Todays America
Living in America today you see a wide variety of some realistic and unrealistic views. We see more and more people leaning towards wanting handouts and to not having to work to achieve what they want in life on their own.
The dependency
Listening to the lecture video on the idea of Universal Basic Income (UVI) by Dr. Steve Trost was quite interesting in the sense that it made you really think and wonder. In modern-day America we see a wide range of families that are becoming more and more dependent on the government which continues to hand out subsidies such as welfare and disability to those who don’t need it. Why is this? I feel that this continual cycle that we see of people relying on the government for handout are people who have no work ethic and don’t want to live a better life. We find these people in small rural areas that don’t have many work opportunities to provide for each person in the community or the jobs that are there do pay enough to make them want to get off of welfare. Growing up my family owned and operated a small business in a small town in Southwest Oklahoma, we saw numerous times when employees would put themselves in harms way to hurt themselves so they could draw disability.
Reallocation
If the government was to enact the Universal Basic Income proposal on January ,1 2026 and do away with welfare where would they reallocate this funding to? I feel as if this money would best be allocated to different areas that are currently less funded. I would like to think that we could see this money be allocated to schools, retired veterans, and start a project to help the homeless get back on their feet. In America we allocate so much money to welfare when we could be using that money for our schools to purchase new books, electronics, facilities, and safety precautions for the students.
Is making more really a good thing for some Americans?
During the lecture it was brought up that “that people who make more money tend to work less.” This statement is relatively true in that people who make more money are content and happy with their lives and that they do not have to worry if their bills are paid and if they can put food on their tables. Whereas, I have seen firsthand people who are considered lower class are either working to try and improve their life to be better or they are relying on the government to issue welfare and food stamps.
The good and the bad
I see many advantages and disadvantages of the Universal Basic Income plan. Will we see more people trying to live off of it than we are currently living solely on warfare today? In Oklahoma this would account for more than what the average welfare is per year. However, this would help with those who are using disability. This would allow the lower income class to potentially live a better life and hopefully strive to work harder to continually increase their income. I fear that we would see a large population of people utilizing this as their source of income, if they were a family of four that would be $36,000 per year. We tend to see people of all income brackets living above their means, the Universal Basic Income could tend to make people do this more. This could be a major factor that could hurt lots of people. If you are giving people more money for free, they are going to see people who have not had access to this amount of money start spending more than what they can afford, leading them to be upside down in their finances.
During the lecture this quote by Vernon Howard was mentioned “Our freedom can be measured by the number of things we can walk away from.” This should lead one to think, how far could our freedom be measured by if we were to step away from welfare, credit cards, payday loans, and numerous other things that are holding people back financially. If we were to start working hard and living within our own means we could all be financially free and live well on our own.
Conclusion
The Universal Basic Income plan is very interesting. It has many pros and cons. I like the fact that this would help families that are currently living poverty escape it fast, and that it would add extra income to families to help them get by. However, I feel as if this plan could run into significant problems by the income classes that would fund this. They would view this as if it was essentially a monthly stimulus check for life from the tax payers pocket.