Universal Basic Income

[CoccoBill]

I don't see any logical premise for this argument. How is creating a whole new entitlement program going to cut down on bureaucracy??

It wouldn't be a whole new program in addition to the old ones, it would replace most if not all current ones. Which one takes more effort, processing the filings of millions of people, constantly adjusting brackets, monitoring people for abuse of the system, probably a whole bunch of other activities I can't right now think of, or, setting up an automated recurring payment? I would assume were talking about a difference of thousands of man-years of labor, with all the facilities, systems and overhead running the system of thousands of people entails.

You can't give everyone the same fixed amount. Seniors, disabled people, unemployed people, people with children, all have different needs. They all have a different definition of what is "basic necessities". So now you need the government to interview, monitor, process, make decisions, etc for millions of people.

Nope, the point is exactly that everyone gets the same amount. I suggest you read up on UBI. I'm sure there can/could be some exceptions, for example some criteria to receive higher payments, but that would defeat a lot of the purpose.

Sure, MAYBE, there would be some efficiency gains if this was all administrated by a single government agency. But you're also talking about adding hundreds of millions of people to the roster of benefit recipients.

Again, a recurring payment to all live citizens doesn't sound too complicated compared to any current form of social benefits.

But there's only a jillion other ways to incentivize labor. Also, it's hard not to point out the circular pitfall of your suggestion. Over time, markets will adjust prices for the effect of UBI. That means that "covering basic necessities" gets more expensive. Which means UBI needs to be increased. Which prompts the market to adjust prices. Which prompts UBI to be increased.....etc.

The question was how would UBI improve on status quo. What you describe is very much a part of status quo, not some new drawback of UBI.

Furthermore, unemployed people here have to prove that they are looking for work. You can't get your check until you give the unemployment office a detailed account of your job-search efforts. They will check too. If you turn down a reasonable job offer, you can't get unemployment benefits.

Further-Furthermore, I'm not sure why that's even relevant as unemployment is not a government entitlement program. It's an insurance program paid for by employers via a pricing system where employers with the highest turnover pay the highest insurance rates.

They have to prove they're looking for work here too. Sit down for a moment and think how much work is wasted generated nationwide to handle the data and make decisions based on it.

Unemployment benefits are government mandated and operated here, but the point is to also get rid of welfare, student benefits (yeah we have those too, as in government benefits for students) etc. A set amount is deducted from your salary for unemployment insurance and the government pools the money and pays out the benefits to those who get unemployed. You can have private unemployment insurance on top of that, and most people do.