The Universal Basic Income (UBI) took a hit recently when the local “Smart Money” columnist stepped back a bit from his support. A “rigorous study” showed “there’s little evidence to support my pet economic idea.”
This is important because, for one, our mayor is one of many signatories to Mayors for a Guaranteed Income. Two, almost half of the city council, likely sympathetic to the same, are vying to succeed him next May.
Does the propriety of such an “experiment” ever occur to any of them, or so-called “experts?”
This study was borne of the same fear that drove Andrew Yang to make a UBI central to his presidential campaign a few years back: automation will so upend society that mass unemployment will result.
Funded by Sam Altman, founder of OpenAI, this fear has crystallized around the growth of artificial intelligence. Good policy never stems from fear, but why are we so fearful anyway?
Technological advance has never resulted in persistently long unemployment lines. Remember operator switchboards? How about phonographs? Drilling for oil used to take many more hands before computers and fracking came along.
All the while, the unemployment rate has hovered around 5-6%. We’ve not only survived, but thrived because of automation.
Moreover, when did we become so condescending to our fellow citizens that we treat them like lab rats, “randomly selected” for a “control trial?”
During a council session in May, one of the mayoral hopefuls thanked “all the players … gathered around the chess table” of the city’s taxpayer-funded workforce development program. We are little more than their pawns.
To those who protested that program he added “win an election.” What about the taxpayers who objected to being test subjects? When did government stop defending the rights of the minority?
Some protest the UBI on principle; it’s simply wrong to take from one to give to another. Still others have a decent enough grasp of economics to know such programs are doomed to fail.
When governments give handouts, people tend to work less, over an hour less in this particular instance. Their income also fell, though they spent more on leisure. All this is a logical consequence that should surprise no one.
Not all recipients would respond this way, but any is too many if it’s funded by those who work. Not all of benefactors would subsequently be discouraged from working, but too many would if we want the prosperity that their earnings and saving/investing brings.
This issue isn’t going away. As the columnist, Michael Taylor said, these “transfers only lasted three years. The dream can stay alive because this one study doesn’t answer everything.”
Council has shown a penchant for flagrantly disregarding key segments of San Antonians for such “dreams.” Reaching forcefully into job creators’ pockets to pass a paid sick leave ordinance in 2018 comes immediately to mind.
As long as policymakers and “scientists” are in cahoots, with the press as their cheering section, taxpayers and small businesses have a target on their back.
