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Comment by jimbokun | Hacker News Reader

> The project worked by recruiting low-income people and couples, offering them a fixed payment with no strings attached that worked out to approximately $17,000 for individuals and $24,000 for couples.

Why discriminate so heavily against couples?

It creates every incentive to lie about your relationship status. Or to avoid sharing a household altogether, creating greater economic inefficiencies and less built in social support of having a partner.

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Yeah, that's a means test and breahes the "universal" principle.

You've hit the nail on the head - means testing is the killer of any social program. Means testing makes social programs challenging to access and frustrating to use, leading to them being unpopular and unsuccessful.

The program was never a universal basic income, just a basic income pilot.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontario_Basic_Income_Pilot_Pro...

Maybe those setting the rates believe most of the money will be spent on housing. Two people each living in their own one bedroom apartment will pay more in total than two people living in a two bedroom apartment. The gap is even larger if the couple lives together in a one bedroom apartment. Healthcare, food, and many other expenses will tend to double but not all will. If UBI is meant to cover the basics rather than everything, and housing is most people's largest expense, the amount can be lower for couples and achieve the same result. The problem, as you noted, is many will choose to game the system.

> Two people each living in their own one bedroom apartment will pay more in total than two people living in a two bedroom apartment. The gap is even larger if the couple lives together in a one bedroom apartment. Healthcare, food, and many other expenses will tend to double but not all will.

Exactly, so you are incentivizing people to be less frugal in order to get a bigger check.

It's because if you're in a relationship, you're considered a more valuable member of the society. Because it signals that someone has selected you to be around for a prolonged amount of time. Being single is more expensive in a big city.

It is punishing couples, not rewarding them. The amount given to two single people is $34,000. The amount given to two people in a relationship is $24,000.

Probably under the assumption that pooling resources and sharing a house means their expenses are NOT the same as two single people.

Right, so punish people for making better economic choices.

Being a couple is 1.5x more expensive than being single.

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