> Forcibly removing someone's money and transferring it to another person can never be justified
Except that almost everything government does involves removing someone's money - through taxes - and transferring it to another person - through social programs (including public school, building infrastructure), social programs, paying government employees, etc.
> If a billionaire wishes to privately sponsor UBI...
Extending this to include the social programs listed above: gee I can't wait to lick a billionaire's boots and do the hokey-pokey to be allowed to drive on their roads, have my burning house saved by their private firefighters, and send my kids to the schools they own.
Yup, this combined with the difference in income for couples vs. individuals mentioned by another commented smells to me like the program had a lot of means testing built in. I wouldn't be surprised if this skewed the results of the experiment in ways that reflect badly on it.
You've hit the nail on the head - means testing is the killer of any social program. Means testing makes social programs challenging to access and frustrating to use, leading to them being unpopular and unsuccessful.
Canadian here, the supply of housing depends on which part of the country you're talking about. As far as I've heard/seen the supply of housing is generally increasing with demand in most parts of the country - some of my relatives who live in a small town a couple of hours from Toronto were saying the town is getting its first block of apartments.
However, the moment you start looking at Toronto, Vancouver, and to some extent Montreal and Ottawa, the trend no longer holds. The populations of Torcouver are going up far faster than supply is able to increase, for a variety of reasons including the cost of building, regulations, NIMBYism, etc. The problem is further exacerbated by demand-side issues driving it up, such as speculation leading to housing sitting empty and illegal AirBNBs keeping units from being rented.
Except that almost everything government does involves removing someone's money - through taxes - and transferring it to another person - through social programs (including public school, building infrastructure), social programs, paying government employees, etc.
> If a billionaire wishes to privately sponsor UBI...
Extending this to include the social programs listed above: gee I can't wait to lick a billionaire's boots and do the hokey-pokey to be allowed to drive on their roads, have my burning house saved by their private firefighters, and send my kids to the schools they own.