Current welfare frameworks generate massive amounts of extra work for both government and those receiving assistance.
In the means-tested approach, the agencies administering welfare have to understand the means of the people receiving assistance. And monitor for changes that might push recipients outside the accepted range or cause a change to benefits.
The recipients carry extra load because they need to understand where they themselves are in that accepted range and organize their lives around that. The current system creates perverse incentives where an unemployed person receiving assistance may find themselves worse off if they get a job.
When the agency's job is "Send $X to every citizen" it's actually a lot simpler for everyone involved. There's no qualifications to verify, no changes to monitor. The recipients don't need to continually re-prove themselves or contort their lives. There's still some fraud potential but the attack surface is now far smaller.
There's still complexity on the tax side because progressive taxation is the way to go to make this work, but we have that already. IMO it'd be a net reduction in complexity and administrative overhead vs the current welfare system.
Sometimes, the means-testing apparatus itself costs more than the benefit that it is supposedly "protecting." Occasionally it costs multiples of the benefit.
In the means-tested approach, the agencies administering welfare have to understand the means of the people receiving assistance. And monitor for changes that might push recipients outside the accepted range or cause a change to benefits.
The recipients carry extra load because they need to understand where they themselves are in that accepted range and organize their lives around that. The current system creates perverse incentives where an unemployed person receiving assistance may find themselves worse off if they get a job.
When the agency's job is "Send $X to every citizen" it's actually a lot simpler for everyone involved. There's no qualifications to verify, no changes to monitor. The recipients don't need to continually re-prove themselves or contort their lives. There's still some fraud potential but the attack surface is now far smaller.
There's still complexity on the tax side because progressive taxation is the way to go to make this work, but we have that already. IMO it'd be a net reduction in complexity and administrative overhead vs the current welfare system.