Re: Best solution ...
I didn't give you an alternative because the stupidity of what you said distracted me from doing so.
Firstly, we are at full employment. 4.2% (if I remember correctly) unemployment is roughly zero when accounting for people who are literally between jobs. Lost one, will get another next week, that sort of thing.
You then imply that sick and disabled is a scam to reduce unemployment, but then in the very same sentence, point out that people are being sanctioned to get them off the states teat.
"In education" has never counted toward unemployment. Are you suggesting it should not. Should we push kids down the dole office at age 5? Do away with that useless book learning? They should be down the pits like their great-great-grandad was at their age.
The better system to UI is broadly what we have now. A safety net that provides for people who are temporarily out of work, provides for those who are unable to work due to disability and an old age pension to provide for those who are too old to work. Housing benefit to make sure that we don't have any (excluding addicts and the insane who throw away chance after chance ) homelessness at all.
You can argue around the edges, say we should spend more on disability benefits or change the rules for housing benefit or whatever, but throwing out the system because you don't like some of the variables is pathetic.
Universal income would do many things, none of them positive. It would give too much to those who don't need it or it would give too little to people who do need it - are you going to replace housing benefit and disability benefit with UI? It's going to be a large payment to everybody in the country, isn't it?
So you've got a bill of literally hundreds of billions, including giving hundreds of pounds per week to people who currently receive no cash from the government at all.
Hundreds of billions of pounds. How much do we have to increase taxes by? Well we'd have to do away with the personal allowance and raise the 20% rate significantly.
But I'm guessing that you think it's fine - we'll just soak the rich. Those fuckers are always avoiding tax and murdering babies, or whatever. The rich just don't have that much money - even if they were inclined to allow your hypothetical government to take it all. They'd bugger straight off to the nearest airport.
And then after that, who would start a business? Well everybody would be a dog groomer or a window cleaner for a bit of extra cash. But I mean who would borrow and take a big risk trying to make themselves a lot of money? Say building a factory? What's the point? The state's just going to steal all your profits anyway.
It's not really being trialled. It got a few weeks in (I think Finland ) with a tiny population of people. It was an academic study, not a test by a government to see whether or not it should bankrupt itself. There was also a study in California with private money. The same again - no policy implications.
Who's saying send babies up chimneys? You're the one suggesting that education not being counted towards unemployment is a statistical fudge.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
