Isn't the cash you get from "Social Services" (or whatever it's called) just that, a basic revenue that's guaranteed (as long as you follow some very simple/basic/normal rules)?
Example: My father's Medicaid was suspended/discontinued because he failed to submit some paperwork by a deadline, and missed a scheduled appointment.
Well, of course he has to fill out the proper paperwork and make his appointments! you might respond, and yes, for you or I, perhaps it might be reasonable to demand filled out forms, on time, and that we submit to an in-person interview. However, if you have COPD / Emphysema, you must to take oxygen with you; lacking a portable oxygen system means that you are, for all practical purposes home-bound. You most certainly are not able to make a sixty mile round trip. So, homebound, and lacking necessary medicine, portable oxygen, his health deteriorated until he needed hospitalization. At the hospital, a social worker was quickly made available. Medicaid was restored. He received enough care at the hospital to be released. He returned to his apartment. This cycle was repeated several times before his death.
One of the tenants of basic income is that you don' discriminate who gets it. The economic impact of everyone having some fraction (relative to their monthly checks) of demand met regardless of employment is something we have never seen. Additionally, all those unemployment / SSI projects are probably less popular because its discriminatory. With BI everyone from a homeless guy on the street to Bill Gates would get a check.
Those services have very narrow windows of qualification. This create a lot of top heavy bureaucracy which wastes a great deal of money that could be going directly to people. In addition it create a bifurcation of society, "those parasites" vs everyone else, which is turn create social stigma which only further exacerbates poverty.
The issue in this branch of the conversation is the stigmatizing of people who legitimately need services but have actual hardships in maintaining them in the face of beauracratic rigidity and "discrimination by fiat".
My mother is legally blind and needs assistance for almost any trip out of her residence, and all paperwork. How many classes/subjects will fix that?
Not so much. It is not very easy to navigate and can take a while depending on how you end up there. Some of the money is also restricted use[1]. It is very much not guaranteed.
1) ok, in the last year or two some rules changed allowing EBT payments at strip clubs and liquor stores, but not buying a burrito at a gas station then cooking it in the gas station's microwave.
Isn't the cash you get from "Social Services" (or whatever it's called) just that, a basic revenue that's guaranteed (as long as you follow some very simple/basic/normal rules)?