Since I left the Libertarian Party a decade ago, I have reverted to a more pragmatic and utilitarian vision of liberty, more Milton Friedman and less Murray Rothbard. Way back when I was in high school I was impressed with Friedman’s Negative Income Tax. Today, I want to simplify the idea and have a flat tax for The 99% coupled with free money for everyone.
But one of my favorite political pundits, P.J. O’Rourke, says NO. He says that a universal basic income is one of this month’s two worst political ideas. He points out that if his younger self had gotten a thousand dollar a month stipend, he would have remained an insufferable useless hippie.
He has a point. Some people will manage to live unproductive lives on a universal basic income, writing bad poetry, chanting Marxist slogans, crafting bad art, and sporting bad hair.
But people are doing this now, with much bigger government grants. We call them college professors, and fine artists.
P.J. makes a major mistake in applying the UBI idea to his younger self: $1000/month today would be far less than a thousand a month was back when he was an insufferable hippie. We had a rather serious bout of inflation in between then and now. To live as a happy hippie on a kilobuck/month today would require serious frugality, or even a bit of farming and other productive, if non-monetary, work. But under a UBI, unlike welfare, you could supplement your free government check with some legal monetary work without losing your benefits. Yes, you would pay taxes on that work, but the rate would be no more than what doctors and lawyers pay today — and they still show up for work from time to time.
Yes, this money is “unearned.” So are inheritances. I have a question for the Republicans in the audience: should inheritances be banned? I can say from direct experience that some who receive major inheritances do live lives of unproductive socialistic yammering. (I knew a few trustafarians back in my Asheville days.) Should we ban all inheritance to make such people get a job?