What is Universal Income and how does it work?
In: 17
Universal income is money paid to each and every citizen, regardless of income.
There are many different schemes proposed, but that’s the gist. Some put age limits on the payments (no payment until you’re 18, for example).
The point is that you get enough money to live *without having to do anything to deserve it*. You don’t have to work, you don’t have to apply, you don’t have to fill in a form, you don’t have to stand in line, you don’t have to live in a specific area, you don’t have to be disabled, you don’t have to be elderly, you don’t have to be sick, and so on.
The idea is that humans have a *right to life*, and in order to live you need some basic necessities like food. Not giving people food because they don’t work is similar to withholding food for people who don’t work, with is in essence the same as withholding life, which is stumblingly close to killing people who don’t work hard enough, which is eerily similar to slavery.
Financially, it works through tax. Those who do make money pay tax, and that tax is redistributed back to everyone. If you make less than a certain amount you get back more than you pay in so you benefit from it directly, if you make more than that amount you do not benefit from it directly.
The proponents argue that *all* would benefit from it indirectly, because lifting people out of abject poverty is good for the economy. You can’t sell widgets to people who are starving. Give them enough to eat, and they may be interested in buying widgets. Then you can build a widget factory, hire engineers and designers to make better widgets and so on.
Critics argue that it will never work, it will make people lazy, that humans are inherently lazy and that we *need* the threat of homelessness and starvation to do any work at all.
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