T Basic Income - Georgetown 2023

Topicality
Provide
Means to make available
Provide means to make available
Marriam-Webster ND, "Definition of PROVIDE," Marriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/provide, AJ
provide
1a: to supply or make available (something wanted or needed)
provided new uniforms for the band
also : AFFORD
curtains provide privacy
b: to make something available to
provide the children with free balloons
2: to have as a condition : STIPULATE
the contract provides that certain deadlines will be met
3 archaic : to prepare in advance
Provide means the thing is needed
Cambridge Dictionary, ND, "provide," Cambridge Dictionary, https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/provide, AJ
provide verb (SUPPLY)
Add to word list
B1 [ T ]
to give someone something that they need:
Basic Income
Must Be Universal---1NC
A basic income is paid unconditionally – it’s the same as a UBI.
Guy Standing 17, British labor economist, Professor of development studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies, Professorial Research Associate at SOAS, University of London, and a co-founder of the Basic Income Earth Network. “Basic Income – Its Meaning and Historical Origins.” Basic Income: A Guide for the Open-Minded, Yale University Press, 2017, pp. 1–22. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1bvnf53.4. AJ
We need to start by defining what is meant by a basic income. Although there are a number of variants, which will be discussed in due course, a basic income can be defined as a modest amount of money paid unconditionally to individuals on a regular basis (for example, monthly). It is often called a universal basic income (UBI) because it is intended to be paid to all.
Basic income is unconditionally granted.
Daniel Raventós and Julie Wark 07. “A Provocative but Possible Proposal.” Basic Income: The Material Conditions of Freedom, Pluto Press, 2007, pp. 7–24. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt18fsbw8.5. AJ
Basic Income is an income paid by the state to each full member or accredited resident of a society, regardless of whether he or she wishes to engage in paid employment, or is rich or poor or, in other words, independently of any other sources of income that person might have, and irrespective of cohabitation arrangements in the domestic sphere.
Although it is somewhat long, this is the definition I prefer because it is clear (and also provocative). The Basic Income Earth Network definition is as follows:
A basic income is an income unconditionally granted to all on an individual basis, without means test or work requirement. It is a form of minimum income guarantee that differs from those that now exist in various European countries in three important ways:
Must Be Universal---2NC/1NR
It’s synonymous with UBI
Center for Hunger Free Communities 21, Drexel University, “Universal Basic Income: Key to Reducing Food Insecurity and Improving Health,” https://drexel.edu/hunger-free-center/research/briefs-and-reports/universal-basic-income/
If every person received the same basic income “floor” regardless of income, class, race, location of residence, or other status, the stigma of receiving support could be eliminated.
UNIVERSAL BASIC INCOME
Universal basic income (UBI), or basic income guarantee, is a government program that aims to address economic inequality and provide economic security through monthly direct cash transfers to every member of a community with no means testing. It creates a basic income floor for everyone, regardless of income and employment status. UBI allows recipients to spend funds however they choose, unlike other benefit programs.
UBI differs from other guaranteed income proposals in that every adult in the community receives a monthly payment, regardless of their income. Guaranteed income programs that target only specific populations are problematic as they require citizens to prove they are deserving of basic income support.
Covers everyone unconditionally.
Stanford Basic Income Lab ND, “What is Basic Income?,” Stanford, https://basicincome.stanford.edu/about/what-is-ubi/#:~:text=Basic%20income%20is%20a%20regular,work%20requirement%20of%20other%20conditions.
Basic income is a regular cash payment to all members of a community, without a work requirement of other conditions.
A basic income is different than minimum income or guaranteed annual income – basic income is not means-tested
Guy Standing 17, British labor economist, Professor of development studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies, Professorial Research Associate at SOAS, University of London, and a co-founder of the Basic Income Earth Network. “Basic Income – Its Meaning and Historical Origins.” Basic Income: A Guide for the Open-Minded, Yale University Press, 2017, pp. 1–22. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1bvnf53.4. AJ
Basic income. This has the virtue of simplicity and familiarity. It differs from ‘minimum income’, a term usually denoting means-tested schemes, where the state ostensibly guarantees the poor some income if they can prove they are poor and ‘deserving’ in some way. And it differs from ‘guaranteed annual income’, a term that has figured prominently in debates in Canada and the US, which seems to signify a means-tested income guarantee, a form of negative income tax. Basic income also differs from the ‘minimum wage’, a statutory amount usually expressed as an hourly rate, that employers are meant to pay to those in jobs.
Not Universal---2AC
A basic income could be universal OR conditional
Kearney and Mogstad 19, Melissa S. Kearney and Magne Mogstad, University of Maryland, University of Chicago, August 23, 2019, " Universal Basic Income (UBI) as a Policy Response to Current Challenges," The Aspen Institute Economic Strategy Group, https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/UBI-ESG-Memo-082319.pdf, AJ
A UBI true to its name would be unconditional and have no means test for eligibility. It would be given to every individual, regardless of their own or their family income. A related, but quite distinct, policy would be a conditional basic income program, or a Negative Income Tax (NIT), as it was named by University of Chicago economist Milton Friedman in his 1962 book Capitalism and Freedom. Under a conditional basic income scheme, the government would provide every individual a guaranteed income level, or a stipend, which would gradually be reduced as their earned income increased. This type of scheme was considered by the Nixon administration and evaluated in randomized controlled trial (RCT) social experiments in the 1960s and 1970s (discussed below).
We view a UBI to be related to a negative income tax, albeit much more expensive and with a very “leaky bucket,” to use the metaphor coined by Brookings scholar Arthur Okun (1975). to describe the “socio-economic leakages” of redistributive policy that arise from administrative costs, reduced savings or investment, or work disincentives. One of our main objections to a UBI is that by making the payment universal and unconditional, the government would be paying a lot of money to well off families, which would not serve any useful redistributive purpose but would divert public funds away from programs that could usefully advance human capital development and economic opportunity for truly needy Americans.
Here we outline key elements of some specific UBI proposals that have been put forward by UBI advocates in the past few years. As this discussion makes clear, many people who support UBI are actually arguing for a conditional basic income, not a universal basic income. We also offer some calculations showing how much it would cost the government to provide conditional basic income payments. These calculations highlight both the large expense of such schemes and the trade-off implicit in a conditional basic income scheme in terms of giving more money to fewer, lower income people or less money to more people, including those with fairly high levels of income. For simplicity, the calculations assume no behavioral response. That said, incorporating behavioral responses is likely to make the UBI proposals even more expensive, both directly through negative income effects on labor supply and indirectly through the distortionary costs of the additional taxes necessary to pay for the program.
Conditional basic income is an option
Najma Dayib 21, Graduate of the University of Pennsylvania with a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics, 4-10-2021, "Universal Basic Income: A Fundamentally Flawed Concept," Penn Political Review, https://pennpoliticalreview.org/2021/04/universal-basic-income-a-fundamentally-flawed-concept/, AJ
There are many other options available, as Table 1, provided by Kearney and Mogstad, shows. These include, but are not limited to, an annual transfer and conditional Basic Income:
TABLE OMMITED
As the alternatives and table above showcase, a conditional — not universal — form of basic income would be preferable in almost all cases. The failure of UBI is the treatment of human capital as a secondary thought. In any credible and useful form, the basic income or annual transfer would allow the top 0.1% not to receive anything and the lowest 20% to receive the most. This is not a part of any true form of UBI.
Must be Uniform---1NC
A basic income must be uniform – pays the same amount to everyone
Guy Standing 17, British labor economist, Professor of development studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies, Professorial Research Associate at SOAS, University of London, and a co-founder of the Basic Income Earth Network. “Basic Income – Its Meaning and Historical Origins.” Basic Income: A Guide for the Open-Minded, Yale University Press, 2017, pp. 1–22. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1bvnf53.4. AJ
The basic income would be paid to each individual as an individual, regardless of marital, family or household status. Thus it would not favour or discriminate against any type of household arrangement. And, unlike benefits paid according to ‘family status’, there would be no presumption of automatic sharing of income within a household, let alone equal sharing, which is often not the case.
The basic income should also be uniform, that is, paid equally to every adult, whatever their circumstances. Some existing state benefits, being family-based, in effect give members of large households a lower amount, assuming economies of scale within families. A basic income makes no such assumption and so avoids unintended discrimination.
Not Uniform---2AC
A Basic income can give different amounts based on an individuals income
Cauwnberghe et al. 18, An Van Cauwnberghe, Niklas Mannfolk, Jan Klesla, Writers for the Institute for Politics and Society, January 2018, "," Institute for Politics and Society, https://www.politikaspolecnost.cz/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Unconditional-basic-income-IPPS.pdf, AJ
Conditional basic income
The models of conditional basic income (CBI) build on the premise that all citizens should be guaranteed a certain economic security, just like the current social security system in Finland does. In most CBI models the state’s input varies based on the individual’s income. For a person with no income, the state provides a minimum security on which everyone should be able to manage. As the individual’s income increases, the state’s input decreases through income taxation, only to cease entirely once the income reaches a sufficient level.
Critics of this system claim that it could and would be abused by people not wanting to work. That may be the case, but this is already happening in the current system. The only difference is that due to the social security being taxed away from increased income rather than being removed entirely in one go, as is the case in current social security systems, there is always an incentive to seek employment. The point is that individuals who work by definition have better net income than people who do not.
Most recently the conditional basic income – instead of unconditional basic income – was proposed by Andrew Ng, formerly the head of AI for Chinese search giant Baidu and, before that, creator of Google's deeplearning Brain project and the founder of Coursera.org. According to Mr. Ng, artificial intelligence is coming for plenty of jobs and we need an updated version of the New Deal, the Depression-era economic program that invested in getting unemployed Americans back to work. Nowadays it should be done by paying displaced workers to learn new job skills. Future waves of innovation, he argues, will bring even “more profound changes to job markets, and we will need a way to adapt to them.”
Those in jobs Mr. Ng thinks will be automated, from call-center workers to radiologists, truck drivers shall be provided with the CBI, not the UBI. According to him, unconditional basic income just encourages people to be “trapped in low skilled jobs without a meaningful path to climb up to do better work.” So rather to pay people to “do nothing” we should rather pay them to study. Incentivizing people to study increases the odds that the displaced worker can gain the skills they need to reenter the workforce and contribute back to this tax phase that gives as this engine of growth of the economy.
However, the goal of a conditional basic income still ought to be reduction of income inequality and poverty, but it would be done through removing disincentives to work. The aim would be for work to always be worthwhile. This would be done by POLICY PAPER | January 2018 giving social security to those who need it, and taxing it away from those who don’t.
UBI/CBI - a liberal solution?
Nevertheless, the basic income is an interesting notion, especially in the form of CBI, when the conditionality is based on retraining of workers to gain new skills and adapt for new jobs given by the digital transformation of economy. The basic income in this sense is a very interesting notion from a liberal point of view. Liberal democracies already guarantee an extensive set of fundamental freedoms to their citizens. Freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and freedom of religion are constitutionally protected. Materially however, people are not free. To be able to lead their life as they want to, they need to earn an income. For most of them, this means they have to work. Therefore the basic income could be the next frontier for liberalism and the quest for ultimate freedom.
Conditional Basic Income seems to be a plausible solution for those whose jobs are going to be lost in the forthcoming era of automation. However, it would probably defeat the original definition of Unconditional Basic Income. Gaining degree also does not mean automatically gaining new employment and it can be wasting the taxpayers’ money. However, it is interesting and promising idea that shall be studied further.
You can also pull things from the Not Universal header
Basic = Living Wage---1NC
The “basic” part of “basic income” entails the amount being sufficient to live in the society
Guy Standing 17, British labor economist, Professor of development studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies, Professorial Research Associate at SOAS, University of London, and a co-founder of the Basic Income Earth Network. “Basic Income – Its Meaning and Historical Origins.” Basic Income: A Guide for the Open-Minded, Yale University Press, 2017, pp. 1–22. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1bvnf53.4. AJ
The term ‘basic’ causes a lot of confusion. At the least, it means an amount that would enable someone to survive in extremis, in the society they live in. It could be more. However, the underlying purpose is to provide basic economic security, not total security or affluence. Total security would be neither feasible nor desirable.
Deciding what constitutes basic security is a challenge, but intuitively it should be easy to understand. Basic security in terms of being able to obtain enough to eat and a place to live, an opportunity to learn and access to medical care surely constitutes what any ‘good society’ should provide, equally and as certainly as it can. Most advocates of a basic income believe it should be provided as a ‘right’, meaning that it cannot be withdrawn at will. This issue is discussed further in Chapter 3.
Some argue that the basic income should be sufficient to ensure ‘participation in society’. As a definition, this seems both unnecessary and too vague. However, it reflects a laudable wish for all to have adequate resources to enable them, in words associated with Alexis de Tocqueville, to go forth in society as citizens with equal status. A sensible pragmatic position is that the level of a basic income should be sufficient to advance in that direction.
Not Tax Credits---1NC
A basic income is different from minimum income guarantees or tax credits
Guy Standing 17, British labor economist, Professor of development studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies, Professorial Research Associate at SOAS, University of London, and a co-founder of the Basic Income Earth Network. “Basic Income – Its Meaning and Historical Origins.” Basic Income: A Guide for the Open-Minded, Yale University Press, 2017, pp. 1–22. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1bvnf53.4. AJ
A stable and predictable basic income, paid come rain come shine, is thus different from a minimum income guarantee, which tops up low incomes to a given level, usually requiring complex means tests. And it is different from a negative income tax or tax credits, which are withdrawn as income rises.
Nevertheless, these variants are often referred to in the same breath as basic income, and they do have in common the idea that everyone should have some sort of basic income security. While this book reserves the term ‘basic income’ for schemes that conform to the definition given at the start of the chapter, readers should be aware (and beware) that commentators often confound these diverse approaches under the ‘basic income’ label. Sometimes this may be done mischievously; more usually, it is a sign that they do not know what they are talking about.