Instead of all the fuckery, imagine if the government just sent everyone a monthly cheque with the only criteria that they are a living breathing adult with a US address.
Universal trickle up.
Universal trickle up.
Counter argument: Won't this just encourage fuckery from the citizenry? Won't they just be encouraged to game the system (have more kids, take care of people to intercept their checks, etc)?
- More kids? OK that's probably good for an aging society, but do we even dole out money based on dependents? Should the government be in the position of subsidizing people having kids in the first place? Since it's adults who are directly impacted (losing income from a job) that's who we target. We can always address dependents through another program if needed, but that'll require a whole other level of complexity.
- Intercepting cheques? Are we talking about a subset of elderly or disabled who can't cash their own cheques? How do we handle social security cheques today? Maybe we would need more measures to handle this issue due to scale?
- Illegal immigrants? This one is a political quagmire. In my opinion they deserve the same benefits, but that's a very controversial opinion, and not something I'd want bogging down immediate assistance to everyone else. Ideally this is something the entire country would get to vote on, understanding that it will have a huge impact on a lot of industries.