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A comment on Jack Dorsey is giving Andrew Yang $5M to build the case for a basic income. Parent comment

Re:Jack Dorsey is giving Andrew Yang $5M to build the case f... by gota on Thursday May 21, 2020 @02:50PM (#23263134)
I think that was a major point, too, because a significant portion of the money available for social assistance is spent on deciding who can get it and fighting 'fraud'. A blanket universal give is a lot easier.

However - I've always been puzzled by how each person in the US doesn't have a public, singularly identifying number assigned. Doesn't that make even an 'universal' basic income hard to define? How do you guarantee that every person gets one, and only one, BI check every month? How do you find out who is dead and should stop getting one...?

From what I know, SSN are used for stuff like that, but there's all this weird stuff about it (althoug I admit my knowledge of it comes from a half forgotten CGP Grey video, and that the impression that stuck)

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Re:Jack Dorsey is giving Andrew Yang $5M to build the case f... by HideousKojima on Thursday May 21, 2020 @02:56PM (#23263245)
Social Security's admin costs are ~.7% of the program's budget, eliminating admin overhead, means-testing, and fraud fighting won't get you many gains:

https://www.cbpp.org/research/social-security/policy-basics-...

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Re:Jack Dorsey is giving Andrew Yang $5M to build the case f... by jdc on Thursday May 21, 2020 @06:31PM (#23266290)
I'm not in the US, so I know little about its social security programs. But isn't Social Security is one of many?

Also this paragraph from the linked article suggests that the 0.7% figure does not include means testing:

Indeed, universal participation and the absence of means-testing make Social Security very efficient to administer. Administrative costs amount to only 0.7 percent of annual benefits, far below the percentages for private retirement annuities. Means-testing Social Security would impose significant reporting and processing burdens on both recipients and administrators, undercutting many of those advantages while yielding little savings.

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