I have very serious reservations about the UBI. (I have blogged about that a bit.) I keep reading these articles that give glowing reports about how it fixes things for women or whatever, and I am incredibly skeptical of that fact. Historically, when you infuse a system with more cash without that cash being connected to increased productivity, the result is inflation. In fact, that is basically the definition of inflation: Needing more money to pay for the same goods and services.<p>I realize that people are arguing that machines and the like are producing labor, thereby infusing the system with productivity, and the problem we have is redistributing the wealth it produces. But I am very skeptical that a UBI is a good solution to that problem.<p>I have a lot of half formed thoughts in reaction to reading this piece. I don&#x27;t know how to begin to back up my opinions when they are based on decades of reading books and articles that, in many cases, I no longer recall the titles of. It is not like I kept a written list of everything I ever read. I was reading these things for personal reasons. But I really am not comfortable with some of the premises of the arguments being made, such as &quot;Basic income helps undermine sexism.&quot; I see no reason to believe that. They did away with slavery in the American South and, from what I have read, blacks had it worse in the years after slavery was abolished. They couldn&#x27;t get jobs, laws were written to deny them the right to vote, etc. We are still, to this day, trying to redress the matter. Blacks in America still, overall, make less money, get arrested more, etc.<p>I have also known women who had jobs who struck me as more enslaved than I felt as a homemaker. Their jobs did not significantly relieve them of the &quot;women&#x27;s work&quot; at home, so their jobs were often more relief for their husband, who no longer felt 100% responsible for paying the bills, yet did not see any real reason to buck up and do housework.<p>I have seen many stories over the years where people thought that giving money would right some social ill, only to see it not work. Money seems to never be able to really fix social ills. Those battles are fought in the hearts and minds of the people, in the establishment of new cultural norms, and in the courts where we determine rights.<p>Everything I have ever seen suggests to me that financial security or wealth grow out of rights&#x2F;privilege, not the other way around.