[avatarlite]

The article's author also wrote a book advocating a universal basic income, “In Our Hands: A Plan to Replace the Welfare State,” which was first published in 2006. In that book he allows that services for the disabled would need to be retained and could not be replaced with a UBI.

[ptaipale]

Of course. The problems of the disabled, the mentally ill and so forth are obvious, and the solution is obvious: don't remove all the social security besides UBI.

But that's also the downfall of UBI, because it means that most of the other transfers will remain a necessity, and the bureaucracy to distribute it will remain a necessity, and the whole issue of welfare dependency is back with us, and so is the constant discussion of what support and subsidy should be expanded.

(I'm looking at this from European angle where the welfare is often, though not always, stronger than in the US).

[dragonwriter]

> The problems of the disabled, the mentally ill and so forth are obvious, and the solution is obvious: don't remove all the social security besides UBI.

The solution isn't to either remove all other benefit programs or to retain them all. in a static, unchanging way.

Its to build UBI in a way that it naturally grows with productivity, and keep existing means-tested benefit programs (whether general or targetted to specific narrow needs like disability) and count UBI income the same as earned income in the means tests for those programs, phasing the programs out as the UBI rises to a level where it is no longer possible to qualify for them. This does leave you with the administrative costs of those programs for some time, but with dropping caseload which reduces the total costs (both benefit and administrative) over time, eventually to zero when the programs are retired because UBI makes them obsolete.

This also lets you start UBI at a very level level, and reduces risks and provides opportunities to address unforseen consequences of the UBI implementation, because you aren't doing a big-bang implementation where immediately the entire social support structure depends on UBI alone.

(Essentially, instead of being obsolete and removed when UBI is first implemented, other programs are deprecated and to be removed in the future with defined criteria.)

[chillacy]

> and the solution is obvious: don't remove all the social security besides UBI.

I think that's where there are two camps within UBI supporters: those who want social security + UBI, and those who want to replace all or most social services with UBI. You can probably see how that maps to the political spectrum.