________________________________________________________________________________
Much of the cost with most social programs is the large amount of means testing done.
Something where you just get 1k a month would he cheaper than the patch work of programs we have now.
The only issue is many people already get more than that. Rapidly cutting them off and telling them to figure out food and housing on 1k a month would he problematic
> cheaper
Can you share your math to come up with this?
All of the UBI programs I’ve seen that are “cheaper” lower paid-for entitlements like social security, so I’m pretty leery of this claim.
Ideally you'd get rid of every other entitlement including social security.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/14/budget-neutral-universal-bas...
>
"In general, the budget-neutral UBI would be detrimental to those at the very bottom and the very top of the income distribution, and beneficial to those in the middle of the income distribution," Matt Jensen, a co-author of the AEI's working paper, writes
You wouldn't fix poverty with this, but at least to me it makes more sense. Maybe someone smarter than I could tweak it to not disadvantage the elderly
There's no way SS, Medicare and welfare programs are going away, there are too many beneficiaries that would vote against it. Any UBI would be in addition to SS and Medicare.
Single payer healthcare + UBI.
Not that I think it'll ever happen, but the current system doesn't really incentivize people to move up. Say you're a single parent, making 30k a year. You get a raise to 45,000 a year, and you can lose your housing assistance, healthcare for your family, and your food stamps all at once.
The welfare Cliff is a pretty good theory on this
Yeah it's a nice idea, sure. No way does it ever happen. Old people aren't going to trade a $1500 a month average SS payout plus Medicare for a $1000 a month UBI plus a single payer system with longer wait times. Single moms on welfare aren't going to trade their various benefits (housing, food stamps, transportation, cell phone, Medicaid etc. for both her and the children) for a $1000/mo. UBI plus single payer healthcare (most UBI programs I've seen have reduced or no payouts for children).
I have thought of Milton Friedman's work with the Negative Income Tax [1]. It sounds difficult to implement administratively but tries to solve this problem of incentivizing the workforce to move up and provide a means of paying taxes to afford the whole thing.
[1]