> Before getting to the political problem of dismantling benefits, some of which pay out more than $12,000 a year and have a vocal, sympathetic minority willing to fight for them.
The best way to handle this is to give people a one-time election of whether they want the UBI. If they want the UBI, they're disqualified from all of these other programs, for life.
Then nearly everyone picks the UBI. The person receiving $500 from other programs certainly does, so does the person receiving $10,000, probably even the person receiving $12,500 because they get to avoid doing the paperwork every year for all the other programs.
You're left with the negligible percentage of people who actually receive non-trivially more than $12,000 under other programs, representing a minority of the existing funding. This could also be assisted by dropping some of the less sympathetic programs immediately and further reducing the number of people on the other side of the $12,000 line. And the percentage shrinks over time, because someone picks the UBI at age 18 and then 10 years later discovers they might have received $16,000 this year from some other set of programs, but they've already made their choice. After a few years the other programs have so few people using them that there is no political will to continue them at all.
And recall that one such program is social security, which is currently funded by a 12.4% tax. That by itself is more than half the way to 22%. And all the existing retirees who choose that over the UBI would then not have to be paid the UBI.
The best way to handle this is to give people a one-time election of whether they want the UBI. If they want the UBI, they're disqualified from all of these other programs, for life.
Then nearly everyone picks the UBI. The person receiving $500 from other programs certainly does, so does the person receiving $10,000, probably even the person receiving $12,500 because they get to avoid doing the paperwork every year for all the other programs.
You're left with the negligible percentage of people who actually receive non-trivially more than $12,000 under other programs, representing a minority of the existing funding. This could also be assisted by dropping some of the less sympathetic programs immediately and further reducing the number of people on the other side of the $12,000 line. And the percentage shrinks over time, because someone picks the UBI at age 18 and then 10 years later discovers they might have received $16,000 this year from some other set of programs, but they've already made their choice. After a few years the other programs have so few people using them that there is no political will to continue them at all.
And recall that one such program is social security, which is currently funded by a 12.4% tax. That by itself is more than half the way to 22%. And all the existing retirees who choose that over the UBI would then not have to be paid the UBI.