Providing basic services should often be more efficient than basic income. The state can use its centralized negotiating power to get lower prices on standardized packages, and accordingly a floor for welfare could be provided at a lower cost than just redistributing income, which, though it gives people more agency, can more easily just inflate prices generally and leave people more liable to impulse spending. To keep such a system efficient, there must be fitness pressure on the programs, plausibly via competing services (e.g. think of charter schools) and you probably want to peg the system to some percentage […]
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