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Disability benefits are means tested by checking if you're disabled, so I think we're talking at cross purposes. Abolishing means testing for that would mean ab

Disability benefits are means tested by checking if you're disabled, so I think we're talking at cross purposes. Abolishing means testing for that would mean abolishing disability benefits entirely. It'd just be rolled into general welfare or UBI. Is that what you want to see? What about income tax? Shall we set a single income tax band for everyone? You say no but where's the consistency? Means testing is good when taking money but bad when giving it? Why? The logic of a strictly egalitarian universal welfare system would also suggest governments be strictly egalitarian in all ways, meaning all taxes would be poll taxes. Everyone treated the same. But nobody is arguing for that, which makes it look like they're not working from a general principle of lower bureaucracy and more equality, just a general love of welfare.

mcv 6y ago
Is means testing not about income? I mean to take income out of the equation, so people don't lose benefits when their income rises, because that would create perverse incentives. If you manage to hold a job despite being severely disabled, more power to you. That's not something that should be punished. I think I already addressed all of this in the comment you're responding to: if UBI is high enough, I think there could indeed be a single tax rate for everybody. Because the UBI would already provide a comfortable living income, and only income for luxuries would be taxed. But I think UBI will start lower than that, which means that at first, progressive taxation will still be necessary to some extent.
- thu2111 6y ago
  Alright, I've been using means testing to mean, a test of eligibility. But I just checked the dictionary and it's indeed defined in purely financial terms. So we can add to the list of welfare bureaucracy that'd still be needed, disability tests. That's where a big part of the fraud comes from in any welfare system, because fraudulently obtained disability benefits is effectively a form of UBI: for those who have it, it never ends even if they get a job, unless the job is one that their pretend disability would prevent them from doing. Very attractive. Also, doctors and assessors don't pay for it so they tend to be willing to grant it to people in very lax ways. This can be seen in the way people on disability benefits rises and falls with the economy in the USA. As for a "comfortable income", again, you're dreaming. For everyone to have a comfortable income without having to work, with extra income only for "luxuries", isn't physically possible. It's literally the original communist vision that was abandoned because it didn't work. Comfortable income was simply redefined back then as subsistence income in a broken economy, and luxury was not only reserved for Party members but redefined as a standard of living lower than that available to ordinary people in the supposedly deeply unequal west. UBI is just centuries old political ideas re-heated and re-branded.

mcv 6y ago

Is means testing not about income? I mean to take income out of the equation, so people don't lose benefits when their income rises, because that would create perverse incentives. If you manage to hold a job despite being severely disabled, more power to you. That's not something that should be punished. I think I already addressed all of this in the comment you're responding to: if UBI is high enough, I think there could indeed be a single tax rate for everybody. Because the UBI would already provide a comfortable living income, and only income for luxuries would be taxed. But I think UBI will start lower than that, which means that at first, progressive taxation will still be necessary to some extent.

thu2111 6y ago
Alright, I've been using means testing to mean, a test of eligibility. But I just checked the dictionary and it's indeed defined in purely financial terms. So we can add to the list of welfare bureaucracy that'd still be needed, disability tests. That's where a big part of the fraud comes from in any welfare system, because fraudulently obtained disability benefits is effectively a form of UBI: for those who have it, it never ends even if they get a job, unless the job is one that their pretend disability would prevent them from doing. Very attractive. Also, doctors and assessors don't pay for it so they tend to be willing to grant it to people in very lax ways. This can be seen in the way people on disability benefits rises and falls with the economy in the USA. As for a "comfortable income", again, you're dreaming. For everyone to have a comfortable income without having to work, with extra income only for "luxuries", isn't physically possible. It's literally the original communist vision that was abandoned because it didn't work. Comfortable income was simply redefined back then as subsistence income in a broken economy, and luxury was not only reserved for Party members but redefined as a standard of living lower than that available to ordinary people in the supposedly deeply unequal west. UBI is just centuries old political ideas re-heated and re-branded.