Universal Basic Dividend
Universal Basic Dividend sounds like a great idea. It truly does. Once again, I don’t know all the exacts on how to think about this system in terms of its actual practices and how they will affect the America we know today, but I am concerned with it. First off, it’s completely different from another other form of welfare put in place. I’ve never seen a system like it before, and I have doubts about if it will work as intended. Speculation and predicting how people will act whenever put into a situation is something that terrifies me. People are unpredictable, and even if there is a reoccurring theme among their behavior with one system there’s always the chance that they can react in a totally different way and ruin all expected outcomes. If this happens, I think immense damage could be done before repairs can be done. I don’t know what kind of damage would be done, or how people would react in such a terrible way that could ruin the whole idea and I won’t until I see this theory in practice. That’s why we take risks, to possibly benefit from them. Along with this I also see issues with the spending budget towards the military, exploitation of workers, and family circumstances that could exploit this system.
Budgeting
With this new system, I believe I perceived the limitation on government spending being placed on everything at a rate of 9% GDP. Meaning they only have that much to spend on government facilities, obviously other welfare programs being shut down will help, but I’m worried about the military budgeting. While we may not need to spend as much money as we do on our military, it helps that our militaries budget is so immense. We have super advanced technologies that provide us with the protection we have and guarantees nobody will try to take our rights without meeting incredible force. If we limit the government’s spending, I’m sure that’ll cut into our military spending. Knowing how politicians act I believe they may find a way to be able to use this budget cut towards the military as leverage towards their goals. I see this as a huge potential problem, and I would simply like some clarification that we would still have the protection our country needs without the possible threat of losing all we have.\
Potential Exploitation
With restrictions upon minimum wage and working hours removed I believe potential exploitation of workers could come from this. Of course, competitive wages will need to be offered in this new market, but with a set wage removed certain workers may be stripped of their old wages and may either be forced to or choose to quit their previous job. This would flood the market with new opportunities as people will likely start up their own businesses to make a wage, they deem appropriate for their skills, but it could also lead to too much flooding. If there aren’t enough jobs for people who leave their previous jobs and they don’t have the same skills required to operate their own businesses, unemployment could potentially rise. There may not be enough positions to fill and thus these people would have to reluctantly return to where they are being underpaid for their work. To make the same living as they had before they may need to work even longer hours, which would lead to a more miserable way of life.
Family Abuse
I feel like there should be more of a limit with this last topic. Giving families an increased amount of money for how many members there are in a family unit could be a double-edged sword. The families that would use the money properly would obviously not be an issue, but there could be an increase in child abuse and neglect because the parents who just want more money would have no incentive to care for their children. There are terrible people in the world and giving them money for an activity they can engage in for their leisure or self-enjoyment wouldn’t be a good idea. Even now there are people who have no incentive to take care of their children and they’re not gaining much money from this, so if the potential to make money by not having to do anything is added into the mix it can only bring bad news. There should be some sort of system in place to guarantee that this abuse isn’t happening, and I know the point of this system was to make it accessible to all, but if there could be a test put into the system to determine if the family is prepared and going to take care of their offspring then I would support this system more-so than I already do.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I believe this system could be genuinely successful and may even bring about a better future for America; however, I need more guarantees and information. Just like how the anti-federalists needed the bill of rights, I would value having more safeguards in place for potential exploits and abuses of powers. With a few corrections and a more thorough explanation I could support this potential amendment wholeheartedly. If the problems I proposed could be explained to me in a more concise way and I could view a potential experiment or a larger scale use of this system than that of the state of Alaska more people like me might even consider it a viable cause.