Switzerthreadi no.2: is UBI the 1st step towards a startrekkish world or just nonsense?

[kentonio]

Judges from Snaresbrook and Croydon Crown Courts seem reliable enough to me.

Yeah but how many cases are we actually talking about here? These kinds of things always seem to involve about 2-3 people in a nation of 70m and yet get big press coverage.

[Dauphin]

I said not widespread. I raise it to demonstrate a significant opportunity for fraud exists if you are handing out free money.

The two cases I am aware of in court in the last six months involved gangs running a few hundred people through the system in each case. Costing around £10m in total. They aren't isolated cases.

[Kropotkin]

On the other hand, harsher rules with requirements of longer periods of residency et cetera, that have been suggested or implemented in the UK, Ireland, also means that labour migrants are excluded from systems of welfare they have contributed to through taxes and/or more or less mandatory contributions to social insurance schemes. One European labour market does not fit well with different forms of national systems of welfare, with very different rules for eligibility and levels of contributions.

[Dinner]

Krop, I am ok with that. No one should get to milk the welfare system without first paying in a minimum amount.

[Dauphin]

Krop, I am ok with that. No one should get to milk the welfare system without first paying in a minimum amount.

Should kids pay to be educated at elementary school?

Should a minimum amount payer then be allowed to milk the system?

[Dinner]

Children have parents who, presumably have paid into the system their whole lives assuming they are citizens.

[Elok]

I've only seen the FL welfare system up close, when I worked there for a month and a half. However, speaking of the cross-section I saw there, it's absurd to expect them to "contribute" to society. At least one in five was homeless. One in four was an ex-con, sometimes straight out of jail. One in three had accumulated spectacular medical debt through having no health insurance. There was considerable overlap between the groups, many being all three. The bulk of the remainder, while not so utterly hosed, had no real job skills and no means of acquiring same. They were working Burger King. The very brightest seemed to all be working for a local call center. These are the people our society has chewed up and spit out; if not for foodstamps and the EITC, the lot of them would likely be starving. You can cut them off their bread and (opiate) circuses in the name of nominal fairness if you like, but then you'll be paying even more to jail them, or to sustain the hospitals they use instead of normal primary care providers, or to repair the damage they do when they riot. Take your pick.

[Dauphin]

Children have parents who, presumably have paid into the system their whole lives assuming they are citizens.

I thought we were discussing migrants.

If a migrant turned up with their family, should the kids be denied free education?

[kentonio]

It's just a endless exercise in cutting off your nose to spite your face. So many people shouting 'Why should WE have to pay for THEM?!' and completely misunderstanding that most of the time it ends up making more money than it costs, and certainly avoids costing far more money further down the line.

[Bereta_Eder]

The swiss got it all wrong
They voted against a guaranteed income for all of 2500 euros per month for life because, they said, they were not sure how to pay for it.

FIRST you vote for something, then it sorts itself out

[The Mad Monk]

"A Democracy...can only exist until the voters discover they can vote themselves largess of the public treasury. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that Democracy always collapses over a loose fiscal policy..."

[kentonio]

How many of our western democracies have ever actually collapsed over loose fiscal policy?

[The Mad Monk]

FIRST you vote for something, then it sorts itself out

Fortunately, most of our western democracies haven't been run by the likes of this.