So, I've been noticing a new controversy going on in UBI communities, and this is whether recent actions from the Biden administration, and the like, should be considered a UBI. This issue reminds me a lot of the general feel of the differences among people within the democratic party. You got people who are purists who want to only have the most strict definitions of UBI count as UBI, and people who are more "pragmatic" who think we can incrementally get UBI via back door means like these tax credits.
As someone who tends to be more purist on issues, I tend to have a fairly strict idea of UBI. However, I am willing to admit that UBI exists on a spectrum. And that said, I'm going to go over the spectrum.
So what is a UBI?
Well, a UBI, or universal basic income, is a policy intended to give people cash monthly. It's intended to be universal, in that everyone gets it with few to no precondiitions, it's basic, meaning it's intended to meet peoples' basic needs, and it's an income, meaning that it takes the form of cash.
I would argue that a true, ideal UBI would give every American citizen over the age of 18 (age of legal adulthood) a check of at least the federal poverty line, without preconditions. It would be given out by the social security administration or similar government agency, and it would be like getting social security. You get a check every month, or a direct deposit in your bank account, you cash it, and you go about your day. You get this every month until you die.
Is an NIT a UBI?
Ideologically, no, although it is very similar to a UBI on paper. Let's be honest, an NIT can basically mimic a UBI. Whereas a UBI would give people an unconditional check and there would be higher taxes to claw back the money, an NIT could, in calculating a person's income, give them an otherwise unconditional amount of money that scales with said income. But it's not really an unconditional amount because it's means tested. Still, to the end user, the effect could be the same. I could have a $13000 UBI with a 30% tax clawback, earn $15,000 a year, and have to pay $4500 in taxes, or, I could earn $15,000, and get an $8,500 check from the IRS. Either way, you're going to get $13000 if you dont work at all, and $23,500 if you do.
But, despite this, an NIT is NOT a UBI in my opinion, although it's the closest thing you can get to a UBI without it being UBI. The thing if, if you go the NIT route, you are not really unconditionally giving people cash, you're means testing it based on income and calculating it. It has the same overall effect of UBI, but it isn't a UBI, it merely mimics it.
An NIT also has a lot of negative trappings of welfare, of needing to constantly get your income recertified in order to maintain payments. It also runs, in my opinion, a higher risk of being undermined or sabotaged the way welfare was. Because it is welfare. Imagine if the next president added a job requirement to it. Or they made the forms longer to discourage people from applying. They could undermine the unconditional aspect of it very fast, and basically turn it into another means tested program. This is why I dont really consider NIT to be a true version of UBI.
It's basically akin to the insurance mandate or public option alternative to universal healthcare. Rather than just ensuring medicare for all, it tries to cheap out and offer subsidies and care for the poor that phase out rather quickly once you hit the middle class. I mean you kind of accomplish what you say you're trying to do, but it's the less optimal way to do it and more vulnerable to sabotage.
Are tax credits/EITC UBI?
Once again, no. These are a step further removed from UBI. Tax credits like the child tax credit and EITC are knock offs of NIT, the way NIT is a knock off of UBI. Here's the thing, these credits are even more conditional, meaning they're not universal, often falling into narrow income ranges, and they often are far less than a UBI. Biden's child tax credit, for example, is giving parents $3000-3600 per child, if they earn less than $75000 a year. And while my own plan gives $4800 to children, with roughly $4600 being the poverty line for additional people in a household, without an adult UBI to accompany this, it's not even close to a UBI. You can't live on these tax credits alone, and they will probably be roughly a quarter of what a real UBI should be in a household (depending on living situation). And while the $75000 figure makes it almost universal, it isn't really universal.
I know this will disappoint a lot of biden bros and yang gangers trying to suck up to the biden administration who claim it's a UBI for kids, but it really isn't. It mimics a UBI in some ways, but the amount is too low and there are still strings attached to it.
And some tax credits like EITC are even worse. Many only apply if you work and earn income between a narrow range of income, with most not being eligible for an income. So it's pretty easy to see how quickly tax credits can become divorced from the idea of a UBI.
Are partial UBIs a "UBI"?
Eh, I know I aimed for the poverty line with my definition, but let's be honest, Andrew Yang's UBI plan was $12,000, just below the poverty line. One NIT plan was $12,500/$4,500. Are they not true UBIs for being just below the poverty line? Well, I'd say they are. Being a dollar below the poverty line does not mean that they should be thrown out and not treated as a UBI. If you're just below the poverty line, I'd say they're UBIs by virtue of being "close enough".
But that begs the question, how low can we go and still consider something a UBI?
Well, here's my thoughts on it. If you're within 10% of the target amount, you're close enough. Less can be considered to be a partial UBI, but we should be clear about the partial aspect. For example, I have backup UBI plans that are around $9000. They pass the true UBI standard in every way, but the amount is lower. But Im pretty clear, hey this is a partial UBI, I wanna make this higher. If you got something around 45-90% of the poverty line, where you're offering between say, $6000-11000 a year, yeah, that's a partial UBI.
What about lower amounts? Well, at some point you gotta admit it's barely a partial UBI. $1 isn't a UBI. $1000 isnt really a UBI by any stretch of the imagination either. I dont even bother with plans below say, $6000, or $500 a month, which is what the lowest pilots offer, and roughly half of what the good faith "close enough" standard is.
What about Yang's UBI?
Yang's plan offers some interesting quandries into what a true UBI plan is, as he broke a few rules here as I'm laying them out. He had a $12000 UBI, which is slightly below the poverty line, but still within the good faith "close enough" standard I established above. But, at the same time, he had no child benefit. I would argue this is not really an essential part of UBI as child benefits are controversial for various reasons. His original plan also excluded seniors given they got social security, which sucks, as many seniors don't even get $1000 in social security a month. Thankfully he walked that back, but yeah, that was a negative aspect of his plan.
Heck, that's one thing I want to discuss here. Yang's plan had some interesting quirks. Rather than remove some welfare programs and run the risk of alienating constituencies for doing so, he did the relatively lazy fix of excluding UBI from those who got welfare. This essentially added an extra layer of conditionality to it that challenges y definition of UBI.
Here, I'm going to grade by intent. Yang is trying to make UBI as unconditional as possible, but ultimately, given the welfare system as it exists has to interact with UBI, UBI or welfare have to be scaled back somehow. My own plan is to remove smaller welfare programs and modify larger ones around the UBI, but Yang instead said "if you like welfare better you can keep that, but you'll forgo the UBI". It was a lazy, ill conceived approach to the problem attempting to simulate a similar outcome to what I and other UBI advocates want, but it did it in a bad way. Heck this approach was so bad it actually created a lot of ill will with progressives who framed his plan as "destroying welfare" and crap, which goes a bit far, but it is a lazy and poor way to do it and made it less unconditonal.
Still, I would argue his plan is far closer to a true UBI than an NIT or anything else I looked at.
Conclusion
So there you have it, that is my opinion on the whole "is X a true UBI" debate. As you guys know, on my big issues, I like my purity, as impure policies can have negative intended or unintended policy consequences. While an NIT is similar to a UBI, I dont believe it is a true UBI. It is a backdoor way of accomplishing the same result, but it has weaknesses a UBI policy would not. And once you get to tax credits and the like, you start getting more and more removed from UBI and more into conditional welfare and the like again. And this leads to flawed policy.
I know the neolibs and even some DNC bootlicking UBI advocates love to act like every cash giving policy is a UBI in some form, and some even argue if you pass tons of these small programs over the years you'll eventually get something similar to a UBI, but honestly, let's be honest, like everything else that comes from the moderate camp, you get crap that attempts to accomplish a similar result in a far less efficient way. And such policies aren't that good.
Now, that's not to say that compromise policies are always crap. We should take what we can get when we can get it. I created my grading scale for a reason, and that's to grade UBI policies according to how well they meet certain goals. If you get a passing grade, your plan probably isn't crap. But it's probably not ideal either, and we shouldn't mince words and act like highly incremental policies are some pathway to UBI.
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