4 ms·
Well, no. Only a small minority of people are on Universal Credit. I don’t get how this follows, at all.
by leadingthenet 5y ago
Well, no. Only a small minority of people are on Universal Credit.
I don’t get how this follows, at all.
- waheoo 5y agoWhat don't you get? They pay the price of it but don't get it, may as well pay the price of it and get the benefits it provides.
- vageli 5y agoAll things being equal, wouldn't that greatly reduce the benefit amount per person?
- Turing_Machine 5y agoI don't know about the UK, but in the US a substantial portion of the budget is spent on bureaucrats ("caseworkers" and the like) who would be unnecessary with UBI.
- wizzwizz4 5y agoAccording to the radio (BBC), a substantial portion of the budget is going to contractors who've started rejecting perfectly good applications.
- _qwfv 5y agoAdministration costs go way down. We're spending a ton on making sure that only the "right" people get benefits and policing the poor.
- neom 5y agoIf you take out pensions(~100b gbp), the UK spends (very) approx. 100 billion pounds a year on social assistance. I think OP is suggesting taking that 100 billion and dividing it evenly among the people of the UK vs specifically to the folks who have applied.
- woko 5y ago> specifically to the folks who have applied I like how you distinguish between the people who are eligible and the people who have applied, because some eligible people do not know they are and therefore do not apply. It is brought up in the press [1] from time to time, and the percentage in France is somewhere between 40% and 50% of the eligible people, which is huge! [1] in French: https://www.leparisien.fr/economie/votre-argent/aides-sociales-un-francais-sur-deux-ignore-ses-droits-14-11-2017-7391007.php https://www.leparisien.fr/economie/votre-argent/aides-social...
- vageli 5y agoIs there surplus in these social assistance budgets going unused? How could you expect to spread the same budget over the entire population while maintaining the quality of benefits?
- neom 5y agoThere is no surplus in the social assistance budget that I saw when I went and looked over the budgetary documents to post my original comment. I'm not an expert and I didn't dive deep, I just wanted to look for the numbers that the UK is associating to "welfare" and "social assistance". As far as I saw, the majority of the benefit is via tax rebate, tax reductions, and in some instances direct payment, so in that light, I'm not sure "quality" is much of a factor? The UK already has social healthcare iirc. I think in the UBI world, everyone pays tax normally, and then that money is distributed evenly vs specifically? (Edit: removed my math as it is wrong, as usual)
- chrisseaton 5y agoWhy not include pensions? Since your pension could be replaced by your basic income. But if you do, it's about £3.5k a year each I think. Not a lot of money. Certainly not enough to live on for a basic standard of living in our society.
- neom 5y agoI agree but I seperated it for whose who might not, this way you can choose how you think about it. :)
- pjc50 5y agoUniversal Credit is very far from universal, of course. It has some deliberate bugs, like a lag in payments that drives people to loan sharks.