Elon Musk Wants to Give You Money for Nothing

Artificial intelligence is the latest justification for supporting the bad idea of ‘universal basic income.’

By Jason L. Riley. Excerpts:

"It’s often forgotten that in the early days of the country’s “war on poverty,” the general understanding was that you alleviate privation by reducing dependency on the government and creating incentives to become more productive. The goal was “to help our less fortunate citizens to help themselves,” President John F. Kennedy said. “We must find ways of returning far more of our dependent people to independence.”"

"In the 1960s and ’70s, as welfare-state programs proliferated, the number of people receiving public assistance more than doubled."

"Nor do we have any reason to believe that issuing no-strings-attached cash stipends to poor families works as intended. “Significant but indirect evidence has suggested that unconditional cash aid would help children flourish,” the New York Times reported last month. “But now a rigorous experiment, in a more direct test, found that years of monthly payments did nothing to boost children’s well-being, a result that defied researchers’ predictions.”"

"The study, titled “Baby’s First Years,” concluded that after four years of monthly payments of $333, children whose parents received money “fared no better than similar children without that help.”"

"other research involving larger stipends has concluded they can negatively affect work habits. Last year, the National Bureau of Economic Research published a working paper on the employment effects of guaranteed income, which was described as the most comprehensive study of its kind to date. Researchers found that families who received $1,000 monthly payments for three years worked fewer hours."

"“Nearly 7 million men in the prime of life—over a tenth of the 25-to-54 age group—are neither working nor looking for work these days,”"