I'm starting to understand why the two words "means testing" are so triggering over on Reddit:

[decoderwheel@hachyderm.io]

@codinghorror @aeischeid

That’s a bit of a head-scratcher for me. Most proposed UBI systems’ design claw it back through tax so that people above a certain income effectively get little no benefit from it.

Meanwhile, means-testing *inevitably* becomes a tool of ideological control. You start with the best of intentions, but sooner or later someone says “you don’t deserve support if you live in a way I don’t approve of.” I live in the UK, and I would regard the recent political chaos around the child benefit cap as a perfect example. If you subtract the industrial parasites from the system, you’ll still have that problem to deal with.

[decoderwheel@hachyderm.io]

@codinghorror @poundquerydotinfo This is not hyperbole: if we don’t figure out how to tax billionaires (or find another way to slow their enrichment), democracy is going to die, and none of the impending ecosystem catastrophes will be prevented or even substantially ameliorated. The growth in their wealth and therefore power is breaking our societies. It’s the number one problem we have to solve, because we can’t solve anything else until we do.

[poundquerydotinfo@forum.virctuary.com]

@codinghorror Lay out your plan for somehow removing corporate greed from government contracts then too!

Regardless, the first step is (1) abolish billionaires with massive wealth taxes or wealth distribution laws on > $1B wealth, and, more conventionally, (2) close income tax loopholes as they're discovered.

Is this hard? Of course. Is it possible? Until Reagan and Thatcher, it was normal. From 1945 to 1980 governments took successive, popular, steps to curb the accumulation of extreme amounts of wealth. With labour supporting governments repeatedly entering office, unions were given strengths and rights that also made a huge difference in ensuring corporate profits didn't go exclusively to the ultra wealthy groups that "owned" those companies.

This is all something we've done before. Sure, a billionaire will slip through the cracks, just as there were a few people worth $100M or more in 1980. But the thing is, you don't get that wealthy without leaving a paper trail.

And you know what causes more harm than saying this is possible? Saying it's all impossible and we need to just live with the fact Thiel, Musk, etc, will own the government forever more. It's clearly possible. It's been done before. It was an intentional policy choice to stop doing it. We need to start doing it again.

And this ultimately is a distraction from the fact means testing isn't bad because Equifax sucks, it's bad because it means people have to go through the humiliating task of proving they're poor until they're given benefits they're entitled to, at a time they're suffering enough stress and anxiety as it is. Somehow we've made unemployment and health benefits a punishment for losing your job. It shouldn't be that way. It doesn't need to be that way.

[aeischeid@mastodon.social]

@codinghorror @decoderwheel yeah, I think taxes that nullify the benefit don't count as means testing even though, in effect, they may be similar.

[codinghorror@infosec.exchange]

@decoderwheel @aeischeid and how exactly are they "clawing it back" when billionaires pay 0% or quite close to 0% right now, today? How? Please explain it to me, break it down for me step by step, so I can understand how this can happen. Ref: https://infosec.exchange/@codinghorror/116034715309329431

[codinghorror@infosec.exchange]

@cwicseolfor and whether you agree or not is ultimately irrelevant. We are already doing it, and will continue to do it, and we will bury politicians in valid scientific data showing FAR more efficient basic means testing IS possible, across dozens or hundreds of american counties running GMI programs, until they win elections on that platform. Or form a new country right here, that does. Whichever. Watch us do it. It'll be fun.

[cwicseolfor@zeroes.ca]

@codinghorror If your argument is that it would be better to means test without a profit motive than with one, on that much we can agree. If your argument is that means testing the poor and the vulnerable before providing them *survival necessities* is preferable to even marginally improving tax policy, and specifically bothering to pursue wealthy tax cheats - an endeavor well documented to return nine dollars for every dollar spent, an unbeatable ROI - in the face of wealth inequality rivaling Louis XVI’s France, such an objective is both shortsighted and morally vacuous. That you showed up to say more a day later *almost* protests too much, but I’d rather believe you’re honestly invested in your efforts than any other explanation.

We could do an immoral thing less poorly, but we can also do a moral thing with the very same investment. I’d be most interested in how these very efficient systems might be put to other use, such as means-testing the far, far smaller, more conspicuous pool of astronomically wealthy. They’re only too big to tax if we agree they are.

[kboyd@phpc.social]

@codinghorror

> "You'll give money to rich people over my dead body."

So you are opposed to bettering life for the bottom 90% of people because of the irrelevant blip it would provide for the top 10%?

> "The idea that it is "impossible" to build any kind of remotely efficient means testing is completely absurd."

Is it? And is efficiency the only metric by which such a system should be judged?

> "So let's route around that damage."

Yes, let's. By completely obviating it.

[kboyd@phpc.social]

@codinghorror (And I say this knowing fairly well that another near-impossibility is getting something like UBI approved nationally. But it's not fully impossible. My country made means testing illegal for medical care in 1984. I got a "free" CT scan on saturday as a result, which was helpful for making sure I wasn't about to die.)

[codinghorror@infosec.exchange]

@kboyd Why not better life for not just 90%, but even more, 95% of people with the same funds, using a more efficient mechanism: actually TRUSTING each other. As for the rest:

Google "means testing industrial complex" and when our data goes into https://ubidata.io/ feel free to analyze all that global data and you tell us.

[codinghorror@infosec.exchange]

@kboyd so why exactly would we favor the "near-impossible" plan over the "gee, almost every time we see a new study the data shows it works, and it's pretty simple" plan?

[kboyd@phpc.social]

@codinghorror Good question. The GMI idea does sound like a good stepping stone.

My issue with the concept of means testing is that, largely, it serves as a cudgel to hamper progress and harm people - whether or not a complex is involved.

It enacts the same thumb on the scale that mandatory helmet laws do to depress cycling uptake.

And that effect has been known for 20 years: https://academic.oup.com/policy-press-scholarship-online/book/23037/chapter-abstract/183846510?redirectedFrom=fulltext&login=false

[stompyrobot@mastodon.gamedev.place]

@codinghorror @cwicseolfor
Programs that aren't means tested survive much better in the US.

Mortgage deduction.
Social security.
Dependent exemption.

Build programs that apply to everyone!