How much do we spend on the benefits that are currently validated including the admin overhead? How much would be spent on UBI? I'm guessing that we don't spend as much on that admin overhead as we would under a UBI plan that includes everyone.
The 2.6bn is staffing costs only, it ignores e.g. fines and legal costs for when the dwp gets things wrong. The dwp was wrong almost 400 times per day, every day of the year if you count the tribunal rulings against them in 2017.
UBI seems cheap.
Under the existing system there are benefits and they phase out aggressively. Some lower income people experience the equivalent of marginal tax rates in excess of 100%. It's a poverty trap -- you can't make a little more money because if you do, the government takes all of it. (And it's little better when they take 80% or 90% of it.) It's very bad.
Under a UBI the formal tax rate would be "higher" -- someone making low wages might be paying 30% compared to what is on paper 0% now, but it would really be 30% instead of 80+% after benefits phase outs that wouldn't exist. It effectively allows you to use a flat tax and end up with a system more progressive than the status quo. (Or you can make it more or less progressive as you please by changing the amount of the UBI.)
The largest beneficiaries of this are the working poor; the lower middle class. Right now they make "too much money" and have lost all the benefits. Under a UBI they would still receive some, e.g. at a 30% tax rate and a $12,000 UBI, someone making $30,000/year would net $3000.
The effect on people right in the middle would zero out. They'd nominally pay more in taxes and then get it all back.
But that $3000 has to come from somewhere, so the upper middle class might pay slightly more than they do now.
Maybe this means software developers would be paying slightly higher taxes. Or maybe not -- eliminating poverty traps is likely to produce economic benefits. First, people with less money have more, and are likely to spend it, which helps the economy. Second, it would likely produce an increase in wages, because people would be less desperate for jobs and employers would have to pay workers more. Both increase the tax base which allows the same level of benefits at a lower tax rate. Also, corporations would pay some of the taxes but only individuals would receive the UBI.
The simple answer is taxes. Companies don't get UBI since they're inhuman. And rich people will almost certainly pay more in taxes more than they receive in UBI.
> I'm guessing that we don't spend as much on that admin overhead as we would under a UBI plan that includes everyone.
My intuition says the opposite. Speaking in startup terms, it's significantly easier to roll out a new feature to all users, or offer a discount to all customers, or enact a policy for all employees than it is to create two or more groups to determine who gets what.
Though our guesses disagree, I'd hope we could agree to experimentally test the hypothesis, and to enact policy based on what the data show.
If we just throw out our existing tax policy and replace it with something less complicated and fair then we don't need UBI.
In computing terms, I like to think that monetary flows are how the market shares information. So having more people "in the game" will increase the fidelity of the information, opening new markets. For example, discount retail might be able to serve more specialty niches.
So then the debate becomes impossible, because the pro UBI side can only talk in theory and hypotheticals, which is never going to swing anyone even slightly inclined to conservatism.