Can We Stop Thinking That Universal Basic Income is a Gimmick?

The idea has been around forever, but people still think it’s a gimmick. Why?

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I told myself that I wasn’t going to write anything about the 3rd Democratic Debates because I didn’t want to write too much about Andrew Yang and Universal Basic Income too much, I do have other interests. However, in the time since the debates started, after they concluded, and all that I’ve seen said about Universal Basic Income since the election year began, it’s gotten to a point where I want to vocalize a little bit of confusion and frustration.

What IS Universal Basic Income

First, we have to define what we are talking about, and that is the concept of Universal Basic Income, which is an economic theory and practice in which a government (mostly a wealthy one) guarantees it’s citizenship a certain amount of money every year.

The concept dates all the way back to the 16th-century author, philosopher, and saint, Sir Thomas More, who’s book Utopia detailed a society in which every person receives a guaranteed income. It would later be written about by notable French philosopher Marquis de Condorcet, being written about during his time in prison for taking part in the French Revolution in his completed work “ Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind.” These works would later go on to catch the attention of German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, being a strong inspiration for his old age pension and health insurance plans, then later catching the attention of Founding Father Thomas Paine and making it into his pamphlet “Agrarian Justice”, to Reverend Martin Luther King Jr, to Economist Milton Friedman, all the way to the Alaska Dividend and studies done around the world to this day.

Over the years, the implementation has changed, from Sir Thomas More to MLK, to Friedman, the actual way to carry out the idea has changed from person to person. However, the core concept, sharing the wealth of a great and powerful nation, and ensuring the those at the very bottom receive the help and security that they need has remained consistent. Hundreds of years later, the idea remains alive and well in the minds of thinkers.

Why Is It Seen As A Gimmick?

Even with all this history, all this thought, and all this research done into the idea of Universal Basic Income, why is it still seen as a Gimmick to some? Well, the answer to that question as simple as the practice itself.

You’re giving people money.

To some, this is an idea that is just too easy, to straight forward, one that could never work. It gets laughed off as a scam, bribery for votes when brought up by politicians, referred to as Socialism (even though it has nothing to do with Socialism). The whole concept of a proposed idea shouldn’t be cast-off as a gimmick, because that’s really what an idea is, and it’s unfair to label something like Universal Basic Income as a gimmick because it’s simple or because it gives money to people. Why is it consistently identified in this manner though? If the solution is easy, isn’t that a good thing? Well, to some no.

The Flow of Money

If we focus on the US for a moment, in the context of Universal Basic Income, why does the idea gets shot down? It’s because it goes against the grain. Money in the US and real money in politics has always circulated in an upward direction. People are taxed, that money goes to the government, the government spends that money on social services, healthcare, the military, oil, and coal subsidies, and the people get a little bit back at the start of the year in the form of a tax refund.

This is the way it has been, and this is the way a lot of people want it to stay. Because it’s easier? Because they benefit the most for the way the system is? I don’t know. What I do know is that Occam’s Razor tells us that when a problem presents itself, the right answer is usually the simplest, and there couldn’t really be anything more simple than just giving people money.

At the end of the day, people can have whatever opinion they want on Universal Basic Income, whether it’s good or it’s bad, it’s not my place to tell them otherwise. However, I feel that if we can stop the pettiness with calling a proposed idea a gimmick, or a scam, or whatever, that we can actually pull some of the vitriol and toxicity out of the argument and have an actual, serious, and clear-headed debate about the validity of a Universal Basic Income.