In the US one party promises free education, free or reduced health care to the majority of the population, etc etc.
This party is still not in power. I don't think its a foregone conclusion that people vote themselves bread and circuses, which is I think your primary point.
On another front I find it hard to believe that UBI if it ever comes to the US will be set anywhere above poverty level. In that context anyone who voted to take money from people in poverty and use it to build roads they would probably be laughed out of office and rightly so.
The Democratic party does not credibly propose any of those things. Hillary Clinton explicitly rebuked Bernie Sanders' campaign promises with regards to health and education.
We have not yet seen a candidate running on a socialist proposal coupled with even mediocre or passable mediatic support. Every time a socialist-leaning candidate pops up, moneyed interests work really, really hard against them. However, it's getting better and better (see: Corbyn in UK).
It'll come. People will vote themselves, not bread and circuses, but health and education. And democracy and markets, as opposing decision-making mechanisms, will clash.
> I don't think its a foregone conclusion that people vote themselves bread and circuses, which is I think your primary point.
Or just populism in general - and I think "fear" is a stronger voter-pull than "want": fear of Mexican immigrants committing crimes, taking your job, fear of increased healthcare costs, etc.
As the majority of Americans do have health coverage it's a given that 51% of the population want cheaper coverage even if it means the other 49% will lose coverage then that's going to happen.
Is it really that simplistic? I would guess many wouldn't vote for cheaper coverage for them if it means that their parents/children/close friends lose coverage.
(Which is why politicians are so busy denying that anyone will lose coverage under their plans.)
Given the history of trying to build public support for moving UBI from $0 to >$0, probably the former, even if you switch the non-UBI factors, after wealthy interests who aren't on the benefitting side of redistribution get their propaganda in.
“People will always vote for the candidate that promises to increase public benefits they receive” is an attractive myth that doesn't actually play out in practice; in the US, it doesn't even play out in practice in primary elections within the major party most favorably inclined to public benefit programs.
" wealthy interests who aren't on the benefitting side of redistribution"
I don't think anybody wants to live in a society where 99% of population are suffering from hunger and lack of basic necessities. There will be no safety in such a society.
but there is always possibility of robot bodyguards!!!
I would assume that's because most people right now picture UBI as benefitting only lazy people etc. Once there is a UBI, they'll realize that they're also getting paid, and they'll be more likely to vote against people who want to cut it.
> Once there is a UBI, they'll realize that they're also getting paid
As with existing benefit programs, people will also realize that they are paying. And, as with benefit programs now, even people who are likely to benefit far more from the “being paid” part more than they lose to the “paying” part will often be prone to, and be encouraged by slick propaganda from moneyed interests to, identify with and vote for the interests of those who are on the other side of that equation instead of their own.
I think it would be important to tie UBI to key economic indicators and put any direct adjustments under the control of economists. We will need to limit politicians control of the purse strings.
> I think it would be important to tie UBI to key economic indicators
Better, just tie it to a defined relationship to a particular revenue stream; if it's capital-income-derived revenue, it's a good theoretical tie to the purpose of compensating for the displacement of labor in industry, and it's less subject to distortion than most economic indicators.
Then wouldn't you end up with a class of economists who are in a revolving door situation with financial institutions (who stand to benefit from networking with those controlling the purse strings), the same way we now have politicians converting to lobbyists (who benefit from networking with those controlling the political decision making)?
> The bad guys in David Weber's Honor Harrington novels are based on this idea.
Pedantically, the obvious “bad guys” in the earliest few, not the (so far, at least) principal bad guys of the whole series, who it turns out were also manipulating those obvious, early ones.
> It's an interesting take on what might happen.
It's kind of a shallow throwaway regurgitation of a standard argument without deep exploration or novel insight (which is okay, because it's not like Havenite society under the People's Republic is all that central a focus of any of the books, so shallow cartoonish broad strokes are fine.)
The bad guys in Baen published novels are just whoever the author doesn't like, usually anyone who isn't a Republican.
Though David Weber has his own pro-monarchy pro-libertarian ironically-not-racist thing going on, he just assigns random evil acts to random characters coincidentally named after his opponents, like having the Progressive Party actually be into human trafficking.
(When SF authors get old they all develop terrible opinions a while before anyone notices. Like Larry Niven wrote a book about the Green Party causing an ice age by stopping climate change and Arthur C Clarke became a pedophile. Heinlein, of course, started out that way.)
People don't necessarily want hand outs, they perhaps just want to live in an environment where they can sustain themselves through their own effort. Perhaps this is part of the reason HRC lost in November.
Centrists like HRC don't believe in giving you things for free, they want to watch you jump through hoops made of paperwork first. It's the TurboTax lobby at work.
- Party A's candidate is clean and runs on improving infrastructure but that requires a slight cut to UBI
- Party B's candidate has issues regarding corruption, doesn't talk much about infrastructure but promises an increase to the UBI stipend
Which candidate do you think people will vote for?