basic income is MAD EXPENSIVE and would INCREASE TAXES
Doar ’18 (Robert Doar, Morgridge fellow in poverty studies at the American Enterprise Institute.), “Universal Basic Income Would Undermine the Success of Our Safety Net,” Spring 2018, George W. Bush Institute, https://www.bushcenter.org/catalyst/are-we-ready/doar-universal-basic-income#:~:text=Universal%20Basic%20Income%20would%20transfer,national%20debt%20(or%20both). //ike
The American safety net is not perfect – not by a long shot – but it does a good job of ensuring that low-income Americans have enough support to meet their basic needs. The data are clear about that: Consumption poverty, which measures the wellbeing of the poor after accounting for safety net assistance provided by the government, declined to an all-time low of 3 percent in 2016. Thanks to a good economy and strong public assistance programs, very few Americans live in deprivation. Universal Basic Income (UBI) would be an unaffordable way to undermine our social safety net’s successes. UBI would transfer money away from those who need it most, change the distinctly American relationship between citizen and government, and sharply raise taxes or the national debt (or both). And critically, it would fail to improve upon our current safety net’s biggest weakness: UBI would destroy – not improve – incentives to work. Universal Basic Income would transfer money away from those who need it most, change the distinctly American relationship between citizen and government, and sharply raise taxes or the national debt (or both). The first problem is the money. A truly universal payment of $10,000 to every citizen every year adds up to a new expense of about $3 trillion, well more than we spend on our social safety net now, and close to the entirety of the tax revenue currently collected by the federal government. If any element of the current safety net is going to be preserved, taxes will have to be raised dramatically, beyond what is politically plausible or economically desirable, or the U.S. would have to borrow even more money than we already do. Proponents of UBI should have to answer: what social programs will be cut to make room for their proposal? Some of the money needed to pay for UBI would have to come from the middle- and lower-middle classes, either in reduced benefits or increased taxes, and they would then see some of their money transferred up to wealthier recipients of UBI. Money that would have been spent on programs for people in the lowest income quintiles would now be distributed universally, including to the uppermost income quintiles. This does not sound much like an anti-poverty program.