>because grocery stores start having a hard time finding employees willing to do the menial labor required to keep a grocery store running.
You are over-estimating the value of the income. People won't be "livin' large" on the basic income. The intention is to keep people out of abject poverty. I'd even argue it would be easier to find people willing to work part-time at places like grocery stores to supplement their income.
"People won't be "livin' large" on the basic income."
Not at first.
I'll tell you one of my big fears about UBI, though: The first vote that comes in Congress about whether to raise it. What happens then? Obviously, you are an asshole of the highest order if you so much as fail to support raising it, let alone arguing that it perhaps needs to be reduced for some reason. It becomes a "race to the top" to compete as to who can promise the biggest increases.
If you don't agree, well, let me get this straight, today's politicians are reckless and stupid for not implementing UBI and having all these separate wasteful programs, but the instant they pass it, they suddenly become responsible caretakers of the common good?
Also: Suppose we become unable to support the UBI for some reason and have to reduce it. How many cities burn as a result? Or do we just not reduce it until society keels?
It makes socio-economic failure states go from "bad" to "catastrophic to the body politic".
(As for observations that the same is true of many social programs today... yes, I fear that too. The only thing that prevents cities from burning when we must inevitably cut SS benefits is that the affected will be too elderly to go out there and burn things. But it's still less of a problem, because the separation of concerns makes it hard for systematic calls to raise benefits to really get going, except maybe SS. Unifying them into one easy phrase changes that.)
I want to see this work at a smaller scale before I would even remotely support recklessly experimenting with the largest economy in the world with such a fundamental change. Yes, I am familiar with the much too small semi-studies that have been done, most of which have bad caveats and ran for nowhere near long enough to matter. Let's at least see a county or something run this for 5 or 10 years, and through at least one reduction.
Not ever unless the economy gets incredibly more productive.
> Also: Suppose we become unable to support the UBI for some reason and have to reduce it. How many cities burn as a result? Or do we just not reduce it until society keels?
If we can't support it, it will reduce itself -- not in nominal terms, of course, but the fact that we can't support it means that it will will drive inflation, which will reduce the real value of the set level of basic income.
As long as UBI isn't pegged to inflation, setting the level too high is self-limiting.
> I want to see this work at a smaller scale before I would even remotely support recklessly experimenting with the largest economy in the world with such a fundamental change.
The smaller the scale the less well its going to work; it makes more sense to try it at a lower level displacing fewer existing programs than to do it at a smaller scale.
"As long as UBI isn't pegged to inflation, setting the level too high is self-limiting."
Yeah, to my mind it should grow just above targeted inflation. Pegging to measured or expected inflation replaces a stabilizing negative-feedback loop with a potentially explosive positive-feedback loop.
Universal Basic Income isn't creating imaginary money into the existing supply, it's just shuffling tax resources around. Potentially lifting impoverished people out of excessive meager full time busy work, and allowing several workers to live a higher quality of life (reduced hours) yet the sum of their employed paycheck + UBI equating about what they had as a full time employee of BusyWork Inc.
Pegging the UBI to the consumer price index could possibly help as well. Or segregating luxury items outside of UBI credits. Or just taxing luxury goods and services.
"Pegging the UBI to the consumer price index could possibly help as well."
Don't do this! If we set the UBI unsustainably high, that will probably be reflected in a rise in prices. In that case, we want the real value of the UBI to fall, reducing that pressure.
"Or segregating luxury items outside of UBI credits."
Also don't do this. If there are fewer things competing for my UBI-tagged dollars, then we'll be needlessly driving up the prices of acceptable things.
> Or segregating luxury items outside of UBI credits.
What does that mean? Prohibiting using UBI funds on luxury items? So, instead of unconditional basic income, it becomes a prescribed-use benefit like food stamps, but with slightly different prescriptions?
One of the sources of administrative inefficiencies UBI is proposed to eliminate (as well as those associated with means testing) are those associated with managing and enforcing use limitations.
> Or just taxing luxury goods and services.
You could do that, or you could just use a progressive income tax.
You are over-estimating the value of the income. People won't be "livin' large" on the basic income. The intention is to keep people out of abject poverty. I'd even argue it would be easier to find people willing to work part-time at places like grocery stores to supplement their income.