Pelosi: It's time to consider universal basic income pushed by Andrew Yang
I think well before we consider universal basic income, we should consider universal basic <i>services</i>. Many services are already highly regulated and naturally somewhat difficult to exploit.<p>Healthcare is the obvious one. It&#x27;s not like you can get a surgery and then resell it to exploit the system. (You could, of course, exploit things like pain medication, but <i>overall</i> healthcare is not expoitation-friendly.)<p>Some amount of water, electricity, Internet access, and some amount of food are other good candidates. (Shelter is a much harder problem to solve and one where I think going through money is probably a better approach.)<p>I&#x27;d much rather see every person be given a reasonable amount of food, water, electricity, Internet access, and good healtcare. That is almost enough to lift people out of poverty and give them enough safety and security to enable them to live healthy, successful lives.<p><i>Then</i> maybe see if it makes sense to provide money too. But my hunch is that UBI itself isn&#x27;t a great solution. You can think of it effectively as a negative tax rate for the poor. The UBI has to be paid for by other taxes, so at some income&#x2F;wealth level you will be breaking even and above that you will be paying for the UBI for people under.<p>I think that structure is perfectly fine for moral reasons, but looking at it from that perspective, it&#x27;s not clear to me how simply having a relatively minor negative tax rate will solve the systemic problems faced by the poor. Getting a check for a hundred bucks every month isn&#x27;t going to fix everything if you break your back and need a million dollars in healthcare.<p>What people need to thrive is <i>security</i> the knowledge that if unfortunate events outside of their control happen, that they will be helped to the degree that society is able. If you know you can be made bankrupt if you get sick, or your access to water can be shut off if someone robs you, then you are &quot;poor&quot; in all of the ways that subjectively matter.