Health care is a good litmus test for UBI in the US. There's reasonably broad support for access/universal coverage but no will to pay for it (people in office are probably more opposed to it than voters).
I think a UBI would work well alongside a jobs for all program rather than instead of it. Say 20k a year for UBI for the disabled, carers, parents, pensioners, and people who are unemployable for whatever reason, or 40k a year working on some huge infrastructure project.
Healthcare costs are a problem because they can often be unpredictable and catastrophic. A UBI wouldn't fix that; you still need either an insurance or a single-payer system of some sort. The short version is that you're going to end up with risk pooling of some description either way.
Where the appeal comes for the right is that a UBI would let you eliminate our patchwork of other social assistance programs and all the headache, cost, and inefficiency of their associated bureaucracy.
The basic pitch isn't actually all that different from the flat tax ideas that are popular in conservative circles with the distinction that a UBI would disproportionately affect the wealthy rather than the poor.
There's one school which argues for that (the Libertarian / Friedman argument typically runs along these lines).
My view is that UBI could substitute for many safety-net expenditures, but not all. It turns out that there are people with special needs or circumstances. The sick, disabled, mentally ill, children, military veterans.
Some specific targeted assistance will likely still remain.
But yes, the bulk of it should likely not be necessary.
UBI isn't a plausible replacement for those, because extreme medical care, and care for the disabled, is priced so far out of range with the rest. I expect part of the steps towards UBI to involve further evolution of our systems for allocating those resources.
UBI would be less successful, or, I can see it run into problems, if it were to replace medical care, for example. There would be those who would forgo the checkups in order that they might have more money for something less critical. I would lean heavily toward separating those to avoid that hazard.
My take would be Medical, basic education [k-12], would be provided by the state and the rest, immediate things people can't skimp on [housing, food, clothing, etc.] could be covered by UBI
UBI would need to implemented as a Negative Income Tax where all welfare programs are effectively replaced by the NIT. I think the one caveat would be that for UBI to work under this model, that there is universal healthcare in the mix. The cost of healthcare is used as a benchmark against which the NIT threshold is set.
I think you're right to an extent, but I think ubi could bridge the gap between necessary services and nice to have services. It could let someone who is on food stamps and housing assistance choose to upgrade one of those or for them to buy the technology needed to get their next job. There are pitfalls, but I think ubi could be a good way of allowing people to position themselves to no longer rely so heavily on other assistance programs or live a better life on their own terms if they can't
I'm very much in favor of UBI. Replacing literally "every government assistance program" has me worried though. I think for most folks this will work well. I do wonder about people with special needs though for whom that won't be sufficient. Might it be physical or mental disabilities, it can get more expensive quickly.
I was thinking about UBI the other day, and was unable to reconcile how it could work given people have different needs. For example, 'the poverty line' here is just under $24,000/yr. But someone on disability support may well be getting $70,000/yr or more to pay for special needs (real example of MS sufferer). With a 'proper' UBI, other forms of welfare would disappear to help pay for it, which would require giving everyone $70,000/yr (or leaving the disabled to their fate). And at triple the current poverty line UBI, getting the in-home help necessary to survive independently would likely be impossible as care industry workers are already in short supply. So we would need to retain at least disability support, and have a much lower UBI, probably below the poverty line. And we would likely still need everyone not on disability support to work, to drag their income up to at least the poverty line so they can survive with some dignity. So without full employment, we would need unemployment benefits as well. In which case, what has the UBI given us? Maybe we just need less wasteful and more compassionate unemployment, disability and aged care support?
Or maybe things change when we consider hereditary wealth? With a below poverty line UBI, middle and upper classes could survive and maybe live quite comfortably with the income boost from investments, with the lower classes having to work to earn enough to pay their landlords.
I think UBI is the best compromise as well for solving worker's rights issues and poverty. It doesn't have to exclude all other governmental programs though.
I don't think fully private healthcare works in practice. It disincentivizes cures and proactive treatment. It's also difficult or impossible to ensure you're getting a good price for emergency treatment. Empirically, public healthcare is cheaper and has better outcomes. I'm not wholly against some private higher-end care for those that want to pay, though.
Privatizing all land/parks sounds disasterous. There are some things we pay for that we don't expect to profit from monetarily. Our national and state parks, blm land, and libraries fit that bill.
Schools, yeah maybe. I'd push for a voucher system while still making school a requirement.
Social security, food stamps, etc. could all be rolled into direct cash payment. People having cash just doesn't solve the issues with having market incentives in places where it is detrimental, imo.
I support UBI! I also suspect that we need to go beyond universal benefits into grappling with the reality that different people have different needs. We'll need to agree on a way to discern which society should take on and which are individual.
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