Giving Away Money Won’t End Poverty, but It Will Destroy Something Special About America

One of the left’s hot new policy ideas is simply to give money to everyone to end poverty.

And of course, California is leading the charge.

Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., proposed a national plan last week that would give families making under $100,000 a tax credit of $500 per month, which adds up to $6,000 a year.

Harris’ plan, though vague on details, is quite similar to a policy idea that’s becoming increasingly popular.

Universal basic income, or UBI, has a wide variety of supporters from radical leftists to tech CEOs. It’s essentially a no-strings attached money giveaway to ensure that nobody falls below the poverty line.

Even a few conservative and libertarian-leaning thinkers, like Charles Murray,argue that the universal basic income could be an improvement over the current welfare system. Their reasoning is that it essentially does a better job of cutting out bureaucratic middlemen—though that rests on the unlikely assumption that all other welfare programs would get eliminated.

Proponents of UBI argue that it will stave off the effects of automation and provide an efficient way to prevent poverty in the turbulent, globalized economy of the future. The idea is that middle and working-class jobs will simply disappear, leaving wide swaths of society unable to make ends meet.

It has certainly been gaining steam as a serious policy proposal.

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