Enough with Basic Income
This guy just seems upset that people are offering up a solution to tech-related job loss that isn&#x27;t with traditional welfare solution proposed by the team he cheers for.<p>He didn&#x27;t spent a lot of time offering up specific arguments against basic income, but rather on background, and the primary arguments he has are to me some of the strongest arguments <i>for</i> BI:<p>1) He worries about division and polarization.  Well, BI is the only solution that I&#x27;m aware of that draws on support from both the libertarian right (strong support, mostly) and liberal left (many support, but some are suspicious like this guy).  No other solution to the jobless future can boast of support from both sides of the political spectrum.<p>2) Oddly, the quote from Olaf Palme he offers up as a critique of basic income reads to me as strong support:<p><pre><code>    &quot;An efficient and stable welfare state must be based on universal social programs,
    such as health insurance, pensions, and child-support allowances-programs that are directed to all citizens. 
    Official “poverty lines” or “means-tests” would not have to define “the poor” (which would minimize the need for bureaucratic controls). 
    At the same time, people in difficult financial circumstances would not have to put up with the degrading classification of “poor.”&quot;
</code></pre>
This sounds like an extremely persuasive argument <i>for</i> BI and one of the reasons why I support it.<p>In fact, it&#x27;s completely unclear to me after reading this whole damn essay <i>why</i> he is so strongly in opposition to the point where he wants people to stop discussing it altogether, other than it&#x27;s not the favored solution of his team.