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Comment by at-fates-hands | Hacker News Reader

It's easy to do some research and say, "Hey, this works! Look at all the places that did it!"

Here in the US, we already have a complex network of safety nets to take care of the people who UBI is really targeted for. This begs the question, if you give people a basic income, what social services people already depend on will you get rid of?

There's no way you can keep all of the social services AND give people a basic income, it's just not economically feasible.

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The real problem with UBI is the people who need help the most are least able to help themselves. I have friends who are mentally unable to advance beyond assistant usher at the movie theater (the head usher is some 16 year old kid who started two weeks ago). I have a friend who is convinced the CIA had the doctors put a bug in their knee while doing surgery.

These are the people that need the most help, and UBI won't help them. Both will fall for scams, and otherwise not provide for their basic needs if just given money.

UBI can help the disabled who are mentally competent. There are many things that I do daily that required working eyes/ears/limbs. Some of them society can make "reasonable accommodation" for, but some of them are not possible given that disability.

UBI can also help those who had "bad luck". Though here we quickly get into people that it is hard to be sympathetic towards. I know of a lot of people that are poor because they continually waste their money on drugs (legal and otherwise - not medically required), gambling, trinkets... They may never be rich, but a different spending habit could change their life. (You will note here that I'm injecting my own value judgement on their lifestyle)

I've always looked at UBI from that angle.

In order to fund it you essentially take the first $X from ALL of the other equivalent services.

IMO this would gut programs like Social Security enough that they could actually be reformed. Right now if you talk about reforming any of them, scare politics are used because it's a singular threat to a person's livelyhood. If you look at your monthly check and see $800 from UBI and $200 from Social Security, all of a sudden that gets a lot less scary.

This is my problem with UBI. I don't believe that the US will ever meaningfully reduce the size or scope of the safety net. It's not politically feasible to do so.

If we could could swap state managed welfare for equivalent UBI, well, that's an interesting trade-off to consider. But I don't think we actually have that option.

> what social services people already depend on will you get rid of?

Most of them, that's one of the major reasons you'd want to do it. The means-testing bureaucracy being so expensive all by itself, you might as well give everybody enough to live and get rid of the bureaucrats.

that would essentially privatize any existing government social services and most conservatives support the idea of smaller government

To implement basic income without raising taxes, the USA would have to trim something like 10% from our defense budget.

I think you mean politically feasible. And political feasibility is something that changes with the popular will.

Not to say we’d want to keep all our current welfare type benefits with UBI

10% of the defense budget would fund a $15 a month UBI.

edit: bad math

598 billion per year * 10% / 325 million people / 12 months/year

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