The basic guaranteed income experiment in Finland has ended with most saying it didn't accomplish what the proponents hoped would happen. See Finnish basic income trial: creates happiness, but not jobs.
Perhaps I'm sounding like those socialists who say, "Yeah, yeah, socialism hasn't worked anywhere it was tried, but they just didn't do it right." And therein lies the problem. It could probably never be done right. And that's what is happening to the universal basic income theory.
After reading Charles Murray's explanation I was a supporter of the idea. But the reality is that no jurisdiction is likely to embrace Mr. Murray's formula for successfully implementing the system. Here's Murray.
I think that a UBI is our only hope to deal with a coming labor market unlike any in human history and that it represents our best hope to revitalize American civil society. ... The great free-market economist Milton Friedman originated the idea of a guaranteed income just after World War II. ...
First, my big caveat: A UBI will do the good things I claim only if it replaces all other transfer payments and the bureaucracies that oversee them. If the guaranteed income is an add-on to the existing system, it will be as destructive as its critics fear. ...
The UBI is to be financed by getting rid of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, Supplemental Security Income, housing subsidies, welfare for single women and every other kind of welfare and social-services program, as well as agricultural subsidies and corporate welfare. As of 2014, the annual cost of a UBI would have been about $200 billion cheaper than the current system. By 2020, it would be nearly a trillion dollars cheaper.
(Bold added to highlight the formula for success of the plan.)
It's a decent theory. But getting it done right is a challenge.
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8:54 AM 2/17/2019
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