June 5, 2016

UBI Continues To Be Wildly Unpopular

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


The concept of an Unconditional Basic Income has become a hot topic on the interwebs. Conservative Charles Murray started things up in 2006 with the publication of In Our Hands, which created a brief stir and then sank into oblivion because (surprise!) conservatives were distinctly uninterested in cutting unconditional checks to lazy welfare bums.

Then it came out of hibernation a few months ago for reasons that escape me. At the time, I vaguely figured that much of the credit belonged to Vox’s Dylan Matthews for his tireless advocacy of a UBI. It also, of course, had something to do with the explosion of Bernie mania. Bernie doesn’t actually support a UBI, but he’s said that it’s “something that must be explored” and it pretty plainly fits into his general worldview. Nonetheless, after another 15 minutes of fame, it went into hibernation again. But it refused to die, emerging from its lair yet again a few weeks ago. Considering the fact that a UBI has less chance of being enacted than a law guaranteeing everyone a pet unicorn, this is a little odd. What’s going on?

I’m still not sure, but much of it was probably due to an upcoming UBI referendum in Switzerland, engineered by the lefty Swiss community a couple of years ago. Today, after months of anticipation, they finally voted on it—and the results weren’t pretty. Even in the heart of social democratic Europe, the mere concept of a UBI1 ended up with only 23 percent approval. It’s still in pet unicorn territory.

But eventually it will become reality. We just have to wait for the robot revolution to evolve to the point where lots of middle-class white people are permanently put out of work. Then it swiftly will go from pet unicorn to “duh.” I imagine this transformation will take a surprisingly short time and will happen sometime around 2030 or so.

1Despite endless headlines suggesting the Swiss were voting on payouts of $2,500 per month, the actual text of the initiative directs the Swiss parliament only to enact a UBI that “shall enable the whole population to live in human dignity and participate in public life.” The actual level and financing of the UBI are not specified.

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate