UBI’s unpopular.
Drum ’16 [Kevin; 6/5/2016; former political blooger for Mother Jones, B.A in journalism from CSU Long Beach; "UBI continues to be wildly unpopular"; Mother Jones; https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2016/06/ubi-continues-be-wildly-unpopular/; accessed 7-15-2023; Lowell-EL]
The concept of an Unconditional Basic Income has become a hot topic on the interwebs. Conservative Charles Murray started things up in 2006 with the publication of which created a brief stir and then sank into oblivion because (surprise!) conservatives were distinctly uninterested in cutting unconditional checks to lazy welfare bums.
Then it came out of hibernation a few months ago for reasons that escape me. At the time, I vaguely figured that much of the credit belonged to Vox’s Dylan Matthews for his tireless advocacy of a UBI. It also, of course, had something to do with the explosion of Bernie mania. Bernie doesn’t actually support a UBI, but he’s said that it’s “something that must be explored” and it pretty plainly fits into his general worldview. Nonetheless, after another 15 minutes of fame, it went into hibernation again. But it refused to die, emerging from its lair yet again a few weeks ago. Considering the fact that a UBI has less chance of being enacted than a law guaranteeing everyone a pet unicorn, this is a little odd. What’s going on?
I’m still not sure, but much of it was probably due to an upcoming UBI referendum in Switzerland, engineered by the lefty Swiss community a couple of years ago. Today, after months of anticipation, they finally voted on it—and the results weren’t pretty. Even in the heart of social democratic Europe, the mere concept of a UBI1 ended up with only It’s still in pet unicorn territory.