One of the things Americans fail to understand, because nobody tells them and politicians don't want them to know, is that the government can spend $10k on someone or something now (e.g., UBI, healthcare) and save itself hundreds of thousands in the future -- or even "profit" in the sense of higher productivity and tax revenues.

Instead, we live in a country that insists on spending $150 million on cops to prevent $104,000 in lost subway fares.

Likewise, we waste more money on means testing and bureaucracy for social programs than it would cost to just give people benefits.
@gwynnion I would love it if liberals understood that means testing any benefit is a right-wing method to gut benefits by making them almost inaccessible to the poor/working class. The time and effort they'd have to spend just to prove they deserve the benefits are simply too much.
@jf_718 @gwynnion And also punish working over the table during the remaining waking hours of the day not spent standing in queues and filling in forms with the same information over and over again by reducing whatever benefits are grudgingly given.