Because the only way to create UBI is to take money from other people and redistribute it. Horrible idea. I do not want my hard-earned income and efforts wasted on those who wish to freeload. I'd much rather donate to charities and responsible non-profits, who will do a better job at supporting those who find themselves in tough situations.
You have to give the money to people who don't need it, otherwise it becomes a powerful disincentive to working or earning income. That's what differentiates UBI from welfare and also what makes it so expensive.
The problem with UBI is that it doesn't promote social behavior. In fact it promotes anti-social behavior, since a UBI recipient need not provide any value to his community as a condition of this benefit.
UBI doesn't really make sense as a replacement to almost any traditional welfare programs for the simple reason that by limiting the money to only those who qualify for it, you can give more. Yet unfortunately UBI is often presented as an alternative that would supplant traditional welfare.
If UBI is not universal there is no point to doing it -- it would just be a complicated welfare system, and we already have one of those, and we certainly shouldn't throw it out just to end up creating another one.
This is not UBI, this is charity. Big difference. I would be willing to give 22$ a month to a Kenyan person in need from my own personal income. Forcing society to do this through point of gun at government enforcement is wrong and I will never support it.
That's a terrible way to implement UBI. It causes the dreaded welfare trap where people are incentivized to do nothing. UBI should be unconditional. This makes it much easier to implement, removes the stigma, and most importantly avoids the welfare trap. You want people who rely on welfare to be encouraged to become self sufficient, not trap them in dependence.
I oppose UBI for unrelated reasons: giving everyone money (if it is actually a life-changing amount of money) is unaffordable. It's hugely wasteful to give money to wealthy people.
Instead, I would prefer a system where people receive payments relative to income, like a reverse tax system. This way, people in higher income brackets pay in (in the form of taxes) and people in lower income brackets get a pay out.
This is far more affordable than UBI, meaning we can actually do it, and also puts money where it is most needed.
We should also have a voluntary charitable UBI. Encourage a culture where everybody contributes what they can to the fund, and then all donations are split equally among all citizens. That money won't be subject to the same political pressures; people who donate will feel good about themselves; and the bureaucracy needed to do this would be minimal.
Why is that ubi is considered the next big thing, while people on welfare are usually looked down upon? In the current (optimistic) horizon it might seem like a good idea, but a recession could easily spin this the wrong way imho. If you don't contribute by working and paying taxes on your income, there can be a problem when a stressed actor comes asking to justify your ubi. OTOH, if you do need to work either way, why not tweak the current distribution system and include ubi money in wages.
The point of UBI is to remove non-private charity support. How will politicians react when people are dying in the streets? The US is not about persons responsiblity.
Most of the discussion of UBI that I've seen posits it as something to replace the social safety net. The social safety net is obviously not paid for by the people it helps (except in some small way, perhaps), so why would UBI be? True, part of the social safety net is inevitably returned to the richer portions of the population through their own share, but inevitably the net flow is towards the poorer population.
Because the concept itself is a lie and panderous ploy for voters. If UBI was universal, nobody would work and UBI would have no funding source since government can only ever be funded by tax revenue by people who work.
Because systems based on pure ideology don't work well in reality. Its the whole idea behind implementing a UBI in our quasi-free-market capitalist system.
The larger point is that not only is the idea of a UBI decent and moral, because nobody should worry about being homeless or starving in a rich society, but because its much cheaper the the alternative! Only someone completely blinded by ideology (or somehow profiting off of the existing system) would argue that its better to spend $50,000 dollars a year per homeless person to manage shelters and run a bureaucracy if simply giving that homeless person $25,000 a year and achieves a better overall result.
Taking away someone's money to give it to someone else IS actually a zero-sum game. Of course, bureaucratic waste and/or graft makes it actually a negative-sum game.
Two people trading with each other is not, because both perceive a benefit, because otherwise they wouldn't trade.
Opposition to UBI comes from people with a clue about economics. One more time: the money for UBI has. to. come. from. somewhere.
Money is not free, and therefore it can't be just handed out by the truckload without adverse effects elsewhere in the economy. Whoever gets free money is happy, but someone somewhere was burdened more than before and is unhappy.
Why would UBI be like a loan, when there is no expectation that it will be paid back? I support it instead of food stamps because it's simpler to understand and more general, but otherwise does the same thing without onerous reporting and beurocracy
The government already issues this amount of money. It's just inefficiently distributed through individual and corporate welfare subsidies. A UBI would replace nearly all of that.
UBI is not a donation. It is forcibly taken at gunpoint (though they will ask nicely many times before pulling out the gun). Also, there can be no "unconditional" giving without "unconditional" taking in a world with finite resources.
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