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How do you Pay for a UBI?
There is no such thing as a free lunch. But what about lunch at marginal cost?
Most analyses of a UBI start with the assumption that its purpose is to provide money to the poor, which immediately raises the question of how it will be paid for. But that assumption is political rather than economic. The case for a UBI is not that it enables people to have things, but that it enables people to make things. Viewed from that perspective, the UBI raises no issue of funding at all.
To end poverty, solve abundance.
One of my favorite guilty pleasure movies is a 1952 bit of Cold War propaganda called The Red Planet Mars. Part of the story line is that the Martians offer to supply the world with ample supply of goods at no cost, and the workers in the West riot at the prospect of losing their jobs. The movie doesn’t try to solve the problem — the messages from Mars are fake — but let’s tweak the offer a bit and see where we end up. Suppose for a moment that the offer is real, that the supply of goods is substantial but not infinite, and that the goods are given to the USA. How do we deal with the economic fall-out?
Note that the challenge here arises not from need but from abundance. The problem is not how to find goods for people to use, but, in a politically acceptable way, to find…