Artificial intelligence is the latest justification for supporting the bad idea of ‘universal basic income.’
A single unrestricted cash-transfer system that replaces the welfare state bureaucracy, the thinking goes, would be more efficient. Unfortunately, the country’s thriving poverty industry, which includes powerful lobbyists and politicians who get elected to protect it, are unlikely to take that trade. The more probable outcome is that an income guarantee would be added to the hundreds of existing entitlement programs instead of replacing them.