Let's say its fine now, and in 5-10 years also. But in a sense, it is a lifetime commitment to a payment that can sustain people's basic living needs with no output from them.
Because if suddenly you cannot afford this, what do you do? You tell people, after assuring them they can live their life free from fear of hunger death, that suddenly they have to fend for themselves.
We kind of have "universal income" for old people in Europe - it's called pensions. And it's a massive ticking time bomb in exactly this way. They are increasingly unaffordable in the aging society, and chances are sooner or later governments will start curtailing these benefits.
That's bad, but what makes it tragic is you first assured people they are safe and can rely on this.
You mention pensions already. In my country the profoundly disabled are also provided payments and housing. (Not much and not enough but it's there.) Your argument applies equally to that. We're promising to support them for the rest of their lives. But maybe one day we won't be able to.
I think I see what you're arguing but I am not following the logic. It would seem to be a general argument that can apply to any form of assistance to anyone in need. Don't provide it, because one day you might be bankrupt, and not be able to provide it anymore, but now they'll be dependent on you and so they'll suffer more than they would have otherwise if they'd never been dependent on you.
But one factor I think you maybe haven't considered: poverty often diminishes capacity to function, and to earn income. I realize this is well into just speculative economic philosophy but my own intuition seems to be the exact opposite of yours: assistance of this kind probably improves capacity to be independent, should it one day be withdrawn.
Pensions and disability payments are by definition targeting a small proportion of the society. It is one thing to make a promise to 10% of the society, and another to 100% of it. And indeed, pensions are becoming tougher as the fraction goes upwards. My point isn't that it is somehow bad that we have these benefits but that they are already quite expensive and look increasingly unsustainable. So with this knowledge, we should be very careful about making much bigger committments.
Further, people on retirement or disability benefits typically don't have much choice. Due to age or circumstances, they cannot really earn a living, or a sufficient one. It's not a choice. We're not promising them an alternative to a productive lifetime. UI is different. If it is to be worth anything, it is surely a promise that you can take economically unsound or risky choices, and if they don't work out, the state has your back. If it doesn't, it's just pocket money. It is actively encouraging people to outsource the financial responsibility for their lives to the state, even as governments globally are struggling to make ends meet.
What is even trickier is that pensions and disability benefits go to people who are generally not very economically active. Extending universal income to everyone kind of expands this to everyone else, i.e. the very people who need to work to make the society work.
We have seen in many places in Europe structural decline of industries, and in various cases, the people affected were given long term unemployment benefits, a little bit like UI. It was probably the right approach - certainly the decent thing to do - but the areas where it happened tended to decrease in productivity and creativity, rather than the other way round. The ones that bounced typically got extensive investment rather than just relied on the improved creativity and industriusness of the people on unemployment benefits.
Let's say its fine now, and in 5-10 years also. But in a sense, it is a lifetime commitment to a payment that can sustain people's basic living needs with no output from them.
Because if suddenly you cannot afford this, what do you do? You tell people, after assuring them they can live their life free from fear of hunger death, that suddenly they have to fend for themselves.
We kind of have "universal income" for old people in Europe - it's called pensions. And it's a massive ticking time bomb in exactly this way. They are increasingly unaffordable in the aging society, and chances are sooner or later governments will start curtailing these benefits.
That's bad, but what makes it tragic is you first assured people they are safe and can rely on this.