Who says you need to be able to live completely off of it?
> 2. Many people oppose welfare that doesn't require a job precisely because of the societal costs to the disincentive to work.
So we're getting rid of all the programs that don't then? Requiring someone to work to receive benefits is unbelievably easy to scam anyway because two people can just hire each other to watch television and have the payments cancel.
It is possible to make the argument that there should be no social assistance at all. But that isn't the status quo, and the argument cannot be made that the status quo is better than a basic income.
I thought the argument for basic income is that it could support someone without the need for a job. If it can't, then that's not what I've been discussing.
>Requiring someone to work to receive benefits is unbelievably easy to scam anyway because two people can just hire each other to watch television and have the payments cancel.
"Illegal thing X cannot be enforced, therefore X should be legal" is an invalid argument.
The amount is independent of the thing. You could have a basic income of $5000/year and it would still work better than $5000/year in means-tested welfare. You could have a basic income of $50,000/year but that is probably inadvisable. What probably makes the most sense is to replace existing welfare at approximately the same level and then collect data on how that works to decide the best amount in the long-term. (But $12,000/year is probably in the ballpark.)
> "Illegal thing X cannot be enforced, therefore X should be legal" is an invalid argument.
How is it an invalid argument? Passing unenforceable laws is futile and stupid. It fosters disrespect for the law and gives advantage to people willing to break the law when they know they can get away with it.
But BI of $5000 costs far more, because anyone can get it. You'd need to reduce the amount to keep costs the same, at which the argument that it's better becomes weaker.
>How is it an invalid argument? Passing unenforceable laws is futile and stupid. It fosters disrespect for the law and gives advantage to people willing to break the law when they know they can get away with it.
If it's difficult but possible to break the law and get away with it, then laws and some enforcement deters breaking the law. E.g. it's pretty easy to get alcohol under 21 and cigarettes under 18 , but the age laws make it harder than if there were no laws, which reduces the amount of underage drinking/smoking. If you agree that's a good thing, then the law is good insofar as it encourages that.
Or in the welfare example, it's not easy to scam welfare, it takes time, organization, etc. Many people who would never try to scam welfare would sign up for basic income, because it's official and there's no risk of getting caught.
Of course, it depends on the ease of scamming, the benefit, etc, but the general argument of "unenforcable->make it legal" is invalid unless accompanied by those arguments.
That's the thing - it isn't and won't be. Basic Income is designed for, and in fact only works in, civilizations with enough excess productivity that they don't have to have their entire population working their assess off to maintain homeostasis and well-being. The USA is just about to get there. Some of the Nordic countries were there probably five or six years ago. There's a reason they're implementing it before us.
BI isn't "so that people can sit on their couches and do nothing all day while I support them". BI is so that people aren't required to have jobs to survive. Because when your civilization has sufficiently efficient per-person production, you end up with an issue where you're not just overprovisioned, but so overprovisioned that companies must start laying off large portions of the population to avoid wasting money hiring uselessly overproductive employees. At which point you end up with 30% or 60% unemployment and you have to choose between letting a third of your population starve or implementing something like BI.
That's the situation. BI isn't here to make it your responsibility to support everybody. BI is here because it's become so easy for people to support others that the economy, which up until now has assumed that there'll never be enough support to go around, has fallen apart. It's set up so that you can choose to support others instead of taking care of your family, and still have everything make sense.