Neg - Feminist UBI - Michigan 7 2023 CPSW

Fem - Neg
1NC
Case
A UBI doesn’t shift structural inequalities or transform the patriarchal capitalist state – creates a drop in women’s bargaining power and loss of social capital which turns case
Brian McDonough & Jessie Bustillos Morales 19 (Brian McDonough is a Family Physician with a focus on patient education. In addition to providing clinical care he employs audio, video and digital technology to provide helpful information for the general public. Jessie Bustillos Morales is a lecturer in education studies at London Metropolitan University; “Universal Basic Income” Chapter 5, 2019)AC
Feminists scholars (McKay, 2005; McLean, 2016; Zelleke, 2011) who are in support of an income maintenance fund, such as universal basic income, have proposed how this regular payment will contribute to women’s autonomy, increase their economic power and independence, as well as re-balance many of the gender inequalities that continue to exist in society. Other feminist scholars (Robeyns, 2010; Gheaus, 2008) are less enthusiastic about the idea of a universal basic income and suggest that it will not help diminish the gendered division of labour, or reduce the gender pay gap, nor increase the participation of women in employment markets. For example, Gheaus (2008: 3) argues that ‘should a BI be introduced, it would be reasonable to expect an overall drop in female labour … differing income effects for different groups of women … and a drop in women’s bargaining power within the household, decreased selfesteem and loss of social capital’. In other words, Gheaus suggests that women may be more likely to give up full-time careers in the world of work, knowing that there’s a sustainable means in which they can base themselves at home, overseeing caring and domestic responsibilities. Feminist views on universal basic income although varied, recognize that a universal basic income will have important effects on poverty, but might not contribute substantially to shift structural inequalities around gender. While many women may benefit from such a policy reform, it is not clear whether or not a universal basic income has the potential to really ‘transform the patriarchal capitalist state’ (O’Brien, 2017: 100). Drawing on feminist arguments for and against a universal basic income, this chapter examines the lives of women from an intersectional perspective to understand the multilayered social influences and constraints which women with diverse identities experience.
No evidence proves that a UBI can work – all aff empirics aren’t contextualizes to the scale of the UBI implemented by the aff
Paul Boyce 19 (Business Economics graduate from the UK and currently an editor, 5/5/19, “Universal Basic Income Is a Pandora’s Box”, https://fee.org/articles/universal-basic-income-is-a-pandora-s-box/)
Previous Experiments Are Not Comparable
First, it must be said that there are a number of cases that suggest UBI does, in fact, work. In Alaska, each resident gets up to $2,000 per year from the “Alaska Permanent Fund.” The state doesn't call it a UBI, but it works in a similar way. The difference, however, is that it is funded by its oil revenues. If oil prices go down, so do their dividends, which fell to $1,100 in 2017.
Research by Damon Jones of the University of Chicago and Ioana Marinescu of the University of Pennsylvania found it had no impact on employment. However, this example and many others are not comparable to the $12,000 Yang proposes. Even European trials of UBI in Barcelona, Utrecht, and Helsinki only grant $590 per month.
While there have been many "successful" UBI trials, few have been tested at over $12,000 per year. There have been "successful" pilots in Namibia and India, but neither offered a comparable income. In Namibia for example, citizens received 100 Namibian dollars per month, or just over $7. In India, the trial gave each adult 300 Indian rupees per month, or just over $4. Although these sums may help the lives of those in the respective countries, they are not comparable to Yang's proposal.
Previous experiments with UBI may suggest it would work, but they in no way represent the scale of $12,000. There is no conclusive evidence to suggest this would work in practice. While the late Milton Friedman is a source of inspiration, he only suggested a modest $300 negative income tax in 1962. In today’s money, this is equivalent to $2,500—far short of the proposed sum.
Using the government decks solvency – turns the aff since it’ll disproportionately affect people of low income
Paul Boyce 19 (Business Economics graduate from the UK and currently an editor, 5/5/19, “Universal Basic Income Is a Pandora’s Box”, https://fee.org/articles/universal-basic-income-is-a-pandora-s-box/)
Inability to Limit Government
Perhaps one of the most important arguments against a UBI is the control it gives government. Once it is enacted, what restricts government from increasing it further? After all, $12,000 is only on the poverty line. What is to prevent government from increasing this to $15,000 to win more votes? The constitution itself does not sufficiently restrict government overreach, so there is little hope for other legislation.
Those in and around the middle class will most likely be paying more taxes. However, they will receive this money back—so no harm done, right? Well, this actually gives even greater power to the state. Even though the government may take $12,000 to give it back, it has control. There is nothing to ensure that $12,000 will still be offered in two years. Government has the ability to withdraw it whenever the political tide turns.
We are living during a period where calls to tax the “rich” are becoming increasingly popular. Are we also to expect that a $12,000 UBI to the rich would continue to remain for long? Perhaps, but perhaps not.
Yang may call his proposal the “Freedom Dividend,” but it, in fact, does the opposite. It hands even more income from the individual to the government. For example, when inflation takes place, the government may not increase the UBI's value. It may take in more through taxes but not distribute that money. The new funds may then be used to fund the latest project. Old government programs are often underfunded because they have already served their purpose of getting officials elected. In the UK, the NHS and education system are always in need of additional funding. They are neglected because they no longer serve any political purpose. There is nothing to demonstrate that a UBI won't be the same.
A UBI is too expensive – taxes don’t work and result in the eradication of means-testing programs which turns inequality – that also decks political support
Robert Greenstein 19 (Founder and President Emeritus of Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 6/13/19, “Commentary: Universal Basic Income May Sound Attractive But, If It Occurred, Would Likelier Increase Poverty Than Reduce It”, https://www.cbpp.org/research/poverty-and-opportunity/commentary-universal-basic-income-may-sound-attractive-but-if-it)AC
At first blush, universal basic income (UBI) seems a very attractive idea, especially to a progressive. Yet it suffers from two serious problems. First, the odds are very high that an effort to secure UBI would prove quixotic. Second, and more disconcerting, any possibility of overcoming the formidable obstacles to UBI will almost certainly require a left-right coalition that has significant conservative support — and conservative support for UBI rests on an approach that would increase poverty, rather than reduce it.
The key issues related to UBI include what it would cost, how it would be paid for, and the risks it poses. Let’s take these one at a time.
The Cost
There are over 300 million Americans today. Suppose UBI provided everyone with $10,000 a year. That would cost more than $3 trillion a year — and $30 trillion to $40 trillion over ten years.
This single-year figure equals more than three-fourths of the entire yearly federal budget — and double the entire budget outside Social Security, Medicare, defense, and interest payments. It’s also equal to close to 100 percent of all tax revenue the federal government collects.
Or, consider UBI that gives everyone $5,000 a year. That would provide income equal to about two-fifths of the poverty line for an individual (which is a projected $12,700 in 2016) and less than the poverty line for a family of four ($24,800). But it would cost as much as the entire federal budget outside Social Security, Medicare, defense, and interest payments.
Some UBI proponents respond that policymakers could make the UBI payments taxable. But the savings from doing so would be relatively modest, because the vast bulk of Americans either owe no federal income tax or are in the 10% or 15% tax brackets. For example, if you gave all 328 million Americans a $10,000 UBI and the cost was $3.28 trillion a year (about $33 trillion over ten years) before taxes, then making the UBI payments taxable would reduce that cost only to something like $2.5 trillion or $2.75 trillion (or $25 trillion to $27.5 trillion over ten years).
Paying For It
Where would the money to finance such a large expenditure come from? That it would come mainly or entirely from new taxes isn’t plausible. We’ll already need substantial new revenues in the coming decades to help keep Social Security and Medicare solvent and avoid large benefit cuts in them. We’ll need further tax increases to help repair a crumbling infrastructure that will otherwise impede economic growth. And if we want to create more opportunity and reduce racial and other barriers and inequities, we’ll also need to raise new revenues to invest more in areas like pre-school education, child care, college affordability, and revitalizing segregated inner-city communities.
A UBI that’s financed primarily by tax increases would require the American people to accept a level of taxation that vastly exceeds anything in U.S. history. It’s hard to imagine that such a UBI would advance very far, especially given the tax increases we’ll already need for Social Security, Medicare, infrastructure, and other needs.
The Risk
UBI’s daunting financing challenges raise fundamental questions about its political feasibility, both now and in coming decades. Proponents often speak of an emerging left-right coalition to support it. But consider what UBI’s supporters on the right advocate. They generally propose UBI as a replacement for the current “welfare state.” That is, they would finance UBI by eliminating all or most programs for people with low or modest incomes.
Consider what that would mean. If you take the dollars targeted on people in the bottom fifth or two-fifths of the population and convert them to universal payments to people all the way up the income scale, you’re redistributing income upward. That would increase poverty and inequality rather than reduce them.
Yet that’s the platform on which the (limited) support for UBI on the right largely rests. It entails abolishing programs from SNAP (food stamps) — which largely eliminated the severe child malnutrition found in parts of the Southern “black belt” and Appalachia in the late 1960s — to the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), Section 8 rental vouchers, Medicaid, Head Start, child care assistance, and many others. These programs lift tens of millions of people, including millions of children, out of poverty each year and make tens of millions more less poor.
Some UBI proponents may argue that by ending current programs, we’d reap large administrative savings that we could convert into UBI payments. But that’s mistaken. For the major means-tested programs — SNAP, Medicaid, the EITC, housing vouchers, Supplemental Security Income (SSI), and school meals — administrative costs consume only 1 to 9 percent of program resources, as a CBPP analysis explains.[1] Their funding goes overwhelmingly to boost the incomes and purchasing power of low-income families.
Moreover, as the Roosevelt Institute’s Mike Konczal has noted, eliminating Medicaid, SNAP, the EITC, housing vouchers, and the like would still leave you far short of what’s needed to finance a meaningful UBI.[2] Would we also end Pell Grants that help low-income students afford college? Would we terminate support for children in foster care, for mental health services, and for job training?
Ed Dolan, who favors UBI, has calculated that we could finance it by using the proceeds from eliminating all means-tested programs outside health care — including Pell Grants, job training, Head Start, free school lunches, and the like, as well as refundable tax credits, SNAP, SSI, low-income housing programs, etc. The result, Dolan found, would be an annual UBI of $1,582 per person, well below the level of support most low-income families (especially working-poor families with children) now receive. The increase in poverty and hardship would be very large.[3]
That’s why the risk is high that under any UBI that could conceivably gain traction politically, tens of millions of poor people would likely end up worse off.
To further understand the risks, consider how working-age adults who aren’t working would fare. In our political culture, there are formidable political obstacles to providing cash to working-age people who aren’t employed, and it’s unlikely that UBI could surmount them. The nation’s social insurance programs — Social Security, Medicare, and unemployment insurance — all go only to people with significant work records. It’s highly unlikely that policymakers would agree to make UBI cash payments of several thousand dollars to people who aren’t elderly or disabled and aren’t working. (By contrast, there is political support for providing poor families that have no earnings with non-cash assistance such as SNAP, Medicaid, rental vouchers, Head Start, and the WIC nutrition program.)
UBI fails
Harris 23
[Neal Harris, Department of Social Sciences, Oxford Brookes University, Critical Theory and Universal Basic Income, 3-10-2023, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/08969205231151562]\\SShah
This is the conundrum of UBI for the left: there is an obvious quantitative gain – which is seemingly undeniable. The poorest in society will benefit from better healthcare outcomes, may live longer and may have greater access to the market economy. However, these quantitative benefits do not signal the move to a more emancipated socialistic society. The counterpoint to these quantitative benefits is the further colonisation of social domains by capitalist forms of cognition and subjectivity. As such, in this paper, I have argued that the further dominance of pathological forms of desire and consciousness need to be factored into the discussion of whether the left should embrace UBI as a policy. As such, despite the claims made by its progressive advocates, when viewed from a critical theory perspective, it seems possible that implementing a UBI may entrench neoliberalism, rather than challenge it. Critical theory is thus of importance to this conversation, as it is through a fusion of Marxian, Weberian, neo-Hegelian, and psychoanalytic insights that reification and can be interrogated. From a critical theory perspective, one may suggest that the implementation of UBI payments could defer, rather than expedite, progressive qualitative transition.
Unlike ‘Traditional Theorists’, who proclaim a scholarly objectivity, critical theorists make no such pretensions towards ‘apolitical’, or value-free, research (Horkheimer, 2002). Critical theorists are explicit about their politics and reflexively acknowledge their research contribution sits as part of a broader political goal: socialistic transition. I have done so here: this paper is explicitly a left-wing critique of UBI. However, for critical theorists, such reflexivity is not merely limited to admitting one’s positionality and political preferences. No investigation of UBI would be complete without reflecting on the political implications of introducing a UBI. A further, obvious question must be considered in conclusion: is it a good idea in the existing political world? To this end, I offer the briefest strategic argument as an addendum to this paper, as to why the implementation of a UBI should be resisted by progressive activists to compliment my critical theoretical rejection of UBI.
Because the idea of introducing a UBI enjoys ‘support from the both the left and right’ (Murphy, 2019: 13), a la Brexit, it is possible that a coalition of populist forces could be united to rally to the call. The promise of a left UBI would appeal broadly and the power of the neoliberal media could succeed, again, in obtaining the necessary support to propel the idea. However, once initiated, the proclaimed ‘capitalist road to communism’ could echo post-Brexit developments in the United Kingdom: the policy could be pushed hard right and could actually serve to normalise right-libertarian values (see Dearden, 2020). What may start as a UBI accompanying the welfare state may slowly shift to the idea of UBI enabling expedited privatisation. As Martinelli (2017: 5) notes, for right-libertarian supporters of UBI, crucially the idea is not to supplement the welfare state, but to ‘replace it’. With a dismantled welfare state, the next logical step for the neoliberal elite would be the gradual reduction of the UBI payment. This would likely occur in two ways: one, creeping conditionality, through conduct policing – targeting activists and those who oppose neoliberal norms, and two, reducing the UBI level to the minimum needed to enable repressive desublimation. As the Bank of England sets interest rates in the United Kingdom today, UBI would be similarly adjusted to optimally inculcate public support and repress dissent, while providing only the smallest possible redistribution of wealth. When van Parijs was writing of UBI as the ‘capitalist road to communism’ in 1986, my political-strategic consideration above may rightly have been deemed deeply dystopian. However, in the populist, Trumpian world, with ever-decreasing space for critical judgement (see Thompson, 2022), such a calculated rejection of UBI on this political basis may now appear a more rational and sensible course to adopt.
Inflation Link
A UBI creates higher prices and inflation – taxation doesn’t offset the effects since it’s about the rate of money going into the economy
Paul Boyce 19 (Business Economics graduate from the UK and currently an editor, 5/5/19, “Universal Basic Income Is a Pandora’s Box”, https://fee.org/articles/universal-basic-income-is-a-pandora-s-box/)
Higher Prices and Inflation
A UBI would essentially transfer wealth away from higher earners toward low earners. This spurs higher consumption because those with lower incomes have a higher propensity to consume. On a macro basis, this may not necessarily create any inflation, as there is no new money entering the economy. However, it will create inflation on a micro basis. Rather than money going toward investment, it is going toward consumer goods. Instead of inflation occurring through a wide variety of areas, it is being concentrated.
Importance of Velocity
Yang says this is just using the existing money in the economy. In part, he is right. However, he fails to consider the velocity of money. One of the reasons the US did not experience significant inflation after quantitative easing was due to a slowing of consumption growth. If we put $12,000 into everyone's hands, consumer demand will rise, and so, too, will velocity.
When velocity increases, the same $1 exchanges hands at a quicker rate. For example, A may buy a television from B for $100. B will then buy a used iPhone from C for $100. C will then buy a used sofa from D for $100. The initial $100 has circulated around the economy at a value of $300. This sends demand signals to the relevant parties, who then respond with higher prices.
Prices Re

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