Basic Income — What doesn’t it solve?

It doesn’t solve income inequality

Basic Income is not trying to balance the scales. It is not a swipe from the rich to give to the poor. Not only would such an attempt certainly fail (sorry the game is rigged), it is unnecessary (See feasibility discussion below). Basic Income does make the income inequality problem less important. The “winners” at the top of these charts can keep their money, as long as everyone is given sufficient money to live.

It doesn’t allow you to live anywhere you want

Land is diverse and precious, also any particular area of land is really scarce (there’s only one of it and it can only be used by one-ish person at a time). That means one of Capitalism’s virtues (See below about why we need capitalism) comes into play. When deciding who should get any particular plot of land, whoever can pay more and still survive gets the land. That’s how money works.

This is the reason there is no regional variance for Basic Income. It’s not a method to allow you to live anywhere you want, it is a basic support structure for everyone living. If you say people in California should get more support structure you’re basically saying that people in California have more right to live than people in Texas. Philosophically that seems like a bad idea. Also more practically if you attempted to regionalize the amount of basic income you would have to create a whole structure to support determining how much each region should get. That structure would become another tool to enhance income inequality.

So if we don’t regionalize that means someone living in California gets just the same as someone in Montana, but it’s much cheaper to live in Montana. That statement is true, but it doesn’t have anything to do with Basic Income. If your Basic Income is not sufficient for you to live in a region then you can move to the outskirts of that region, as you are not tied to a job. Or you could move to another region without penalty (as there’s no job transfer).

A tangent to the regionalization argument is something I call the San Francisco problem. Right now there is a lot of contention for housing in San Francisco and well paid citizenry from Silicon Valley are driving up the prices. So if we give everyone Basic Income doesn’t that mean they could drive up the prices even more? I suggest that this is a misleading question, because the answer is: ‘yes, but dollar for dollar you’ll have just as much money available from basic income as the rich guys’. If you choose to spend that money to try and join the housing market you are no worse off than you were before. If instead you turn away and use the Basic Income for added flexibility you’ll be in a stronger position.

It doesn’t solve the medical care problem

Regularly when I discuss Basic Income I am told:

But you have to have socialized medicine too, right?

Not at all. That’s someone else’s problem. There is definitely a medical care crisis in America. The care is way too expensive for what it provides. But Basic Income isn’t a solution for that, nor does it require a solution to work. Healthcare being expensive is unfortunate, and it’s troubling that it would eat out of your Basic Income money. But if you want to solve that don’t do it by trying to complicate Basic Income. I do think that it would allow doctors and nurses who truly want to heal others to provide their services for less as they would need less to survive. In my wild imagination I see roaming doctors who get their Basic Income and treat people for just a bit above the cost of the materials.