It feels kind of hopeless now that we’d ever get something that feels so “radical”, but I’d like to remind people that 80+ hour work weeks without overtime used to be the norm before unions got us the 40 hour work week. It feels inevitable and hopeless until the moment we get that breakthrough, then it becomes the new norm.
Radical is, by definition, a pejorative for any significant distance/divergence from the status quo. If you don’t think the status quo is good, then radical is not bad.
I have no problem with calling (U)BI a radical departure, because our current labor system is not good.
I don’t really understand some of this. Why pair it with a VAT? VAT itself is a known to be a regressive tax because poor people/ households spend a higher percentage of their incomes on consumption (food etc) so the effect of a VAT is to raise their overall tax percentage.
This is definitely what happens in my country, where we have a flat 15% VAT on all goods and services. As someone on disability that means I’m being taxed an extra 15% on most of my income.
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Others see everything from a means of unleashing the population’s creative potential to a policy that would undermine human agency and erode “psychological capital.” Some see it as a way to shore up the welfare state.
The same goes for one that replaces all other welfare, like food aid (sometimes referred to as a “pure UBI,” which would actually leave the most disadvantaged worse off, and is a bad idea), compared with one that complements existing programs.
If basic income won’t be the silver bullet that changes — or destroys — society, it becomes something far more politically tractable: a moderately effective policy, albeit one with trade-offs, that is well worth considering.
It’s how to get a program with a $3 trillion price tag through a Congress that couldn’t even solidify an incredibly successful basic income for children — the temporarily expanded child tax credit — that only cost about $100 billion.
Even if the $3 trillion version were to pass, perhaps by effectively communicating how taxing some of the benefits back would lower the program’s net cost, the result would land US federal spending as a percentage of GDP right around where France and Scandinavian countries already sit.
It could bring basic income further into the realm of pragmatic policy analysis, where wonks of all stripes present their views on whether or not the programs’ tradeoffs are worth it.
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