I heard a Planet Money podcast recently where they were revisiting the 1990s orgy of stock options that every company was showering on employees. One consultant who advised a few boards of directors at the time said (in all seriousness), "We thought they were free." It apparently never occurred to many business people at the time that they couldn't print money consequence free. In that case, of course, they were diluting shareholders who had bought stock. In the case of basic income, of course we'd be diluting taxpayers (the ostensible shareholders in government). This isn't an argument against basic income (though I am skeptical of it), but it is a reminder that actions have consequences....very little discussion about where the funds come from...
Wouldn't the funds come from taxes? Or is your issue that the taxes would be insufficient?
Taxes are already insufficient. If I heard some parents talking about all the benefits their children were going to enjoy thanks to a generous new allowance, while they were already spending beyond their means, I would think them a bit irresponsible. Whenever I have seen someone multiply the benefit by the number of beneficiaries, the result is a very large number, such that even gutting existing welfare programs would not be enough to cover the cost.
Hold on. It is the way it is because most of those programs don't provide services directly, they provide funding for state/local agencies and nonprofits to provide services. Congress controls what social services are provided by being very specific about what services they will fund. Now, I'll be the first to argue that that's counterproductive, given that half the country prefers drooling idiots who think all poor people are lazy and welfare queens are a thing to represent them in the House, and we would be better off letting HUD/the Department of Education/whoever decide what they should be funding, thereby having the decisions made by people with a clue about what they're making decisions about rather than by drooling idiots, but that's another thing. So long as Congress has that role, this is the way it has to fill it.
I get that. I put a social worker through grad school. But you can't deny that (A) this is a deliberately confusing and bad graph (B) designed to further the interests of those drooling idiots that (C) is nonetheless within the casual realm of describing the byzantine labyrinth that is the American welfare state. I get that this is your wheelhouse and good on ya and I also get that the agencies painted on that picture didn't choose to stand where they stand but it still remains a stunning double-meaning testament to inefficiency.