[Retric]

Only if you ignore the tax code. US example for single people:

SNAP for a single person is $291/month - total income * 0.3 so they get nothing at 11,640 per year of annual income and 291$/month at 0$ annual income.

2024 income brackets for single people are: 10% $0 to $11,600, 12% $11,600 to $47,150, 22% $47,151 to $100,525, ... Maximum tax bracket is 37%.

Hand everyone 260$ per month, but change things so the highest tax bracket 37% applies $0 to $11,600 and everyone making 12,000+$/ year sees zero change in their take home pay. And people making 0$/year get 260$/month.

Those numbers aren’t quite identical, but it’s surprising how close it ends up. At 30%, $0 to $11,640 it’s off by less than 1$/year.

[_heimdall]

Not quite sure that I follow here. In your model, what are the proposed benefits given out as a UBI? Is it $260/mo reducing down to $0 when you make at least $12,000 per year?

If so, how is that universal? Or a basic income covering some of the basic resources UBI is argued to cover, like shelter or food?

[Retric]

My example was for a US UBI that only covered food and the math was limited to single people, but the points could be applied more broadly.

UBI means everyone has an income of at least x$/year. If you’re making more than x$/year in take home pay that’s an income > x$/year.

Behind the scenes the advantage of the government handing out money every month is redundancy. Even if that same amount is normally removed from a paycheck, people aren’t suddenly left with 0$ if their paycheck bounces etc. Thus a single deposit of $10,000 per month is slightly worse than a deposit of $10,000 - $x and an independent deposit of $x.

[_heimdall]

If you want to take the SNAP program as a baseline and only slightly tweak the limits on when funds taper off, why bother with a new UBI program at all? It sounds like SNAP gets you 90% of the way there, it mainly just needs the restrictions on what the money can be spent on removed.

With limits so low I'm not totally sure how it would make a meaningful difference compared to the various welfare and entitlement programs we have today in the US. We already have multiple programs attempting to give needs-based funding to the public. How is such a limited UBI as you describe it any different, or different enough to justify the massive political battle it would entail?

[Retric]

I was bringing it up as a starting point for discussion and to show how UBI doesn’t imply extra spending.

Proponents suggest bring more programs into a single UBI could significantly lower operating costs. A single check each month could replace some or all of: Housing assistance, Supplemental Security Income (SSI), Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), including Pass through Child Support, General Assistance (GA), Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI), etc.

Healthcare in the US is similarly split across Medicaid, Medicare, VA benefits, ACA health insurance subsidies, Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), plus a host of things you haven’t heard of like Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program. There’s a massive opportunity for cost savings by simply reducing administrative redundancy.

[_heimdall]

Interesting, I could see that going either way. Surely there is waste when funds are split across multiple programs, but the potential benefit to that approach is that people may get benefits from one or two programs rather than all of them.

WIC and the CA are great examples. The population helped by both programs is purposefully smaller than the total population. If the funds currently spent only on mothers or veterans is spread across everyone it seems reasonable that efficiencies of moving to a single program wouldn't make up for the increased number of beneficiaries.