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Any studies involving UBI need to have malicious actors as a part of the study.

UBI, if it is ever realized, will be a scammer's paradise. Every possible method for getting a slice of people's UBIs will be tried. From fake government calls, to identity theft, to greedy landlords, to you name it. And whose UBI will be most vulnerable to these types of attacks? The poor.



This argument always seems to frame "the poor" as being unable to deal with having money, as if it's better to leave them poor else they'll just misspend/lose it.

As long as people don't get scammed _future_ basic income, I think people will learn over time how to manage money, just like I don't worry about how getting a raise will make me more vulnerable to scammers.


>Any studies involving UBI need to have malicious actors as a part of the study.

Yes, and no.

Of course there will be some low form of abuse and whatever.. that is just a given with anything in the entire world. It should NOT be a main reason of any form to be against it.

We are trying to help people, so what if it's getting a little bit abused? We as a whole are still better off.

It's like a universal healthcare argument.. people might say "well what if someone from mexico sneaks in and get care for free?? I'm paying for that!" If the worst case is that someone gets health treatment... then it's a pretty silly argument in my book.


What if the worst case for UBI is that it, counter-intuitively, increases the income gap between low and middle classes? Is it still worth it then?


That's a tricky one. It depends on how it affects the relationship with the upper class too.

Completely unreal example numbers: If the distribution of lower:middle:upper was 2:5:40 and changes to 4:8:25 then that's a big improvement, even though the gap between lower and middle increased from 3 to 4.


Of course not- and that has nothing to do with the situation I was talking about.

I was giving an example where the worst case was still "good" overall.

You are giving an example where the worst case is "bad" overall.. so, duh?


Doesn't this already happen with social security, i.e. we know the effects of scammers?


Those are ongoing issues with any form of government aid, and not specific to UBI.


Right, so if we increase the scale of government aid to unprecedented levels, then we should expect the issues to scale proportionally to unprecedented levels as well


bingo




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