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This reminds me of a This American Life episode where many members of a town collected disability because doctors there didn't consider them "smart enough to wo

This reminds me of a This American Life episode where many members of a town collected disability because doctors there didn't consider them "smart enough to work". Seems to be the beginning of Universal Basic Income in all but name. On another note, it must be depressing to live there. http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/490/trends-with-benefits http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/490/t...

maxerickson 10y ago
There's a writeup: http://apps.npr.org/unfit-for-work/ http://apps.npr.org/unfit-for-work/ In the writeup, there is a county where one doctor considers whether a person he is talking too would be able to get a sit down job when he decides if he thinks they are disabled or not.
dcposch 10y ago
Unfortunately it's not a Universal Basic Income at all. UBI and related proposals like Negative Income Tax minimize economic distortion. As you make more money, there's a smooth transition from receiving money from the gov't to paying net money as your taxes increase. When you're on disability, you are generally not allowed to work. Any "substantial gainful activity" beyond roughly $1k / month ends your benefits [1]. So you might have a choice between $13k/year working 0 hours a week, or he could make $15k/year working 40 hours a week doing something menial and unpleasant. If you tried to design a system to incentivize the working poor to drop out and accept a lifetime of poverty and gov't dependence, it's hard to see how you could do more. The fact that the program also incentivizes states to convert welfare recipients into disability is just icing. --- I think America needs sweeping entitlement reform. Not "entitlement reform" in the euphemistic Republican sense of cutting benefits, but reform done with empathy for the poor and guided by competent economists. IMO the goals should be to simplify and combine the many ways we have of giving money to poor people, and to reduce the perverse incentives that those programs create.

maxerickson 10y ago

There's a writeup: http://apps.npr.org/unfit-for-work/ http://apps.npr.org/unfit-for-work/ In the writeup, there is a county where one doctor considers whether a person he is talking too would be able to get a sit down job when he decides if he thinks they are disabled or not.

dcposch 10y ago

Unfortunately it's not a Universal Basic Income at all. UBI and related proposals like Negative Income Tax minimize economic distortion. As you make more money, there's a smooth transition from receiving money from the gov't to paying net money as your taxes increase. When you're on disability, you are generally not allowed to work. Any "substantial gainful activity" beyond roughly $1k / month ends your benefits [1]. So you might have a choice between $13k/year working 0 hours a week, or he could make $15k/year working 40 hours a week doing something menial and unpleasant. If you tried to design a system to incentivize the working poor to drop out and accept a lifetime of poverty and gov't dependence, it's hard to see how you could do more. The fact that the program also incentivizes states to convert welfare recipients into disability is just icing. --- I think America needs sweeping entitlement reform. Not "entitlement reform" in the euphemistic Republican sense of cutting benefits, but reform done with empathy for the poor and guided by competent economists. IMO the goals should be to simplify and combine the many ways we have of giving money to poor people, and to reduce the perverse incentives that those programs create.