Letting them keep the family money is a tax subsidy? You'll lose most people with that.
Do you actually understand how step-up basis, generation skipping trusts, and "peanut buttering" the QSBS work, just to pick 3 examples? Trust fund babies get capital gains from their parents at 0% capital gains tax. You and I pay 20% + the 3.8% medicare surtax. That means if, for example, they get this treatment on $10M in capital gains we the taxpayer subsidized them to the tune of $2.38M dollars. That results in over a $50B give away to trust fund babies every year for step-up basis alone. If this concept "loses most people" then "most people" don't understand basic finance, but it certainly doesn't make it any less true does it? Do you dispute the factual basis of this in any way, or is your only assertion that others don't grasp it therefore we should ignore it?
Agreed, but there is a real crime problem that cries out for innovative approaches. Any large infusion of resources needs to tackle the crime problem as well.
That's a nice opinion, but nothing says that poverty programs need to be tied to crime reduction. Are you saying that if we had a could buy a magic bullet for $500M that would guarantee take 1,000,000 people out of poverty but have no impact on crime that we should ignore it? Not that UBI is a magic bullet, just to highlight the absurdity of insisting that the two be tied together.
Efficiency. It doesn't cost much to verify eligibility for those programs in comparison to what gets given out.
That's interesting to hear you believe our social programs are well run and efficient.
Strings are already attached for many programs. I don't support UBI for several different reasons, not least of which is that the only entities that propose this are liberal enclaves like Chicago that can't afford it, and the rest of the state and the country isn't going to want to subsidize it.
Actually UBI is a deeply conservative idea, no less than Milton Friedman pushed for it and as I've pointed out again and again, reducing bureaucracy and the government telling people what to do with their lives at least used to be bedrock conservative principals. Has that changed, or is it now that "keep the government out of my life, but who cares about poor people" when it comes to government intrusiveness?
You can just keep saying "no it doesn't" but that doesn't change the inevitable conclusion from your argument. Again, I ask you specifically, if you don’t support removing the strings attached to any kind of assistance for anyone, and you think strings should be attached because recipients have "mental capacity" issues or require "guidance and structure", then what other conclusion can be drawn? Why insist that no aid program of any kind going to those who don't have "mental capacity" issues or require "guidance and structure" be turned into UBI for those participants? Why, exactly, do you insist that SNAP funds not be turned into UBI for those who don't have "mental capacity" issues or require "guidance and structure", for example?
There's a big moral difference between the two, and too many people assume the former, which isn't fair if the truth is the latter.
Hopefully you're not purposely missing the point here.. that is that there's a third, fourth, fifth... lots of disparate reason that people are poor and moral differences have nothing to do with it. I'm not sure you grasp that being born into a poor life situation, bad luck, and maybe a poor decision or two that you, me, and the trust fund babies could walk away from consequence free could be the cause of poverty for a good chunk of people? If you did, this attitude that all poor people need to be supervised by the state in exchange for any aid would naturally be abhorrent to you, just as it would be abhorrent to you if I told you that you were going to be subjected to the same intrusive government oversight that you advocate for the poor.
