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I've been somewhat blessed that my first interaction with government income didn't happen until last year, when the company I was working for shut down unexpect

I've been somewhat blessed that my first interaction with government income didn't happen until last year, when the company I was working for shut down unexpectedly (I came in to work on Tuesday morning, joined a conference call where they announced that we were all terminated, effective immediately). Although I didn't expect to be out of work long, this was right before Thanksgiving, so I didn't expect to find anything until January at the earliest, and filed for unemployment - after all, that's what it's there for, right? Of course, the application process was ridiculously complicated and poorly documented, but I got through it and started collecting, I think, something like $500/week (which I still owed income tax on). Well, better than nothing, I guess. There's a seemingly perfectly reasonable requirement, though, that while you're collecting unemployment, you have to make 5 job-search contacts per week. Of course, it's entirely unclear what constitutes a job-search contact or how you're supposed to report them. Or what, exactly, happens if you fall short. Well, I got a job offer not too long afterward, but there was a two-week waiting period while they completed a background check on me. But I was stil collecting unemployment during that two weeks, as I was, after all, still unemployed. So, am I supposed to keep making job-search contacts? Of course, nobody could give me a straight answer (and you'll be on hold for hours trying to get in touch with somebody). So, to be on the safe side, I kept sending out resumes to companies that I had no intention of following through with just to comply with what seemed to be a legal requirement. This sort of well-intentioned, but one-size-fits-all sort of hidden regulation is exactly what concerns me about any government income program... they can't make the rules too clear because if they did, clever people would have an easier time taking advantage.

tom_mellior 9y ago
You do realize that the universal basic income is the exact opposite of what you describe? The "universal" part means that you get money without any requirements, without any forms to fill out (except to prove once that you exist and have a bank account, I guess), without any rules. UBI wants to get away from all the unclear rules and the hassle and cost of enforcing them.
- perl4ever 9y ago
  It is not unheard of for people to collect money for people who don't exist. It used to be popular in the US to claim extra dependents on one's taxes. It might be going too far to present basic income as a totally foolproof program.
  - tom_mellior 9y ago
    Of course it has to be implemented well and must rely on some other (important) assumption like "social security numbers belong to actually living persons".
dragonwriter 9y ago
> This sort of well-intentioned, but one-size-fits-all sort of hidden regulation is exactly what concerns me about any government income program... they can't make the rules too clear because if they did, clever people would have an easier time taking advantage. That problem seems to be an aspect of the broader problem with conditional government income programs that unconditional basic income is aimed right at the heart of. It's very hard to game a rule of, e.g., ”If you are a citizen or lawful permanent resident, you get exactly $X/month” doesn't have a lot of room for manipulation, despite being quite clear.
- commandlinefan 9y ago
  > If you are a citizen or lawful permanent resident I see a flaw right there...
  - undersuit 9y ago
    What's the flaw?
WorldMaker 9y ago
Unemployment Insurance suffers from over-protectionism due to "Protestant values". Because "work" is virtuous, not working is "sinful", so you must prove you aren't entirely a sinner. Despite the fact that every dollar you get back out of the Unemployment Insurance pool was most likely a dollar you put into the pool, people want to make sure you aren't just "wasting" resources. If there is a better example for why the U in UBI needs to be truly Universal for it to really work, it's unemployment insurance. The more gatekeeping in a Basic Income scheme, the more likely it is to bring in human biases and human judgment calls. A lot of UBI complaints are the same "Protestant values" fights: "why should people do the godly thing and work themselves hard to death if you give them the basics for free?" Not everyone believes that work is godly, but yet we've commonly voted those that do in charge of what should be unbiased protection systems like Unemployment Insurance (and Social Security and Medicare, etc), and we've let them dominate the conversations.
m0llusk 9y ago
And with all of that it is worth keeping in mind that these complications cause unemployment insurance to have average failure rates of around 20 percent. This means that overall roughly one in five who qualify and apply correctly receive no benefits and roughly one in five who should be disqualified but apply receive benefits anyway. This kind of error is what makes the simple universal basic income citizen dividend benefit such a compelling alternative: We can actually do it with relatively low error rates and high transparency.

tom_mellior 9y ago

You do realize that the universal basic income is the exact opposite of what you describe? The "universal" part means that you get money without any requirements, without any forms to fill out (except to prove once that you exist and have a bank account, I guess), without any rules. UBI wants to get away from all the unclear rules and the hassle and cost of enforcing them.

perl4ever 9y ago
It is not unheard of for people to collect money for people who don't exist. It used to be popular in the US to claim extra dependents on one's taxes. It might be going too far to present basic income as a totally foolproof program.
- tom_mellior 9y ago
  Of course it has to be implemented well and must rely on some other (important) assumption like "social security numbers belong to actually living persons".

dragonwriter 9y ago

> This sort of well-intentioned, but one-size-fits-all sort of hidden regulation is exactly what concerns me about any government income program... they can't make the rules too clear because if they did, clever people would have an easier time taking advantage. That problem seems to be an aspect of the broader problem with conditional government income programs that unconditional basic income is aimed right at the heart of. It's very hard to game a rule of, e.g., ”If you are a citizen or lawful permanent resident, you get exactly $X/month” doesn't have a lot of room for manipulation, despite being quite clear.

commandlinefan 9y ago
> If you are a citizen or lawful permanent resident I see a flaw right there...
- undersuit 9y ago
  What's the flaw?

WorldMaker 9y ago

Unemployment Insurance suffers from over-protectionism due to "Protestant values". Because "work" is virtuous, not working is "sinful", so you must prove you aren't entirely a sinner. Despite the fact that every dollar you get back out of the Unemployment Insurance pool was most likely a dollar you put into the pool, people want to make sure you aren't just "wasting" resources. If there is a better example for why the U in UBI needs to be truly Universal for it to really work, it's unemployment insurance. The more gatekeeping in a Basic Income scheme, the more likely it is to bring in human biases and human judgment calls. A lot of UBI complaints are the same "Protestant values" fights: "why should people do the godly thing and work themselves hard to death if you give them the basics for free?" Not everyone believes that work is godly, but yet we've commonly voted those that do in charge of what should be unbiased protection systems like Unemployment Insurance (and Social Security and Medicare, etc), and we've let them dominate the conversations.

m0llusk 9y ago

And with all of that it is worth keeping in mind that these complications cause unemployment insurance to have average failure rates of around 20 percent. This means that overall roughly one in five who qualify and apply correctly receive no benefits and roughly one in five who should be disqualified but apply receive benefits anyway. This kind of error is what makes the simple universal basic income citizen dividend benefit such a compelling alternative: We can actually do it with relatively low error rates and high transparency.