What If Andrew Yang Was Right?
We don&#x27;t have to entirely speculate, we can look at existing evidence.<p>Australia has the most liberal welfare in the world. Anyone over 18 can get $984 per month, and up to another $242 in rent assistance. [1]<p>It has nothing to do with your previous employment history, or being fired, or anything like that. In fact, you can get it if you&#x27;ve never had a job in your life. You need to be &quot;actively looking for work&quot; which in reality means fill out a few job applications and forms every week. It&#x27;s easy, I&#x27;ve done it.<p>You can&#x27;t live a glamorous life, but you can certainly live. Especially if you get 3-4 people in a cheap rental, you&#x27;ll have enough money to surf everyday, or watch TV, or smoke weed or do whatever else you want.<p>Yes, there are people that do exactly that, and probably will for all time. Has it ruined the Australian economy? nope. Has there been rampant inflation? nope.<p>I know it&#x27;s not exactly UBI because if you have a paying job you can&#x27;t get this money. So it&#x27;s not &quot;extra&quot; money for everyone, but money for those that can&#x27;t&#x2F;won&#x27;t or don&#x27;t find paying work. It&#x27;s interesting because it shows what percentage of people choose to sit around and do nothing with their lives and get free money - not that many [2]. When you dig into the numbers and take out age pensioners, people with disabilities and students (who get paid to go to university), you see that about 1.2 million Australian get welfare payments, which is just less than 5% of the population.<p>Keep in mind Australia has extremely low violent crime rates, and has one the highest happiness indexes in the world, and Melbourne is often voted the world&#x27;s most livable city (or it comes in 2nd). [4]<p>Here&#x27;s a great breakdown of how Australia spends it&#x27;s welfare money [3]<p>Please, look at what other countries are doing and learn from it, don&#x27;t just endlessly speculate about all the terrible ways UBI (or something like the above) might destroy things.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.crikey.com.au&#x2F;2013&#x2F;01&#x2F;16&#x2F;dole-around-the-world-how-does-australia-stack-up&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.crikey.com.au&#x2F;2013&#x2F;01&#x2F;16&#x2F;dole-around-the-world-h...</a><p>[2] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;theconversation.com&#x2F;factcheck-is-half-to-two-thirds-of-the-australian-population-receiving-a-government-benefit-41027" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;theconversation.com&#x2F;factcheck-is-half-to-two-thirds-o...</a><p>[3] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.aihw.gov.au&#x2F;reports&#x2F;australias-welfare&#x2F;australias-welfare-2017&#x2F;contents&#x2F;summary" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.aihw.gov.au&#x2F;reports&#x2F;australias-welfare&#x2F;australia...</a><p>[4] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Global_Liveability_Ranking" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Global_Liveability_Ranking</a>