Jacob Smith
11:00
At this point in the video Dr. Trost makes a statement on the current welfare system of the United States, claiming it promotes a cycle of dependency over encouraging those who receive it to seek out economic freedom. He expands on this statement with the introduction of his own proposal of a universal dividend, but I feel like he never really touched on why the current welfare system doesn’t promote the same freedoms his plan promises. I think the proposal did not include enough direct comparisons to the current welfare system and why the new plan would be an improvement. During Dr. Trost’s talk, he briefly mentions the arguments against a UBI, acknowledging some of the drawbacks a universal dividend would have on the country. *However, I don’t believe some of the arguments he listed against the UBI are very profound, especially the “Entitlement Mentality”. I really wish he expanded more on this idea and why it is a drawback in the first place, especially because I believe this is a symptom of a larger problem within the United States, and I don’t think his proposal makes a solid attempt at solving the problem. Why is an entitlement mentality bad when it originates from a basic human need? *
28:00
Around this point of the lecture Dr. Trost talks about what he claims is one of the biggest benefits of his proposed UBI, the “freedom to walk away”. Under this universal basic dividend plan he’s proposed, no matter where someone lives in the united states, they will receive the exact some percentage of funding. He uses the example: If someone cannot afford to live in New York with that universal income, then they have the freedom to move a state with a lower cost of living while receiving the same universal income. While the idea of this sounds nice on paper, I cannot see a reality where this is a benefit for a majority of the population. The solution itself comes off as “well if you don’t like it here then just leave” which is a fair statement to make in retrospect, but I was hoping the UBI would intend to solve some of the problems people face in higher cost regions than just “allow” them to move away. Overpopulation of states where the cost of living is lower would become a problem, as those regions are not prepared for that kind of jump. A student mentions this problem at the end of the lecture, and while Dr. Trost presents a solution, I still don’t believe it’s very strong. Trost believes that a result of a non-geographically based income would encourage competition between regions where they need to find that “it factor”, persuading families to move to their towns. He gave an example of Agra, OK banding together to build a world-renown pre-engineering school, where families could be encouraged to bring their kids to get a great education, all the while affording to live in the low cost community with just their UBI. Where would this town get the funding to construct a facility of this scale, how would they encourage intelligent instructors to relocate to a smaller town with little to nothing to offer outside of a school, and what would happen to the rest of the townspeople? If a majority of people living in the low cost community could live there just off of their UBI, then what’s the incentive for them to work in the first place. You’d end up with communities where thousands of residents are jobless and the only people making much of a living are the ones working for the small local businesses. This wouldn’t encourage economic growth, and people and business would not want to relocate to these locations. Banking on a communal school just doesn’t seem strong enough to be an appropriate solution to this problem. And sure we can’t avoid these types of lazy communities from existing, some people just straight up don’t want to work and if they can make a living off of UBI then all the power to them. For the rest, they can “move” to a place with more opportunities right? But what if the only places that have those opportunities have too high of a cost of living? What happens to those families?
No Minimum Wage
Finally, Dr. Trost mentions that under his proposed UBI, all personal and corporate welfare programs will be eliminated, along with minimum wage restrictions. The reasoning behind these being we just couldn’t afford to have both a UBI and welfare, and without a minimum wage poor and unskilled workers have a better chance at finding work. While I don’t necessarily disagree with these non-negotiables, I am not very convinced that the new plan will solve the issues that will arise with the elimination of them. A poor unskilled man born from a family of poverty, living on food stamps and working at gas station, is suddenly stripped of his food source and due to the low skill requirement of being a gas station clerk, his salary is dropped to 4 an hour. Because he lives in the city, that 750 a month he will now receive is not enough to cover the cost of living. Without any support from welfare aid, or a guaranteed minimum wage that previously helped pay for his housing, the man is left to make a decision under this new system. Does he stay where he’s at, and fight to earn a higher wage at a job where there’s not much growth available, and eat rice and beans in order to barely afford housing? Or does he just move away to a small town, where the opportunity to grow is significant smaller, but he can at least afford to survive there. It sounds like the cycle of poverty he was born into will now just repeat, but this time he’s just in a different location.