I think this is why the discussion of UBI (and lots of other policy issues) goes in circles. There are multiple ideas up for debate. Will there always be enough jobs in the future? Is extreme inequality a bad thing? What effect would there be on inflation? Will people work less if we give them enough to cover the basics?
It's bizarre that you wrote in a way that implies 'extreme inequality' is some hypothetical situation and not a reality that we have reams of studies, evidence, historical context, modern examples and first person lived experience regarding.
If anyone concludes that extreme inequality is good they are simply ignorant. No one experiencing bottom 1% poverty likes it. No on is enriched by it. No one is stronger, more able, more motivated or more capable because of it.
Do you know what the bottom of society is like? Even here in Australia the bottom 1% is this:
- Obviously, you can't afford anything - barely even rent and food, often not rent, and public housing is scarce, so you're homeless
- Your rates of: domestic violence, neglect, childhood trauma, development delays, high school drop out, drug use, addiction, learning disorders, incarceration, unemployment, health risks, heart disease, etc are sky high compared to everyone else
- Your mental health is a shit show
- Incidences of child abuse, molestation, rape, assault are through the roof
- You're generally unliked by society, very few people accept or want you around - socially isolated, publicly maligned
- You're miserable
- Systems don't support you and have little interest in changing to do so
- You die 30 years younger than everyone else
It's shit. I've spent way too much of my life trying to help people in the bottom 1% here and they suffer every fucking day. It's miserable and ugly and unpleasant and so hard. Almost all of them have developmental trauma so severe we can see a
reduction in brain development in an MRI scan - and when you've got developmental delays, abnormal brain development and developmental trauma you're not learning much.
Reducing human suffering should be a social aim the world over - extreme inequality (where the # of people at the bottom increases) increases human suffering. Perhaps not everyone should be at the top, but as few people as possible should be at the bottom.
Extreme inequality is terrible, it's ugly, if it ever was natural (and I don't think that's a good argument) we have the money to stop it right now. It is unethical, immoral and disgusting that in rich countries like ours it still happens.