I’m not sure exactly how Australia does this, but in the US, the largest welfare program we have manages to be fairly universal, politically popular and not abusive (as far as I know). That program is Social Security / welfare for older people.
I think some important pieces of how it manages to work are:
The requirements are very minimal so almost everyone who lives long[1] enough qualifies (11 years of earnings[2] and reaching the age of 62)
There’s no requirements going forward, so there’s no point to re-checking (i.e. if I’m 62 this year, I’ll definitely be 62-or-older next year)
Older people are a big enough portion of the voting population that making this worse would be politically unfeasible
Part of the popularity is that there’s a general agreement that people over a certain age should get a break, but people used to work basically until they died and the idea that 62 year olds should be given retirement is fairly new. I suspect if we slowly pushed the retirement age down, the age at which people consider retirement reasonable will also go down. Past a certain point you might reach some political instability when people in their 20′s realize how much they’re getting screwed over and insist that the system covers them too, and I think you might reach an equilibrium where everyone over age X gets benefits because they “deserve” it and everyone under age X gets benefits because it would be “unfair” to leave them out when they’re the ones doing all of the actual work.
But basically, I think you’d get better results from trying to expand a popular program than trying to expand an unpopular program. Starting from old-age down might also be more efficient, as younger people adapt to new technology faster and so are less impacted by technology making them obsolete.
[1] And importantly, it feels universal since everyone expects to live long enough to collect on it
[2] Or there’s various ways to get social security benefits through a spouse even after divorce
While I share your ignorance about how things are done in Australia and your general description of Social Security I think a couple of points might be worth considering. First, Social Security is not a UBI or even supposed to be sufficient to support someone in retirement. It is a supplemental income program that, that people pay into. I agree that there is a rather large disconnect between what you pay in and what you can expect to take out based on your personal situation.
That said, it also seems to share some of the same concerns that OP makes. Many question if those paying in now will actually be able to collect, solvency issues. While I don’t think any talks about this (but I don’t look so it could be well known and discussed in some circles) there seems to be a very clear bias towards the “haves” actually being able to pull the most out compared to those most needing it. Look at the payout schedule for delaying your payment until 70. Those that need cannot wait. My supposition is that this incentive to delay for a few years is largely about cash flow issues related to the whole question of solvency. But clearly that introduces some, arguably, undesirable distributional effects.
I would also point out that while you can start collecting at 62 you will not be collecting what is considered your full monthly supplemental income. You get penalized for taking payment early (full age and full payment depends on when you were born—for me I have to be 66 1⁄2 to collect a full payout) just as you get a premium for waiting.
I think one can find plenty of similar points of contention related to Social Security as is raised in the OP.
Edit to add a small pointer to Alaska. That State, unless it’s changed, has something of a UBI type payout. It’s based on the royalties one mineral and oil leases on State land. All Alaskan citizens get their share (not sure if it’s uniform or proportional to some factor). Perhaps some make similar complaints about that program as are raised in the OP but if not then it might be something of a compare and contrast option.
I think the intention of Social Security is to provide enough money for you to survive, but not neccesarily live comfortably, which matches how UBI’s are marketed. It’s possible with inflation it’s not even good enough for that, but I suspect if it actually caused major problems it would be fixed, since it’s a very popular program.
I don’t think solvency is a real problem for Social Security necessarily. For historical reasons we pretend that workers pay in and then get benefits and Social Security supports itself, but that’s not true and hasn’t been for a while, but the program is still popular. I expect that if Social Security’s surplus runs out, the funding from general taxes / printing money will increase to compensate.
Note that really the only argument I’ve heard against Social Security is that it’s too expensive, but that argument will have much less power if we’re living in a world of such extreme abundance that most people don’t need to work.
I’m not sure exactly how Australia does this, but in the US, the largest welfare program we have manages to be fairly universal, politically popular and not abusive (as far as I know). That program is Social Security / welfare for older people.
I think some important pieces of how it manages to work are:
The requirements are very minimal so almost everyone who lives long[1] enough qualifies (11 years of earnings[2] and reaching the age of 62)
There’s no requirements going forward, so there’s no point to re-checking (i.e. if I’m 62 this year, I’ll definitely be 62-or-older next year)
Older people are a big enough portion of the voting population that making this worse would be politically unfeasible
Part of the popularity is that there’s a general agreement that people over a certain age should get a break, but people used to work basically until they died and the idea that 62 year olds should be given retirement is fairly new. I suspect if we slowly pushed the retirement age down, the age at which people consider retirement reasonable will also go down. Past a certain point you might reach some political instability when people in their 20′s realize how much they’re getting screwed over and insist that the system covers them too, and I think you might reach an equilibrium where everyone over age X gets benefits because they “deserve” it and everyone under age X gets benefits because it would be “unfair” to leave them out when they’re the ones doing all of the actual work.
But basically, I think you’d get better results from trying to expand a popular program than trying to expand an unpopular program. Starting from old-age down might also be more efficient, as younger people adapt to new technology faster and so are less impacted by technology making them obsolete.
[1] And importantly, it feels universal since everyone expects to live long enough to collect on it [2] Or there’s various ways to get social security benefits through a spouse even after divorce
While I share your ignorance about how things are done in Australia and your general description of Social Security I think a couple of points might be worth considering. First, Social Security is not a UBI or even supposed to be sufficient to support someone in retirement. It is a supplemental income program that, that people pay into. I agree that there is a rather large disconnect between what you pay in and what you can expect to take out based on your personal situation.
That said, it also seems to share some of the same concerns that OP makes. Many question if those paying in now will actually be able to collect, solvency issues. While I don’t think any talks about this (but I don’t look so it could be well known and discussed in some circles) there seems to be a very clear bias towards the “haves” actually being able to pull the most out compared to those most needing it. Look at the payout schedule for delaying your payment until 70. Those that need cannot wait. My supposition is that this incentive to delay for a few years is largely about cash flow issues related to the whole question of solvency. But clearly that introduces some, arguably, undesirable distributional effects.
I would also point out that while you can start collecting at 62 you will not be collecting what is considered your full monthly supplemental income. You get penalized for taking payment early (full age and full payment depends on when you were born—for me I have to be 66 1⁄2 to collect a full payout) just as you get a premium for waiting.
I think one can find plenty of similar points of contention related to Social Security as is raised in the OP.
Edit to add a small pointer to Alaska. That State, unless it’s changed, has something of a UBI type payout. It’s based on the royalties one mineral and oil leases on State land. All Alaskan citizens get their share (not sure if it’s uniform or proportional to some factor). Perhaps some make similar complaints about that program as are raised in the OP but if not then it might be something of a compare and contrast option.
I think the intention of Social Security is to provide enough money for you to survive, but not neccesarily live comfortably, which matches how UBI’s are marketed. It’s possible with inflation it’s not even good enough for that, but I suspect if it actually caused major problems it would be fixed, since it’s a very popular program.
I don’t think solvency is a real problem for Social Security necessarily. For historical reasons we pretend that workers pay in and then get benefits and Social Security supports itself, but that’s not true and hasn’t been for a while, but the program is still popular. I expect that if Social Security’s surplus runs out, the funding from general taxes / printing money will increase to compensate.
Note that really the only argument I’ve heard against Social Security is that it’s too expensive, but that argument will have much less power if we’re living in a world of such extreme abundance that most people don’t need to work.
Are you limiting the phrase “Social Security” to the funds given to the elderly or are you including things like disability payments?
I was only talking about funds given to the elderly. The disability system is very bad and I’d recommend not making that the inspiration or a UBI.
Thanks for the clarification.