I don’t dislike the idea of state/government subsidies for essentials. Most of that is already in place for many first world countries, in some way, shape, or form.
The problem I have with it is that you need to qualify for the assistance. So you need this whole complicated application and approval system, oversight to ensure that it’s not being taken advantage of, either by the would-be clients, nor the administrative staff managing it, and then that needs to go into paying for housing and whatnot for eligible people, and yatta yatta.
All of that overhead goes away with UBI. Everyone gets it. There’s no disability, no employment insurance, no disability benefits, nothing. If you have citizenship, you get UBI. The amount of UBI deducts from your regular work earnings, so businesses, and the rich are paying the majority of the ubi payouts, and the system is both simplified and streamlined. If you lose your job, or you need to be out of work for a while due to sickness, injury or other issue, no problem, you still get UBI, and nothing changes. You don’t need to apply for disability or short term medical benefits because you now can’t work, because that amount is your UBI.
Additionally, UBI should be tied to the cost of living and/or inflation, as costs rise, so does UBI.
In this way, you dramatically lower the administrative costs and overhead from running such a program, and citizens have peace of mind that they will always be able to afford the basics. Mainly rent, and food.
The market provides all of that to them, rather than needing a complex and approval based benefit system to provide it instead.
It’s so hard to describe how many government services would end up getting folded into UBI. The obvious ones are unemployment services and/or welfare, disability benefits, both for long term and short term disabilities any bursaries or grants given to people for short duration assistance. A huge segment of government work would no longer be needed. And yeah, some of those people will end up unemployed, some will shift over to UBI work… To their benefit, all those freshly unemployed workers have UBI now, so they don’t need to worry about applying for unemployment benefits, they just need to focus on finding new employment if they choose to.
I don’t dislike the idea of state/government subsidies for essentials. Most of that is already in place for many first world countries, in some way, shape, or form.
The problem I have with it is that you need to qualify for the assistance. So you need this whole complicated application and approval system, oversight to ensure that it’s not being taken advantage of, either by the would-be clients, nor the administrative staff managing it, and then that needs to go into paying for housing and whatnot for eligible people, and yatta yatta.
All of that overhead goes away with UBI. Everyone gets it. There’s no disability, no employment insurance, no disability benefits, nothing. If you have citizenship, you get UBI. The amount of UBI deducts from your regular work earnings, so businesses, and the rich are paying the majority of the ubi payouts, and the system is both simplified and streamlined. If you lose your job, or you need to be out of work for a while due to sickness, injury or other issue, no problem, you still get UBI, and nothing changes. You don’t need to apply for disability or short term medical benefits because you now can’t work, because that amount is your UBI.
Additionally, UBI should be tied to the cost of living and/or inflation, as costs rise, so does UBI.
In this way, you dramatically lower the administrative costs and overhead from running such a program, and citizens have peace of mind that they will always be able to afford the basics. Mainly rent, and food.
The market provides all of that to them, rather than needing a complex and approval based benefit system to provide it instead.
It’s so hard to describe how many government services would end up getting folded into UBI. The obvious ones are unemployment services and/or welfare, disability benefits, both for long term and short term disabilities any bursaries or grants given to people for short duration assistance. A huge segment of government work would no longer be needed. And yeah, some of those people will end up unemployed, some will shift over to UBI work… To their benefit, all those freshly unemployed workers have UBI now, so they don’t need to worry about applying for unemployment benefits, they just need to focus on finding new employment if they choose to.
I could rant about it all day. I’ll stop here.