“People don’t want handouts.”

I totally agree. People want what is fair. They want what they deserve and what they have earned, and they want that for others as well. We human beings have a strong sense of fairness and justice built into our moral DNA. This is why it’s important to understand that UBI isn’t “free money” or “money for nothing,” as many both for and against it unfortunately tend to depict it.

Both morally and practically, UBI is not a handout; it is deserved by each and every human being. Morally, we’ve decided that a human is entitled the right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, but we don’t yet fulfill that promise. At minimum, Life requires food and shelter, while Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness require the ability to choose one’s path, to say “no” to a bad deal or unsuitable situation. UBI delivers that choice and that security as efficiently as possible in the form of straight cash with no strings attached. JG, on the other hand, by including the stipulation that one must work in a government-approved job in order to receive those benefits, severely limits and potentially removes that freedom of choice. When you have the “option” to either work for the state or starve, there’s no real choice. You have to take the job.

It is more appropriate to understand UBI as a dividend than as a handout. It is an equal share in the prosperity of the country, acknowledging that none of us alive today have individually created the system that allows for such prosperity. Our technology, infrastructure, laws, property, resources, and networks are mostly inherited, and the economic system we have designed allows far too much of these inherited benefits to be funneled directly to those who already have money or who are descendants of those who have laid claim to what should rightfully belong to everyone. UBI is a tweak to the system to make sure that we are acknowledging that every citizen is a rightful co-owner of what no individual should ever be allowed to claim for themselves.

Land, air, water, freedom, opportunity, and the fruits of societal and technological advancement belong in the commons; they belong to us all. Those who wish to creatively and ambitiously advance themselves by leveraging these resources should of course still be allowed and encouraged to do so, because that is how we spur innovation. However, it is only fair that the extractors and controllers of natural resources (generally corporations and landowners) should pay some form of appropriate rent or fee to the rightful owners of those natural resources (The People) for that privilege. The real handouts that we should be concerned with are the ones we give to corporations and people of wealth every day when we essentially allow them to extract from our public resources far too cheaply at the expense of the public.

Coincidentally, this type of policy mindset will also serve to disincentivize abuse of said resources and keep their use at healthy levels. For one example, a carbon cap or tax is a great way (with support on all sides of the aisle) to move toward the ecological goal of phasing out fossil fuels, and if the revenues are put directly back into the pockets of The People through a UBI rather than into government coffers, any rise in cost of living for the lower and middle classes due to rising gas prices could be more than compensated for with the extra dollars coming in. By doing this, we support everyone during our transition off of fossil fuels while also encouraging a quicker move away from them. This model of paying fees for use or exploitation of the commons (or what some refer to as “Universal Basic Assets”) could be expanded to include other forms of pollution as well as land ownership, financial transactions, broadcast spectrum usage, patent protected profits, and so on. It would finally and directly acknowledge that The People are the true owners of the commons.