The utilitarian argument for UBI

 So...I got in a bit of a political argument over UBI. And the person I was arguing with said that I had no ethics and no right to take money from someone and redistribute it. So I ended up making a rough utilitarian argument for UBI that I figure is valid here. I rarely argue like this here, but it really is a good argument I want to make. 

Essentially, as I keep saying, I'm a human centered capitalist, or a humanist capitalist if I want to be more precise and distance the concept from Yang a bit. I don't see our social and economic systems as dictated from "god" on high, but as human creations that serve human needs. That said, in order to really have a discussion with me on a serious note, you need to eschew most concepts of objective morality. The closest thing I get to objective morality is as such. Morality is geared toward human happiness and well being, and any attempts to create a moral system should serve to further those ends. From there, we can debate endlessly over the methods of how to get there and what they might look like, and I believe we can have a thousand different people propose a thousand different systems that all technically meet that criteria. But, not all of those systems are going to be compatible with one another. Some people might prefer more freedom and less state intervention. Some will be more authoritarian. Some will preserve the status quo, some will seek radical change. Some will seek individualism, and some will be collectivist. And honestly, we can achieve any result in between those outcomes too. I acknowledge my views aren't gospel either. As passionately as I argue for them, and as rigid in my self righteousness that I am, I acknowledge that at the end of the day, to a large degree morality is a matter of preference to some degree. 

But, that still means that our social systems and the morality and justness behind them are also a matter of preference. To a large degree, we're indoctrinated to perpetuate them, regardless of whatever problems they cause, and as long as people think in such a rigid way, I don't expect things to change. The big problem with capitalism is...work. Jobs. We have this idea that everyone should go out there and work, and where they end up is a matter of their own effort. We consider the successful hard working, the not successful as lazy and undeserving, and in a lot of cases this seems to be done in an ex post facto way, as a matter of people just regurgitating indoctrination. We don't think about how social mobility might be limited, or how the worker-employer relationship is unjust, or how income inequality is exploding. We just tend to assume that those who make it deserved it and those who don't don't.

And of course, a lot of people who tend to view politics in different ways might have some idea of the problem, but may accept rival ideologies that approach the problem a different way. For example, the person I was talking to was not necessarily a conservative, but a liberal. They were one of those upper class suburbanite professional class types who didn't think it was right that I wanted to tax her at $80,000 to fund UBI (never mind that her tax bill would be neutral and we would only START paying net taxes at that point). Meanwhile, she seemed overly concerned about how hard she worked and how white males in the same job as her make much more than she does, claiming she has a coworker who makes $120k and isn't as qualified as her and it isn't fair. Now, while I do support the idea of equal pay for equal work, there is no good way to enforce this, as stuff like affirmative action and quotas are divisive and alienating, driving others to the right, and you need to PROVE gender discrimination to have a case. She thought my idea of wanting to redistribute her income to other people was unjust and I had no right to do it and how I would like it if I had her band together with other feminists against all white males. Now, the fact that a lot of feminists literally act like that aside, I told her that her employer is the problem here, not white males, and if she wanted to band together with her coworkers and form a union, she should. I have nothing against people banding together to better distribute the fruits of the economic system. As a matter of fact, i wish we would do it. There is no inherent justice to the current system, and a lot of the principles on which the current system are built don't work any way. Does anyone seriously think a billionaire works millions of times harder than a middle wage or even median worker? Of course not. I don't even think a lot of professional class people work harder than minimum wage or median wage people. I think they just have more education, connections, and opportunities to develop skillsets that make them employable in high demand fields. In a way, for all these kinds of people talk about privilege based on identity, these guys' entire lifestyle is built on a form of privilege that others don't have. 

Even if the system worked perfectly, I still would find it unjust under indepentarian ethics. After all, for me, while the issues with income inequality and failures of meritocracy do play into my support for UBI too, I still think forcing people to work and participate in this system in the first place is unjust. The value in meritocracy and the idea of markets rewarding effort is effectively rooted in the idea that we need those things to create work incentive. After all, wasn't the problem with "communism" as capitalists point out the fact that if everyone makes the same regardless of how they perform, doesn't that not give people much incentive to work hard? So, income DOES need to be tied to effort to SOME extent, but I don't tend to fetishize the idea. I mean, ultimately, I'm a structural functionalist and nothing more. I support the idea of markets, inequalities for work incentives, yada yada yada, but I also tend to recognize that a system that relies solely on this is kind of nasty and brutish. Our system does guarantee that so much poverty will exist. There are real structural problems with the jobs system in creating enough jobs for everyone, having them pay well, and be rewarding. In reality, most americans are slaves to a system that doesn't benefit them much. UBI is my solution to this. We've discussed that before.

But, I came here to discuss the utilitarian aspect of it, so here it is. Ultimately, my ideas are, to some extent, guided by Rawls' veil of ignorance. Widerquist in discussing indepentarianism cited Rawls too as an influence, discussing the veil of ignorance and how we should place ourselves in the position of the worst off person possible, and design the system around treating THAT person well. If we can treat THAT person well, then we, by extension, treat everyone better. And basic income does that. By guaranteeing all citizens and legal residents of society a minimum income of at least the poverty line, that means there is no poverty. 

From a utilitarian position, UBI decreases income inequality. Generally speaking, the top 20% pay for the bottom 80% of so. Why is this fair? This person asked this, as a member of the top 25% or so (she was an individual making $80k, which is the 74th percentile for SINGLE earners, although for families the income threshold for paying into UBI is in practice much higher). But, generally speaking, the top 20% are the ones who benefit most from the system as is. While statistics vary, I've seen stats suggesting only the top 20% have gained net income since the 1970s, while others break it down showing the most extreme gains are among the top 5, 1, or even 0.1 percent. Still, I think the 80-20 divide is fairly helpful here, and I do think it's fair that the richest 20% pay for the bottom 80%, here's why.

Money is a matter of utility to a person. It is directly correlated with happiness and well being, and arguably does so in a way of diminishing marginal utility. Going from $0 to $10000 leads to greater improvements in well being and happiness than going from $90k to $100k. And the difference isn't gonna matter at all for Jeff Bezos. His net worth probably fluctuates by more than that every few seconds when the stock market is active and people are actively trading. The fact is, the richer you get, the less additional money matters. You already can live comfortably, and be fulfilled as a person. But, for someone who is lower class, stuck in a dead end job in the working or middle class, a few thousand extra dollars can change one's life. And for the poorest of the poor, it can literally be life changing. 

If we are to create the ideal safety net, is it not fair that those who have the most are expected to contribute most as they are able, while those who don't have much are asked to contribute little? If we want to have a better society that resolves income inequality, poverty, and other problems that are directly associated to this messed up existence we call the job market in the post industrial 21st century, I am perfectly fine with expecting the top 20-25% to pay for the bottom 70-75%. At the end of the day, the people at the top will still be the most comfortable. If you make $80,000 a year, you will pay $14400...and get $14400 back. If you make $200k, you'll pay $36k, and get $14,400 back. You might be about $22k poorer, but you know what? THat's only 10% of your income. And you make more than 10x those at the bottom.

Sure, those who goof off and play video games have an income, but it's only $14,400. Even at the current minimum wage, working a job for $15,000 is going to net you double income before taxes. After, well, you'll pay 18% more, amounting to around $2,700, but you'll still be over $12k richer than you would be if you stayed home. That's almost doubling your income. Even including stuff like social security taxes, a very basic income tax (with the standard deduction still in place), okay, so you lose like another $1-2k. Still, work is rewarded. And that's if you make the MINIMUM. If you make a good wage, like $40k or something, you would pay an additional $7200 and get $7200 back in net. 

 I mean, work is still rewarded, and while I support the right and freedom to say no to work altogether, the amount is not high enough where most would be satisfied to not work. UBI is designed to take care of basics, but still leave room for actual effort to acquire higher standards of living. While we can talk about higher levels of UBI as the NEED for work goes down over time, currently we still live in a society dependent on labor, and will be for the time being. UBI is a good compromise between moving away from work, while acknowledging the need for human effort to get crap done. 

So, I really don't see the problem. maybe die hard jobists who believe everyone should be FORCED to work and it's okay to deprive people of their needs if they choose not to will be against this, but I'm going to be honest, I don't take their opinions seriously, as that is such a nasty and brutish way of looking at things. Again, work exists as a means to an end, not an end to itself. It exists to serve our needs, we don't exist to serve it. I feel like we forget this. 

Honestly, UBI would decrease income inequality, alleviate poverty, increase overall happiness, and well being, and it would make society better. By my one "objective" standard of morality, it passes, with flying colors. And I'm going to be honest, I view the movement against it to be, quite frankly, regressive, and ideologically driven. I have nothing against those with the most being expected to contribute to those with the least. Regardless of how much they deserve it by meritocratic standards. Because again, those standards only exist to motivate people to work in the first place. People need to stop seeing work as the end, but the means to the end. All of these social systems exist to serve that end. Everything else is just a pretext, or justification, or necessary function to make it all work. And it's only valued insofar that it contributes to that end. Work in itself is meaningless. Meritocracy in itself is meaningless. What isn't meaningless is the alleviation of human suffering, the improvement of human living standards, and the increase in human happiness and well being. All ethics should follow that core idea, regardless of what they are.