this post was submitted on 04 Feb 2025
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It's not "universal" unless/until it's given to everyone. Until then, it's just another targeted welfare program, "offered to a select portion of a city's population instead of all residents", as your link says.
You can't say UBI has been "proven mostly successful" without actually doing UBI, considering its main hurdles are related directly to giving out that much money to everyone. A UBI of $12000/year ($1000/month) for just all working-age people in the US (a bit over 200 million) would cost the government $2.4 TRILLION, yearly.
Even seizing the entirety of every US billionaire's net worth (est. $4.5 trillion), assuming you could convert it straight across into cash 1:1 (which you can't), and cutting defense spending (~$850 billion), the two most common ways I've seen people claim we can pay for UBI in the US, even if defense was cut to literal zero (also absurdly unrealistic), that still wouldn't even cover the cost of this UBI for three years.
I've had this discussion before. You might want to do some more research and have sources. I would advise you to look at really good sources about the following points:
Your numbers and projected income is way wonky. I'll discuss it when you come back with sources from the studies of UBI and why most experts think they worked being referenced.
I’m not the other person but I’ve had this discussion in work before and people have hit back with the following:
This wouldn’t work because with all these people getting UBI would just mean companies would put prices up to levels making the UBI worthless. For example if the cost of living is $1000 and you give people who need it $1000 then before long the cost of living would rise to $2000.
Now I’m in support of doing more for the average person and taking from corporations but I just don’t know how to argue against their, albeit lacking in actual data, arguments.
You may choose to have a $2000 cost of living, but you would choose that too through a pay raise. You could be empowered to keep $1000 cost of living, and there would be more apartments like "yours" if everyone else is moving up in lifestyle.
UBI gives you more choices. If you think everyone else is passive, just paying what they are told, you can use the opportunity to build more affordable life options for people, including easy access to loans from all of the extra money getting spent.
So when I said cost of living I meant in general and not on an individual basis.
For example $1000 would cover all rent and bills, but then companies or landlords get greedy and raise prices so the cost of living is now $2000 making UBI futile. Rather than an individual increasing their own cost of living. If that makes sense.