4 ms·
"This country needs to offer a minimal viable income to all citizens" It's called "welfare": Various government programs (SNAP, edicaid, EITC, SSI, CHIP, TANS
by tosseraccount 11y ago
"This country needs to offer a minimal viable income to all citizens"
It's called "welfare": Various government programs (SNAP, edicaid, EITC, SSI, CHIP, TANS CSFP, Obamacare, etc.) do provide minimal viable income to US citizens.
Social Justice types may bemoan the situation; but throwing middle class tax money at the problem is not a guaranteed solution.
- ci5er 11y agoWell, in the US, sure. And I don't see anyone here proposing doing a UBI program globally... There are a number of problems with the current system. One is the "welfare cliff" that severely demotivates someone who can take (or not take) the option of signing up for a marginal wage job. We all know that ladders start at the bottom, but we keep removing rungs. If someone is getting benefits, I'd also like him to get a job or training to slowly work up to not needing those benefits - not go backwards. Not many people will choose to go backwards. Another one (to me, because I tend minarchy), is the obscene bureaucratic overhead. Of course this is because of our complex array of rules and means-testing. But, if we could eliminate the disincentives to work that come from the way that welfare programs are constructed today, do we really need to means test? I'd rather Bill Gates gets a free two thousand dollar check than hire someone to make sure he doesn't. At some point, I suspect this can only be resolved by some sort of limited behavioral experiment. While I like to think that most Americans, given a choice, wouldn't choose to sit around and watch Jerry Springer - our current system's construction has given me little confidence that this is necessarily true.