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> (b) California residents who are 18 years of age or older and receiving benefits under the Medi-Cal program, the County Medical Services Program, the CalFresh

> (b) California residents who are 18 years of age or older and receiving benefits under the Medi-Cal program, the County Medical Services Program, the CalFresh program, the CalWORKs program, or Unemployment Insurance shall not be eligible to receive a universal basic income under the CalUBI Program. I must be misunderstanding something. If you're unemployed and getting unemployment benefits you don't get your UBI? Isn't that part of the point of UBI? Edit: Thanks to everyone helping me understand what I was missing!

SilasX 7y ago
Yes and no? The point of UBI is to replace all of that social spending (and its resultant nasty discontinuities), so that’s keeping with the spirit, kind of. Though even better (under the logic of UBI) would be to give it to everyone and get rid of those programs.
vorpalhex 7y ago
The idea with UBI is that it replaces other forms of government assistance. Since this is a test and obviously California doesn't want to end it's unemployment insurance in case the test goes badly, it's exempting those people using the other programs from this one. Basically, no double dipping.
- throwaway55554 7y ago
  That makes sense. I wonder why they don't migrate at least some of those people to UBI, though. I think that would be what you would want to test.
  - vorpalhex 7y ago
    Ethics. It'd be great to do a side by side but if the UBI test goes poorly you've derailed a lot of lives for your experiment.
deleted 7y ago
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dcposch 7y ago
This bill is false advertising. The U in UBI means universal. Those rules above are the opposite of that.
- brodouevencode 7y ago
  Could it be that they're attempting to lay the tracks for further expansion?
timerol 7y ago
One of the stated benefits of UBI is that it has the potential to replace other forms of welfare more efficiently. Instead of people getting separate benefits for food, housing, unemployment, etc, they get the one benefit: UBI. This removes the problem of "I don't work hard enough to be poor in America", where the people going through the worst situations have to spend the most time going through forms and bureaucracies. Instead, you just get UBI. In good times and in bad, so there's no weird income caps and disincentives to work. People don't have to deal with welfare cliffs (https://www.learnliberty.org/blog/the-welfare-cliff-and-why-many-low-income-workers-will-never-overcome-poverty/ https://www.learnliberty.org/blog/the-welfare-cliff-and-why-...) and/or multiple welfare off-ramps simultaneously anymore. Having UBI and still keeping means-tested welfare removes one of the best benefits of UBI. Most serious UBI proposals do what this one does: Either keep your current benefits or go on a UBI, whatever works best for you.
- michaelt 7y ago
  > Most serious UBI proposals do what this one does: Either keep your current benefits or go on a UBI, whatever works best for you. I appreciate that we wouldn't want the situation where instituting UBI stops (for example) severely disabled veterans getting specially adapted cars. But doesn't this mean we retain all the forms and bureaucracies and weird income caps and disincentives to work, and the administrative costs that go with them?
  - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
    > But doesn't this mean we retain all the forms and bureaucracies and weird income caps and disincentives to work, and the administrative costs that go with them? Mostly not, because everyone whose weird byzantine collection of benefits doesn't add up to more than the UBI will abandon all of them and choose the UBI. That should be nearly everybody even if it isn't literally everybody.

SilasX 7y ago

Yes and no? The point of UBI is to replace all of that social spending (and its resultant nasty discontinuities), so that’s keeping with the spirit, kind of. Though even better (under the logic of UBI) would be to give it to everyone and get rid of those programs.

vorpalhex 7y ago

The idea with UBI is that it replaces other forms of government assistance. Since this is a test and obviously California doesn't want to end it's unemployment insurance in case the test goes badly, it's exempting those people using the other programs from this one. Basically, no double dipping.

throwaway55554 7y ago
That makes sense. I wonder why they don't migrate at least some of those people to UBI, though. I think that would be what you would want to test.
- vorpalhex 7y ago
  Ethics. It'd be great to do a side by side but if the UBI test goes poorly you've derailed a lot of lives for your experiment.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

dcposch 7y ago

This bill is false advertising. The U in UBI means universal. Those rules above are the opposite of that.

brodouevencode 7y ago
Could it be that they're attempting to lay the tracks for further expansion?

timerol 7y ago

One of the stated benefits of UBI is that it has the potential to replace other forms of welfare more efficiently. Instead of people getting separate benefits for food, housing, unemployment, etc, they get the one benefit: UBI. This removes the problem of "I don't work hard enough to be poor in America", where the people going through the worst situations have to spend the most time going through forms and bureaucracies. Instead, you just get UBI. In good times and in bad, so there's no weird income caps and disincentives to work. People don't have to deal with welfare cliffs (https://www.learnliberty.org/blog/the-welfare-cliff-and-why-many-low-income-workers-will-never-overcome-poverty/ https://www.learnliberty.org/blog/the-welfare-cliff-and-why-...) and/or multiple welfare off-ramps simultaneously anymore. Having UBI and still keeping means-tested welfare removes one of the best benefits of UBI. Most serious UBI proposals do what this one does: Either keep your current benefits or go on a UBI, whatever works best for you.

michaelt 7y ago
> Most serious UBI proposals do what this one does: Either keep your current benefits or go on a UBI, whatever works best for you. I appreciate that we wouldn't want the situation where instituting UBI stops (for example) severely disabled veterans getting specially adapted cars. But doesn't this mean we retain all the forms and bureaucracies and weird income caps and disincentives to work, and the administrative costs that go with them?
- AnthonyMouse 7y ago
  > But doesn't this mean we retain all the forms and bureaucracies and weird income caps and disincentives to work, and the administrative costs that go with them? Mostly not, because everyone whose weird byzantine collection of benefits doesn't add up to more than the UBI will abandon all of them and choose the UBI. That should be nearly everybody even if it isn't literally everybody.