This is not about what UBI “means to me”, but about what the basic idea is that everyone but you calls “UBI”. The basic idea is to sweep away all of the various special-case means-tested benefits that require armies of staff to implement, and replace them by a single one that is paid to everyone. Are you alive? Are you a citizen? Then you get the UBI. That’s it. That is the fundamental idea.
You can advocate for different welfare systems involving means tests and training vouchers and food stamps and businesses lobbying for this and that, but you don’t get to call that a “redefinition” of UBI, any more than you can redefine “blue” to mean the colour of bananas or “France” to mean Australia.
I don’t deny that many, maybe the majority, view UBI as unconditional. But to say ALL define UBI this way is a really strong statement, do you have any proof?
Here an example I found on Britannica:
Uganda’s UBI trial, the Youth Opportunities Program, enabled participants to invest in skills training as well as tools and materials, resulting in an increase of business assets by 57%, work hours by 17%, and earnings by 38%.
Christopher Blattman et al., “Generating Skilled Self-Employment in Developing Countries: Experimental Evidence from Uganda,” ssrn.com, Nov. 14, 2013
The article you link begins by bluntly saying, “Universal basic income (UBI) is an unconditional cash payment given at regular intervals by the government to all residents, regardless of their earnings or employment status.” Yes! That is what UBI is! It continues, “UBI remains largely theoretical and, thus, does not have much of a history.” Yes! That is also true!
Various partial versions have been tried to a limited extent. But the Blattman et al paper the article cites does not claim to have anything to do with UBI. Neither “UBI” nor “universal” occur anywhere in that paper, and the welfare scheme it studies is nothing like UBI. The reference is irrelevant to the encyclopedia article, which has no business calling it “Uganda’s UBI trial”.
Have Encyclopedia Britannica sunk so low as to use chatbots to write for them? Eheu!
If definition was so important to me, I could argue with you what unconditional really means and if the unsupervised Uganda program falls under the definition of UBI even when it’s only granted to applicants with a valid proposal. But I give up, you win. And I don’t have to defend Britannica, because it’s so well established.
This is not about what UBI “means to me”, but about what the basic idea is that everyone but you calls “UBI”. The basic idea is to sweep away all of the various special-case means-tested benefits that require armies of staff to implement, and replace them by a single one that is paid to everyone. Are you alive? Are you a citizen? Then you get the UBI. That’s it. That is the fundamental idea.
You can advocate for different welfare systems involving means tests and training vouchers and food stamps and businesses lobbying for this and that, but you don’t get to call that a “redefinition” of UBI, any more than you can redefine “blue” to mean the colour of bananas or “France” to mean Australia.
I don’t deny that many, maybe the majority, view UBI as unconditional. But to say ALL define UBI this way is a really strong statement, do you have any proof?
Here an example I found on Britannica:
Uganda’s UBI trial, the Youth Opportunities Program, enabled participants to invest in skills training as well as tools and materials, resulting in an increase of business assets by 57%, work hours by 17%, and earnings by 38%.
Christopher Blattman et al., “Generating Skilled Self-Employment in Developing Countries: Experimental Evidence from Uganda,” ssrn.com, Nov. 14, 2013
Link: https://www.britannica.com/procon/universal-basic-income-UBI-debate
The article you link begins by bluntly saying, “Universal basic income (UBI) is an unconditional cash payment given at regular intervals by the government to all residents, regardless of their earnings or employment status.” Yes! That is what UBI is! It continues, “UBI remains largely theoretical and, thus, does not have much of a history.” Yes! That is also true!
Various partial versions have been tried to a limited extent. But the Blattman et al paper the article cites does not claim to have anything to do with UBI. Neither “UBI” nor “universal” occur anywhere in that paper, and the welfare scheme it studies is nothing like UBI. The reference is irrelevant to the encyclopedia article, which has no business calling it “Uganda’s UBI trial”.
Have Encyclopedia Britannica sunk so low as to use chatbots to write for them? Eheu!
If definition was so important to me, I could argue with you what unconditional really means and if the unsupervised Uganda program falls under the definition of UBI even when it’s only granted to applicants with a valid proposal. But I give up, you win. And I don’t have to defend Britannica, because it’s so well established.