Recently I was sent a link to an article, entitled "Europe's New Social Reality: The Case Against Universal Basic Income" which was long and not very interesting, but did contain this gem:
One of the most profound concerns around UBI is the impact it could have on diminishing the scope of existing social policies and the potential for new programmes. Most modest models of UBI – which offer guaranteed payments at relatively low levels – account for the withdrawal of many existing benefits and allowances, often with the exception of housing and disability payments.
As Figure 5.1 shows, the RSA’s model – drawing upon prior work by the Citizen’s Income Trust – proposes the abolition £272 billion worth of existing UK programmes and allowances. Thus in order to finance a very modest UBI, many existing structures of the welfare state would still have to be swept away.
So what is a feature of UBI, simplification of the welfare system, is being presented as a bug.
Preumably the author, Daniel Page, thinks that the ability of politicians and bureaucrats to tinker with and micromanage welfare payments is essential. There is also the "UBI is too expensive" KCN which is presented as a given, without any justification, apart from another paper based on the same KCN.
Debate Magazine
