Thorwegian (old account) on Nostr: kind of leaning toward thinking that welfare/unemployment services should either be ...

kind of leaning toward thinking that welfare/unemployment services should either be privatised or completely replaced with Universal Basic Income.

how would you privatise them and why?

well, have various providers run this service. funds for benefits are supplied by the treasury as usual. have them be contractually obliged to do as the welfare laws say.

why? to allow multiple suppliers to compete in a single area. have them compete for the people who need these services. they get compensated per client, so if people start leaving a provider they're unhappy with, the provider won't survive in the market.

in most countries, one organisation - a branch of the government - has the monopoly for one area, and government jobs are safe, so there is no incentive for customer satisfaction.

why UBI instead? well, because it would save us all a lot of time. whatever your problem is, you're going to need money to survive on, and you're generally going to apply for some kind of benefit if you lack income. and if you do earn an income, the UBI comes on top of that.

if employment was at 100%, all UBI would lead to is "it comes out of your taxes and it comes back out again, so you're not left with less"

there isn't too much research data on UBI out there, but the studies that exist suggest that you're not going to get increased freeloading even if you introduce a universal benefit.