I came across a link to Europe's New Social Reality: The Case Against Universal Basic Income and thought to check which killer arguments the author was using. They turned out to be three:
1. Public support for higher spending,
2. Deservingness and the welfare state,
3. Social norms around work.
KCN No 1 is easily dealt with. No evidence is given that higher taxation would be necessary, apart from an unevidenced claim that CI would cost £34Bn (Hirsch (2015)estimates that even by abolishing most existing benefits, an extra £34 billion would need to beraised each year.). There is no suggestion that CI could be implemented by removing the tax-free amount from claimants, for instance.
KCN No 2 is dealt with in the same way. Sure, the sight of the titled lady in her Rolls-Royce pulling up to the Post Office to claim the Child Benefit for her children was not a popular one, however, if CI is made conditional on the removal of the tax-free amount, then rich people would not be claiming it, they would have the tax-free amount instead.
KCN No 3 is the classic right wing argument that if you give poor people money, they won't work, completely ignoring the fact that it is abundantly obvious that this doesn't happen with rich people, who, whilst in receipt of more money that they know what to do with, still put in long hours.
In fact, from the short amount of time I spent reading the paper (I wasn't going to spend an estimated 78 minutes of my life reading the whole thing), it appears that it should really be titled, The Case for Universal Basic Income.
Debate Magazine
