I was discussing with someone, and he said something to me about UBI, he said that the Universal Basic income is going to create a Utopia and so he would appreciate it if all countries starts to pay UBI. I cannot antagonize his point of view, I am very sure he has his reasons for saying so but in this post, I will be looking into the word UBI (Universal Basic Income), its good and its bad.
Universal Basic Income is a non-refundable equal, and regular stipends given by the government to it citizen for being alive, so as to attend to poverty line basic needs. Poverty line is the right word to use because the stipends should be able to attend to the basic necessity of human survivals without any waste. The UBI is supposed to be received by all citizen regardless of their position, class and status. UBI is often paid by the government with public money. With Universal Basic Income, anyone is liable to get paid by the government without any criteria, the only criteria needed to be part of this income is to be alive.
Some countries have given this a trial like in Finland, citizens were given 560 EUR/month for about two years after which the test ended in 2018, Germany is also trying to experiment it. While some countries accept it, other countries like Switzerland refused it.
When people know they will be getting stipends for a particular period, they tend to hold their jobs but when they know that the income will be coming in indefinitely, the reverse is the case in terms of behavior. I can give a simple example. The government of a state in Nigeria decided to create a scheme to help the poor but they had to perform community service twice a week and come for a general meeting once a month. They were told the program will last for a year and so people kept their jobs and still got the stipends from doing the community service. The stipends was seen as additional money but then, after a year the government said they will be doing this for a little longer but with no definite date on when they will be relieving the first batch off their duties. The government did this for another two years and this time, a lot of people started to quit their jobs and just stick to the less stressful stipends. When the government decided to let go of the first batch so they could bring in another batch, a lot of them became unemployed.
Although, it is no news that the reason why a lot of countries are putting UBI into a test is ascertain how the economy will strive when automation/globalization takes over people’s job and so UBI is given a trial. Entrepreneurs like Elon Musk, Richard Branson and Mark Zuckerberg are very supportive of UBI. A lot of people believe that the UBI will reduce the rate of poverty around the world as well reduce the inequality in the society, it is seen as a leeway for people with no jobs but will UBI be enough to serve as capital for people with no jobs?, will UBI ever reduce poverty seeing that even when people who win lotteries still go broke after such huge money?
UBI will be costly for the government and it will affect the labour market as a lot of people will prefer to wake up to nothing on a daily basis which will affect the productivity of humans which will affect the growth of the economy.
There are a lot of positive and negative views about UBI and it is no doubt that this form of Income is really a point of discussion among economical analyst and people in general
