> This therefore means there is an incentive to go work.
Yes and no. It's not an incentive to get a 10hr/week part-time job, for example, because you'd lose your benefits and so get paid less overall. Even making the transition can be difficult - most jobs won't pay you until the end of the month, but your benefits will be cut off at the start. How long does it take to save up a month's expenditures while on benefits?
> There is also control, to make sure the money the unemployed person is getting is mostly spent on the basics (such as housing, rather than say drugs).
> What's worse is that assuming the people who are unemployed are given the choice on how that money is spent, they may in fact not spend the money sensibly (i.e. on their housing) and end up homeless instead.
Sure. But the evidence is that just giving people money works better on average than requiring them to jump through hoops.
> The problem with suddenly giving everyone a minimum amount of money, is that due to everyone now 'at least' having that amount of money at hand, this becomes the new 'bottom' of the market. If I get a job, I earn money on top of this basic amount, which means I can afford nice things and the person unemployed still can't afford anything.
You can't have it both ways. Either employed people get more money than unemployed, which provides an incentive to go work, or they don't, which doesn't.
It's not like people with more money are going to start consuming twice as much food. The unemployed should be able to afford basic necessities; the employed will find it easier to buy luxuries, which is as it should be.
1. I address this somewhere else. I agree this is broken, but this is not a problem with the benefit system - it's something to do with wages not rising accordingly with everything else.
2. Perhaps, although if they do something stupid with that money, they still need supporting - so you either let people go homeless / starve or help them (which creates a new layer of welfare)
3. I'm not saying twice the food would be consumed, I'm saying prices would rise accordingly which would mean consuming the same amount of food costs more than it does now. The goal posts will just be moved and the poverty line will be above the basic minimum everyone gets paid.
> 2. Perhaps, although if they do something stupid with that money, they still need supporting - so you either let people go homeless / starve or help them (which creates a new layer of welfare)
Maybe. Even giving people food isn't reliable - some people will sell it for drugs. Sure, we'd probably still need some kind of emergency welfare system for those circumstances, but drastically reducing the size and complexity of the welfare system is a win, even if we don't eliminate it entirely.
> The goal posts will just be moved and the poverty line will be above the basic minimum everyone gets paid.
The point isn't to make the unemployed any better off than they are now. The point is to make the working poor better off, incentivize work more than it is presently, and reduce the overheads of the welfare system.
OK, I had missed that piece of context. Also, even though I think I am generally more familiar with British than with American English usage, I did not know this meaning of the word benefit.
Yes and no. It's not an incentive to get a 10hr/week part-time job, for example, because you'd lose your benefits and so get paid less overall. Even making the transition can be difficult - most jobs won't pay you until the end of the month, but your benefits will be cut off at the start. How long does it take to save up a month's expenditures while on benefits?
> There is also control, to make sure the money the unemployed person is getting is mostly spent on the basics (such as housing, rather than say drugs). > What's worse is that assuming the people who are unemployed are given the choice on how that money is spent, they may in fact not spend the money sensibly (i.e. on their housing) and end up homeless instead.
Sure. But the evidence is that just giving people money works better on average than requiring them to jump through hoops.
> The problem with suddenly giving everyone a minimum amount of money, is that due to everyone now 'at least' having that amount of money at hand, this becomes the new 'bottom' of the market. If I get a job, I earn money on top of this basic amount, which means I can afford nice things and the person unemployed still can't afford anything.
You can't have it both ways. Either employed people get more money than unemployed, which provides an incentive to go work, or they don't, which doesn't.
It's not like people with more money are going to start consuming twice as much food. The unemployed should be able to afford basic necessities; the employed will find it easier to buy luxuries, which is as it should be.