- 25 Sep 2023 21:10
#15288422
Guaranteed Universal Income has been a wet dream of the Liberal Left.
(I normally do not use such crude language, but in this case I believe the allusion is entirely appropriate)
But a question: How exactly would UBI work with open borders and mass immigration?
How could it work?
The more people there are, the harder it's going to be able to hand out free money to each of them, obviously. Especially when those people being added are poor (typically taking the less desirable jobs the people already in the country are more reluctant to do).
It might be one thing to create entitlements for all the citizens already living in the country, but when a country has an open-borders immigration policy, and will let in just anyone from any other part of the world, the country can't be offering free stuff.
By having open borders and taking in so much immigration, the Left is pretty much near guaranteeing that UBI is never going to be able to practically work.
Free Market economist Milton Friedman said as much in a speech in 1977.
"I have always been amused by kind of a paradox."
Friedman then contrasted immigration to the U.S. before 1914 to the hypothetical of what if the country had those same policies today.
"The United States, as you know, before 1914 had completely free immigration. Anybody could get on a boat and come to these shores."
"But then, suppose I say to the same people: 'But now, what about today? Do you think we should have free immigration?
'Oh no,' they'll say. 'We couldn't possibly have free immigration today. Boy that would, uhh, that would flood us with immigrants from India and God knows where. We'd be driven down to a bare subsistence level.'"
"Why is it that free immigration was a good thing before 1914 and free immigration is a bad thing today?
Well, there is a sense in which that answer is right. There is a sense in which free immigration, in the same sense in which we had it before 1914, is not possible today.
Why not? Because it is one thing to have free immigration to jobs. It is another thing to have free immigration to welfare. And you cannot have both.
If you have a welfare state, if you have a state in which every resident is promised certain minimum level of income, or a minimum level of subsistence - regardless of whether he works or not, produces it or not - well then it really is an impossible thing.
If you have free immigration in the way in which we had it before 1914, everybody benefited."
(I normally do not use such crude language, but in this case I believe the allusion is entirely appropriate)
But a question: How exactly would UBI work with open borders and mass immigration?
How could it work?
The more people there are, the harder it's going to be able to hand out free money to each of them, obviously. Especially when those people being added are poor (typically taking the less desirable jobs the people already in the country are more reluctant to do).
It might be one thing to create entitlements for all the citizens already living in the country, but when a country has an open-borders immigration policy, and will let in just anyone from any other part of the world, the country can't be offering free stuff.
By having open borders and taking in so much immigration, the Left is pretty much near guaranteeing that UBI is never going to be able to practically work.
Free Market economist Milton Friedman said as much in a speech in 1977.
"I have always been amused by kind of a paradox."
Friedman then contrasted immigration to the U.S. before 1914 to the hypothetical of what if the country had those same policies today.
"The United States, as you know, before 1914 had completely free immigration. Anybody could get on a boat and come to these shores."
"But then, suppose I say to the same people: 'But now, what about today? Do you think we should have free immigration?
'Oh no,' they'll say. 'We couldn't possibly have free immigration today. Boy that would, uhh, that would flood us with immigrants from India and God knows where. We'd be driven down to a bare subsistence level.'"
"Why is it that free immigration was a good thing before 1914 and free immigration is a bad thing today?
Well, there is a sense in which that answer is right. There is a sense in which free immigration, in the same sense in which we had it before 1914, is not possible today.
Why not? Because it is one thing to have free immigration to jobs. It is another thing to have free immigration to welfare. And you cannot have both.
If you have a welfare state, if you have a state in which every resident is promised certain minimum level of income, or a minimum level of subsistence - regardless of whether he works or not, produces it or not - well then it really is an impossible thing.
If you have free immigration in the way in which we had it before 1914, everybody benefited."