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Comment by websiteapi | Hacker News Reader

ubi just doesn't make any sense. case in point is the overwhelming negative response to the laptop 4G program in NYC with the Chromebooks. virtually every comment said it makes more sense for such a thing to be means tested and it was a waste of money since most people already had internet at their house. how ironic - if that's the attitude on this forum of all places about table stakes, imagine the reaction when you give rich people thousands of dollars a year for food. ubi is DOA.

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Means testing has its own issues. How do you decide what the lines are? How do you design it for people just outside those lines that keeps it fair? Who enforces it? What happens when your means change?

Figuring all this stuff has a cost, both real (now you have to hire people to screen and enforce the means testing) and emotional/political (news story about a single mother who was rejected for making $1 too much).

So when advocating for means testing please keep in mind it’s a lot easier to not have it. Yes some who don’t need it will get it, but that can be better than a ballooned cost and some who do need it being blocked or dissuaded from getting it.

A lot of the interest groups arguing for means testing on public benefits actually don't want those things to exist at all. Adding means tests to them is a way of making them more and more inaccessible while claiming it's simply about fareness. It's a deliberate strategy.

the reality is you can't just give things to everyone. the cost is just not sustainable.

For sure. We could never have universal benefits like roads, childhood education, firefighters, etc. That would never work.

The flipside is that some corporation is getting a massive handout for a technology contract like that, and the actual utility benefit to most people is low. You could spend the same exact amount of money directly on UBI cash and be much more effective by letting people spend money on whatever they need.

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