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Comment by free652 | Hacker News Reader

Where did you get that? UBI won't help people that get free housing in NYC UBI doesn't work with HCOL areas.

Where did you get the idea that all current social programs would continue unchanged if something as radical as UBI were introduced?

There are two versions of the proposal. UBI as a replacement for social programs is fantasy. The UBI cheque would have to be insanely fat to replace the welfare/medicare/housing/food all the other forms of assistance that disadvantaged people need. I know a lot of libertarians support it because it is essentially a round about way of cutting social benefits.

And hypothetically speaking, say the government is spending $10k/year on assistance to a disabled individual. If you instead give $10k/year to that individual in cash he would not be able to buy the same level of care for the same price on the private market. He'd get massively short changed. Welfare is far more efficient, financially speaking, than handing out cash to people and letting them fend for themselves.

> If you instead give $10k/year to that individual in cash he would not be able to buy the same level of care for the same price on the private market

How do you know that? Countries with much worse welfare than the US often have much better prices than the US when it comes to healthcare.

Maybe healthcare prices were allowed to grow so much only because insurance pays for most of it anyway. If that changes, healthcare providers would have to charge more realistic amounts, especially for common procedures like dental checkups and medications like insulin.

Because you would cut programs all social programs like medicaid, ssi, section 8 and etc. How would these people live going forward?

Many UBI proposals have suggested eliminating or reducing other programs in conjunction with their implementation.

Why would anyone sane want to live in NYC anyway, if UBI was a thing? People move to big cities with expensive housing because that's where the well paying jobs are.

Sane? Like a great-grandmother? Would be she insane to live in NYC where is her whole family?

The combined disposable income of an entire family should be enough to afford housing for one great grandmother. UBI probably won't help or hurt her at all.

It would be insane for her family to not take her into their home and take care of her, which unfortunately the US doesn’t do as much as other cultures.

So right now she is independent, but under UBI she has to beg her family? Is that what you call a success of UBI?

That's just income redistribution from the most vulnerable, right wing would love this.

She is not really independent right now. There is no way a grandma can live comfortably in one of the biggest cities in the world without massive subsidies in the form of rent control, for example.

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