improve their lives? What about their family life?
It turned out that Sam AltmanThe people behind ChatGPT helped create these tests. His large-scale study gave 1,000 low-income people $1,000 a month for three years for free. what happened?
Not the greatness promised. After three years of receiving $1,000 a month, UBI recipients were actually a little more in debt than they were before.
why? Because they have less time to work. So did their partners.
Although some recipients talked about starting a business, very few actually tried starting a business. Most of those who said they had actually started a business waited until the third year of the survey, when they were nearing the end of their free money.
I’m not surprised. When you give people free money, you disincentivize them from working. Incentives are important.
Shaw argues that “we confuse the concepts of work and work.”
It’s true that people do meaningful work outside of work. But being paid to work means you’re worth something to someone else.
“How much money are you worth to the child you’re raising?” Shaw replies. “Who is your sick parent that you are caring for?”
a lot. “But it doesn’t mention that other people have to work to pay for it.”
Shaw replies: “We pay taxes for the betterment of our people, for general welfare. That’s…what we do as a country.”
“But this will almost double the amount!” I point out. “We already spend almost $2 trillion on welfare programs. Want to add to that?”
No, Shaw says, UBI should “replace existing welfare programs.”
That’s an interesting idea. (Related: John Stossel: It’s time for these irresponsible cowards in Washington to stop spending money like drunken sailors)
“What if we could eliminate unemployment insurance, food stamps, welfare, and all these other insane policies and just have a modest universal basic income,” he says. Harvard University economist Jeffrey Miron, “I think that would be a huge improvement.”
But that will never happen. Every time someone tries to cut government programs, people panic. Imagine trying to cut all welfare.
“The chances of that happening politically are probably zero,” Miron says.
Progressives want to add UBI to existing programs.
“Adding more programs is insane!” says Miron. “Then the whole country would collapse. The poor would bear the brunt. The rich would move to other countries and hide their assets. We have never seen anything like this before. There will be a debt crisis like this.”
We are already in a debt crisis like no one has ever seen before.
Let’s not make things worse with UBI.
Mr. Stossel posts a new video every Tuesday on JohnStossel.com about the battle between government and freedom. He is the author of “Give Me a Break: How I Exposed Fraudsters, Swindlers, Fraudsters and the Liberal Media’s Scourge”.
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