In a survey done by a social worker of n somewhere around 80 nearly all people on public assistance programs preferred the cash instead of public assistance.

Arbitrarily set and legislated into oblivion means testing thresholds and the administrative overhead of checking in constantly plus the shame of assistance appears to be a serious problem. Similar happens with EITC which most people eligible for do not claim.

See also how awful state-run TANF has been in Mississippi. UBI nationwide could be thought of as taking back control of programs from states that have dismantled the nets already.

This is a tough issue that has a lot of dimensions of discussion that won’t be covered respectfully in an HN thread exactly for the gravity of the problem

I agree that the overhead burden is insanely expensive. There's also the cruel, soul destroying experiences on both sides to account for. The staff, paranoid, treating everyone as a leech until proven not. The downtrodden, forced to prove their innocence while drowning in the bad hand life dealt them.

Another effect to consider is where do all the staff go to get new jobs? Many will find the private sector exceptionally difficult to integrate into after decades in public benefits work.

It feels like you just strung together dinne fancy words and didn't provide any reasoning.

Please don't be a jerk in HN comments, and please don't make unsubstantive negative posts.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

It boggles to imagine which of those words you found fancy

Yang’s website says the plan will rely on poor people electing not to get other social safety net benefits. People will end up without healthcare and without food if there are not programs in place to address those problems specifically.

> found fancy

I was giving you the benefit

> without healthcare and without food

What? I've never heard him say this and seens like something he wouldn't say given his stance on wellbeing. Also, you can use UBI for food.

The only thing I've heard is people on welfare programs would be able to choose between continuing those or stopping them and switching to UBI. Nothing about healthcare and with these the people get to choose themselves.

From Yang’s campaign website: “Current welfare and social program beneficiaries would be given a choice between their current benefits or $1,000 cash unconditionally – most would prefer cash with no restriction.”

The point of public healthcare and food programs, among the other programs he’s talking about not having, is that even if you run out of money you can still buy food because the food stamps are reserved for doing so.

I know you all like to imagine everyone is rational like you, but what will you do when someone has spent everything and cannot feed themselves? Or has spent everything because of an emergency and their healthcare coverage lapses and they are ill?

Has anyone actually studied what people do in these scenarios or are you just assuming that people will willingly starve themselves to death en masse at a rate greater than the current just because they get $1k in pity money a month?

Give me a break.