Lee Jae-myung's 'Basic Income' vs Oh Se-hoon's 'Safe Income'... Three Days of SNS Debate

[Asia Economy Reporter Jeon Jin-young] Gyeonggi Province Governor Lee Jae-myung, who advocates for universal basic income as part of universal welfare, and Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon, who is promoting a pilot project for selective welfare called Ansim Income, have been engaged in a heated debate on SNS for three consecutive days.

[Image source=Yonhap News]

On the 30th, Governor Lee targeted Mayor Oh through Facebook, saying, “Mayor Oh advocates for Ansim Income, which is completely opposite to basic income, discriminatory, unfair, conflict-inducing, and economically ineffective.”

He criticized, “Mayor Oh says he will distribute 17 trillion won annually in cash to the bottom 50% of Seoul citizens’ income, amounting to thousands or hundreds of millions of won each, but claims he will not raise taxes. If you can generate 17 trillion won annually in Seoul without tax increases, that would be a miracle akin to the loaves and fishes.”

[Image source=Yonhap News]

Mayor Oh retorted, “Governor Lee’s so-called ‘fake basic income’ and ‘nominal basic income’ clearly provide fewer benefits to low-income groups compared to Ansim Income, making it a clear case of reverse discrimination and counterproductive to resolving polarization,” adding, “The curtain is falling on the fake basic income and the cash handout monopoly.”

In response, Governor Lee said, “Selective cash handout policies that exclude taxpayers are much closer to populist cash giveaways than local currency-type economic policies that benefit taxpayers as well,” and added, “There should be limits to impudence; is this not what you call impudence?”

The welfare policy debate between the two metropolitan leaders has continued for three days. Over this period, they exchanged a total of eight posts related to basic income and Ansim Income.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.