| ▲ | WorldMaker 9 hours ago | |
The historic origins of UBI are from political parties that wanted most of those same things, too, especially raising the minimum wage and expanding medicare to everyone. A strong minimum wage makes UBI more attractive. More people will want jobs in addition to UBI. UBI is also seen as a market force to naturally drive minimum wage up, because UBI offers workers more choices: more opportunities to build a startup or take a sabbatical instead of work 40 hours. The labor market has to compete with that "opportunity cost" in ways it doesn't need to care about today. It would increase liquidity in the labor market and in terms going all the way back to even Adam Smith, make the market more free. Wages would better reflect demand for the work if laborers had more choices at more times in their lives where and how much to work. Medicare for Everyone and Universal Health Care make UBI simpler. Health risk is always going to be variable and insurance-like risk pooling will always be a good idea for society to defray costs in bad years from surpluses in good ones and defray costs from unhealthy people by considering how many people are kept healthy. UBI could be designed to try cover much of health care, but it is never going to be as efficient as a pooled single payer. If a country already has Universal Health Case, the conversations about UBI get a lot simpler. It is a lot easier to sell it is a flat universal grant. Your health care can be provided by a complex risk pool and smart accountants doing a lot of smart math on your behalf. Your UBI can be just a flat number. Simpler: you can think about how you spend your UBI without having to consider your predicted health outcomes in that period of time. UBI's flat universal value can be set on benchmarks that don't need need complex amortization schedules and risk analysis. The Canadian Social Credit Party, formed to espouse UBI was one of the keys to building Canada's Universal Health Care and their priority was that first, then UBI. That still seems the best priority order to me. | ||