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Comment by tj-teej | Hacker News Reader

It is not a UBI as it is not U.

The McDonalds cashier is likely getting subsidized housing and food stamp benefits.

Yang's plan would require that the cashier has to choose between the "UBI" or her existing benefits.

I asked his campaign why they designed it this way and they did not have an answer, I was told to ask the candidate directly, which was disappointing.

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> Yang's plan would require that the cashier has to choose between the "UBI" or her existing benefits.

I'm neutral on Yang's campaign, but I like the idea of a UBI because administering it will be much cheaper than running existing benefits. Means-testing has a real and very sizeable cost.

What will happen to all the guvment workers who will get laid off once existing benefits have been supplanted by the UBI? They will go home to merrily enjoy their new UBI checks.

It’s the government: They’ll just move everyone over to the new Department of UBI, with an Administrator of UBI, a Deputy Administrator of UBI, an Assistant To The Deputy Administrator, a team of consultants, inspectors, auditors, inspectors of the auditors, auditors of the inspectors of the auditors, and so on. Nobody will actually lose their job.

Your comment is insightful, but left me no instructions as to whether I should be laughing or crying. So, I'll do both.

I think UBI is definitely interesting, but it can't wholesale replace benefits. For example, a major illness like cancer now can wipe out your income, your savings, and a UBI quite easily. I think UBI might be better than a range of some lower end benefits - but the also exists a variation of needs where we should commit to helping people with, that is going to exceed almost any general UBI threshhold in many cases, and still needs to be covered as benefits.

Which existing means-tested government benefits are capable of paving over a major illness such as cancer?

One example might be medicaid - given it's in an incredibly barbaric and stressful way of exhausting your finances first, then trying to get onto the program all while fighting the illness.

> They will go home to merrily enjoy their new UBI checks.

Which might be cheaper for the government than paying them to do their current jobs.

Yang has separate plan to tackle housing price. So essentially the choice is between food stamp or UBI. I would argue UBI is better since it allow you to buy anything you want, no paperwork/approval process required and you wouldn't lose it as you make more money.

Yang talks about this on JRE, the idea is that individuals know what they need better than the boards designing "one size fits all" benefits. The Freedom Dividend is meant to help replace complicated benefits for those receiving less than the $1k with a more flexible fund.

Cutting back existing benefit programs saves money in bureaucracy and empowers individuals to spend in ways that most benefit them.

people are still gonna end up broke and need food, but now there won’t be food stamps specifically set aside for food, or Medicaid funding specifically set aside for healthcare? Terrible choice. People need $1,000 a month on top of what they have, not a check and slashing all their present support.

FWIW, the article says she has no benefits like that.

I hate how well off people assume poor people are getting large benefits.

Most people under the poverty line do not receive over $1k in means tested benefits.

Also, millions of Americans living in poverty receive no benefits at all.[1]

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/13-million-p...

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