I've said this before here on HN, but Naval Ravikant (of AngelList) nailed the problem with government pay subsidies and universal basic income on a podcast with Joe Rogan.
"A slippery slide transfer straight into socialism. The moment people can start voting themselves money, combined with democracy it's just a matter of time before the bottom 51 votes themselves into the top 49. By the way, the slippery slope fallacy is not a fallacy; they haven’t thought it through.”
"The moment you start having a direct transfer mechanism like that in democracy, you're basically doing away with capitalism which is the engine of economic growth. You're also forcing the entrepreneur out, or telling them not to come here."
"People who are down on their luck, they're not looking for handouts. It's not just about money, it's also about status and meaning. The moment I start giving money to you, I've lowered your status and made you a second class citizen.”
"You have to teach a man to fish, not to basically throw your rod in and eat the leftover scraps."
> The moment I start giving money to you, I've lowered your status and made you a second class citizen.
This is why the "Universal" part of UBI is important. Having everybody get it reduces the social stigma. (Also providing the bonus side-effect of reducing the admin overhead that comes with means testing)
But you are going to have outrage by people being upset that wealthy people are getting UBI, even though the UBI amount for wealthy people is inconsequential. This is exactly why the COVID-19 stimulus checks were only sent to people making less than $100k.
The media will start writing posts and articles about X millionaire or X billionaire getting a UBI or stimulus check and outrage ensues.
> This is exactly why the COVID-19 stimulus checks were only sent to people making less than $100k.
I agree that this was why, but the end result was that many people fell through the cracks, largely due to situations changing for many since the 2018 tax return it was based on. People who earned 90k in 2018 and 120k in 2020 were eligible, where people earning 100k in 2018 and unemployed due to covid in 2020 were ineligible.
> ... X billionaire getting a UBI or stimulus check and outrage ensues.
If accidentally giving money to people who are "too wealthy" is really that big of a deal, it can always be taxed back at the end of the year. Anyone who earns over $X that received UBI has to pay it back in taxes or opt out themselves? It doesn't seem like an unsolvable problem, and it avoids the many pitfalls of means testing. I'd lean towards accidentally giving one of the ~600 billionaires in the U.S. a few thousand dollars over accidentally leaving tens or hundreds of thousands of Americans excluded.
"A slippery slide transfer straight into socialism. The moment people can start voting themselves money, combined with democracy it's just a matter of time before the bottom 51 votes themselves into the top 49. By the way, the slippery slope fallacy is not a fallacy; they haven’t thought it through.”
"The moment you start having a direct transfer mechanism like that in democracy, you're basically doing away with capitalism which is the engine of economic growth. You're also forcing the entrepreneur out, or telling them not to come here."
"People who are down on their luck, they're not looking for handouts. It's not just about money, it's also about status and meaning. The moment I start giving money to you, I've lowered your status and made you a second class citizen.”
"You have to teach a man to fish, not to basically throw your rod in and eat the leftover scraps."