Should we have Universal Basic Income?

This is a genuinely contested policy question where reasonable people disagree based on their values and how they weigh the evidence. Let me pull in some current data on how UBI pilots have actually performed to ground the discussion.Whether to adopt Universal Basic Income is ultimately a values-based policy question without a single "correct" answer—but the evidence from dozens of pilots gives us a clearer picture of what UBI actually does and doesn't deliver. Here's a balanced look:

The case for UBI

It demonstrably helps with basic needs and well-being. Across guaranteed income pilots, a wave of guaranteed income pilot programs launched in cities throughout the U.S. over the past five years has been effective in addressing basic needs such as housing and food and improving mental health, but their impact on long-term financial security is less clear. In one pilot, these results suggest that UBI income, when provided to a financially strained sub-population, has meaningful impacts on participants' financial security and overall well-being.

People spend it responsibly, not frivolously. Data from over 30 pilots shows the largest share of expenditures went to retail sales and services, at 35%, food and groceries were the second highest at 33%, transport and housing/utilities were next, at 9% and 9%, followed by financial transactions at 6% and travel/leisure/entertainment at 4%, with healthcare, miscellaneous, and educational expenses making up the final 5%.

Momentum is real. More than 150 cities have some type of guaranteed income program today, and some successes have led to permanence: this November, Cook County, Illinois, became the first U.S. county to establish permanent funding for guaranteed income, following the success of its $42 million pilot, which provided $500 month payments.

The case against (or for caution)

The employment evidence is weaker than headlines suggest. A comprehensive review of 122 U.S. pilots found of those 122 pilots, only 52 had published outcomes, only 35 used randomized designs, and only 30 reported employment outcomes. Among the most rigorous studies, the average effect was a 0.8 percentage-point increase in employment—not exactly ironclad evidence for redesigning the American welfare state. One analysis even found this negative effect is consistent with broader academic literature on income and labor supply (an income elasticity of -0.18) in the largest, most robust studies.

Data quality is shaky. Among the 26 pilots for which attrition could be measured, the average attrition rate was 37 percent—a giant warning sign, since if enough people drop out, the reported results can become badly distorted. Researchers caution that these findings may not generalize to a permanent, universal, nationwide UBI under current or future conditions.

The cost is enormous. A modest national UBI would be staggeringly expensive: a $1,000/month UBI for all US adults costs approximately $3 trillion annually — roughly equal to the entire current federal budget. Critics argue "universal" quickly means sending money to many people who are not poor while piling enormous costs onto taxpayers, and there's a real risk it gets added on top of, rather than replacing, existing welfare programs: in theory, UBI supporters sometimes imagine replacing the welfare state with one simple cash transfer, but in reality, government programs rarely disappear—so a UBI would likely be stacked on top of much of the current welfare state, not substituted for it.

Inflation risk is debated, not settled. One of the most common arguments against UBI stems from the upward pressure on prices, in particular for labor and housing rents, which would likely cause inflation. But the effect depends heavily on design: it all depends—UBI can be inflationary if done in a certain way in a certain context, but not in other ways; a $100/mo UBI is going to have a different inflationary impact than $10,000/mo—the amount matters. Notably, real-world quasi-UBI evidence is reassuring on this front: since implementing the APF - Alaska's quasi universal basic income - Alaska has experienced no spike in inflation, and notably, had lower inflation than the rest of the United States.

Where the debate is heading

Given the cost and evidence problems with full universality, the 2025 policy debate has shifted toward targeted UBI — guaranteed income for specific populations (families with children, caregivers, recently displaced workers) — which is more fiscally feasible and garnering bipartisan pilot program support. At the same time, AI-driven automation concerns are reviving interest: recent commentary has argued that AI-driven job losses may eventually require something like a universal basic income to offset large-scale displacement, though skeptics counter that the actual pilot evidence gathered so far doesn't support treating UBI as a ready-made solution to an AI-driven labor disruption that hasn't fully materialized yet.

My honest take

I don't think there's a clean yes/no answer here — it really hinges on your priorities:

A full nationwide UBI remains more of a thought experiment than a tested policy — no country has ever fully implemented it. What we actually have evidence for is narrower, smaller-scale guaranteed income, and that evidence is genuinely encouraging on well-being but much murkier on jobs, inflation, and scalability. Given that, "should we have UBI" might be the wrong framing — "should we expand targeted cash assistance" is probably the more empirically grounded and politically tractable question.