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Support For a Universal Basic Income Is Inching Up In Europe (qz.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Finland and the Netherlands are running modest pilots, and others are being considered by governments in France, Switzerland, and the UK, and by a host of nonprofits. To gauge public enthusiasm for the idea, Dalia Research, a Berlin-based market research firm, has been surveying Europeans' attitudes toward basic income since 2016. They've found a warm welcome. In a March survey, 68% of Europeans said they would vote yes in a basic-income referendum, up from 64% last year. The survey was put to 11,000 citizens in 28 European Union states and has a 1.1% margin of error. But not everyone is ready to see it implemented right away -- 48% said they wanted to test the policy first, while 31% advocated for adopting it as soon as possible. The 24% of respondents who opposed a UBI in both years were most concerned about the economic impact, including the expense, the risk of reducing the motivation to work, and the possibility foreigners would take exploit it. Those in favor of a UBI were most convinced by the promise of increased security and freedom, namely a reduced financial anxiety over meeting basic needs, more equality in opportunities, and the prospect of greater financial independence and self-reliance.
Most European countries already have systems in place to make sure that people without income doesn't end up starving or homeless.
The cost is already there. The point of UBI is to reduce the administrative overhead.
Instead of figuring out who needs the extra support you give it to everyone wether they need it or not.
For those who didn't need it it will seem redundant that they are first taxed and then have the money given back to them, but in the end nothing much happened.
UBI isn't as radical as some people make it out to be.
Would you like to pay higher taxes so that some of it will be given to others even if they do not work?
Hell no!
Finland, the Netherlands, France, Switzerland, and the UK already has systems in place to make sure that people doesn't starve or end up homeless.
The cost is already there. Switching to UBI doesn't necessarily require higher taxes. Especially since you no longer need government workers investigating who is entitled to extra support.
It doesn't make much sense to contribute to a plan that can't actually be implemented unless everyone has to contribute by law.The US will never have single payer healthcare for the same specious argument. So enjoy that bucket of crabs you're in.
"Old man yells at systemd"
Some of it is supposed to be paid for by eliminating the enormous welfare bureaucracy associated with the alphabet soup of individual welfare programs, the means testing, the monitoring, etc.
Just because $1 in tax money goes into a welfare program does not mean that $1 in benefits was received by a recipient. Much of that $1 went into the budgets, salaries and operations involved in running that program.
With UBI you eliminate all of that. You get a check and the progressive tax code decides whether it's net positive for you when your total income (UBI + wages) goes above the income level of benefits eligibility.
In fact, I think it makes sense if a person gets $25,000 UBI, makes $5,000 working that they should somehow net out something more than $25,000 and less than $30,000. We want people to have an incentive to keep working, and not losing all benefits because of *any* work goes a long way to providing that incentive. A big problem with many current welfare programs is the complexity of means testing and the games people play to get benefits though they don't qualify or to kill work incentives so they continue to get benefits.