[Shivetya]

Poverty and homelessness will not be solved by throwing money around. It only can be solved if society is willing to understand some people need to be told what to do each step of their lives. It will only be solved if people realize that we will actually have to build housing and make people live there. It will only be solved when people realize that once you get them housed you may need to insure their dietary needs are properly met which means someone else choosing what food is provided. Then after the basics of housing, food, and health, are taking care off, then you can just hand them money to do with as they need. The real bugaboo is when someone realizes that China's one child rule may have been too utopian in a future world, as in assistance may come with restrictions on even starting a family or curtailing family size.

All UBI programs tested or suggested really are nothing more than allowances and cannot solve the problem. The problem is not cheap nor universal. The universal part should be, you cannot fall below this threshold, not that everyone gets the same benefits. That is only being done to sell it when people should just be told, some people need no help currently. It will be there should they need it but right now they don't.

We have many of our problems for two reasons, governments which do not respect the property rights and personal rights of their citizenry and also that there are just people in this world who cannot operate on their own.

[chipsa]

Can't go below a threshold. Cool. So threshold is $12k or whatever. Person could work, and get $200 a week. So they get $50 a week in benefits. Or they could not work, and get $250 a week in benefits. So why work? Working more or less in the very low income range doesn't make any difference. So they won't. Not at a 100% income tax rate.

That's the point of having it being a fixed amount: you can tax the regular income, so the effective amount they get decreases as they work more, but you don't have perverse incentives to not work.