because as decent human beings we're not willing to stand by and let people die of their own bad decisions because they spent their basic income on recreation instead of rent and food. And *that* gets us to food stamps and rent stamps and whatnot instead of cash, which is much harder to judge fairly and administer.
Not necessarily! It's an approach, but it's not even the only approach our society uses, already today.
One thing that I think is a feature not a bug of the UBI approach is that it is likely to surface a bunch of problems we're failing to address as a society. One such problem is discovering that some people can't be handed money to live on, because they, for whatever reason, are not capable of being responsible for turning that money into survival.
Right now, there's a prejudicial belief that poor people are poor because they are all irresponsible with money. The real percentage of poor people who can't survive if given adequate means, due to what... let us call them behavioral problems, is likely much, much smaller.
Interestingly, it's likely to be pretty infintessimal, and actually largely already handled. Because people too irresponsible to get the rent to the landlord? Section 8 doesn't solve that. Recipients still have the equivalent of a copay. If you really can't handle that, well, there's a very, very good chance that the problem is that you are legitimately in some way disabled: cognitively, such as someone who is very mentally retarded, or psychologically, such as someone with a thought disorder or executive function disorder.
Consider how our soicety handles people who are mentally retarded or severely mentally ill, such that their judgment and functioning are impaired to the point they can't reliably get rent to a landlord. These people already qualify for Disability, but their Disability payment don't go to them. They have what are called rep payees. (Not even sure what "rep" is short for. Representative?) These rep payess are allegedly-responsible adults who use the money to pay the bills for the the disabled person. They may also give the disabled person an allowance out of it.
(You might be surprised to learn that many people who are not responsible enough to pay their rent on time actually choose to have a rep payee handle their money for them, because they know themselves and don't want to get evicted.)
We could use the same system: if you don't use your UBI to maintain your survival, you stop being in charge of it, and someone else – possibly someone else chosen by you, like a family member – gets it and handles it for you.
Important technical term: "self-neglect". Someone who is not managing to provide for their own survival - not maintaining their housing, not managing to feed themselves, not keeping themselves in sanitary conditions – is experiencing "self-neglect". In a vulnerable population, e.g. someone elderly or disabled, that's a mandated reporter call in my state.
Honestly, things like "food stamps and rent stamps and whatnot instead of cash" are pretty useless at preventing self-neglect. Frankly, all those can be liquidated (or stolen, or lost). Which is why there are rep payees.
ETA: Sorry, I wandered off before I actually closed the loop. What I'm saying is that it seems to me we have this prejudicial notion about povery that is possibly/likely obscuring the actual extent (probably vastly smaller) of people not actually being able to take care of themselves. And if we had a UBI, that might get clarified for us. I expect we would find very few people were not able to manage their money, but those that do need parent-equivalents to look after them, not large bureaucratic systems to earmark money for specific expenses.
no subject
Not necessarily! It's an approach, but it's not even the only approach our society uses, already today.
One thing that I think is a feature not a bug of the UBI approach is that it is likely to surface a bunch of problems we're failing to address as a society. One such problem is discovering that some people can't be handed money to live on, because they, for whatever reason, are not capable of being responsible for turning that money into survival.
Right now, there's a prejudicial belief that poor people are poor because they are all irresponsible with money. The real percentage of poor people who can't survive if given adequate means, due to what... let us call them behavioral problems, is likely much, much smaller.
Interestingly, it's likely to be pretty infintessimal, and actually largely already handled. Because people too irresponsible to get the rent to the landlord? Section 8 doesn't solve that. Recipients still have the equivalent of a copay. If you really can't handle that, well, there's a very, very good chance that the problem is that you are legitimately in some way disabled: cognitively, such as someone who is very mentally retarded, or psychologically, such as someone with a thought disorder or executive function disorder.
Consider how our soicety handles people who are mentally retarded or severely mentally ill, such that their judgment and functioning are impaired to the point they can't reliably get rent to a landlord. These people already qualify for Disability, but their Disability payment don't go to them. They have what are called rep payees. (Not even sure what "rep" is short for. Representative?) These rep payess are allegedly-responsible adults who use the money to pay the bills for the the disabled person. They may also give the disabled person an allowance out of it.
(You might be surprised to learn that many people who are not responsible enough to pay their rent on time actually choose to have a rep payee handle their money for them, because they know themselves and don't want to get evicted.)
We could use the same system: if you don't use your UBI to maintain your survival, you stop being in charge of it, and someone else – possibly someone else chosen by you, like a family member – gets it and handles it for you.
Important technical term: "self-neglect". Someone who is not managing to provide for their own survival - not maintaining their housing, not managing to feed themselves, not keeping themselves in sanitary conditions – is experiencing "self-neglect". In a vulnerable population, e.g. someone elderly or disabled, that's a mandated reporter call in my state.
Honestly, things like "food stamps and rent stamps and whatnot instead of cash" are pretty useless at preventing self-neglect. Frankly, all those can be liquidated (or stolen, or lost). Which is why there are rep payees.
ETA: Sorry, I wandered off before I actually closed the loop. What I'm saying is that it seems to me we have this prejudicial notion about povery that is possibly/likely obscuring the actual extent (probably vastly smaller) of people not actually being able to take care of themselves. And if we had a UBI, that might get clarified for us. I expect we would find very few people were not able to manage their money, but those that do need parent-equivalents to look after them, not large bureaucratic systems to earmark money for specific expenses.