People are already complaining about taxes too high and lazy welfare recipients. With UBI this would get even worse and I agree that most likely it would get voted out very quickly. If we can’t even get universal health care, robust social safety net or secure retirement going without political fights, forget UBI.
The argument for UBI in place of those other things is that it's extremely simple. Legislatively, bureaucratically, etc. Just give people more money to offset all of these systems that are too expensive. Simpler also means cheaper to implement.
It does avoid dealing with the root problems in some sense, but it's certainly elegant.
I'm tentatively a UBI fan, but just switching to single-payer healthcare would do a lot of that. So much damn bureaucracy, public and private, for that. I think the public side's under-accounted-for, actually—so many government agencies end up having to deal with health insurance crap for one reason or another.
Some would remain for private supplemental plans or whatever, but 90+% of that work would just go away. Plus all those uncompensated hours individuals spend fucking with insurance and medical provider billing departments.
Yep. People who oppose universal healthcare because "have you been to the DMV?" don't consider the fact that in this case private industry already has dramatically more bureaucracy than the government equivalent would. My health insurer is already the DMV, just without any legal obligation to help me.
Of course, it would still take tons of legwork to make the actual transition. But the end result would be a net win for simplicity.
Universal healthcare is a prerequisite for UBI. How could you ever rely on it if you have the threat of a six figure hospital bill whenever you get sick or have an accident? Affordable housing is also a prerequisite or the UBI money will go straight into the pockets of landlords (I often suspect this is the secret plan of billionaires who propose UBI).
A lot of the poor that qualify for benefits can already get equivalents through family or friends if the program were not offered. If we just give cash, they're likely to spend it on other things and combine expenses where possible.
It's popular because everybody gets a check each fall that's been around $1500. One year the dividend was higher, just over $2k. There was also an "energy rebate" of $1200 that year, so every qualifying person in the state got $3200 that year. In a family of four, that's over $12k. Large families, for example 8 people, got $24k that year!
Some people use it well, putting some in the bank for their kids, paying off loans, etc. But many people just splurge every fall. There's an increase in alcohol and substance abuse-related incidents.
It has impacted politics significantly. We are no longer getting large influxes of cash every year, so there's an open question about how to fund our state's services. We could implement an income tax, but that's a hard sell. We could start tapping into the permanent fund principal, but anyone who proposes that gets trounced by politicians willing to "protect" people's pfd by slashing services. We could offer so much as a state, but people won't have it because they want their $1500 each fall.
I appreciate your posts on the Permanent Fund here.
I have a friend who moved to Alaska last year for work last year and will probably be there for a few more years. We had discussions about the fund recently because this is the first year he qualifies for it. He will very much be in that camp of using the check in the fall to splurge and will do so until he is able to move in a few years.
As an outsider, it seems frustrating to me that the funds aren't used to improve the state (schools, utilities, infrastructure). I've expressed this to my friend and kind of derided him a bit for being what I see as part of the problem. In reality I guess I can't really blame him for taking the money and (eventually) running, but it just feels wrong to me.
I feel vaguely similar, having moved to Texas a year ago. No income tax, also money needed for services, when I point this out people just kinda go "oh you crazy new york folks."
The property tax burden (if you own) is fairly high, especially if one is not getting a high tech salary. The sort of permanent fund equivalent in Texas is dedicated to the state university system - they make a pretty big deal of this in civics classes in Texas.
Also, there is a delayed reckoning in the public school system in Texas - they keep on cutting state funding to systems to avoid having to increase state taxes so local school systems have to try to make this up, and the state for a long time fraudulently worked to deny children with special education needs the correct diagnosis - since special education (for whatever reason/cause) children cost a lot more to educate. https://www.chron.com/politics/texas/article/Delayed-or-deni...
The Alaska thing is different. It's a) not enough money to be considered b) a reasonable response to the direct revenues from an Oil windfall.
Now, it might be a good example of how a nation should distribute revenues from natural resources, i.e. right into the hands of the people. But it's not a UBI substitute.
On the other hand, who knows how long UBI would stay in place in a democratic country? It might get voted out in the next election, too.