julie.blank14 posted the question
Will universal basic income end poverty
While some level of income is required for an individual to live in our society, i do not think that current policies of universal basic income would solve such a problem. The reason why it would not work is for tweo reasons. One reason is that the definition of income is a transfer of currency in exchange for labor or goods and universal basic income does not require said labor or goods to be exchanged. The second reason is that poverty is a very difficult state to escape and requires more than just a larger income to get out of.
The income one makes is usually due to the work one has put into making said income. This causation motivates people to wrok harder and longer in order to produce more income. This is how our society works, and is why many people considered middle class are hard workers. What a universal basic income would do is remove the work correlation from the income. Since naturally no one wants to work, no one will work without the incentive of income, and the people who recieve universal basic income will work less and less the more they recieve which puts less work into our society.
The scond and most complicated issue is poverty. All communities around the world have impoversihed people. While thier reasons for becoming impoverished are many, the issue is moving out of poverty. Since impoverished people have almost no valuables they do not have any expendable income and must focuse on using what they have to survive. While you may think that providing a universal basic income would bring them out of poverty, it in fact does not. In our current society, government programs such as unemployment checks provide income simmilar to that of a universal basic income. As seen with covid causing unemployment, many people will continue to live off of unemployment even though they could find another job and provie even more income for themselves. The solution to poverty isnt just to throw money at the impoverished, the impoverished also need to be willing to put in the effort and work to pull themselves out of poverty.
I know that may seem cruel, and I know that many people such as the disabled and mentally ill cannot just go "get a job" and pull themselves out of poverty. That is why i say that universal basic income will not work as it stands. I think universal basic income should be a government program able to assist those who cannot help themsleves. I also think that such a system should be forgiving to those less fortonate than others. However, universal basic income should be used as a stepping off point and not a life support. Society cannot function without the exchange of goods and services, and if thier are more outputs than inputs, then the system will not survive.