I'm thinking the name you're searching for might be "confirmation bias." We do this all the time based on our limited range of experientially based understanding. If most of the people you interact with fall into a small percentage, you tend to assume the characteristics those people take on are more common than they actually are.

I continually see a false argument made and I'm wondering if it has a specific name, like "no true scottsman".

Person A: "My bicycle got stolen, I should go buy a bike lock instead of leaving it unlocked"

Person B: "There's no point in buying a bike lock, a determined person will always steal your bike".

1 out of 10 people might be super determined, but the other 9 out of 10 might be lazy and simply reacting to easy, impulsive opportunity.

I see this argument continually, where people only consider the effects of something based off one fraction of the spectrum, instead of the entire range. They are essentially thinking that world is made of dots when in reality it's made of lines.

Does this false thought-profess already have a designated name?

Bernstein's argument that UBI cannot succeed without increases in taxes is real enough; but we may have no alternative and Taxes on high wealth individuals and companies need to be raised.

The focus on unemployment rate may be quite misguided. What is changing steadily is the workforce participation rate: it has steadily been declining for the last decade, even for women in the US. The focus on where to get the money ignores the wealth created by automation as it replaces jobs

Bernstein's fears about libertarians corrupting UBI to destroy the safety net is seriously real, but the need for UBI to keep jobless people safe in the face of automation is clear. The US' refusal to give jobless people a living support makes UBI necessary.

The happiest people in the world are mostly from the Nordic countries. They are the most equitable with regards to money. They mostly have the lowest crime rates. They have good health care for all. They have the lowest rates of poverty. The Nordic countries pay millions in child care so mothers can go to work. It's easy for big business and right wing governments that are supported by the wealthy to fool people into thinking cuts in everything need to be made. The Nordic countries are proving the opposite is true. I would support a UBI, even if it started to cut out at 50K and was cut out at 100K. If you take economy of scale into account, there is no reason at all why the US can't be doing even better than the Nordic countries. No reason at all.    Don't fool yourself into believing that you can work the effects of things in an economy with "logic". You give away money to the poor it will cost $X . They need to and will spend it, that will create X number of jobs. That will cause X inflation. That will effect the $ by X amount. That will effect exports by X amount. And the list goes on and on. LOL.   Look at what's working around the world and don't be scared to say that your country has many many many things that are failing far too many people in major ways.

 Your philosophy essentially relies on a few points that must be taken for granted. First, you must believe that people are, at their most basic levels, total scumbags that must be forced into productive labor. I assume that you do not equate the threat of homeless starvation with chains and whippings so I am not going to even ask if you think the labor of a slave is just as beneficial to building the character of a citizen. Interestingly, you made a point indicating your support for the idea of some minimal level of responsibility for an employee by his employer, a rare thing among the true believers in the virtues of capitalism. However, I agree that just giving people money isnt the solution. It would only artificially raise the price of essentials and modest luxuries. Last, I contend that there is no primary thing that makes a man honorable. If the society he is raised in and lives in promotes "honorable" behaviour, and doesnt sacrifice its ideals for profits or political gain, then you have a good chance of his being an honorable person, even if all he does is sit around and smoke pot all day. As long as said individual isnt robbing or assaulting people, and as long as he doesnt turn away from those in desperate need he is honorable, job or not. Could a pot head not be a criminal and actively assist people in need? Yes, without qualification they can.

This topic displays the total indoctrination of america. A universal basic income is the dumbest idea ever. Give a million people 10,000 dollars a year and watch 10 people make a billion dollars a year and trickle down 20 million. Or, feed the opiod habits of the masses or any of a hundred things that people can stupidly spend their money on. I am surprised the wealthy arent pushing this day and night. However, if you provided basic living conditions of housing, electricity alotments, wic style food alotments, and essential transportation of some type be it bus passes or whatever, then you actually achieve the desired results, eliminate the flood up, and control the production and distribution of essential resources, controlling costs and protecting resources.

I fear the UBI will allow people throw each other way more. I don't agree that we will have a great society where we each push each other to do better because of UBI. However, I do see the point that we are fast approaching a point where our technology will put so many people out of work that we will be encumbered by a massive problem. Is UBI the savior in the short and long term? I dont know.

Mr. Furman tried to put the audience off the UBI  by saying that to pay for it by raising taxes  would require doubling the income tax. But this is misleading.  Income taxes are only one component of overall taxes. While American income taxes are relatively high, our overall taxes are comparatively low.--about 26% of GDP, compared to the OECD average of 34%. To raise the 1.8 trillion (for a UBI for working age people) would require raising overall taxes only to roughly the OECD average; and that's without raising any money by melting down existing programs, some of which could be melted down without hurting poor people if there were a UBI. Both Mr. Furman and Mr. Bernstein raised the objection that a UBI would provide income to Bill Gates. I think that objection is silly. Bill Gates would be a net contributor, not a net gainer, because his taxes would go up by enough to claw back the UBI grant. Well, why give him the money in the first place, if you're only going to claw it back in taxes?  That's the best way to do it, because the alternative makes the UBI a nonU BI, which would be divisive and complicated.

The debaters for the motion failed to explain how they could do it and where the money would come from. The against side kept bringing up that the UBI would take away very vital things such as food stamps, and that people would actually suffer from the UBI because to the money they would have to drastically raise taxes. The cost was estimated at 1.8 trillion. The pro side never elaborated on the con side's arguments.

Clarification: Because of rounding my example isn't -6cents each iteration, but does seem that way at first.  (6% of $1) + (6% of 0.94) + (6% of 0.88) + (6% of 0.83) + (6% of 0.78) [...] after 30 iterations though, the amount that has come back in taxes is $0.82.To be even more conservative you can include a 10% loss of remainder on each iteration due to people who might save that money or send it overseas or make a bad business decision that then gets written off from taxes.  That's still $0.37 for every dollar that is coming back around in taxes at assuming a 6% tax.  At 10%, it would be $0.50... at 12.5%, it would be $0.56.But my point still stands that a dollar given to people (to spend in the economy) doesn't deplete our government's tax revenue by a dollar.

Randy is making the same assumption that the "Against" people were and thinking that every dollar is taxed only one time.  But no, it gets taxed every single time it exchanges hands.  A dollar you spend at the mall on clothes, you pay sales tax.  Let's say that store has a retail markup/margin of 50% so 25-50% of their sales go toward buying new inventory to sell.  They buy those clothes from suppliers where they also pay sales tax.  Both the supplier AND the store might use about 10% of their revenue in paying salaries and payroll which is again taxed.  Then that take home pay the employee uses to buy other things they are then taxed on.  So even the most conservative simulations I ran show that each $1000 you give to the poor through UBI might cycle through the economy enough times to generate $680 in taxes as it passes around to everyone (even in capital gains taxes of the shareholders in the companies where the money is  spent).  So that gets you a lot closer to be able to fund the UBI when you cut tax exemptions and all the other social welfare programs.

The "Against" kept touting "basic arithmetic" when it came to generating money to fund the UBI... but they don't seem like they have taken even a basic economics course.  Almost every dollar given to a low-to-middle income family gets spent on goods and services which is then taxed (sales tax) at local businesses that might use half their revenue to purchase goods from suppliers (which gets taxed, sales tax again) and any profit is taxed as a business profit, all the payroll paid to their employees are taxed, and the take-home pay those employees get are then spent at other businesses and the cycle continues.  Saying that putting $1.8T in cash into the checking accounts of Americans and saying it's "basic arithmetic" to say we need to come up with $1.8T to do so, is simply false because how much of that is coming back around in taxes after it cycles through the economy getting 6-28% taxed on each and every iteration of the cycle?  Each dollar to the poor will get spent and taxed and what's left gets taxed and what's left gets taxed... so even at the lowest tax, maybe sales tax of 6%: equals 6% of $1 + 6% of $0.94 + 6% of $0.88... will quickly be more than the dollar in the first place.

I went into the debate with some background knowledge of the topic having read a few articles and had some good discussions with friends at all places on the political spectrum. I certainly wavered especially when the team Against spoke about the fact that there are many people who will waste their money and therefore not be able to afford necessities leaving them better off under current social safety net programs. But, in the end the reason I voted For the motion is simply that the actual motion itself is one I can agree to. Unfortunately, neither team really explored the reality of how to get there.

I don't think it can work wide spread. I think it could work better if implemented in specific areas in need i.e. inner city Chicago or run down mid west mining towns

Well, those line breaks did not work out very well.

There is a LOT to learn from what the rest of the world does. In the US we seem to deliberately ignore, look away, pooh-pooh, dismiss, etc ideas from other country and automatically assume that we are better in all regards. In a way that is funny, but in reality is a tragic. We seem to know this or sense it in the back of our minds. Note how easily it was for people to relate to Donald Trump's demagoguery when expressed in the right terms about how our infrastructure is crumbling. We know this. People who go overseas, particularly to part of Asia and the Middle East see how decrepit our country looks.

> but comparisons to the Nordic models are too simplistic.

No comparison is perfect, in fact very imperfect comparisons can hit the target right in the bullseye.

I only yesterday found out that the journalistic writer T.R. Reid is releasing a book about the American tax system titled "A Fine Mess". It was discussed on PBS's Fresh Air. One main reason that comparisons are so easily dismissed in the US is that we are ruled by slogans and emotionally appealing lies, yet when you bring it down to a simplistic fact sometimes it puts everything in perspective.

For example, Bernie Sander's wonderful line that he keep going back to ... "why are we the only developed country in the world that does not provide health care to its people". Then the reply to support the status quo is something like ... well it wouldn't work here because it is too complicated.

So, back to the point about T.R. Reid. He is the one who wrote the two Frontline documentaries, "Sick Around the World" and "Sick Around America" investigating and busting myths about health care, and there is hardly anything but myths on that issue. So I looked favorably on his book coming up about the tax system, and pre-ordered it. One myth here is that Americans are the most taxed people in the world. The fact is that we are some of the least taxed people. These myths that destroy perception and discussion of the broken systems in America do not just pop up by accident. More and more people are controlled by lies and misinformation.

They are able to do universal health care in all these countries but the US because, to paraphrase T.R. Reid, each country decided that all their citizens had a right to it. They respect their citizens. In America, some find it very, very profitably to sew disrespect, fear, racial hatred and on top of those issues people are extorted by merely the right to eat and survive into working for wages that do not really allow them to live so much as to die slowly.

With all our self-righteous preaching about religion in the US, the basis of our country is cheap labor gotten any way we can get it - legal or illegal. Our system is one way, and allowing real factual journalism in the mainstream, and now even around the edges has allowed people to realize that our system is corrupt. Meaning that control of wealth and the means of production, the means of survival is being usurped by a single group that also controls the media. The UBI would give some very important power back to the people at the bottom. We talk about our great system - pointing to a fading myth, meanwhile we see our great system fading ... and even fading for the white majority that though they were so secure.

Are the people ready for UBI, or democracy, socialism, national health care? If not it is our country's own fault for infantilizing them. Feeding them lies or nothing in media instead of the truth. Feeding them food that is full of factory ingredients instead of nutrition. On every dimension we show that we care more about profits of the controlling class, and their questionable control than we do about people. The reason I am so strongly for the idea of UBI, and Single Payer Health Care is that there is no other way that I can see that is not so complex 90+% of the people would not understand it. What people would understand is that the country cares about them in the universal currency and god of America - MONEY.

This was mostly to address what you referred to as the incentive problem. We use a pain incentive issue, and that is why we fall further and further behind, and have to resort to tricks and violence to get our way. I've read many books about not to motivate people, and how to raise children, and you get a better "product" without dysfunction - people on anti-depressants, drugs, anger, rage and suicide when you use positive reinforcement. The big secret of America is that the parts that work get this, and the parts that do not cannot survive, let alone move forward.

So, to address point 3, "we don't want it" ... like Trump voters, spun round and round starved for information, of course they don't want it. The same thing happened with FDR, until people realized that it worked, and created with positive reinforcement the greatest blossoming of our economy and culture right up to the 70's when the positive virtual cycle was broken.

Of all your points, number 3 is the most powerful. To change a process or way of doing business in the private sector, there are tons of books about it. Process improvement through 6 sigma, DMAIC DMADV ... one of the hardest most neglected issues is the institutionalization of new ideas, assuming they work. I think millennials are smart enough to see what is going on with our country, and they do want it. They will want it until the American propaganda machine finds a way to drag them down to the lowest common denominator and hate and fear everyone else too.

The ideas of complexity economics and how the system works is explored in a website called Evonomics. It is a change of the way of thinking and it has taken hold virtually everywhere but in the US. It is not too simple of a question to just ask why. We neglect, fool and criminalize the lower classes so they work for less money that it takes to live - which show a complete disrespect for our citizens, a continuation of what was 200 years ago a real slave state and now virtual, and we criminalize our people and pull people into this toxic game.

The UBI is not perfect, but as someone said in another post it can help people not have to take degrading jobs and be able to invest in themselves. When a job does not pay enough to survive, the rules that we tell people are hypocritical and we become uncaring hypocrites as well.

Bruce K, your response is a rarity these days - I thank you for that as it makes this forum a unique place to exchange ideas.  I left a response to Randy Martin which may answer your questions.   You may still consider me a on the right, but I align myself with classic liberalism. 

I am not arguing against a UBI, so I will restrict this to just healthcare.Are the problems with a potential universal healthcare system insurmountable?  That is beyond my pay-grade to determine, but comparisons to the Nordic models are too simplistic.Scale Up Problem #1: Entitlement Programs are Difficult to Enact.  America's political institutions (congressional committees, budget estimates, conference committees, amendments and a veto - plus the courts after the fact) make life difficult for entitlement programs, and the bigger the entitlement, the more difficult it is.  Case in point- ACA and the attempted repeal of ACA.  No such hurdles exist in Sweden.Scale Up Problem #2: The US has a Different Social Incentive Structure / Culture.  The US has a more cutthroat capitalism which produces greater inequality, greater poverty, and a weaker safety net than its Scandinavian compatriots with the benefit of greater technological innovation.  This technological innovation keeps the US in a position of leadership in the global economy.  The US changing this system to accommodate a more egalitarian distribution (similar to the Scandinavians) would have major global impacts in the reduction in global growth, given the size of the US markets.  An analogy would be the US changing its military structure to that per capital levels of Sweden - this would have serious negative impacts on the world.Scale Up Problem #3: Homogeneity.  Sweden has a relatively homogeneous geography and homogeneous population (although that is changing).  Political beliefs and culture is also more homogeneous.Scale Up Problems #4: We Don't Want It.  Or at least a significant portion of the population does not want it.  Political culture in America tends towards a strong belief in classical liberalism and the idea that the government should play a limited role in society.  Swedes have different political ideals.The list is not exhaustive, but it is where I started.

Just heard the podcast. Allow me to present these 2 points without judgement on the debate.  1) I have a basic income, as long as the stock market doesn't completely collapse. It is pretty nice. After my illness, I could afford to not work, then work part time. Even while employed, it removes any worry about the future. I'll always have a house, food. I'll never have to take a job that demeans me. 2) What paid for the investments that give me that income was mostly my work in the homeless services industry, and I worked around people for making 5 times as much. That wasn't all federal money, but none of that actually made it to the hands of homeless people, or even to social workers in contact with the needy.A point was made about how the new industry of programming will provide the same sort of income factory work did. No, it doesn't. This is my industry. Most apps will not even recoup their cost. Any developer can be replaced with an H1B for less, and that person can be off-shored for a lot less. I'm still in favor of globalization for reducing the maximum amount of poverty, but no worker is immune to having somebody else do that work for less.My opinion is that the government in general needs constant feedback and oversight. It has no problem letting huge companies and certain real estate developers pay nothing in taxes, or coming up with money for the F35 or tanks the Army says it doesn't want. Government spending on well-meaning, deserving causes creates problems like for-profit sham colleges, soaring medical costs, and yes, programmers for social service software.

Hi Morgaine, I'm curious about your comment and would like to learn more about this inefficiency. At the 100k income level a typical tax return in my state has around 18k in federal tax, 6k in state tax, 6k in social security and 1.4k in medicare tax. How could it be costing 32k to process this money? Where are the leaks?

Do you believe these scaling issues are things that can't be overcome? Please help me and Bruce out and give us a few examples of the types of scaling issues that may arise in either health care or UBI to which a smart engineer might have difficulty designing a solution for. Thanks in advance, Trevor.

Hi Emily, All that's needed to solve that particular problem is math. The against side stated that it this program would cost twice that of our current social security program so find the income level where someone is paying $6000 in social security tax and you'll have found the point where the increased tax liability matches the UBI they would receive. http://taxformcalculator.com/state_tax.html

I have not seen any discussion about moral implications, and the morality of the UBI might be the biggest issue. We consider the taking by force of the fruit of a person's labor for the personal benefit of another a great evil, and call it slavery. The taking by force of the fruit of a person's labor for generally beneficial purposes, such as roads and bridges, police and fire protection, and national defense --- we recognize this as the cost of living in a civil society.The UBI consists of the taking by force the fruit of one person's labor for the personal benefit of another, and as such is morally indistinguishable from slavery. The fact that the personal benefit is diffuse (and maybe fungible) doesn't change the moral quality, but only obscures the issue.Supporters of the UBI can address this question in several different ways, from asserting that the relief of poverty is for the common good (like the argument in favor of free, universal education), to accepting that the moral benefit of taking one person's goods for the benefit of another person exceeds the moral cost.In a way, I think of this debate the same way I think of Esau selling his birthright to Jacob for a bowl of bean soup. This event had massive long term consequences, likewise, whatever decision we reach about the UBI.

Prior to listening to this I was all for UBI. After hearing about how much this would cost, I would need to hear more about where the money would come from to fund this income before I could decide if it have too much of a negative impact in areas I had previously not considered. I am still leaning towards the 'for the motion' side, but would need to see more studies.

I was surprised that the audience was so persuaded by the against the motion panelists.  I think it was a relatively equal debate that probably should have ended like it started.  Personally, I think UBI is a good idea (although I would like to see the actual math and analysis) primarily because I believe a person can get more food and housing value out of $12k cash than value they would get if the government spent $12k cash for them.  I also like the idea that no one is flat broke, would have to go to the store with food stamps or would have to live in horrible housing while they search for a job they actually want.  I'm not for handouts but I are more not for government inefficiency.  I actually believe that is possible that UBI could be cheaper to the government than the myriad of programs and overhead they have now.Nevertheless, I think there were three matters in this debate that were inadequately discussed:1) Cost is clearly and issue and there was not a great response to why high income earners should get UBI so why wasn't it proposed to the dissenters whether they would support UBI if it only went to the bottom 50%.  Would it work then?2) there was a great audience question about whether UBI would depress wages.  I would have loved to have heard more on that.3) Jared spoke broadly and confidently about a government programs that work and can lead people out of poverty.  What programs are those?  He should have been asked to elaborate.Otherwise, another good listen.

Hi John and thanks for the update.   I saw that and understood it, I see this subject matter as a very complex human interface to understand; yes, there will be a spectrum of reactions.  The other side to understand (before any complex implementation) also is what will the government do with the implementation.  So far, they tend to always complicate the outcome; as I see it, today, the ratio of the government complexity to that of what the people can sustain is very high (autopoiesis).  most people are now afraid of their government.  In my mind, this problem has to be analyzed, studied, and solved first.

Hi again Roberto. In the end, I think Charles Murray got closest to discussing the human element, as you put it. While all four debaters saw the possibility that some people might choose not to work, Murray made his argument that the UBI would lead to what he sees as personal responsibility getting an upgrade, as a part of the fabric of American life. I noticed that the other side did not engage much on that point.

Trevor, I apologize if you felt attacked.  I did not intend to direct the right-winger label at you personally, but it is a tactic used on discussion boards to  make a point without making a point, or argument.  I could have safely left that out and probably should have.

IF you want to leave a carriage return, and white space between paragraphs, type:

LT BR GT LT BR GT

where LT is a less-than character, and GT is a greater than character.  The BR is HTML for line BReak.

A lot of good posts.  If I had to put it in analogy terms, the UBI could be thought ofas an economic turbo-charager.  After it gets going we will have a lot more productivepeople who are much more productive than they would be if they were languishingin poverty, and crime, or worrying about their poverty-stricken parents, or children.I hate to bring criticism of Capitalism into the argument, but I think the idea of monetizingeverything and creating income streams that only flow a few places means that thevast majority of people are starving, literally or metaphorically - and there is not otherworld they can belong too.  Privatizing health care, education and prisons works to alow degree, but these are things that when they have monetary value are only availableto the rich, and the political actions of the rich end up with a feedback effect that pusheseveryone else down - so there needs to be in the system something like a rising tide oran under-draft that counteracts that, but those on top end up wanting everything.As a computer-scientist and systems person I always try to see the big picture and argueto make things as flexible and open-ended as possible.  I think soon we will start to seethrough some of the hype in AI and that of the work that this planet really needs self-driving cars and robots are only a small part.We need facilitators like teachers, mentors; we need people who will rebuild andremediate natural environments that we have let die and need to bring back.  Whatereverone thinks of global warming, dumping more and more garbage into the environmentis not good, and it's a waste.  Nature is the ultimate source from which everythingcomes.  I've seen studies where our system of mechanized agriculture fails or doesnot achieve the results of by-hand organic farming, and we renew the life and keepthe world healthy.  People could afford to do these kinds of jobs, or could get grantsto work on areas of land and build it up until it is profitable and then reap the profitsof sustainability. The biggest argument to me is our culture.  People ask why socialized medicine worksin Europe, or Japan, or Cuba, but say it would never work in the US.  Because of ourculture.  We have been taught to see the way we are as superior, and yet year by yearwe see it doesn't work and the wisest among us say do not change, or go backwards.Nothing will work if our culture is toxic or totalitarian, but I do think UBI would actagainst that as well.  Americans are uninformed, some of the least informed people inthe world, with so much.  People have to work too much.  Somehow that is seen as aplus, like when George W. Bush spoke to the woman who had to work 3 jobs to surviveand he spun it like a plus ... only in America.   What good does it do us collectively tocontract people's lives like that, to remove their humanity.   Real human beings aremore responsible to their society, not less, and to speak to the post of another here,that is where honor comes from.

One interesting question would be .... who would do that menial work, or does that price of it just go up?  If so, it this inflationary, or producing of an inflationary cycle?

This was a good debate, but there are plenty of UBI (or BIG--Basic Income Guarantee) proponents who have done some serious homework on how to implement the UBI financially. The "for" side's biggest blunder was that they could not explain why Bill Gates would also get the money, and how on Earth we would pay for it. As an economics student, I listen to a podcast called EconTalk. The host recently had Michael Munger, a professor at Duke University, on the program to discuss the UBI (they used the acronym BIG) and Munger referenced a paper that he wrote, detailing how and why a BIG is feasible, and also necessary. The link is below. I understand and sympathize with everyone who has commented worrying about people taking advantage of a UBI and not working. But I argue, that is a good thing. People are constantly seeking meaning in their lives, constantly searching for a purpose, something that will give them status and respect. No one is happy living off of food stamps. With a UBI, yes, maybe people will quit their jobs. But that is because their job was meaningless, it was not bringing any happiness or satisfaction. People enjoy the feeling of working hard and accomplishing a goal. They will work hard, but maybe at something that does not command dollars in the market. Maybe they will go back to school! Maybe they will become artists, learn an instrument, or volunteer. The options are endless. And almost everyone I have talked to agrees that 10 or even 15 thousand dollars is not enough to keep them from working. Another thing about us humans? We always want more! There is also a reason we NEED the UBI. If any of you listen to or read about the leading technologists and AI engineers, they will tell you that this revolution is different than any other. The machines will not only be able to do fairly sophisticated tasks that many respectable humans do, but they will be able to do those jobs more quickly and efficiently. There will still be jobs that pay wages, of course, but only for a few highly skilled experts in the fields of computer science, mathematics, and engineering. Almost every other job is in danger. Of course, the UBI will have its kinks that must be smoothed out, but is better than any other idea we have to date. link to the EconTalk podcast: link to Mr. Munger's paper: 

As a "student" of John Rawls and a senior citizen, I believe that UBI in addition to giving poor people dignity would also allow people to select more creative work, or to volunteer for community work instead of having to perform menial labor to just survive.

Bruce, the scaling problem is in healthcare, if that was not contextually clear.  However, I do not feel that your criticizing my use of the word "might" in scaling problems with healthcare, then proceeding to use "right wingers" to generalize any opposition to the Swedish solution warrants further explanation on my part of where scaling problems arise.  

Sorry, the part above after "Secondly" was a quote from the post I was replying to.  I was trying to mark it in some way, and use italics, but it did not work ... but at least I got the line breaks to show up.

First, I noticed the thing that irks me about your presentation is that it is all done in decree of what you think things should be.  The government is here to do what we want it to do.  It is at the LEAST closed minded to decide that the idea of government is not flexible nor there there serve the interests of the people in whatever way they decide to organize things.  Within that framework there are problems as with any human endeavor.

Secondly ...

The closest in the USA to Sweden single payer is the Health System for Veterans and what I have been reading about for the last 5 years plus is how terrible it is, how our veterans go without care, and the wait list for care is miles long.  If we do that to our Veterans (the people that have put their lives on the line to defend the Constitution of our Country), what do you think will happen to a system for citizens?

(I was trying for Italics here)  Again, is this supposed to be a reasoned argument?  I can not believe this is reasoning to counter the information Sarah A. explained. The question it begs is - why is the United States like this?  That is an attempt to rat-hole the discussion off to somewhere else, not an attempt to further the discussion.

The implication being that many other countries are capably of living in civilized productive ways, but the USA is somehow different kind ... that you must explain or at least offer an opinion - but you sweep everything away with Reagan's "Big Government" broom, and yet after Reagan, it is still more right-wing complaints, even though Reagan really did nothing to bump the economy.  At the same time many other things were happening like the division of the country by race, the pushing of drugs in the inner cities.

The problem with Conservatives is that they think they already know the answer, which of course supports their personal needs, they are never willing to try the experiment, and all to willing once something anywhere is tried and isn't perfect to use that as some excuse to never change anything again.  We have just been through another cycle of Conservative illogic with the talking up of private health care, which really amounts to allowing people to die and giving tax breaks to billionaires.

Might????   Is that supposed to be an argument, or a scare tactic, or a dismissal.  There is a very compelling argument Sarah A. made, and all the right wingers ( sorry to generalize ) can do is innuendo and scared tactics a mile side and a millimeter deep.At least explain the factors you think "might" affect the scale differential between the US and Sweden ... come on, try to make a complete argument please!

ok, scratch that. it looked like it worked because it usually does and it does in the text box, but perhaps

> br < will work?

Ugh. My formatting got removed.shift+enter does the jobsee?

The only problem i can see with that argument is that it isn't true. "paying people NOT to work" does not represent what a UBI is in any sense. People will be free to work and anyone who doesn't want to be the poorest of the poor will try to make more any way they can. The way they can will be to quit jobs that aren't good or meaningful, to seek out their dreams, to start businesses. If you look at the experiments that have been done so far, you'll see that people will do More work when they have the feeling that they can actually accomplish something by doing so.

Work is not a positive. The vast majority of work is such that it benefits those who have done nothing but provide capital over those who actually work. Your idea of moral pressure has no weight.

The automation of essentially everything is not theory, it's inevitable. Wealth either gets circulated, which means a robust economy, or stockpiled, which results in infinitely recursive inequality. Nobody wants to be poor and everyone wants to better their lives in some way. People who haven't done it probably haven't because they can't, even if that's as simple as not understanding how.

Let's not forget that barely scraping the surface of the "defense" budget could end poverty and hunger WORLDWIDE if we could only find the political will.

The second speaker was logically and empirically incorrect on every single point. I'd call him disingenuous but i believe "liar" is a more correct term. I'd be happy to say why if anyone cares.

Having done analysis on how a UBI could be funded, the economic arguments against it were very unconvincing or just wrong.

I'm even more in support after learning of the non-financial benefits: moral agency (by providing the wherewithal to do the right thing and removing the excuse not to) and dignity.

I'm afraid you're losing me a bit with all the analogies, Bruce. Did you watch the debate? I think the opponents made a very credible argument that UBI would be a net negative for less wealthy, less advantaged people.

Matthew, let's assume there are better ways to do all of those things - because of course there always must be, right?  There are also better ways to generate electricity, in the realm of power generation - for example nuclear.  I happen to be pro-nuclear in theory, and anti-nuclear in practice, that is nuclear is fantastic in the imagination.  It takes very little fuel, it creates very little waste and does not, if working property broadcast that waste and destroy the environment and hurt people.  The reason I mention that is that "better ways" is an argument that should be ignored.  There may indeed be perfect ways that we have not thought of yet ... as in do not let the good be the enemy of the perfect.

Conservatives are always saying that when people have their own money they spend it more wisely, so the UBI would be a very quick and efficient, but certain imperfect with certain inbuilt problems, but as in growing a lawn, when you throw out grass seed into a yard soon the grass grow up and overpowers the weeds.  Conservatives like to focus on the weeds, but it is the grass that will count over time. 

Another side of this is that it does not require a lot of education, training or policing, natural incentives will work to motivate people to be "grass" instead of "weeds" and the weeds cause their own problems over time that keeps their numbers down.

Finally, one thing I've noticed about Conservative arguments, is that some Conservative thinking is very good, but the primary ones that bubble up in our media or editorials are almost always disingenuous.  Conservatives rail about programs to help the poor almost always based on arguments that they hurt the poor, but they never had alternatives ... in other words, they argue about the best way to help the poor or disenfranchised, but they really don't give a damn and have not even thought about it much other than to just offer a obstructive argument.  That is, let's wait until the Liberals can come up with the perfect ( there's that word again) system to help the poor that somehow Conservatives will have no argument against or reason to oppose.  But this never happens and never well.  The recent ObamaCare repeal and replace effort by the Republicans is the perfect contemporary example.

Thanks for the discussion! I think there are better ways to create opportunities, reduce poverty and fight inequality: a fair minimum wage, subsidized education and health care, progressive tax policy, to name a few. Thankfully we don't live in a Monopoly game powered by robot workers, yet. Let's hope we can keep such dystopias in the realm of thought experiments. 

UBI does not make value judgments, everybody gets it, that's the Universal part. The AGAINST plan says "Let's make judgments about people -- no, let's pay this huge beauracracy to make value judgments about people and what they spend their money on." Which lends itself to all kinds of biases both on the part of case workers as well as the implementation of rules designed to prevent biases. If you're on the wrong side of the dividing line, you're thinking "Who are you to tell me my income is too high, that I don't "need" any "help". You helped that other guy that made just a little bit less than me, so you're punishing me for pushing myself to get a better job." Now we have resentment over a system that cannot possibly be made fair.

Eliminating current welfare programs and other programs for the poor could save $900 billion/year. A 10% national sales tax would raise $1.6 trillion/year. Scrapping the Cap on Social Security, and treating unearned income as earned income wouldn't affect the middle class, but could raise tens or hundreds of billions per year. There is over a trillion dollars of "spending via tax code" like the Home Mortgage Interest Deduction, which could be scrapped to pay for UBI. Considering it's the upper-middle class and above who take the most deductions, this is a fair way to pay for UBI. The tax hikes on the top percent are offset by the UBI they will receive, and a homeless person or the generational working poor will be much better off with $1000 per month in their pockets, even if some of them lose SNAP & Section 8. I think if you look at the average American middle-class, spending perhaps $4,000 per month or less on consumer goods & amortized home & car payments ($400/month tax hike to pay sales tax) and then add in UBI ($2,000/month for 2 parents) and explain the tradeoff to people, they will gladly take the extra money.Cities, states, towns, and counties would have much less need to spend money to help the poor & homeless, and also less need to foreclose on properties due to back taxes. So local tax collection, fees, and revenues rise, while costs drop. This could lead to increased service or lower taxes at the local levels.The civil society aspect is important as well. The argument that "Middle class folks don't *need* UBI" forgets the fact that most Americans donate some of their income, and they also help struggling friends and family in times of need. So now, when crazy Uncle Louie shows up at your doorstep needing help, not only does he have his UBI to help pay for his expenses, but his family has UBI to ease the financial pressure as well.

Mr. Furman's point about the arithmetic seems to be the immovable object. If a UBI would cost $1.8t per year, then it is simply infeasible. Notwithstanding the "soak the rich" mentality of the bureaucrats on the stage, it is actually the upper 50% that currently carry the entire tax burden, and targeting a tax increase at an even smaller portion of tax payers is not only unjust, but you would have to more than double the tax rate for those people in order to pay for the program. It would be incredibly unfair and un-American to do so, not to mention politically quite impossible. I actually appreciated Dr. Murray's argument vis-à-vis civil society and the indirect effects of a general knowledge of the UBI. I was incredibly turned off by Mr. Stern's emotional appeals (and Mr. Bernstein's as well to a lesser degree, but maybe because he just seems like a nicer man).

Sarah A.  Thank you for your insight - different perspectives are very valuable in enlightened discourse.  I will point out that one thing left out of your analysis is scale.  An engineer would tell you that scale-up is critical, and solutions on the micro level do not always work out well on the marco level.  With a population and a GDP  roughly 30 times greater, solutions that work for Sweeden might not be practical for the US.

EDIT: It would be at $95k as an individual and $190k as a couple that a $12k UBI and the additional 2x social security tax would cancel out.

There were perfectly good responses to each of the against sides counterarguments that the pro side didn't seem prepared for. "A dollar going to someone who doesn't really need it is a dollar that isn't going to someone who really does." This is a true statement but an irrelevant one and here's why. If you raise Mr. Gates taxes by .1% and generate another $200k of tax revenues, you can well afford to give him a $12k rebate while helping the poor to the effect of the other $188k. The objection was raised that we can't afford UBI because it will cost double that of social security. This statement, while also true, doesn't seem to appreciate what the net effects of this policy would be. Someone who earns $30k per year will on average pay around $1.8k to social security. If you were to triple this part of their tax liability while also giving them the $12k UBI, you've just increased their net income by $8.4k. It would only be at around $65k per year as an individual $130k as a married couple that you'd see the tripled social security tax and the UBI cancel each other out and fail to increase your net income. Due to the way the social security tax is structured, the people who would see the most difference in their take home pay would be people making around 120k per year who would pay an additional $14.5k in taxes and only receive $12k back in the form of the UBI which would result in a net decrease in their take home pay of $2.5k. This is a manageable tax increase. The against side said there was no good reason to think the coming revolution will be so much different from the industrial revolution. This statement is false. The industrial revolution displaced workers whose jobs involved simple repetitive tasks and brute force tasks which was precisely the type of work the coming technology was well suited for. Thus far humans have held a monopoly on the types of work that require high level thinking and creativity but this is precisely the type of labor that the machines are beginning to compete with us for. This revolution is qualitatively different because humans will no longer have a monopoly on any particular type of labor and may soon find themselves inferior to the machines at essentially every task. The advent of strong AI would likely accomplish all of these advances in a very short time but even without strong AI we have examples of programs able to do better work than their human counterparts and humans taking  up supporting roles to those programs.

Sarah thank you for the note and sharing your knowledge on Sweden, it is a good thing to learn how other countries live.  There are definitely differences between our countries and no one seems to know where we will end up in the long run (even for the UBI Debate, they made a rule to only discuss near effects of UBI). Meanwhile opinions abound, many about how will UBI take care of “me.”  You wrote about “Ideology, Healthcare, Government Regulations, Student Debt, Employee Benefits, and National Holidays,” Sharing what you believe has worked in Sweden, including what you call the “single payer health system.”                                                                                                                                           The closest in the USA to Sweden single payer is the Health System for Veterans and what I have been reading about for the last 5 years plus is how terrible it is, how our veterans go without care, and the wait list for care is miles long.  If we do that to our Veterans (the people that have put their lives on the line to defend the Constitution of our Country), what do you think will happen to a system for citizens?                                                                                                                                           Like “Veterans Care,” there are plenty of examples that “BIG Government” in this country does NOT work.  As I said in my updated write up, our Government does NOT know the difference between “Development and Growth,” and everything they “Do” only makes them grow.  This mindset alone will eventually kill us.  This is what has been going on for the last 30 years and look where we are.  The blame, no matter the ideology, is on BOTH, liberals AND conservatives.  Some people (me included)  absolutely do not care about ideology.  I want what works.                                                                                                                                              After 30 years of watching every type of corruption known to politics to the detriment of the people (including wars we did not have to fight), yes, a lot of us consider ideology DEAD and want the SIZE of Government slashed to the bone.  I learned a lot from the greatest philosopher this country has ever had, Charlie Brown, and the practice that comes to mind is, when Lucy asks Charlie Brown to “Kick the Ball” while she holds it, and as Charlie gets there to kick it with all his might, she pulls the ball out.  This is what ALL the politicians have done to us in the last 30 years; they have promised whatever they think will get our vote and once they are in, they forget about it.  Once upon a time I went to the “Brookings Institute” to learn “How the Government Works.”  One day we were going to meet with several Senators and Congressman, on the way to the meeting our handler told us, “you are going to meet some of the most intelligent people in the country but don’t let this fool you;  Congress is filled with very, individually, intelligent people; however, as an aggregate, they are dumber than a rock.  This has always been a mystery to me.”  I never forgot that, and over the last 30 years of observation, I have become totally convinced this is absolutely true and it is due to people not working together.                                                                                                                                      The Undesirable Effect (UDE) of Congress not working together is, “Government Grows” due to all the deal-making that has to occur for anything to be made into law.  A metric of the degree our government is frozen is the number of “Executive Orders” implemented by various Presidents and what content those orders were used for.  It has gotten way out of hand, the Executive branch of our government is not there to institute law.

Sarah....I forgot to mention that I have spent a lot of time in Stockholm working with Erickson.  And I have made several good friends there.  I agree that Sweden has created one of the most well-educated and family-centric environments I have seen.  I do see them as a rather uniquely successful country.

Sarah....Good response to my comment.  I am a retired software executive (35+ years) who made presentations to various groups (especially higher education organizations) about the disappearance of jobs.  Early on, I warned about the collapse of middle management, which was primarily involved with gathering and summarizing data drawn from 1st line managers into presentations for upper management.  Automation eliminated most these jobs - first the tabulators and then the analysts.With the growth of automated data collection and process analytics generated by the devices on the assembly line, the need for many 1st line managers has greatly reduced.  The next step is for increasing robotics to greatly reduce/eliminate to lowest level production staff.  One can imagine upper management being the only ones left in the (virtual) office.  Except for the hackers that will continue to find ways inside the data flows to either corrupt or tap off the data for their own use.I spent much of the last 10 year running a multi-partner, international consulting company that focused on helping off-shore high-tech companies find ways to enter the U.S. marketplace.  And I have seen many of the European countries, in particular, lower their worker productivity through both corrupt unions and socialism run amok.  So many people with their hands stuck out, but refusing to take available jobs, mostly because they have been traditionally done by "Lower Class", mostly immigrants.  (Same thing is happening in the good old USA too.)I am a strong believer that there are many government programs, especially those targeted to the youngest students,  that have great ROIs, but are openly fought by teacher's unions.  We have a big challenge in the USA to bring back the strong work ethic that built this country.  Look to Asia to see where we were 50 years ago.  Students fighting for top grades to get the best jobs.  Parents actively pushing their children to do better, and taking few excuses.  We've lost that.The H1B program has been horribly and dishonestly described as somehow bad for America.  As a major employer of programmers, I spent considerable effort trying to locate programmers, even at the entry level. But American schools are simply not producing anywhere near enough to meet even a small fraction of the demand.  So what do many companies of all sizes do - go outside to countries like Japan, China, Ireland, Poland, India, Russia and so on, where they have skilled people but insufficient jobs.  The program does not displace anyone - the jobs are sitting there empty, hurting our companies.I can go on and on (and have over the years) with this important topic.  I strongly believe that the world, especially 1st world countries, are rapidly evolving from agriculture and manufacturing based workplaces to information focused systems.  And there are many jobs waiting and many new jobs to be created in the future.  But the basic employment criteria is a strong technical education.  And our education results place us closer to a 2nd world country.  Get competition and discipline back in the school system, not unearned income gimmicks.Having spent considerable time in Europe and Mid-Asia, I have had the opportunity (probably a poor description) to hear people talk about the "inevitable necessary steps" to fix the future world of massive unemployment and its resulting unhappiness of the idle population.  These include ugly solutions such as massive birth control to even worse like introducing population reducing drugs and diseases.  Targeted, of course, on the "lower classes" of citizens.  Books and movies are already showing up focused on this scenario.  Well, lets just hope that the world finds far better solutions.

I am going to test HTML paragraphs here to see if it works.
That is putting a less-than BR and a greater than to make a line break after a paragraph.

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Test, test, test.

You guys are right on with your comments. The revolution begins at 21stCenturyBillofRights.org which includes Post Office Banking and a Basic Income for Americans paid for with Treasury Dollars. Americans need an "Ideas" party that focuses on solutions, tradeoffs, and policy instead of identity, ideology, and fundraising. 

I suppose you didn't understand the argument that Andy Stern put forth about our CURRENT tax code, which doles out much *more* than $12,000 per year to upper-middle and rich families in the forms of 1)Mortgage Interest tax deduction (huge tax dodge for million dollar homes)2)Lower taxes on capital gains3)Education and other tax credits that favor incomes over $150,000 per yearSince we're talking about a scenario where taxing the rich is politically possible, the increased income tax, national sales tax, and financial transaction taxes on Bill Gates, Warren Buffet et al, will more than outweigh the $12,000 per year in UBI that they get. Furthermore, the "against" argument ignores the possibility that the rich (like Bill Gates, who has a proven track record of charity) will simply give their UBI away as scholarships or other need-based grants. In fact, the "for" side forgot to advance the argument that the middle class, flush with their new UBI, will be likely to donate 10% of it, which means a $30 billion per year donation bonanza that will fuel private programs to help the poor. 

The entire point of UBI is to give a hand up to those who will use it for the right cause. Most people in UBI studies do the right thing, get education for their kids, invest in their homes, and eat better. Gambling addicts exist now, and they are a drain on their families, even middle class families can be dragged down. With UBI, families and friends have resources to help people with addictions and other problems. Laws could be made so that 30% of UBI could be protected from debt collection. Most folks today trapped in debt would be debt free, or have a car loan or mortgage within a year, and be improving their lives. Some folks will always be ruined, and millions fall through the cracks today. 

Congress cannot be trusted. America must enact a 21st Century Bill of Rights, as constitutional amendments, with Basic Income paid in Treasury Dollars and pegged to a composite of 3 inflation indices that include food, housing, health care, and education. This $1000/month would have to be changed by another constitutional amendment afterwards. 

I do not think the against side had a good response to the large unemployment over the horizon due to automation, and focused too much on poverty reduction. UBI is a response to the massive changes coming in the next 50 years due to advancement in technology. It is a social preservation of our state rather than a poverty reduction effort.

Sorry for the wall of text. I swear I typed separate paragraphs. I2, please consider making it easier for people to type paragraphs. It would also be nice if we could edit comments.

I agree, this has merit and we need to have serious discussions about it.What is frightening is that we are heading in the wrong direction for Healthcare, considering millions of jobs will be eliminated in a few years, thus people loosing their healthcare through employeers.We need to find a way out of our ideological corners and just deal with the task at hand and realistic assessment of near future problems we think will arise. Think that can happen ?

Hey Paul,I understand and agree with your point, however this discussion is focused on a mass unemployment that is around the corner for us. I'm in the tech industry and currently I'm working on developing self driving cars. This includes personal and commercial cars - Trucks etc. We are realistically about 7 years away from it, and millions of American will loose their jobs over a period of 10 years, so 17 years from now, we estimate majority of cars on the streets will be self driving.Not to mention all of the retail and factory jobs that will be eliminated over the same period of time, estimate about 50% of current jobs to no longer exist. Humans always find new industries and markets, however there will be a transitional time while we figure that out. Unless our politicians can start taking this seriously and strategies re training/ vocational education programs public/private partnerships. But our politics is too shortsighted for them to make any moves now, that we can benefit from in 10-20 years :(Also, another problem is that we are heading in the wrong direction with our healthcare, what are all these people going to do once they loose their jobs? Even if it is for short amounts of time, this is not about ideology just practical stuff. Everyone will be miserable, rich or poor if people don't even have access to healthcare bc of these major societal changes. I'm from Sweden and over here, we are already planning vigorously, with free education for people if they want to re-educate themselves, and lot's of public/private partnerships for people to have a chance to start over, even when they are in their 40's, 50's etc.How can your working class compete with Europe and some parts of Asia, where basic healthcare and education is available for free?  You don't seem to have any collective planning for United States  and anytime someone want to discuss something that is very realistic to happen in future, it seems everyone goes to their ideological corners and decide from there what they think.I am siencerily interested in knowing, what you think is the solution to what is coming.  

I find the UBI to be a simple and appealing idea to end poverty.  At first thought, I would like to see us pay for it with higher taxes on capital gains.  This makes the most sense to me--tax income generated by wealth.  I disagree with Bill Gates' robot tax idea.  It's hard to define what a robot is, and it ignores other technologies that lead to less work for humans.  Why single out robot assets?  Tax income generated from all assets instead.I thought the best criticism against the UBI was the question of whether we get a larger return on investment using the UBI or existing social net-type programs.  I think this is something we need more analysis and data for.  In general, I would much rather let people decide how to best help themselves rather than have the government decide for them.  It's an interesting question, though, and it'd be good to see the advantages and disadvantages more clearly laid out.There's also a question of fairness.  Can we justify taxing rich people to pay for poor people's basic income?  I do think it's justified at this point.  People like Zuckerberg have made billions, but their hard work alone didn't get themselves there.  Without centuries of society's technological progress before Facebook, Facebook would have never been possible.  There's an argument to be made that society has some claim to this income as well.One major concern I have about the UBI regards the practicality of implementing it.  Specifically, if we start giving everyone $1000/month, what's to stop everyone from voting to increase this amount?  The slippery slope argument seems very relevant here.

I believe that those opposed to the motion strengthened and reconfirmed my concerns about simply handing out money, without any strings, will result in any significant improvement to the lives of people in poverty.

I just opened the news this morning to see this: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/new-research-identifies-a-sea-of-despair-among-white-working-class-americans/2017/03/22/c777ab6e-0da6-11e7-9b0d-d27c98455440_story.htmlA lot of the people in rural areas are too proud to ask for help. And probably there's a lot of peer-pressure not to take government handouts. If UBI went to everyone, there wouldn't be any stigma with that. I really think the benefits of this could be even more clear in rural than urban places. 

I was wondering if there were any way of preventing some sort of pay-day-loan scenario, wherein some individual receiving this steady stream of guaranteed income borrows against that stream for more money today and loses it all (i.e. buys a flashy car, starts a business that flops, etc.). What would their safetynet then be?

Whilst I am not in favor of purely 'Universal' Basic Income, I believe the concept has merit and does deserve serious consideration.

I don't know about you, but that wouldn't be enough for me. Do you only work so you can eat? Everyone I know find dignity in working, food and shelter is the goal but it goes beyond that. I know many well to do people that probably don't have to work for the rest of their life if they choose to, however they probably work more than most. Maybe for you the basic "free money programs" are  enough to remove your ambition, however humans are generally not wired that way. The people who are chronicle moochers are within the margin of error for any program and is expected, that doesn't mean it's bad or not working for it's intended purposes. It just means we need to enforce and monitor cheating. It will never be perfect, just like in a professional setting, some people take 2 slices of pizza when we have free lunch in break room, although we only had enough for 1 slice per person. We don't stop Pizza Friday for that reason, we just work on enforcing the 1 slice rule. 

I felt the against side's argument came off as condescending, and continuously returned to an irreverent argument of Bill Gates.

I can appreciate your logic.As an aside, I think these Oxford style debates, as they call them, are a tad silly.  Pre-voting before the debate merely allows for people who want to stack the vote to their preferred side to vote for the other side and then say that the preferred side won them over.  What do we as viewers gain by this?   I2 has some great shows, but the competitive debate format is not something I like.  They should just have the debate and then poll people what they think and stick to the basics.

But we are not even going in the right direction for healthcare. Feels hopeless that we will come up with a practical solution. 

Roberto,  So here is the thing I agree with everything you said about work retraining. I am from Sweden, and I guess in the United States most of my views are considered "liberal" or "left leaning". We don't really have any "conservative" or "right leaning" political movements in Sweden (the "right" in Sweden are white nationalists, but they’re very left leaning in terms of economics).  Before I lay out my case for a Swedish model, I want to point out that Forbes ranked Sweden easiest country to do business in, and our economy grew by 4.2%  and we’re debt free, with a trade balance surplus of 5.2% of GDP last year. (2016), Unemployment was about 7%, mostly because of all of the refugees we took on. Also we have the most startups per capita in the world (humble brag).    https://www.forbes.com/sites/kurtbadenhausen/2016/12/21/sweden-heads-the-best-countries-for-business-for-2017/#77fee3fe7ecd Here is the thing, I work in New York these days (for a Swedish tech startup), what I find difficult is that anytime I have a conversation with American conservatives they often reference “free markets” which I love by the way and we have benefitted from that in Sweden very much, but it kind of hinders us from having a practical and pragmatic conversation about where we are and our best prediction of what we need to collectively do to prepare for future changes.  For instance I was telling my work mate that, the healthcare bill “Obamacare” is going in wrong direction now with the Trumpcare instead, because so many workers are going to lose their jobs in coming years (probably millions),  due to self driving cars and all the other automation that is coming, this will hit truck drivers very hard. And you have many truck driver in America (it’s also one of the few pretty good paying working class jobs left) These workers can find other things to do and the market typically adjusts.  For example when women entered the work force, a lot of men were worried about women stealing their jobs, since the workforce could potentially double. That really never happened though, women kind of gradually made it in to the job market and often did something different than the jobs men did. I believe it was over a period of 40 years that the workforce was doubled, without the expense of men loosing their jobs, the market expanded in stead.  This is also often true with immigrants.  Here is the thing though, with automation there will be a gap and transitional period of large amounts of people being unemployed. This is very realistic scenario I believe, especially since businesses are not heavily regulated here, they will probably lay off large groups of people in different periods of time. This is why the healthcare debate, feels very diss connected from reality, because it will be miserable for everyone in this country, if these people that at no fault of their own lost their jobs can not even count on healthcare. And government here don’t seem to want to get involved in planning this out, warning and preparing workers aggressively ( they should really already be doing it now). So we need a little practical way to solve this. But also in a way to make it fair for people that are not necessarily the receivers of this benefit, so if I am a tax payer and we expand benefits (if we must), then there have to be something in it for me too, this is why single payer works in many countries, it’s for everyone period! This is not what I am suggesting for united states, just saying there are  ways to expand benefits everyone needs, in a way that we all benefit.  But how can we have this conversation, without any filter of ideology or politics? I find that part really difficult here, and because of that I think your citizens are left fighting from behind and minimal preparation. Many modern countries now have free college, healthcare, maternity leave, transitional worker vocational training and so much more. If jobs are disappearing all over the world, the countries that have prepared realistically and population is able to reeducate themselves, those countries will be ahead.  Also it is very painful to see the type of college debt my co-workers here in NYC have, with same education as I have. Many of them studied technology at MIT, different state universities etc and have debt close to $100,000. this is going to put you behind eventually. I went to a University equivalent to theirs (even did exchange program with Harvard) but I have zero debt, I even received money for my living expenses while in college. This is very bad for competition in your country, as automation expands and you need higher educated workforce. Right now in Sweden, many 45 year old people are going back to college to learn how to code and many other skills. It is completely normal to do that and is expected.  Now everyone is talking about deregulating businesses, when in fact you need to reign them in so they don’t create a bunch of temporary jobs to later leave communities in total chaos.  American companies often here complain about regulation but when they come to Sweden and thrive, even though they have to follow those regulations. For instance McDonalds employees in Sweden are unionized (as are 70% of Swedish workforce, including doctors and lawyers) McDonalds actually pays the workers a minimum wage of $18 dollars, living cost is basically the same as here. On top of that they are also forced to give their full time staff amongst many other benefits, I’ve listed examples below.  All of these things were put in place, not so much because we are left or right of the political spectrum, but because it’s practical. One can have a free market, but still demand standards from business that want to come to our community and make money out of us, it’s a two way street and we think we have a right to demand businesses don’t end up destabilizing our communities, after extracting our resources. These are just some of the benefits that McDonalds offers their employees in Sweden, forced by law. And they are very successful in Sweden, we are number 8 in most McDonalds per capita - .252 per 10,000 people. I don’t even want to get into the Environmental regulation they have to abide by. Our goal is for Sweden to have 0 greenhouse emission by 2035. 25 days of paid holiday per year.  sick pay amounts to 80% of the employee's salary.Sickness benefit is paid by the state to the employee after 14 days. Sickness benefits amount to approximately 80% of the annual income.  Full time off for a parent until the child is 18 months with 80% of wages from social security during that time, and employees have to give you back your job upon return. I really recommend that you go to this link and read about all the employees requirements for businesses in Sweden, even the tax code in bottom of page is ridiculously simple, it’s a English page.. http://uk.practicallaw.com/1-503-3778?q=%22Joint#a121256 Now why are American companies constantly telling US citizens, they can’t pay higher wages or that they’re over regulated. I think they do it because, they get away with it and they use ideology to protect their interests. And I think everyone will be better off if everything  we envision necessary for a economy to work is thrown out (because it is too late to be purists now, so let’s just work with what we have), and then let’s just look at what is infant of us and go from there TOGETHER.  This post ended up waaaay too long for a Swede that find spelling in English impossible. I apologize in advance. 

I voted against the motion because as a debate, I rewarded the side that I feel argued better. It is for the same reason my first vote is always “undecided.” In this case, I think the side against the motion argued better. Why do I think that? Perhaps because the motion was already heavily tilted to their side. Donvan mentions that both sides have agreed to discuss UBI relating to the somewhat nearest future, as opposed to a hundred years from now. The social changes that would warrant an UBI would have to be more drastic than perhaps what many can imagine for the next 25 years. I believe that such changes will happen: AI and robotics will replace many jobs, but not at the same place at the same time. It will happen incrementally. For example, we might first see a sudden job-loss in professional drivers (taxi drivers, truck drivers, etc.) as driver-less cars enter the market. Simply put, I agree with the dreamers, but within the constraints of the debate, there just wasn’t a place for them. 

I agree with you, I don't want to have any incentive to work a $10, 40+ hour a week shift at McDonalds, because I'd rather have that extra time to myself coding and studying for an education.  Newton and Einstein never flipped burgers for minimum wage in their 20's and 30's to pay their rent.  Now I'll concede, there will be a small portion of people that are going to smoke pot and play videogames, because that is their passion, but there are also going to be a portion of people that will be closer to achieving a labor of love that will be beneficial to society, all because they didn't waste their time on the brainless tasks assigned to teenagers working in retail. 

I hear you.  There is a major change coming in human evolution ... to put it in "dreamer" terms!  ;-)How we handle that will make the difference in the future of the whole planet.  If we prioritize people over hierarchy I think we move forward and bring greater good to more people.  If we prioritize feeding the egos of the very rich it is kind of Orwellian where that leads.  It is hard to be anything but a dreamer talking about something that has no happened and has no definite shape.  It would be like talking about the Internet back in the 80's ... no one would have really had an idea what was going to come of it, good or bad.  For that reason I would disagree with your strategy of voting against the motion even though you agree in principle.  Principles are what we need to base our society on ... recall the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.  When you favor hierarchy and precedent you can skip down the primrose path to overturning all those principles based on double-talk, money  and politics.

First, it is really hardly the true that all poor people, or even very many poor people get free medical care, education and/or food ... where did you get that data from Ed?Secondly, that assumes that people only work for survival or to "avoid the whip".It also ignores the idea that the failure of people to work is not solely their lack of desire, but the lack of meaningful work that also allows them to survive.  Yours seems like a mean insulting comment about "poor people" and it makes me wonder how many poor people you know. One of the most giving, friendly, helpful to other people I know has a real problem with fitting into working in our society and spends most of his time helping his friends and doing odd jobs. With a little help this guy's entire life could have added a lot more value to many other people's lives but he had to spend so much time scrambling just to stay alive.

I should not have said "blathering" ... obfuscating would have been the better word.

Poor people already receive free medical care, free education, and free free food (e.g. SNAP). With "free income" there is no incentive to work.

While I agree in principle with the side for the motion, I had to vote against them. I think the side against the motion were better at problematizing the issue, while the side for the motion came across as dreamers. For example, I wish the side for the motion had hit harder against the "Bill Gates doesn't need x-amount of money every month"-rhetoric. How much money would go to the top 1% of the top 1%? Would it be enough to warrant a word change from “universal” to “almost-universal”? AUBI does have a ring to it.

I agree. We need a Progressive party, not Republican and Republican-lite.

I think that it's hard to quantify the psychological benefits of this concept, but there's a lot more human ambition and creativity that would be released when the fear of subsistence goes away. And I think we can trust people more than we think, based on experiments on cash donations to impoverished folks in the developing world. I also feel this discussion seemed to aim at urban struggles--which are legit--but saving rural communities where job options are so sparse is another major possible good outcome of this.

I think we could save Americans a lot of misery by giving them a Basic Income now.

Interesting final results. I am still in favor and appreciate the debate today. We'll have more data by the end of this year from actual implementations and experiments. 

Charles Murray was convincing

The amounts I quoted would be in lieu of any other gov't aid.

Will someone ask the question about taxing robots and AI? 

I'm pro-UBI but Murray and Stern are doing a terrible job of defending it. Why are they refusing to respond to the obvious arguments and objections from the other side?

I wish they would spend more time on technological unemployment (TI). Perfect markets and economics are just one way to look at complex systems (society). TI will affect unskilled and skilled workers and this debate should invest a few minutes looking at both perspectives. 

Jarod and Jason are the ones who do not appear to understand the math!

One thing I learned while working for the government is that paperwork is expensive. At some point in the income scale we are spending more in processing taxes than we are collecting. Someone would have to calculate the actual threshold, which I'm guessing would fall around $100,000.  Anyone making less than that shouldn't be expected to pay tax because the government loses money on it. I also believe collecting taxes from government employees is absurd, but I'm off topic. Sorry.

Jared Bernstein is a fast talker, but he goes everywhere blathering, except putting together what his premises and arguments really express - that he is arguing that the current poverty safety net would be undermined by the UBI ... except that this is not really the argument that he makes explicitly, and nor does what he says or the fact he brings support.  Most likely because there is nothing that would indicate this.Jared, in my opinion is, or operates, as someone who Republicanized the Democratic party, the kind of person real Democrats detest and need to single out and force over to the Republican side where they can be more honest and balance out the nuts that currently live there.  Clinton, both of them, Obama ... Bernstein, etc, are exactly the problem with the Democratic party that has been written about so often, most recently and most powerfully by Thomas Frank in his book "Listen Liberal".These virtual Republicans will drag Democrats down every time and turn them into the kind of voters would turn to a Donald Trump out of sheer desperation.

Here is Economics Nobel prize winner Joseph Stiglitz advocating for universal basic income, for those who say that "basic arithmetic" doesn't support UBI (he knows his maths by the way)http://basicincome.org/news/2016/12/audio-nobel-laureate-joseph-stiglitz-addresses-ubi-ezra-klien-show/

It seems to me that most of the things I've done in my life for pay, have been meaningless and could just as well have been left undone or been done by automatons. Time = Life. I bartered my time/life for ludicrous small sums that barely kept a roof over my head. The important things I have done, that improved life in some way for others, have all been unpaid, mostly when I've been out of "work".I am old now, and I think Basic Income would have meant that I could have looked back on my life with satisfaction instead of with regret for all the hours stolen from me.

Basic income should only cover the basics for food, shelter, health and education. Universal income would be a perpetual boost to the economy with a great multiplicative factor, because every penny would be spent and returned into the economy, just in contrast with money being given to banks and the top 0.1% as has happened in the last few years. Universal basic income would promote a more just and equal society, strengthening democracy and true wellbeing.  

I do agree Morgaine that as robotics and computers replace more and more jobs in the US that some sort of stipend will be required.  Should it be paid for, at least in part, by a tax on companies that replaces workers with technology?  Do you anticipate that $1,500-$2,000 per month  to be in addition to Soc Sec payments?  Do you  anticipate any amount paid out to be considered taxable income?  Would something of this nature be seen as highly inflationary?

You'be got a pretty poor definition of "man" if you think you require work to make you honorable.  There are many honorable activities that don't involve money, and those activities are more likely to get done when money is no longer a restriction.

We will look back on the world without a Universal/Unconditional #BasicIncome as if it was the dark ages. “Who are YOU to decide if someone has worth, and for that matter, to decide who lives and who doesn’t?” …because for so many people, it’s not merely having the freedom (or some might say luxury) to display their own worth/greatness/fulfillment — for some, reality is facing life or death sitations on a daily basis. Yes, we’ve come a long way in terms of society ensuring many people can now survive without fear of death.…but look around, many aspects of our society now seem poised for regression. Do we as a society treat a human life as inherently valuable and has worth from day one? Do we as a society recognize that they should have the freedom to spend their own limited time on Earth displaying their own worth, in their own way? (How things currently do NOT work) …OR… Do we as a society decide that an individual ONLY has worth or value once they can prove their own worth or value, as defined by another individual’s idea or concept of value… or defined by society’s definition of worth or value? (How things currently work)The rejection of the idea of Universal Basic Income is a rejection of the idea that ALL people have the capacity for greatness or fulfillment if given the freedom of choice on how to spend their own, limited, time on Earth.I ask you to CHOOSE UBI today, then we can all work out the details and make it happen, as we have made great things happen in the past.https://medium.com/basic-income/ubi-is-a-moral-choice-before-anything-else-40300f9b75de#.xr1lcbaap

Those details would have to be negotiated but I want to point out that I believe the amount necessary per citizen would be $1,500 -$2000 per month.

American Capitalism is dying and the people at the top of the system know it. Watch the panic with which the upper classes are hoarding wealth and taking it out of America. There's another big crash coming because most of the money Wall Street shuffles around so frantically only exists on paper. Every once in a while somebody tallies it all up and the system crashes because the money isn't really there. This will continue to happen periodically if we don't make changes.If we're going  to continue to support having a handful of fabulously wealthy individuals #BasicIncome will be a necessity. The masses are not going to let this system continue to reward .1% while the rest of us can barely get by. If we are going to avoid the violent reaction this system is rushing toward, people are going to need a little ease. I'm not kidding about violence. I think we're well on the way toward our own French Revolution if the people at the bottom of our system are not made comfortable. The people at the top, especially those in government, are too removed from the reality of life in 2017 to see it coming. They don't understand technology at all. Most of our congress is functionally illiterate in cyber space but the voters are not. We know how to get information and how to use it. You've got several generations of lower classes who spend time watching the fabulously wealthy on TV knowing that those people usually do nothing and produce nothing of any great import. Our media is feeding a monstrous sense of entitlement that will ultimately create one logical reaction - "why not me?"Our elections are being manipulated. So far, the majority has become apathetic and don't bother to vote. That is going to change as we continue to see good people put out of their homes in a system where empty houses far outnumber the homeless. Automation is about to put all those people out of their minimum wage jobs. People that are scraping by with 40 to 60 hour work weeks are soon going to be idle and Washington is about to take a chain saw to the safety net which is already piss poor. Activism is becoming easier and more effective in the age of Facebook and Twitter. The people at the top of the system didn't learn the lesson that was the Women's March on January 21st, but they'll have more chances like the upcoming March for Science. The people are awake and connected like never before. We're all "woke AF." If you don't know what that means, you'd better find out. You'd better find out fast.There is no longer any justification to force people to live in poverty. There's wealth and abundance in this world as never before and we all know it. We ALL know it. #BasicIncome can lift everybody up above the poverty line right now. These things aren't that hard. Congress is putting on great theatrics about how hard it is to give people health insurance while we all watch knowing they could take the age restriction out of the Medicare law and make everyone happy (except a few big pharma lobbyists.) It would take five minutes and one sheet of paper and we all know it. People don't get lazy when they get Basic Income. They get relief, they get relaxed and then they get creative. We could be looking at a new renaissance once people know the rent and electric are paid. Half of us could be entrepreneurs finding better ways to do all the things we have to do or want to do. People will still invent, innovate, strive for something better. Artists will make art, business people will do business, robots will do all the grunt work and people will be free to enjoy their lives and their families as never before. Basic Income is a moral imperitive. Now that it's possible, failure to do it is unconscionable. 

Are you including the $10,000 per annum being paid to incarcerated felons?  If someone is being sued for a wrongful death would the money the deceased would have received be included as part of the calculations for any monetary damages?

By the way ... are you using HTML tags to get those paragraph breaks?

Well, it is fitting that you walked back your work definition.  Applying force through a distance is not what gives "man" honor.   However, you did not really go far enough in understanding your mistake.  That is, under your definition slavery is honorable.I believe you misinterpreted my use of the word feelings as well.  For example, advertising is a way to engage people's feelings to make them want to do business with you.  It can be accurate or it can be lies.  Money does not carry the honor that the work that earned it.  It can be stolen money, or honestly earned money, there is no difference in what it can buy.  I think you are spending too much energy on trying to decipher my emotions, which I don't perceive you have any insight to.You said this - "When we accept our potential, and work honestly to be the best that we can be within our capability, we are happy."  That is your belief, not a fact.  It is too vague for me to say I agree with it completely, but it is a nice "emotional" statement.You further went on to say this - "Our democracy gives us that opportunity."  I don't believe this is true, and I think this is one reason the UBI makes sense.  It removes the arbitrary  power and control of the "bosses" and allows people to not be enslaved or exploited.  That is another sense of honor - the feeling of self-integrity.What our forefathers fought for always make a nice flag-waving patriotic sounding comment, but few of us today, if any, have the insight  or perspective on how to view that statement.  Each interpretation is as different as different people's interpretation of the Constitution.I am not sure where you are going in your last paragraph, but the trends show that work as we know it is on the way out.  There is less of it, and it takes more intelligence, creativity and education - that is specialization.  When we specialize we end up gambling and the investment we make may not pay off, and even if you are world class in what you have trained for you may not be needed or employable.As there are less work jobs, there are more and more service jobs, and there are records that being a wage slave as it was called was looked down on in the past.  Having to sell yourself to another to earn a living was never a tenet of anything I ever read about the Founders - quite the opposite.The trends we see now are vastly increasing inequality, and the people with the gains are insulated, segregated from the majority of people, and they have taken over the government and changed it unilaterally so that it does not represent those people.  As that intensifies, there will be a whole lot of people who have nothing to do and must seek to find meaning, and honor in their lives.  I don't see any other way to look at it other than a UBI would help people do that.  If not everyone will be beholden to the fraction of people with money and power ... which is hardly honorable.

Bruce, you can find the definition of “work” in the dictionary.  In Engineering work is the expenditure of energy for a result (be it translation or expansion); more technically it is a force acting through a displacement.  Energy has to be spent to do work.  We all do work and usually, as a result we get rewarded for our efforts.  This is what makes man honorable.  It is also why I never thought it below me to clean buildings, wash dishes, pump gas, or work the design of Spacecrafts.  I was thinking of people who grow up to be functioning members of society.  may be in your case I should clarify by saying, “ Honest Work makes men honorable,” this is why there has to be respect for people that work within the bounds of our society, no matter what job they do.                                                                                                                      As to “feelings,” as you say, we all are but bags of emotions walking around, without these, well, we’d be “artificial intelligence.”  I can read your emotions very clearly in your replies.                                                                                                                        My personal opinion is that we all have a defined potential.  You have Einstein, Stephen Hawking, Richard Feynman, George Washington, John Marshall, or Oliver Wendell Holmes (and many others I am sure), in one hand, and the rest of us on the other,  there is a vast variety of potential in people.  When we accept our potential, and work honestly to be the best that we can be within our capability, we are happy.  Our democracy gives us that opportunity.  The freedom to do that is what our forefathers fought for fiercely and won our independence for.  That is what made this country great, and I voice my opinion to defend.                                                                                                                                  I would totally accept AI as part of the workforce  and vote yea, if our demographics change so drastically that we need help to maintain productivity.  However, if it is the other way around, “people” are the surplus, then I vote nay, because UBI will change people and 50 years from now, we will not be have the “people-edge” we have today.  It is called the “paradox of the boiling frog,” or “sorites paradox,” in our case it is not sand we are removing, we are removing people from the workforce.  The mindset for those removed will be vastly different from those not removed from work.  Not only that, the process to be used will be one of “incremental seduction,” in other works when it hits us we will not know what happened, because it took such a long time to get there.  UBI will give Corporations card blanche to let people go and not even give them a second thought.

Clearly in your mind something would change drastically in the world if UBI was instituted.  I think mostly it would be called democracy.  I agree also with the thinking that it is at least a little bit scary - look at Donald Trump.  So, I agree with you that we need more than simply democracy and empowering everyone equally.  But I don't think UBI is a threat, and neither would it do that, just allow those who wanted to make something of their lives free from the manipulations and profiteering of others.  My second though is that in addition to protecting and taking care of people when they need it, correct incentives need to be installed in our country all through the system,  As an example of that I would cite health care and how in a pure capitalist mode it is nothing more than paying to remove the threat of death ... hardly a market, and it leads to worst case not best.  If we consider Universal Single Payer Health Care, the incentives would be to reduce costs and maximize efficiency of service - because we all pay for it equally.  If the incentives are not right, the the costs are not distributed correctly either - but at least there is hope when we all contribute to a system we all expect to need and use.  AND, if we pay for healthcare and something shows up like too many processed and sugary foods that cause disease, we all have an incentive to do something about it, and we can measure it as well - instead of leaving it purely up to the whims of the food industry that is still going full blast the wrong direction.  The other day I saw for sale in the super-market chocolate covered Twinkies.  

Separating the types of income such as investment or earned income seems artificial.  In the interests of simplicity and fairness I would suggest constructing a mathematical formula that looks at the costs of government and "progressively" computes a polynomial function that would be mandated to pay for every penny, throwing debt interest in if that is part of the equation as well.  Below some point a person would not pay tax, but as per UBI get money, or equivalent to survive and prosper if they choose to, and above some point the rates of return on income would be very high, or even could be zero ... as in creating a maximum wage in the interests of keeping inequality from getting out of hand.

Please define "work" in that context?  That seems like a very loaded concept.  Work, as in working for someone?  That implies a kind of political hierarchy or owner, employee/slave, or am I reading too much into what you say.  When someone like Donald Trump has so much money and power, and it is clear he did not get it all, honorably, though I suppose you yourself might disagree, what does honor mean, and what does the fruits of someone's labor mean?  With money being what it is today, we pretty much equate the work of a farmworker with that of a businessman, with that of a inverstor, with that of a criminal ... all their money can buy the same things and no one is the wiser except for "feelings" people might have for those they interact with through the economic system.

OK, maybe you want to thought experiment this scenario.  What happens, which as mathematically proven will happen - by Thomas Picketty - that a super rich segment of society economically takes over everything.  Given the extra power than capital has in terms of investment opportunities and political influence - take it to the extreme as an thought experiment - one person wins the "Monopoly Game" and ends up owning and controlling everything.  What does everyone else do?   Now throw in other end-game scenarios that perhaps robot labor even does all the labor and this person, or corporation, or family - whatever owns the land, the means of production, the IP, copyrights, patents ... just what is everyone else who has been disenfranchised supposed to do?  That is, besides revolt?   Now think back to the process that got to that point, and that is pretty much what is happening today.  If not the UBI, then what would be your policy?

...Yes please. All my statemnts above were separated and ended up just glommed into one large almost unreadble paragraph.

...considering that: Those in Congress are getting a nice 6 digit salary and golden parachute for being in session half the year and many pretty much doing nothing (good) for the citizens of this nation while also receiving bribes...er...lobby money from corporate and wealthy interests to pass legislation in their, not our favour.Big corporations are allowed to hoard money in tax havens free of taxation and benefit from generous tax breaks  while creating more jobs outside our borders which in those economies effectively pay people better than here.Corporate CEOs who used to make about 20 to 25 times what their employees earned now get 300 -400 times that, while wages for the most part remain low and stagnant. The wealthy benefit from generous tax breaks and loopholes and have done nothing positive for their fellow citizens as was promised under "Trickle Down".The too big to prosecute banks ruin the lives of depositors and make their employees scapegoats, while their execs not only get off  with a wrist slap but are often allowed to walk with a severance package that would make a pro athlete envious rather than a prison sentence.The Pentagon gets most of each tax dollar collected, yet can't seem to account for what it spends while wasting billions (potential trillions?) on flawed projects like the F-35.We have a  president who enjoys living a life of luxury at an almost "imperial" level for himself and his family on the taxpayers' dime, yet looks at the needy and working poor as being "takers", "cheats"  and "bums"....yeah, UBI does make sense, as it's about time that the rest of us get a break The real "Takers" are not us, but those I mentioned above.

I am glad IQ2US chose this topic - not because I think UBI is good policy (IMHO it's rather nutty), but because it's a fascinating thought experiment. I expect the debate will yield insights and perspectives about the future of work and inequality, the direction of the labor movement, and how government should (and shouldn't) interfere in the labor market.  Government has a role to play in the economy. How best to serve that role, now and in the future, is a vital question for debate. 

Thank you your consideration and request.  I gave this a lot of thought, and boiled it down to a context statement and the challenge question at the end.  Feel free to drop the context statement if you think it is too much.                                                                                                                                           Most of the discussion here and in the supporting documentation centers on money and the program affordability.  Like Social Security has been, it may not be a bad assumption that we would create this program in perpetuity, and for any age.  However, is affordability the only consideration? Some will say, that is good information and knowledge, however, the ability to see and evaluate the long term consequences of our actions is Wisdom;  in other words, have you considered the effect that money will have on the Human element of the argument and what kind of Country we will become paying people NOT to work?

Hello Roberto. Just read your very provocative comment here. I have this question for you: if you could boil down your challenge to the FOR side's argument into one sentence, how would you phrase it? I am asking for something that I might actually be able to use in the middle of the debate. Chances are, the opposing side will make the same sort of counterargument, and I avoid taking questions that merely repeat what the opposition is already saying. But just in case, I'd like to get your version of a challenging question which also covers your argument. By the way, I know it's not so easy to do, so no hard feelings if you're not inclined. But thanks for what you said here. It has me thinking.

031617 Update - After reading all the articles pro and con this debate subject, I found 99% of the only discuss the MONEY aspects of the idea.  If the debate to be had centers only on this, it will NOT address the most important point to be made.  The only idea I found amongst the articles that closest resembles the root change that will occur in our country is given by Oren Cass in his "National Review" article "Why Universal Basic Income is a Terrible Idea."                                                                                        Here is the portion of the paragraph where Mr.  Cass outlined that reason that came close to the idea why, in my opinion, UBI, not only will not work, but will change this country forever: “A UBI would redefine the relationship between individuals, families, communities, and the state by giving government the role of provider. It would make work optional and render self-reliance moot. An underclass dependent on government handouts would no longer be one of society’s greatest challenges but instead would be recast as one of its proudest achievements.”  True “The Government” will acquire a new role, but worse yet, The People (Who Are the government) will no longer be the people that “created” our Constitution, we will be a herd, “managed” by the a “state,” no longer a “Democracy.”                                                                                           When I read the motion for this debate, I reacted almost instinctively to what I read, and just to make sure, I read the articles behind it.                                                                                              I cannot imagine getting a check from the government because it would be against every principle in my brain.  If it is happening in Finland, they must have a lot of drunks and drug addicts.  Work makes man honorable, NOT money.                                                                                     Why are we debating this point at all?  There is no excuse and our Government vision cannot support that.  Our vision was cast by, and for, fiercely independent people who do not need a Government to survive.  This thought is exactly the OPPOSITE!  We only need a government to have a legacy, a place safe enough to secure a future for our children in perpetuity.  This will happen if we all keep this attitude.  Now, WE are copying ideas from Europe?  We are made from people that left there to be here and create a NEW life.  We have that now.  Why abandon a great creation?  Just the thought gives be the hibby jibbies.                                                                                       More and more these debates seem to be driven by progressives looking for a government acting like a perpetual engine.  But, like an engine and all other things in nature, the system has “entropy.”  Coffee can only get cold, things left on their own will crumble,  the Universe will continue to expand a lose energy.  A government cannot produce money out of nothing, this is NOT their job.  Paying farmers NOT to plant a crop was not their job either. But now, 71 percent of farm subsidies go to the top 10 percent of subsidy beneficiaries, almost all of which are large farms. In 2002, 78 farms, none small or struggling, each received over a million dollars in subsidies. The bottom 80 percent of recipients average only $846 per year. Nothing the government does is simple.  The government, for the last 30 years has proven to us to be a self-eating-watermelon (any undertaking that exists only to justify its own existence rather than to serve a productive purpose – this is why I voted for Trump), and now we want to add another program of perpetual motion to serve people that are quite capable to work?  This just adds the people to the list of self-eating-watermelons.                                                                                        Rather than just “letting technology transform the workplace,” I would rather see laws pass to ensure “transformation through training”  the company that displaces workers due to artificial intelligence has the responsibility to look for viable employment for those displaced and to train them for those markets.  I am assuming that advance technology translates into more profits due to gained efficiencies.  Those profits need to be spent for something productive, like retraining people that need it.  The government cannot do that,  they do not know the difference between development and growth, they just know how to grow; and, there is a difference between development and growth.  This distinction is not clearly understood in our culture and leads to a common mistake which in the long run could be fatal.  You can grow without development, AND you can develop without growth.  For example, a Cemetery grows but it does not develop anything; on the other hand, Einstein continued to develop way past the time he stopped growing.  We, “The People,” are responsible to keep a lean and mean government; one with “limited” growth.  Our forefathers fought for “Independence;” Meaning, they wanted to have “control” of their destiny, why would we now give that up?  For a handout?                                                                                       We are all part of a system.  A system is a whole which consists of a set of two or more interactive parts, each of which can affect its behavior or its property.  As such, each part of the system, when it affects the system, is dependent for its effect on some other part, i.e., they are interactive.  When you take essential parts of the system out, it stops functioning for its original intent, and either becomes something different, or it is junk (i.e., not usable).  People are an essential part of the system.  It is well known by system experts that applying solutions to part of the system without understanding its interactions can only create “undesirable effects (UDEs).  For example, the way we treated alcoholism in the 1920’s, or drug addiction in the 1960’s.  Alcoholism was a “defect,” and we wanted to get rid of alcoholism.  The question was asked, “What is to blame?” The answer was clear, “Alcohol.”  So, in a “black and white” fashion (yields binary laws) we just made it “illegal” to produce alcohol.  We did not get rid of alcohol, we just illegalized it.  Alcohol production was not the problem, it was still plentiful and people continued to drink.  The prohibition created “organized crime” as an UDE, which did not exist up until that point.  We did not work to study the interaction of people and alcohol and tried to solve this problem (too invisible and it offered no “quick solution”).  Today, we are still fighting “the war on drugs,” because, without learning the lesson of system design (dealing with the interaction of people and a drug), we applied the same solution (the definition of insanity).  As of 1994, we had the highest rate of addiction on drugs in the developed World.  Gun control is the latest.                                                                                            One of the “ads” pro UBI have says, “We won’t know until we try;”  However, that is like being “a little bit pregnant, isn’t?”  When a mass of people are out of the system, NOBODY will know what will happen.  One thing is clear, when this happens, this will not be the United States of America any longer, and our Constitution will stop functioning for its original intent.  This is because “the essential, defining properties of ANY system are properties as a whole that none of its part have.”  When that “whole” (the people) are no longer there, that system no longer exists.  True, the engine of a car cannot do the function of the car;  However, the car cannot do its function without the engine.  Selectively taking people out of the system is like saying, all of them are “non-essential parts of the system any longer.”  Rather, they are like the hinges of the doors of the car, or the doors of the car.  The car can function and do its intended function without them, how much of that can happen before it becomes what we intended for the car to be originally?  What market will ALL those AI machines be working for anyway?  We are the producers and the consumers IN the market.  You take one out, what happens to the other?                  UBI does not address the most basic need of a Human Being: Work makes man honorable, NOT money.

I cannot imagine getting a check from the government because it would be against every principle in my brain.  If it is happening in Finland, they must have a lot of drunks and drug addicts.  Work makes man honorable, NOT money.                                                                                                         Why are we debating this point at all?  There is no excuse and our Government vision cannot support that.  Our vision was cast by and for fiercely independent people who do not need a Government to survive.  We only need a government to have a legacy, a place safe enough to secure a future for our children in perpetuity.                                                                                                         More and more this debates seems to be driven by progressives looking for a government acting like a perpetual engine.  But, like an engine and all other things in nature, the system has “entropy.”  Coffee can only get cold, things left on their own will crumble,  the Universe will continue to expand a lose energy.  A government cannot produce money out of nothing, this is NOT their job.  Paying farmers NOT to plant a crop is not their job either. 71 percent of farm subsidies go to the top 10 percent of subsidy beneficiaries, almost all of which are large farms. In 2002, 78 farms, none small or struggling, each received over a million dollars in subsidies. The bottom 80 percent of recipients average only $846 per year. Nothing the government does is simple.                                                                                                            Rather than just “letting technology transform the workplace,” I would rather see laws pass to ensure “transformation through training”  the company that displaces workers due to artificial intelligence has the responsibility to look for viable employment for those displaced and to train them for those markets.  I am assuming that advance technology translates into more profits due to gained efficiencies It is a bad assumption).  Those profits need to be spent for something productive, like retraining people that need it.  The government cannot do that,  they do not know the difference between efficiency and effectiveness.                                                                                                            We are all part of a system.  A system is a whole which consists of a set of two or more interactive parts, each of which can affect the behavior or its property.  As such, each part of the system, when it affects the system, is dependent for its effect on some other part, i.e., they are interactive.  When you take essential parts of the system out, it stops functioning for its original intend and either becomes something different or it is junk (i.e., not usable).  People are an essential part of the system.  It is well known by system experts that applying solutions to part of the system without understanding its interactions can only create “undesirable effects (UDEs).  For example, the way we treated alcoholism in the 1920’s, or drug addiction in the 1960’s.  Alcoholism was a “defect,” and we wanted to get rid of alcoholism.  The question was asked, “What is to blame?” The answer was clear, “Alcohol.”  So, in a “black and white” fashion (yields binary laws) we just made it “illegal” to produce alcohol.  We did not get rid of alcohol, we just illegalized it.  Alcohol production was not the problem, it was still plentiful and people continued to drink.  The prohibition created “organized crime” as an UDE, which did not exist up until that point.  We did not work to study the interaction of people and alcohol and tried to solve this problem (too invisible and it offered no “quick solution”).  Today, we are still fighting “the war on drugs,” because, without learning the lesson of system design (dealing with the interaction of people and a drug), we applied the same solution (the definition of insanity).  As of 1994, we had the highest rate of addiction on drugs in the developed World.                                                                                                                             When a mass of people are out of the system, NOBODY will know what will happen.  One thing is clear, when this happens, this will not be the United States of America any longer, and our Constitution will stop functioning for its original intent.  This is because “the essential, defining properties of ANY system are properties as a whole that none of its part have.”  When that “whole” (the people) are no longer there, thst system no longer exists.  True, the engine of a car cannot do the function of the car;  However, the car cannot function without the engine.  Selectively taking people out of the system is like saying, all of them are “non-essential parts of the system any longer.”  Rather, they are like the hinges of the doors of the car, or the doors of the car.  The car can function and do its intended function without them, how much of that can happen before it becomes what we intended for the car to be originally?  What market will ALL those AI machines be working for anyway?  We are the producers and the consumers IN the market.  You take one out, what happens to the other?                                                                                                                          Work makes Man honorable, NOT money.

Oh, ugh, where did all my nice formatting go?  How about allowing us to insert lines feeds and paragraphs?

Although I am FOR the motion and voted yes that the Universal Basic IncomeIs The Safety Net Of The Future, I have reservations enough to be skeptical.The factors that affect this utopian ideal, and I am a Utopianist, or wish I couldbe or have hope of something for the future more than the mess we have madeof human lives today, are many and they are basic to how our society runs.Currently the most powerful system on the globe is Western Capitalism,specifically American Capitalism, and it is supported by a whole set of myths andlies about the way the world is.  So, to have people live differently they need tohave different myths.  That means we need a different type of culture becausethe basic motif of American culture is war.UBI would set up a universal system, which is like a monoculture in farming, alla scheming billionaire or trillionaire would have to do is to find ways to suckthat money from unknowing people using market force manipulation.Unless in concert with a way to buoy UP the lowest members of society we alsohave some way to regulate or keep any one group or person from getting toomuch we will have a worst problem than we have today.I believe there is room for compromise though.  With UBI people could get creditfor education.  They could afford to get job experience and work with otherswithout getting paid at first ... we would have a safe labor market.  This would makeConservatives happy in that the minimum wage could be done away with.  But I think there would need to be lots of organizing programs but instead of beinggovernment programs they could be crowfunded, though, where would the moneycome from.More and more would end up on the UBI and disposeable income would be lowerand lower, the same problems we have today, without more complex regulation.Landlords for instance knowing that everyone makes so much money wouldeventually raise their rents to subsistance level, along with food markets and allother consumer good.  On a large scale, without political power and protectionit could be a massive mess.It is not that people do not want to be good, is it that they do not know what to door now it fits into their lives.  We see how massive anonymous crowds behave onthe Internet where the latest thing was was IMDB shutting down its discussionboards because of too many trolls.  If UBI works for many or most, but there are stilllots of criminals, what do we end up with, a big military school where the worstcitizens live in semi-prisons, while others are allowed to have their ladders upand out if they decide to take them?But the alternative is more of the same, and the planet and people cannot takemore of that.  YES.

"Taxing robots" is more of a narrative than a real policy proposal. Income taxes on high personal incomes, especially unearned income, need to rise. Unearned Capital Gains need to track earned income in tax brackets, while closing loopholes for top earners. This will allow for exempting $25,000 per person (UBI not included) from any income taxes, while dropping the middle class income brackets 5% each. To make up for some of these shortfalls, a national sales tax of 10% could cover hundreds of billions in cost, and restrain inflation. Any shortfalls can be made up for by expanding our currency supply with constitutionally authorized Treasury Dollars. With tens of billions of dollars in personal debt, expanding the currency supply $1 trillion per year isn't as huge a shock as a layman might think. 

I have a basic income. It works. It works really really well.http://www.vox.com/first-person/2016/11/14/13513066/universal-basic-income-crowdfundOh sure, Scott, but is it affordable to give to everyone?Yes. The net cost after elimination of no longer necessary programs and tax expenditures is a few hundred billion dollars. If we count the savings from what we'd no longer spend on the costs of things like crime and healthcare, a universal basic income costs less to our society than not having it.Okay, but where does the money come from?The new additional tax revenue required to fund the basic income should come from the stakeholders of the capital that through automation is replacing and transforming the labor market. Robots work at Amazon, they don't shop there. So transfer the money from machines to people.https://medium.com/@2noame/if-labor-is-being-replaced-by-capital-which-it-is-then-the-revenue-should-come-mostly-from-12fc4985c90Have even more questions now? Please refer to http://www.scottsantens.com/basic-income-faq for those.