Five Important Things you Need to Know About UBI

I usually write about economics — albeit in much more radical contexts. David Graeber liked my critique of one of his books enough to retweet it.

This is just going to be a series of factual statements on UBI, not arguments for or against doing or not doing anything.

I’m not terribly interested in making moral arguments for this. You have your own values, and what I say here will drive you towards or against the proposal, depending on those. Nor am I interested in arguing for a particular candidate. In fact, I think that I could write an entire article on everything that’s wrong with Yang.

I’d describe myself as more-or-less in favor of a UBI, but I don’t think that it’s likely to be as easy to achieve or as all-solving as its more rabid fans seem to.

1 — a basic income promotes small-scale investment

Poor people make short-term decisions, because their futures are inevitably so uncertain. This means that, when they do get money, they spend it on meeting their immediate needs — not on education, better tools for themselves, or other ways to ensure more income in the long term.

According to Business Insider, when a charity gave everyone in a rural Kenyan village $22 a month (with the promise of this…