Crud, the US has been doing this for decades on a massive scale.
Welfare programs are not new.
They’re already ON welfare and/or unemployment !
The difference is that from an operational standpoint just cutting them a check each month is far cheaper.
Programs like Section 8 and Food Stamps employ thousands of teet-sucking bureaucrats just to make the wheels go round.
Cut to the chase with a direct cash payment and you get to lay them all off.
Ideal world we wouldn’t be doing ANY welfare....but you KNOW that’s not gonna happen.
What’s different is the “no questions asked” aspect. No criteria beyond simple citizenship; no proving need, no demonstrating eligibility, no showing attempts at employment/recovery... you just get a check for $X/month. If you pay more than $X in taxes, it’s effectively a refund; if you pay less, it’s your entitlement to at least poverty-line sustenance, and what you do with it is your problem.
The biggest problem with implementing it here is precisely the “massive scale”: it eviscerates the huge bureaucracy of entitlements, replacing it with a simple funds transfer (direct deposit for most, checks for a few). Ain’t gonna happen without a vicious political fight, resulting in huge unemployment numbers.
Oddly, “guaranteed basic income” has its best chance under Trump as part of his “drain the swamp”, giving him a way to amputate most of the welfare infrastructure without cutting actual welfare payments (no way can he cut both at once).
This is very different. A guaranteed income means everybody gets it. You don’t have to qualify for it and it never ends.
Given human nature, two things will happen. Fewer people will want to work and the amount of free money will quickly increase... And the country will go broke and or inflation will soar.
As Ben Franklin politely put it, there has to be discomfort in poverty, to reduce poverty.
This is very different. A guaranteed income means everybody gets it. You don’t have to qualify for it and it never ends.
Given human nature, two things will happen. Fewer people will want to work and the amount of free money will quickly increase... And the country will go broke and or inflation will soar.
As Ben Franklin politely put it, there has to be discomfort in poverty, to reduce poverty.