Most proposals do away with welfare programs, reducing enforcement costs with it. No need to ensure a person is unemployed and looking for a job or unable to work due to a medical condition.

Sure, but the cost of enforcing who receives benefits is orders of magnitude less than the cost of paying $12k net of income taxes to the large number of working age people who for whatever reason (usually existing wealth or partner/parent income) aren't currently interested in working.

This isn't just common sense; the data on working age economically inactive people, working age economically inactive people receiving benefits and admin costs is free and open for most countries.

There is good indication this reduces income disparity, create more opportunities for entrepreneurship (you can quit your job or go part-time while you do your thing) and, in general, more people consume more. The incentive to work more is there: with a sensible basic income you and your family won't starve and you won't need to work yourself to death, but you may want to have a nice vacation from time to time. With better economic security your freedom to move to better paying markets is increased.

The only reason not to back an idea like this is how much the top earners will be able to evade paying their part, overburdening those who can't dodge taxes as efficiently.

> and no mention if this would affect welfare and other social programs.

Which is quite surprising because every, and I mean every, UBI proposal talks up how much money we'd _save_ because welfare would be eliminated. I just don't see how that's possible, because inevitably there are going to be a lot of people with real or self-imposed crises crying about how they don't have enough money to pay rent or buy food, and what is the government going to do, tell them "tough shit, you should've managed your UBI better"? Uh, I doubt it. We'll end up stuck with welfare programs as a UBI safety net and then people will inevitably game the system by crying broke every single month.

This whole thing is such a ridiculous leftist fantasy, the biggest giveaway is that it completely ignores basic human behavior.

One wonders which humans you surround yourself with to consider that "basic human behavior".

Trying to maximize earnings is basic human behavior, sorry to break it to you. Welfare scams occur regularly, and that's before UBI.

And you're dodging the bigger question: I'm on UBI and my money runs out, can't afford to feed the kids. Multiply that by at least several thousand people every month. Now what?

How can maximising earnings be basic human behaviour when 'earnings' have only existed for a few thousand years, a tiny fraction of the history of our species?

Food banks exist already, why would UBI change that.

Same as now. You don't get more food stamps just because you ran out.

The difference is it's earmarked money today. There's no potential to spend your food money on a phone and then claim you can't buy food at the end of the month.

Most countries just give cash to people without income, they don't bother with a separate food program. That seems to work fine.

It's not really a ridiculous leftist fantasy, it was originally a conservative idea as an alternative to the welfare state. And as for what to do when people say they can't afford X, you raise the payouts so they can (if they really can't afford it).

> I just don't see how that's possible, because inevitably there are going to be a lot of people with real or self-imposed crises crying about how they don't have enough money to pay rent or buy food, and what is the government going to do, tell them "tough shit, you should've managed your UBI better"?

In the UK, many welfare payments go directly to the person, so this wouldn't be a new issue.

Many of them are designed really just to ensure a floor people don't drop below, but combined with exceptionally high marginal tax rates and odd conditions. The marginal tax rate in many cases is 100%, and can be above this.

> In the UK, many welfare payments go directly to the person, so this wouldn't be a new issue.

Not sure what you mean by this. The issue is that currently welfare payments are earmarked: this money can only be used for rent, this money can only be used for food, etc. By eliminating our existing welfare programs, as is the case with every UBI proposal, we would instead be giving a single check and saying "manage this money wisely and pay your expenses." The problem is that when the money isn't earmarked for a specific purpose you can't be sure that the basic necessities are actually paid for before the money runs out. Just ignoring the fraud angle (spend all the money and claim an emergency makes you unable to pay for rent), how do you deal with someone having a _real_ emergency, having to spend all their UBI, and then being unable to pay for rent? Tell them tough shit? That's not what's going to happen.

> Not sure what you mean by this. The issue is that currently welfare payments are earmarked: this money can only be used for rent, this money can only be used for food, etc.

I mean this is often not the case in the UK. We don't have food stamps and housing benefit is afaik generally paid directly to the person, not the landlord.

> Tell them tough shit? That's not what's going to happen.

That's what happens now, whether the person gets money from a job or from any kind of benefits. Why should it change? It's called 'Basic Income', not 'Basic Relax All Your Needs Will Be Met'.

And the right's fantasy? Everyone has a right to a gun, but we can't trust them with money.

Certainly any job that only offers "do this and we give you enough money to barely live" will have to pay more.

Or no, since the person will already be receiving enough to live.

Well, the price of goods and services will go up because everybody suddenly has more money and the owners of the businesses that sell those goods and services have just had their taxes doubled, so we're back to square one anyways.

Increased demand for some goods will create competition and prices will stay the same or fall. Commodity goods providers don't have pricing power so they can't raise prices without losing sales to competitors. There is also the "menu cost" which is the resistance of businesses to react in real time to economic events. A restaurant won't reprint menus everyday and the $1.99 cleaner won't change prices very often.

In addition. The total money supply isn't growing, it is being redistributed to people more likely to consume. The velocity of money will increase but the total amount won't. This will keep prices relatively stable.

I worry about this too. Who cares if you have more money if it has less buying power per dollar? This is also why I worry about drastically higher minimum wage. Poor people have more money but all the places they spend it have higher costs that lead to higher prices. Rich people don't spend the majority of their money at Wal-Mart so it affects them less. EITC and other tax reductions on the poor seems more effective and doesn't reduce buying power.

>Who cares if you have more money if it has less buying power per dollar?

People who are broke care. Some money is always better than no money.

But the wages they pay to workers have gone down.