As someone who use to be on government assistance, I assure you, it's not what people think it is. These systems keep you in poverty because any increase in your income is a cut to your assistance. You basically have to live off less than $1,000 a month in order to keep your "benefits".

Milton Friedman proposed Negative Income Tax, not UBI

This Is What Happened When Maine Forced Welfare Recipients To Work For Their Benefits ...After forcing these individuals to either work part-time for twenty hours each week, enroll in a vocational program, or volunteer for a minimum of twenty-four hours per month, the numbers showed a significant drop from 12,000 enrollees to just over 2,500.

An alternative to welfare: Private charity and mutual-aid societies within an economically free society!!!

One major advantage I see in Universal Basic Income is we can finally get rid of the shitty minimum wage system.

C'mon guys. Use your heads here and think. He's not saying this is the ideal way to solve the welfare problem. He's saying this way is a more realistic and efficient alternative. This is why he said he's a directionalist. This is about moving the government in a direction where it wastes less money and offers people more freedom. It's not the best way but it's better than what we have. If you're going to spend money, at least don't waste it.

"An Alternative to Welfare" "Another Welfare Scheme"

I don't personally know a single person on welfare that doesn't spend their money on tobacco, weed and other non-essentials/luxury items I couldn't afford while establishing myself. (I live in the UK) They seem perfectly content with their lifestyle and don't really seem to pursue anything in life and have little respect for the houses provided by the local council. The messiest houses Ive visited have been council houses, people who own their own homes tend to more often have clean homes which is interesting because people who work have less time to clean. I don't think these kinds of people are going to change their lifestyle around just by having more access to money, Its a cultural / social issue. If your raised in a shit hole and are never taught the the principles that make a person a success in the real world then you're destined to fail.

I notice he included Social Security in the programs to be eliminated to pay for Universal Basic Income. So I pay into a system for 47 years to receive $24,00 a year so that I can lose it to receive $12,000 a year in Universal Basic Income. The other $12,000 goes to someone that has never worked their whole life. Does that sound fair to you?

So the alternative to welfare is... a different welfare program?

UBI is still a bad idea. Ask anyone on a native reserve.

I was opposed to universal basic income but I had never heard anyone make it a replacement for all other welfare programs. With that condition it's a great idea. If you blow it all on booze and drugs the person who suffers most is you. If you use to it to improve your life and your family you will get the reward of your investment. There is a discussion to be had about how much but the premise, with the aforementioned condition, is better than what we have now. I just got a promotion that increases my income by 2 and a half times. I have been living in subsidized housing, collecting food stamps, and my wife and children are on Medicaid. Now we have to move and we will lose those benefits. I did the math and I will have the same or slightly less disposable income than before. When you factor in that my employer's health insurance has copays, deductibles, and less than 100% coverage on lots of things I might be significantly worse off. Makes you think, doesn't it?

Just so everyone is aware, a $12,000 UBI to the 325 million people in America would cost $3.9 trillion (with a T). The Federal government is projected to collect $3.5T, the States $1.7T, and Local governments $1.4T.

3 questions - 1. Wouldn't a universal basic income just cause inflation to go up by whatever percentage would make the income amount become worthless because prices would have to go up proportionally to make up for the tax that pays for it? 2. Do any countries actually do this? 3. Don't we already have UBI for people over 65? Social Security? What about all the people who are saying that program is unsustainable?

Stop rewarding people for not having a plan for their life. Have a plan if you plan to have!

I believe Hayek spoke about some sort of basic income as well, with the idea that we protect the free market from coercion. People being part of that free market also require a means against coercion. With a basic income min wage should also be abolished.

It's redistribution of wealth. No dude.

I am by no means an economist. My expertise is medicine. I do have one question that perplexes me with this video. If everyone increases their income by universal income standard, warm things increase proportionally to the influx of the new revenue within the social system? So, won't this negate the value of the universal income?

This would still impair the incentives to generate wealth, as does our current welfare system

UBI encourages self-responsibility and encourages that bridge to a full-time job/career. Milton Friedman advocated for a negative income tax.

You would have to spend 5 to 10 yrs fighting the insurance company. I’ve seen it before. That’s why it’s good to have a safety net in a society that works .

Or the government could just stop taking people's taxes and giving it to other people, and let people help themselves.

“The poor people will spend the money in wrong things”🤔 May be is where education fails too🤔

I believe in Milton Friedman Negative Income Tax. Which could be played for through a Land Value Tax or a flat consumption tax.

Welfare - the government is a terrible polygamist. Universal Basic Income - the government is a terrible charity.

Honestly the fast majority will spend it wrong but not intentionally. We need to include financial education so people know how to manage their income.

This is the first rational argument for Universal Basic Income. I'm not 100% convinced, but this is a very interesting way of putting it.

The sad problem government faces ironically is that by simplifying the bureaucracy and saving money, that probably just decreases the jobs available in government therefore less money to people who take up these positions. Governments purpose is to spend money on creating jobs, even inefficiently if required.

The reason some people hate welfare is because we don't want people who didn't earn their money to live as comfortably as those who had to work hard for it. I think the best solution would be to provide the BARE essentials while keeping a general discomfort, so as to give an incentive to people to improve their situation. So the state might set up food banks where people without income can get free food (only boring basics, no beer or cigarettes or unhealthy snacks). The state could also set up homeless centers where people can go sleep. These homeless centers would have no TVs or entertainment. Electricity and water would be rationed. People's essential needs would be met, but their everyday life would be so boring and uninspiring that they might find job-hunting a nice way of spending their time. As for people with disabilities with no family to fall back on, we would have to provide some medical care and some extra-comfort, but I think the number of people in these conditions pales compared to the people on welfare who are fit for work and choose not to for various reasons.

It's a disappointment seeing Learn Liberty advocating for UBI.

Yes please enforce prosperity for everyone. How come no one ever thought of this solution before, it's brilliant. We're all gonna be rich. Where do I sign my soul away? oh you already did that for me.

A recent study found out that. with a basic income the only people quit jobs were overwheamingly low income students, and mothers.

Alternative to welfare is called WORK! If anyone needs a helping hand then give them a loan and help them find work then take your money back once they are working. STOP all handouts

How do we stop a UBI from growing larger and larger over time? There will always be more winners than losers for every politician to advocate for another increase in a UBI. We've seen something similar with socialised medicine where the demand is limitless and budgets and bureaucracies only grow. Why saddle ourselves with another burden?

in a previous Liberty U video it was stated $20k was spent on each poor person..adding up federal, state, and local govt. but I can how this is discussing federal policy so maybe 12k comes fed of 20k

Now, is he taking about the same basic income amount given to everyone? Because Milton Freud was not in favor of that. He proposed a negative income tax, a system in which tax credits are allowed if you make under a certain amount. And if your credits outweigh your tax liability, you get a percentage of the difference given to you. It's essentially a wage subsidy that increases or decrease in proportion to your income if it's below a certain level. It eliminates the cliff effect of welfare, providing a way for the poor to work and earn more without being penalized for doing so. It would replace all welfare, under Friedman's plan. There would be no means testing or anything like that. It would be money directly given. It would be administratively much cheeper, and may cost zero to administer if you also enacted a flat positive income tax and abolished the IRS. There would still be free loaders, but there always have and always will be. Friedman also made the point that it wouldn't be a GOOD plan necessarily. It would just be the least bad option.

Wow! Learn Liberty preaching communist ideals, never saw that coming.

A serious problem with this is that if recipients blow it on booze and drugs, etc., it's their innocent children who will suffer, just as what happens with the current welfare system.

A lot of commenters here are criticising the fact that LL has endorsed UBI. They're ignoring the fact that we ALREADY have a huge bloated welfare state. Instituting a UBI would eliminate all other bureaucracy and welfare agencies and leave us with ONE welfare agency that's cheaper to operate and uses a small fraction of the manpower to administrate. Compared to doing NOTHING is a UBI good? No. Obviously not ... but we're not in a situation where we have nothing, are we? We're in a situation where we have something ... and it's huge and terrible and it's expensive. Is a UBI better than what we currently have? YES! Without a doubt! THIS is why LL is advocating it. Not because it's better than nothing, but because it's better than what we have and it gets us closer to having nothing. We didn't get into this welfare state in one big step. It was incremental steps over 100 years. We're not going to eliminate the welfare state in one big step either. Be realistic. If we're going to get rid of it, it will have to be one step at a time and a UBI would be a HUGE step in the right direction ... so why NOT support it? That's not rhetorical. That's a real question. Can you give me any reason why we shouldn't trade out our current system for a UBI?

If the UBI is a tax on infrastructure that we paid for I support it because that would be in alignment with Jefferson's idea of "promote the general welfare." Specifically: 1) it must be general (universal) not to a specific group or territory. 2) it must not involve stipulations of federal overreach on the population. 3) it must be a legal duty or tax on a public common, resource or infrastructure. So if corporations are using our public commons like satellites and the internet grid, which they do, the public deserves fair compensation for the use of our property. The last thing Yang should do to appeal to libertarians in regards to the UBI is call it a "negative income tax" because it is not. What he should do is make it a legal dividend from the use of public commons infrastructure and resources.

I always thought a good alternative to welfare was work.

Biggest problem with this scheme is probably the work disincentive. It would be very tempting to simply quit working and live cheap, since there would be no social condemnation of using what everyone gets. Second biggest problem is the raw cost. He glibly says this will replace all other programs, including social security. Yeah, but do the math: 12k per year for adult population (78% of 308 million). That's 2.9 trillion dollars per year. That's 66% of the entire federal budget.

I remember in an interview Shark Tank host Kevin O'leary said the same thing as a way to make the standing Canadian welfare system more efficient. I could not find that interview again, but it is great to find this interview with that same premise, but more articulated. I agree that is the easiest and fastest way to reform our welfare now, just get everything together and just make it a single simple payment on a monthly basis. It is also great that he noted the Libertarian view that must be put on this Directional vs. Destinational.

Update the safety net. Have a means tested financial safety net (at the state level), not a safety net based on government run programs for everyone.

It seems to have the same basic problem as welfare: it will expand indefinitely, both in number of people receiving it and the amount they receive.

Interesting thought process, but how would you stop the runaway inflation as an unintended consequence? As an analogy, consider the rise in cost of education after the government started giving out tuition assistance. I still don't see UBI as a viable alternative to the very piss poor idea that the government has to take care of the destitute.

Milton freidman did NOT advocate for a UBI, he advocated for a negitive income tax. He said its the least bad government wealfare. Just as he said the least bad tax is the land value tax.

I'm all for Universal income but if you are on universal income you should not be allowed to vote, as you are not a responsible independent adult who can take care of them self. Another caveat if we are going to do Universal income is the only way I would support it is if all social programs are shut down that includes public education Social Security Medicaid everything it's got to go. All government employees that work on those programs should also be laid off.

The only way Universal Basic Income would work is if you gave everyone the same basic income from the poorest of poor, to the richest of the rich. Then if a person's income is above a certain level, they pay a portion back and the higher the income the more you pay back. For example if you make 30k then pay 10% back, going up 5% for every 10k income till you reach 100%. This all or nothing because you reach a threshold is stupid.

Surprised to see a universal income get mentioned on this channel, considering the kind of all taxation is theft/all or nothing views I see at least in the comments. I believe at automation of more and more 'complex' jobs takes over a universal income will gain more traction, and gradually increase to the payout. Currently I'd be in favor of a UBI that is just barely enough to house and feed yourself, without taking into consideration the cost of living of areas like most big cities. Encourage the movement of people to areas where there is a need for people rather than a need for housing, let the free market take care of immigration.

How about holding people accountable for making bad choices?

Correction! Milton Friedman is NOT for UBI, He argued for negative income tax!

What I don't understand about UBI is "how would we mitigate inflation?". If the money supply increases all around (without a corresponding increase in the number of goods), isn't that the text book definition of inflation?

In line at a grocery store a woman with Louis Vuitton bag gold earrings, bracelet, necklace; Using food stamps. The woman behind her had no food stamps and was using coupons, and she was not carrying a 900$ bag.

Universal basic income and welfare are exactly the same thing --- money a person did not earn, and does not deserve. Giving them this money is always wrong, because it is not able to actually help any human being, ever.

No thank you. Take away my Social Security and give me $12,000 instead? That cuts my income in half. I already paid more into SS than I will ever get back in my lifetime.

It will not work.

They shouldn’t be complaining on what they get to spend on the handouts they’re getting. Those who supply the handouts deserve a say.

He said: use funds from the existing subsidies to pay everyone a BUI. So how this works is one would pay a tax into this thing and receive a shiny new paycheck from the government in the form of supplemental income. How bout I just keep that money and we call it good.

Good thought and makes tremendous sense. The biggest problem, however, is to suggest in a political economy that assuming politicians would never keep creating additional and new support programs would be an assumption that has never held true.

As a liberal who supports a strong welfare state, I agree! I generally prefer universal programs to means tested programs, because means testing come with negative side effects and extra bureacracy

There are 329.5 million people in the US. If you were to give them all UBI of $1,000/month that'd cost 3,954,000,000,000 per year on the payouts alone. That doesn't even include the administration costs. That's 4 trillion dollars. With that said, the US brought in an estimated 3.71 trillion in tax revenue in 2020. Even if the government completely eliminated every other form of spending, no military, no healthcare, no infrastructure, no nothing, it STILL couldn't afford UBI.

Oh, the argument is, we are doing something stupid, but we should do that stupid thing differently? That is just stupidity squared...

The problem will be that if a universal basic income is introduced, none of the other subsides will be dropped. It will become one more entitlement piled on top of all the others. Friedman was in favour of basic income only if the other entitlements were eliminated.

Replacing Welfare with UBI is a shell game. The new system will be abused by the same people who abused the old system. "The state is a bad polygamist" is a catchy catch phrase but ignores the basic fact: You should produce and earn what you deserve. The government should not be picking winners and losers.

Normally I would be entirely against this concept it seems naive to say the least. However his arguments were good and he said them very elegantly and I am currently intrigued. If we got rid of every type of welfare 100% clean slate, I wonder how much we could just give anyone and everyone over the age of 18 who weren't working. How much would it be? Would it be so much that we could easily cut it back and save money? Would it be so little that it couldn't even cover basic needs? Here is why I ask, if someone more qualified than me ran the numbers and we realized if we did that we'd actually be able to give these people a lot of money, so than we could cut it back significantly so the amount they got was literally bare minimum for basic food, water and shelter maybe some medical needs would it save everyone else money as well? If it was such a basic amount people could move around and not worry so much and because it didn't provide enough for luxuries people would still be very driven to stop needing it. Maybe even minimum wage could be cut back and this base income could essentially compensate anyone who got paid less than a certain threshold. However if we did the numbers and we discovered the only way for it to work was to get everyone else to pay even more well my answer is still, why should I pay for everyone else? I'm not rich, I don't live in luxury I work stupid amounts of hours and sacrifice my own life and well being, if you're not willing to do the same than you're not someone who even deserves my help.

Universal Basic Income can be a wonderful alternative to welfare! Just make sure it's only enough for the bare minimum reasonable standard of living, and it replaces nearly all existing welfare programs. That's really the only way a ubi can be sustainable long term. Homelessness and destitution would likely plummet to almost nothing, prison recidivism rates would fall, etc. Now the only bad things about ubi would be its potential to lower the work ethic of the population and make them even more dependent upon the state. Also, it would be unsustainable unless almost all alphabet soup agencies were abolished and the ubi was very small.

Recognizing the distorting affects of state intervention, he purposes a half-measure. Time for whole measures.

UBI is a bad idea because, once you concede it, you will have those state taxes back ON TOP OF UBI. What will happen is the system will collapse first due to debt default and then the correct position will be established- no welfare paid. No forced transfer to those who don't work from those who do.

Where did Milton Friedman say he is OK with UBI? I know he was promoting negative income tax but I never heard anything about UBI from him.

This is a good argument but doesn't account for the dis-incentivisation of productivity nor the demand push inflation in CPI due to this. Would be great to see this worked out.

3:20 Destinationalist or Directionalist

The only way UBI could possibly work is for a body completely independent of the government to distribute the money. Otherwise every election time, each party would just promise more and more.

After watching this Prager U. video called "The War on Work" I got curious. The total cost to the Union of the Civil War was $6.2 billion. (In 2015 dollars, that's $96.8 billion.) In the Prager video, the speaker said we paid $960 billion to fight poverty in 2012. In short, we spend almost exactly ten times as much to eliminate poverty every year as the ENTIRE Civil War cost the Union...in real dollars. According to blackdemographics.com, 42.6 million Americans identify themselves as "black only". Divide $960 billion by that, and it comes to $22,535 for every black man, woman and child in America. A one-time gift would pay for college for every black kid under 18, and it would pay the rent and groceries for every unemployed black adult for a year, enough time to get off drugs, go back to school or find some kind of job. And that's just how much we spent in one year. Poverty, Inc. is big business, and that is why NO ONE helping the poor ever wants them to go away.

This cannot even be discussed until the borders are firmly shut.

Hold up... if you're taking the same amount of money that's currently being spent on all social programs combined, and spend that amount on UBI, wouldn't some people end up receiving less in benefits than they are now? I don't think that would go over too well.

His argument only holds with "we're already spending the money, just spend it better" but if we're changing the system, why not change it to eliminate wealth redistribution, which is the reason people get trapped in poverty anyway

I've never heard this perspective before. I like the directionalist vs destinationalist distinction. The only thing I can disagree with is marriage being positive. The marriage risk premium is the highest of all... ..With equities, you can at least exit your position and know the exact loss BEFORE you sell!!! Marriage makes hyperinflation look like child's play... ...with hyperinflation, you can hold on to your hard/fixed assets until things normalize (assuming you have enough canned food).

I admire his practicality. Replacement is a small step compared to abolishment. At least it's in the right direction. Still, I prefer negative income tax as Friedman explained.

Can someone please explain to me how am I a debt slave if I haven't borrowed anything?

I never thought I'd be agreeing with a libertarian.

Thank you I've been saying this for 10 years

$12K UBI in San Francisco or NY City is different than $12K UBI in Tulsa or St. Paul. Also, base prices for many goods and services could increase.

3:43 The government shouldn't give out money, it's theft, the one plan is to get rid of it. Ending government is the end goal, all else is secondary.

Every state action has a cost on its population. The balance of state services and individual services can’t be thrown out of balance.

I vote for zero social assistance. If you’re unemployed then the state should find some shit work for you to do and compensate you that way. You’d be amazed how motivated someone will get when the have to pick up trash or cut grass in 100 degree heat.

Good video, I disagree with the content. Good explanations of how people feel about Universal income.

This is why I'd rather watch PragerU videos. I hope they win the lawsuit against KZfaq and Google.

I have had this question for a while, wouldn't every single person recieving say $10k just mean that prices will eventually rise to an equilibrium so it is as if that $10k is barely worth anything? Or am I way off here?

Why doesn't the state just provide jobs for the unemployed? Simple and cheap solution.

Even social security? So somone who works all his life and is now too old to work has to take a pay cut to help younger people that refuse to work at all?

Wow... that actually made a LOT of sense. And I'm as anti-UBI as it comes; but the idea of a more efficient administration of currently existing entitlements is a great step in the "smaller-government" direction (the idea of eliminating thousands of state and federal bureaucrats makes me giddy).

The problem is that you're gonna get UBI and the current system

A flat tax with a universal basic and tax free retirement and health savings account and a school voucher system would fix America.

If I was reviewing " free" money, a universal basic income, why should I work? Hell, why should anyone work? Just quit your job and do nothing, it wouldn't matter, you get paid regardless. That is the problem with this argument.

I agree with some of what he said, big time disagree with others. 1) If you eliminate social security, do you cut benefits for us nearing retirement who were counting on whatever was promised, and put folks into poverty that have been working for 30-40 years. 2) If you give cash to an addict, they WILL spend it on drugs, alcohol, gambling, sex, whatever their addiction is, they can't help it. Unless they are one of the few that can make a huge life change, they won't care for their kids, their parents, their addiction always comes first. 3) SO.... if you come up with a UBI plan that makes the person receiving the benefits show that they are responsibly using them, I'm onboard, but otherwise, I think the benefits would be wasted.

Cant be liberty loving and wear your heart on your sleeve when it comes to other ppls money.

I think a good idea, if you attempt to move towards a market approach to welfare, is to roll all social spending into 3 flexoble individual budget items 1) education savings accounts 2) health savings accounts 3) basic discretionary income. All 3 would act as optional/universal federal grants given to individuals not states or programs and this allows people the flexibility to spend the tax money they believe they are entitled to in the ways that they normally would if it were their income. Combined with reforms to school and health spending this might work. Would have to see if fiscally possible

The problem with a Universal Basic Income - You MUST pay it to everyone. If you have any line where you stop paying it, than the cliff exists. I'm a fan of something similar to a Universal Basic Income, but I think it should be structured on a sliding scale. So basically, if you decide that $40K annually is the minimum anyone should get, than someone 100% dependent on government should receive that money. For every dollar you make in income from a job, you lose 50 cents of the government money. That way, anyone with a job is still better off than they were before the job. Anyone getting a raise is still better off than they were before the raise, etc. Now, I don't know if those are the exact best numbers. You have to let people keep enough of their own money that they have an incentive to get the extra money. Right now, the system is exactly the opposite. There are actually income ranges where for every dollar a person makes, the lose more than a dollar of government benefits, leaving them worse off after a raise than they were before. That provides a disincentive for people to become self-sufficient and is a dangerous trap. Sure, eventually that person will be better off if they continue to improve their circumstances, but they may go years worse off in the meantime and most people aren't going to look that far ahead. As for the "they will spend it on the wrong things" argument. I don't have much sympathy for that argument. Paying providers directly can address some of that, but people will say "that's what we are doing today". That has 3rd-party payer issues which drives costs artificially high and is not good. But even if we kept that end of things, we still need to consolidate entitlements and have a sliding scale instead of the cliff so that there is incentive to become self-sufficient.

UBI has issues, like giving it to people who don't need it or landlords will know how much money one has additionally so they can raise rent by that amount. Also additional aid for disabled etc seems like a valid left position to hold so cutting it all is radical. Tax simplification and a negative tax would solve the issues UBI has while also being cheaper, especially if it's just enough to not starve and make an employable appearance.