This is a moral case for a guaranteed income: we should secure for each person the means necessary to live a modern life of dignity, and no one should be asked to take on an inordinate risk to enjoy such a life. I call this a moral argument and a moral case specifically because I am not making an economic argument for any specific economic policy or any specific form of guaranteed income. I am, instead, asserting that we should first commit to securing a level of human dignity and then figure out which specific policies get us there. If we think this is impossible or too costly, we should remember that we do impossible, costly things all the time by changing our grasp of what is worthwhile. Before we put a human on Mars, before a car drives itself across the country, we ought to figure out how to guarantee each person access to a dignified life.
https://audacity.substack.com/p/a-moral-argument-for-basic-income