The Case for Universal Basic Income
A personal journey through corporate inefficiency and human nature.
Back in 2015, when I was still navigating the corridors of corporate management, I encountered a reality that would fundamentally reshape my understanding of work and human potential. During a particularly challenging quarter, I found myself overseeing a team where roughly half the employees operated at what I generously estimated to be 30-40% of their actual capability. They weren't lazy or incompetent, they were simply existing within a system that neither demanded nor rewarded exceptional effort to more than a few at the very top.
I witnessed colleagues who could have revolutionized processes choosing instead to maintain comfortable mediocrity. The company's bureaucratic structure made innovation feel futile, so why extend yourself? Meanwhile, I watched genuinely hardworking individuals receive poor performance reviews, not because their work was substandard, but because relative comparisons within the performing peer group skewed the evaluation process. The irony was stark: in a moderation session for high performers, someone inevitably had to be labeled as underperforming, regardless of their actual contribution.
This experience makes me draw a troubling parallel with the universal basic income debate. Just as my corporate environment created perverse incentives that discouraged peak performance from a good part of the workforce , critics argue that Universal Basic Income (UBI) might similarly reduce motivation to work. Yet supporters contend it could liberate human potential by removing survival anxieties. Neither position seemed definitively correct and both carried compelling logic and troubling implications.
Understanding Universal Basic Income
Universal Basic Income represents a social welfare proposal where all citizens receive regular, unconditional cash payments regardless of their employment status or wealth. Unlike traditional welfare systems that impose means tests or work requirements, UBI provides money with no strings attached. The concept exists on a spectrum: a "full basic income" provides enough to meet basic needs above the poverty line, while a "partial basic income" supplements rather than replaces other income sources.
Currently, no country operates a comprehensive UBI system, though Iran and Mongolia have implemented partial versions. Alaska's Permanent Fund Dividend, distributing annual payments to residents from oil revenues, represents the closest real-world example of ongoing UBI implementation.
The Philosophy of Human Nature
Any honest discussion of UBI must deal with fundamental questions about human nature, questions philosophers have debated for centuries. Thomas Hobbes famously characterized humans as inherently selfish, arguing that "men are naturally egoistic and always remain so". In his view, people act primarily from self-interest, requiring strong institutions to maintain social order. With extrapolation, this perspective suggests that providing unconditional income might encourage laziness and social decay.
Conversely, John Stuart Mill argued for a more optimistic view of human potential. He believed that "a desire of perfection and sympathy for fellow human beings belong to human nature". Mill emphasized that people are capable of improvement and altruistic motivation, suggesting that economic security might enable rather than discourage positive human development.
Mill's utilitarian framework, that actions should promote the greatest happiness for the greatest number, provides a compelling lens for evaluating UBI. If guaranteed income reduces suffering and enables people to pursue meaningful activities, it aligns with utilitarian principles regardless of whether recipients choose traditional employment.
Historical attempts to implement universal systems offer sobering lessons. The Soviet experiment with centralized economic planning, despite initial idealism, ultimately failed due to bureaucratic inefficiency and misaligned incentives. Similarly, Nixon's proposed Family Assistance Plan, essentially a negative income tax, passed the House in 1971 but died in the Senate, partly due to lack of broad public support and concerns about work disincentives.
The Silicon Valley Perspective
Today's most prominent UBI advocates emerge from technology's epicenter, driven by concerns about artificial intelligence displacing human workers. Sam Altman, OpenAI's CEO, has personally funded extensive UBI research, stating that "if public policy doesn't adapt, most will end up worse off than they are today". His recent study provided $1,000 monthly to participants over three years, finding positive outcomes without significant work reduction.
Elon Musk predicts that AI will eventually eliminate most jobs, necessitating what he calls "universal high income", not merely basic survival payments, but enough for comfortable living. "There will be universal high income, and not universal basic income, universal high income. There'll be no shortage of goods or services," Musk declared at a 2024 technology conference.
Marc Benioff of Salesforce views the COVID-19 stimulus payments as evidence that UBI is becoming inevitable. "I think that basic income will be part of our future, we can see the need for that right now," he observed, connecting pandemic relief to broader economic transformation.
The Critics' Concerns
Economists and policy experts raise substantial objections to UBI implementation. The primary criticism centers on fiscal sustainability, providing meaningful payments to entire populations would require unprecedented government expenditure. Critics calculate that a universal $1,000 monthly payment in the United States would cost nearly $4 trillion annually, requiring dramatic tax increases or deficit spending.
MIT economist David Autor warns of a different dystopian scenario. Rather than mass unemployment, he predicts that AI will devalue human skills, creating a "Mad Max" future where "everybody is competing over a few remaining resources that aren't controlled by some warlord somewhere". In this view, UBI becomes insufficient compensation for widespread economic displacement.
Work disincentive effects represent another major concern. Studies of negative income tax experiments in the 1970s found that each $1,000 in benefits reduced earnings by $660 on average. While recipients didn't become completely idle, the substantial reduction in work effort raised questions about program sustainability and social values.
The International Monetary Fund identifies additional risks: UBI might reduce work incentives, crowd out other essential social programs, and create unsustainable fiscal pressures, particularly in developing countries with limited resources.
Human Nature and Current Disruption
We face unprecedented technological disruption that may render traditional employment discussions irrelevant. McKinsey research indicates that 60-70% of current work activities could be automated, with knowledge workers, previously considered immune to automation, facing the greatest displacement risk.
In 2025 alone, over 10,000 jobs have been lost to automation in the first quarter, with technology companies leading the displacement. I personally believe the number is much higher. Paradoxically, blue-collar workers appear more protected, with only 1% of such jobs currently at automation risk. The irony is stark: the educated professionals who designed these systems may be among their first casualties. Very generalized statement, I know!
This reversal challenges historical patterns where technological advancement primarily displaced manual laborers. Instead, AI threatens lawyers, accountants, journalists, and analysts, roles requiring cognitive skills rather than physical dexterity. Content creators, web designers, and even enterprise-level programmers face increasing pressure from AI capabilities.
Alternative Solutions and Hybrid Approaches
If UBI proves politically or economically unfeasible, several alternatives merit consideration.
Targeted Basic Income could provide guaranteed payments to specific vulnerable populations like youth aging out of foster care, displaced workers in declining industries, or parents with young children. This approach maintains UBI's simplicity while addressing fiscal concerns through focused application.
Universal Basic Services would guarantee access to essential services like healthcare, education, transportation, and housing rather than cash payments. This model, successfully implemented in various forms across Scandinavian countries, ensures basic needs while maintaining work incentives.
Progressive automation taxation could fund transition programs by levying fees on companies that replace human workers with AI systems. These revenues could support retraining, education, or direct payments to affected communities.
Conditional Basic Income might require participation in education, training, or community service, maintaining social contribution expectations while providing economic security. Singapore's SkillsFuture program exemplifies this approach, providing learning credits to all citizens for continuous skill development.
A Pragmatic Synthesis
The UBI debate reveals a fundamental truth: there is no universally correct approach to managing technological disruption and economic inequality. Every solution carries trade-offs between economic efficiency, social cohesion, and individual freedom.
My corporate experience taught me that human motivation is far more complex than simple economic incentives suggest. Some people will always seek to minimize effort regardless of compensation structure, while others derive satisfaction from meaningful work regardless of financial pressure. The key insight is that current systems often waste human potential through poor design rather than inherent laziness.
A viable path forward might combine elements from multiple approaches: targeted basic income for vulnerable populations, universal basic services for essential needs, progressive taxation of automation benefits, and massive investment in education and skill development. Rather than choosing between market mechanisms and social support, we need systems that harness both.
Crucially, any UBI implementation should be experimental and adaptive. Alaska's dividend program succeeds partly because it's modest in scope and funded by natural resource wealth rather than general taxation. Scaling such programs requires careful testing of different models, payment levels, and eligibility criteria.
The Machine Question
Perhaps the most profound consideration is whether artificial intelligence could manage resource distribution more effectively than human institutions.
If machines become capable of optimizing production and allocation without human bias or corruption, they might enable abundance-based economics that make scarcity-driven work obsolete.
This possibility terrifies those who value human agency, yet it may prove inevitable. If AI systems can plan agriculture, manage supply chains, and coordinate services with perfect efficiency, traditional economic assumptions about work and exchange break down entirely.
Call for Action
This is not a problem that can be resolved through opinion articles or legislative debates alone. We need coordinated international research involving economists, technologists, philosophers, and practitioners from affected industries. The disruption has already begun and waiting for perfect solutions means accepting chaotic transformation.
While policymakers deliberate, individuals must act. We should invest in AI-resilient skills: emotional intelligence, creative problem-solving, and complex interpersonal abilities that machines cannot easily replicate. We should support businesses that augment rather than replace human capabilities. And we should learn to use AI tools to our advantage rather than fearing them as competitors.
Who knows, my incessant reading across a diverse range of topics, unconnected, is what gives me an edge by making connections that are unique and by giving me certain perspectives, and that possibly is what will keep me relevant in the age of AI!
The future of work, and by extension, the future of human dignity and purpose, depends on decisions we make today. Universal basic income may not be the complete answer, but it represents a crucial experiment in imagining alternatives to systems that increasingly fail to serve human flourishing.
In my corporate days, I often wondered what those underperforming colleagues might accomplish if freed from bureaucratic constraints and survival anxieties. Now, as AI transforms the employment landscape entirely, that question has become urgently relevant for all of us.