Originally Posted by pondering_it_all
Sorry, I've got to jump in here.

Part of the problem with a cash UBI is that the poor typically spend any cash they get buying fast food, cigarettes, and maybe alcohol maybe drugs and then running out of money before the next check arrives. They really don't know how cheaply somebody can live by cooking every meal at home, not smoking, etc. (My sister is a perfect example of this.) Give them more cash and they will just buy more McDonalds, etc. You would just be subsidizing the fast food industry, payroll lenders, pawn shops, and so forth.
The Food Stamps program limits what you can use the money for. (It isn't cash, BTW). You CANNOT buy cigarettes or alcohol. If someone wants to eat at MacDonalds because it's cheap then so be it. You can't dictate what food people want.
As for drugs, again, the food stamps come on a card and I know of no drug dealers that accept that card as payment.
Originally Posted by pondering_it_all
As for creating a UBI tax credit, that only works for people who pay some taxes and file. You would be boosting the working poor a bit, but ignoring everybody below that level! I think we really need a bottom-up system. And I suspect this would be easy to pass because we already spend the money it would take on welfare programs. We just need to redirect that money to actually help the real poor.
I agree. I don't see how a tax credit would work.

Originally Posted by pondering_it_all
I also think "the poverty line" is hogwash: $11,770 income for an individual is poor but certainly survivable. The real poor are homeless and have to beg or collect aluminum cans to survive.
In any large city in the U.S. you would live in a cardboard box with that income. In the smaller places where cost of living is lower it is still very little, but at the same time you are limiting job opportunities - which is contradictory to the whole point. So unless the program also creates decent paying work in small cities you are not solving the problem. Just putting a band-aid.

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Lenny Bruce

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Dostoevsky