If we did cut out the theoretical work-requirement and possibly stopped paying the rent and instead paid out money (but then quite a few people would fail to pay rent and we'd need another social program to cover them), this would be UBI.
So far, I haven't seen the explosion in creativity, entrepreneurship, volunteering etc that's usually promised. On the other hand, we're up there fighting about the top position in OECD countries for total tax rate.
That's because most people don't have the ambition and discipline of Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos and if given the chance would rather bum around their whole life instead of work.
I see the same thing in Austria and so do my friends living in other wealthy European countries with strong social nets.
Most people, if given easy access to welfare, would rather lower their standard of living to fit in that small sum of money and not do anything all day rather than use their free time to hustle, learn a new skill or build a business that will permit them a higher standard of living later on.
In my experience in highly funded research groups that run outside out of traditional management (translation annoying and wasteful tertiary education administration) researchers that make an impact get on just fine and produce excellent results on a liveable wage and being given the space to do their jobs. In my mind, the highly masculine and overly aggressive capitalist mindset that competition == results is either untrue or false and discounts a wide range of motivations, personalities and skill sets which do things of interest or worth in intellectual jobs.
ALG II is pretty far from unconditional. You only get it after you burn through all your savings, and it forces you to look for work. TV costs 17€ a month per household even if you don't have a TV. Health insurance is pretty far from free, though it matches your income.
Don't get me wrong, it's generally a pretty good system, but it's not unconditional.
Yes, in a theoretic sense. Not practically, it does not run out and you have to be pretty combative and purposefully i-wont-work to be sanctioned.
> TV costs 17€ a month per household even if you don't have a TV
Which is waived for anyone on social benefits.
> Health insurance is pretty far from free
It is for anyone on social benefits, paid by taxing those that work.
It's not just "stop working, get free things".
If you are not a citizen, it's also going to ensure your visa doesn't get renewed. The government had to make an exception this time for COVID-19.
As for savings: true, but less relevant. With a high net wealth you're already free to do whatever you like. 41% of Germans have less than $10.000 in personal wealth, which will be pretty much the so called Schonvermögen (which you do not need to touch to be eligible for Hartz-4; retirement savings are not taken into account for this, and only applied to private retirement savings, while the super majority relies on the public retirement system in Germany).
So yeah, it's not "stop working, get free things", but it's pretty close to it. Close enough that we should see all the huge benefits that are promised by UBI proponents. But we don't.
> If you are not a citizen, it's also going to ensure your visa doesn't get renewed.
That's not accurate. About 2 million non-citizens are receiving Hartz-4 benefits, the trend is pointing upwards, it does not affect their legal status.
US statistics:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/05/04/baby-boom... (Millions of baby boomers are getting caught in the country’s broken retirement system)
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/05/these-people-are-on-the-verg... (48 percent of American households over the age of 55 still have no retirement savings)
https://www.cbpp.org/research/social-security/social-securit... (Although most of those whom Social Security keeps out of poverty are elderly [14.8 million], 6.9 million are under age 65, including 1.2 million children)
For our purposes, it's important that you scope to only those who are collecting only Social Security, and have no other retirement savings to closely model your average citizen collecting a potential UBI.