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Charles Murray, a well known conservative economist, first wrote an article about the idea of a guaranteed minimum income for all in the early 1980’s. He was not the first to express this idea but was the first one I had read about. I thought the idea a little outrageous when I first read his proposals but over time they have made more sense to me. Especially when ever more people are going to be put out of work through technology and automation.
He wrote another article in the WSJ this past June reiterating his ideas and I believe this time around he has more sympathetic eyes (or ears as it may be) on the topic:
Quote
When people learn that I want to replace the welfare state with a universal basic income, or UBI, the response I almost always get goes something like this: “But people will just use it to live off the rest of us!” “People will waste their lives!” Or, as they would have put it in a bygone age, a guaranteed income will foster idleness and vice. I see it differently. I think that a UBI is our only hope to deal with a coming labor market unlike any in human history and that it represents our best hope to revitalize American civil society.
