...it's become increasingly clear to all of us that the implementation of well-meaning policies intended to separate the deserving from the undeserving ends up adding an incredible amount of complexity and overhead,...
Unless the overhead is truly massive (read: 5x more than the actual benefits), it doesn't matter. It's still vastly cheaper to pay only a small set of deserving people than to pay everyone.
Consider a BI paying 300M people $20k. Cost is $6 trillion.
Consider a targeted program paying 50M people $20k, no overhead. Cost is $1 trillion.
You need an overhead cost of 500% of benefits for a basic income to be cost competitive.
Can any BI proponents provide even a back of the envelope calculation suggesting how BI could possibly be competitive?
Unless the overhead is truly massive (read: 5x more than the actual benefits), it doesn't matter. It's still vastly cheaper to pay only a small set of deserving people than to pay everyone.
Consider a BI paying 300M people $20k. Cost is $6 trillion.
Consider a targeted program paying 50M people $20k, no overhead. Cost is $1 trillion.
You need an overhead cost of 500% of benefits for a basic income to be cost competitive.
Can any BI proponents provide even a back of the envelope calculation suggesting how BI could possibly be competitive?