PALESTINE, Says @SineReplying to
A lot of opponents whine "But means-testing, but unfair, waaah, waaah, waaah"
Dude. My dude. No. You don't get it. The entire point of UBI is that you DON'T waste money on means-testing. That's what the 'universal' means. The US public-assistance infrastructure spends MORE MONEY ON BUREAUCRACY FOR MEANS TESTING THAN ON ACTUALLY PROVIDING BENEFITS. To make sure that nobody who "doesn't deserve it" gets any. But multiple economic studies have found that not only does UBI always work whenever tried, it is actually cheaper to just give benefits to EVERYONE than to figure out who "deserves" them. The amounts are a drop in the bucket for the well-off anyway.
The real objection to UBI fundamentally comes from two kinds of people: The ones who object to a single dollar of public money being spent on anyone other than them, and the ones who understand that UBI will hurt their ability to get people to labor for them on terms that approach indentured servitude, and that they personally benefit from keeping the poorest people dependent upon their table crumbs.
Dude. My dude. No. You don't get it. The entire point of UBI is that you DON'T waste money on means-testing. That's what the 'universal' means. The US public-assistance infrastructure spends MORE MONEY ON BUREAUCRACY FOR MEANS TESTING THAN ON ACTUALLY PROVIDING BENEFITS. To make sure that nobody who "doesn't deserve it" gets any. But multiple economic studies have found that not only does UBI always work whenever tried, it is actually cheaper to just give benefits to EVERYONE than to figure out who "deserves" them. The amounts are a drop in the bucket for the well-off anyway.
The real objection to UBI fundamentally comes from two kinds of people: The ones who object to a single dollar of public money being spent on anyone other than them, and the ones who understand that UBI will hurt their ability to get people to labor for them on terms that approach indentured servitude, and that they personally benefit from keeping the poorest people dependent upon their table crumbs.
