[HN Gopher] An experiment in giving cash to recently homeless pe...
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An experiment in giving cash to recently homeless people [video]
Author : neom
Score : 38 points
Date : 2021-02-12 18:31 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| tehwebguy wrote:
| This is super interesting. My last 5 years living on Rose Ave in
| LA we noticed a growing number of folks sleeping in tents, trucks
| & RVs on the blocks just west of us. I often wondered how many of
| the people living on (or basically on) the streets could
| completely fix their lives with a single payment of $5-10k.
| tehwebguy wrote:
| Also I regret the phrasing "fix their lives" here. A better
| description of what I'm wondering is if that amount of money
| could get the folks in question housed and afford them the time
| to do what it takes to stay housed.
| antihero wrote:
| Also RV living is probably quite attractive in some ways, it
| feels almost dirty spending such a large amount of the money
| you work for paying off someone else's mortgage or enriching
| them simply for owning stuff.
| ncallaway wrote:
| I haven't watched the video, but from the short description this
| doesn't sound like universal basic income:
|
| > it handed C$7,500 (US$5,900) with no strings attached to a
| number of recently homeless people
|
| I'm absolutely all for direct cash assistance and housing
| assistance for homeless and housing insecure populations. I think
| direct cash and housing first models are absolutely the best
| first approaches for the unhoused and I'm glad to see more
| experiments in that vein.
| dang wrote:
| Ok, we've changed the title to use a more precise phrase from
| the article abstract.
|
| I think it's important to understand that "universal basic
| income" has two usages now: the more precise definition that
| everyone on HN is familiar with, but also more generally the
| concept of giving money to poor people with no strings
| attached. That idea is gradually getting more research and the
| research has been producing interesting results for some time
| now.
|
| Of course it's an oxymoron to use "UBI" to refer to the latter.
| The word 'universal' already contradicts it, as does 'basic
| income' arguably. But language does not spread by precision,
| and there are more interesting things to discuss here than
| terminology.
| FriendlyNormie wrote:
| Shut up brainless NPC commie faggot.
| deelowe wrote:
| yep. It's very important UBI be given to everyone regardless of
| status/income otherwise it's not a valid economic experiment.
| This is just welfare with more money.
| leetcrew wrote:
| the other issue (and the bigger one imo) is that the
| experiment described in the video seems to be a one-off
| payment, which you would expect to have very different
| behavioral outcomes. if you gave me $7500, I would probably
| just put it all in SPY and pretend it didn't happen. if you
| promised me $7500/yr, I might actually change my lifestyle a
| bit.
| La1n wrote:
| >otherwise it's not a valid economic experiment.
|
| It can still be a valid economic experiment, it just isn't
| UBI.
| ncallaway wrote:
| Yep, this is a great point. There are a _lot_ of great
| experiments that show that direct cash assistance is a
| really good
|
| Valid experiment, but not a full UBI experiment.
|
| That said, I do think these kinds of experiments are still
| helpful for evaluating UBI as a policy. It's good to know
| that direct cash assistance is an effective welfare program
| for a lot of cases. It's probably also worth evaluating
| where direct cash assistance falls short as a safety net.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| An experiment is always more limited than the thing it is
| being used to study.
|
| If you are experimenting with a limited budget you really
| cannot afford to give it to absolutely everyone; just as in
| an experiment in physics or chemistry you try to simplify the
| environment so as to both make the signal clearer and to get
| it done with the resources available.
|
| It's a balancing act. If you insist that the only valid
| experiment regarding UBI is to give it to everyone then no
| experiments can ever be done.
| notahacker wrote:
| If you experiment properly, you take people who were in a
| region on $startdate and give them UBI indefinitely, also
| levying enough additional tax or welfare cuts on that
| region to pay for it. That's _geographically_ more limited,
| and it might be temporally more limited if it turns out to
| be a massive failure forcing the curtailment of the whole
| thing, but it 's very different from testing to draw the
| amazing conclusion that penniless people given $7.5k are on
| average more financially secure a year later, which
| actually tells you less about a hypothetical UBI than the
| existing welfare state.
|
| (There might be other public policy reasons to test giving
| cash handouts to homeless people, like "is this more
| efficient use of funds than spending the equivalent on
| homeless hostels and counselling?" but likewise, you have
| to construct the experiment to actually look at that side
| of things)
| kybernetikos wrote:
| > If you are experimenting with a limited budget you really
| cannot afford to give it to absolutely everyone;
|
| A real UBI program would also be experimenting with a
| limited budget. The universal part is a big part of what
| makes UBI unusual in comparison to the common means tested
| approaches, and is therefore the part that needs some of
| the most careful research.
| foolinaround wrote:
| the money has to come from somewhere.
|
| Why would you and I, members of the society with our needs
| met, also need to get money... This massively increases the
| cost of the programs.
|
| this is the part that i don't get...
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Because it removes the administrative overhead almost
| completely. Arguably, that saves even more money than
| trying to only give it to people who "need" it.
| foolinaround wrote:
| this is a good point, but is this true though?
|
| Assuming it costs $10000 per person/yr
|
| If we can agree that 80% of society has their needs met,
| then if we give to all, we now have an additional 4 times
| of the overall outlay.
|
| I dont think the cost of administration would be so much,
| and if so, we should aim to cut down those as much as
| possible,
|
| I also pulled out that 80% number. As this goes down to
| 50%, then the argument is easier made that the
| administrative cost is now equal to the cost of funds we
| could have just given away.
| samatman wrote:
| This misses what is probably the more important point,
| which is that any system which tries to measure who has
| their needs met is going to screw up.
|
| People won't fill out the paperwork, they'll check the
| wrong box, the papers will get lost, the wrong flag will
| be entered on the database, they won't fulfill the
| criteria on paper but still really need the help: people
| in need fall through the cracks all the time.
|
| Also, great care needs to be taken with welfare to avoid
| income traps. It's easy to set up a system where working
| more means you lose money, and that's hard to get out of.
| This remains a problem with US welfare and disability
| payments.
|
| With a UBI, it's simple: do they know who you are, and
| have you been paid yet.
|
| And the people who have enough are generally easy to
| find, and have, let's say, a preexisting relationship
| with the IRS. It's easy enough to tax the UBI back from
| them, and it would be comforting, if and when they
| unexpectedly lose their job, to know that a check will be
| arriving. One less thing to think about.
|
| I have some reservations about UBI, but I'm familiar with
| the case for it, which I'm conveying here without a full
| endorsement.
| dfgdghdf wrote:
| Exactly this. In the UK we have "universal credit", which
| is a guaranteed payment for people out of work. In
| practice, claiming this can be so difficult that many
| must turn to food banks and private charities before they
| receive their payments.
| ModernMech wrote:
| I like to say that our current welfare system is a safety
| net, and like all nets it has holes in it through which
| people fall. UBI is more like a safety blanket, which
| will catch anyone who falls into it.
| foolinaround wrote:
| if I understood you right, all 100 of us get the $10000,
| then the 80 of us who file with the IRS gets taxed back
| for that 10k, so in sum, only 20 X 10000 = 200K get
| spent.
|
| I can get behind this.
| throwaway2245 wrote:
| Requiring "means testing", i.e. excluding people who are
| not in need, is often shown to cost more money than it
| saves.
|
| (and allows some people who don't technically qualify to
| fall through the gaps)
|
| If you receive an extra $10,000 that you say you don't
| need, you could receive it and be in a tax band which gets
| taxed an extra $10,000. That's more straightforward.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Direct cash is not without problems. Theft, mismanagement,
| exploitation, violence are all known issue of just throwing
| money at people.
|
| I'll admit the administrative costs are low compared to no/low
| income housing or food assistance.
|
| But this can be a be careful of what you wish for type of
| thing. A lot of homeless people are not prepared to just have
| cash. I know from my time working with a local shelter.
| ncallaway wrote:
| > A lot of homeless people are not prepared to just have cash
|
| Sure, that's a fair hypothesis. But studies have shown that
| it tends not to be true, and that direct cash assistance is
| actually often a remarkably effective intervention, and often
| more effective than other welfare programs.
|
| The studies have generally shown that a lot of homeless
| people actually _are_ prepared to just have cash.
|
| I don't think direct cash assistance is a panacea or
| anything, but the data shows it is often much more effective
| than people expect it to be.
|
| The studies on this are actually fairly conclusive, so if you
| want to push back I'd need to see solid data as pushback.
| Anecdotes won't really convince me otherwise on this topic,
| because we've had a lot of experiments that have created a
| pretty strong record.
| jandrese wrote:
| A combination of direct cash assistance and mental
| healthcare would go a long way towards eliminating
| homelessness.
|
| I have not performed the study, but suspect that in the
| long run this would be less costly than the current system
| since it's much easier to maintain mental health when you
| have housing. I would expect most of the participants to
| eventually integrate back into society and no longer be
| dependent on the subsidies for basic needs.
| iovrthoughtthis wrote:
| Do you have any sources for these claims?
| wahern wrote:
| Sources would be anyone who's grown up in a poor
| neighborhood. The day that government checks clear gets
| weird. Drug and liquor lines grow, as do those for sexual
| services. And of course the flurry of activity invites
| robbery, etc. Housing projects, for example homeless
| housing in SF, will ban visitors on and around those days.
|
| I know it may be hard to believe, but 20-something drug
| addicts, the mentally ill, etc, don't exactly manage their
| budget as well the 40-year-old 85th percentile income
| earning HN programmer or 75-year-old retired school
| teacher.
|
| That's not a moral judgment. It's just a fact. And to the
| degree it's a cultural artifact (i.e. maybe drug addicts in
| Sweden are veritable CFOs), a UBI won't change that
| overnight.
| admax88q wrote:
| > That's not a moral judgment.
|
| That was still a moral judgement. Welfare and UBI always
| have this issue in that everyone has a moral opinion on
| what recipients of money should spend it on.
|
| If you have money, nobody cares what you spend it on, but
| if you don't have money, suddenly everyone has an opinion
| on what you should and shouldn't be allowed to use it
| for.
| prewett wrote:
| A moral judgment is "it is wrong to do X". It isn't a
| moral judgement to say "We don't want to spend our
| society's money subsidizing drug and alcohol addiction,
| we want to spend it on getting homeless people jobs,
| houses, etc." It isn't a moral judgment to say "we have
| observed that drug and alcohol addiction are harmful to
| the addicts and to the society we want to create, so we
| don't want to spend our money on that." Usually people
| aren't quite so precise and assume that the "we have
| observed ... to be harmful" is understood.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| > a UBI won't change that overnight.
|
| Of course not but that doesn't mean it isn't worth
| trying. Your other objections regarding poor
| neighbourhoods and so on are not so much an argument
| against UBI as an argument against the conditions that
| made those neighbourhoods poor in the first place; of
| course those causes need to be tackled as well, but not
| everyone who is poor is also a drunken, sex-crazed, drug
| addict.
| wahern wrote:
| I'm not objecting to UBI, and certainly not to UBI-like
| experiments. Nor was SV_BubbleTime, AFAICT. But
| SV_BubbleTime makes a _significant_ and _important_
| point, and a legitimate retort to the opinion, "direct
| cash and housing first models are absolutely the best
| first approaches for the unhoused".
|
| San Francisco adopted precisely those policies 15 years
| ago, providing free housing and direct cash payments, and
| most who live in San Francisco and understand the history
| of the policies probably have reservations about free
| housing and direct cash being the "best first
| approaches". Even Governor Newsom, who was the mayor who
| did the most to accelerate and materialize those policies
| (e.g. ~8k housing units for the homeless have been built
| or converted since 2005) has admitted that those policies
| were incomplete and naive.
|
| EDIT: s/15k housing units/8k housing units/. Per
| https://londonbreed.medium.com/homelessness-recovery-
| plan-40.... (Google search sucks these days so difficult
| to find the better sources I originally had in mind.)
| Note that these are units, not shelter beds. San
| Francisco has built more permanent housing for the
| homeless than the entire homeless population when the
| program started.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _Sources would be anyone who 's grown up in a poor
| neighborhood._
|
| So you've got opinions and anecdotes at best, then.
|
| Source: grew up in a poor neighborhood.
| wahern wrote:
| > Average weekly mortality due to illicit drug overdose
| was 40% higher during weeks of income assistance payments
| compared to weeks without payments (P<0.001). Consistent
| increases in mortality appeared the day after cheque
| disbursement and were significantly higher for two days,
| and marginally higher after 3 days, even when controlling
| for other temporal trends.
|
| Source: "Illicit drug overdose deaths resulting from
| income assistance payments: Analysis of the 'check
| effect' using daily mortality data",
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27402469/
|
| > The findings suggest that scheduling and staffing
| practices of various emergency service areas in Hennepin
| County reflect patient load variation associated with
| time of welfare check distribution. Systematic variation
| of time or amount of welfare could lead to improved
| distribution and reduction of emergency services demand.
|
| Source: "Correlation of emergency health care use, 911
| volume, and jail activity with welfare check
| distribution", https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1648313/
|
| To be clear, these aren't arguments for removing or
| rejecting cash assistance altogether:
|
| > The implications are that there is a general check
| effect and that it was not reduced by ending benefits to
| persons with drug and alcohol related disabilities.
|
| Source: "Psychiatric emergencies: the check effect
| revisited", https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10331323/
|
| > Disability payments impact the timing of substance use,
| but receipt of disability payments is not associated with
| more overall substance use than unalleviated poverty.
| Money management-based clinical interventions, which may
| involve assignment of a representative payee, can
| minimize the purchase of substances with disability
| payments.
|
| Source: "The Check Effect Reconsidered",
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3094507/
|
| An example alternative model is California's In-Home
| Supportive Services (IHSS):
| https://www.payingforseniorcare.com/california/inhome-
| suppor... On the face of it, it's a voucher program for
| the disabled and elderly to obtain in-home assistance
| (cleaning, bathing, laundry, shopping, etc). But it's
| actually more of a jobs program for the unemployed or
| underemployed able-bodied. And in cities like San
| Francisco a significant fraction of recipients of the
| vouchers are older drug addicts, and a large number of
| those paid with the vouchers are able-bodied older
| adults. There's plenty of rules violations and cheating
| all around (because people will be people), but arguably
| the money is nonetheless more well spent--e.g. less of
| the public expenditure is diverted to drugs--than if the
| program simply provided cash directly to the recipients.
|
| Obviously, a single mother working two part-time jobs has
| much more to gain (as does the public) by no-strings-
| attached, direct cash assistance. Not all poverty looks
| the same, and not all of the impoverished have or even
| want the same incentives. That's the point being debated
| and that seems to chafe people the wrong way for some
| reason.
| iovrthoughtthis wrote:
| You know those aren't sources and sf is a local
| microcosm.
|
| Your post lack humanity and nuance. Perhaps you're jaded
| by your experiences which is fair but not representative.
|
| Consistent access to sufficient money is life changing
| for people who grew up without. The change isn't
| immediate. You don't just suddenly adapt. You don't
| unlearn the coping mechanisms you develop to survive
| while your poor. It takes time.
|
| Poverty fucks you up.
| specialp wrote:
| It isn't lacking humanity. I grew up poor as well. And
| what the poster says does indeed happen a lot. This is
| not to say I don't think the poor should be helped. I was
| helped with school grants and loans to get me to where I
| am today, Medicaid, and also welfare for my parents and
| I. So personally I know how it was, and I know how it is
| to have to fight that. It is hard and the poor need help
| for sure.
|
| The problem of poverty can come multiple ways. One way is
| lack of opportunity or being in a hole you can't get out
| of (kids and nobody to care for them, no home, nobody to
| look up to, mental illness, drug addiction, health
| problems). But there's also people that just aren't going
| to do their part to help themselves either. So what we
| need to do is help people get out of holes to get on
| their feet. There's a substantial portion of people that
| will take that money and do exactly what the OP said.
| andrewvc wrote:
| The question isn't wether there are problems with direct
| cash, but rather if it has fewer problems than existing
| systems, which this study finds evidence of.
|
| The political problem of direct cash transfers is that people
| find them odious. Money is earned and should not be given,
| but food can be. This is incredibly illogical but it's our
| political reality, one that can hopefully be changed.
| mminer237 wrote:
| This is on top of already existing systems though. I don't
| think many people ever doubted that giving everyone an
| extra $12k per year or whatever made out of thin air would
| help some people, but in real life, the money has to come
| from somewhere. Plenty of people don't want to pay the
| increase in taxes that would be necessary to help the
| homeless publicly like that. Many people believe that more
| targeted spending is a more efficient and possibly a more
| effective way to help the homeless. Converting current
| public aid to just cash payments would probably be less
| effective.
|
| It's not illogical to prefer giving food and housing to
| cash. Somewhere around a third of homeless people are
| addicted to drugs or alcohol. Many have mental problems or
| just very bad financial skills. Many don't have a way to
| keep that money safe. If you give homeless people money,
| there's a very good chance it'll be blown on drugs, booze,
| or lotto tickets or just stolen. Some people it will help;
| some it won't. Whereas if you take that same increase in
| funding proposed and instead, say, expand housing programs,
| fund food banks, or provide mental health treatment, you
| know all that money is going to help people. Plus it can
| help people in ways that they may not help themselves
| otherwise.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I don't think many people ever doubted that giving
| everyone an extra $12k per year or whatever made out of
| thin air would help some people, but in real life, the
| money has to come from somewhere.
|
| No, in real life money (especially in a country whose
| debt is denominated in currency it controls) is, almost
| literally, just made out of thin air. There are
| consequences of having more money around, and sometimes
| it is useful to destroy some money in a different
| distribution to offset some of the effects of creating
| money that was created and distributed a particular way,
| but that's a different issue. (This is the relatively
| uncontroversial part of Modern Monetary Theory; the
| controversial part is the follow-up "...and, therefore,
| we she engage in deficit spending a lot more freely than
| we do now."
|
| The myth of the fisc (a metaphor held over from commodity
| money times when it was a decent repres5 of reality) is
| that money has to come from somewhere.
|
| > Plenty of people don't want to pay the increase in
| taxes that would be necessary to help the homeless
| publicly like that.
|
| The idea that taxes are necessary to pay for spending is
| the myth of the fisc. It's true only to the extent that
| the government decides it should be true. (Which, as much
| as people in government talk about it when opposing
| spending they don't like or promoting tax increases they
| do like, isn't all that much, hence the absence of
| anything approximating long-term fiscal balance.)
|
| > Whereas if you take that same increase in funding
| proposed and instead, say, expand housing programs, fund
| food banks, or provide mental health treatment, you know
| all that money is going to help people.
|
| No, you don't; waste, fraud, and abuse in selectively
| targeted government programs is a very, very real thing,
| and a lot of the money that doesn't go into waste, fraud,
| and abuse goes into control measures to prevent waste,
| fraud, and abuse, instead of to the actual program
| purpose.
|
| Source: more than 20 years in public sector work, the
| part of it that wasn't in IT specifically in fiscal
| management aimed at accounting for proper use of funds.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Unless you're talking about federal programs, the money
| is absolutely not made out of thin air. States and cities
| cannot print money, and most have mandatory balanced
| budget laws.
| ska wrote:
| > It's not illogical to prefer giving food and housing to
| cash.
|
| It's not inherently logical either. Your assertion that
| indirect funding is somehow more effective is unproven.
| If you want to be strictly logical about it, you decide
| up front what the actual goals are, and you try and find
| the most cost effective way to reach them.
|
| It may be _counterintuitive_ , but it's entirely
| plausible that on the whole direct funding is more
| effective. There is at least some good evidence pointing
| this way in some areas. If you dig into any of this stuff
| in any real depth, you'll find that the "common sense"
| solutions are often wrongheaded for non obvious ways.
|
| Further: breaking the world into "normal folks" and
| "homeless people incapable of managing their finances" is
| far too reductive. There certainly are people whose
| addictions or mental health issues or whatever make it
| difficult for them to manage their own finances, but that
| is a small fraction of the people who rely on some sort
| of public assistance.
| [deleted]
| isoskeles wrote:
| Why don't these experiments get set up as a closed system, where
| all the participants are also paying taxes into the UBI program
| to sustain its costs?
|
| They can even go a step further and set up an experimental
| currency to model what happens when experimental federal
| government running the experimental program has an experimental
| budget deficit and sells experimental bonds to the experimental
| central bank to pay for it all.
|
| Why don't the experiments account for these factors?
| dmwallin wrote:
| How are you going to decide which corporations are you going to
| tax? How are you going to get citizens from the upper
| percentage of the tax bracket to just agree to join a voluntary
| experiment.
|
| It turns out that designing studies for national policies is
| REALLY hard due to the complexity of our modern society.
| Institutions exist across a large variety of scales and the
| smaller the study the more you have to account for external
| factors and abstract out things like funding sources, which are
| not directly connected to the effect of the money on the
| populace being studied.
|
| It's much easier to look separately at the effects of income,
| and compare that to separate studies on the effect of higher
| taxation, to see if the tradeoffs are worth it.
| clavalle wrote:
| 'Closed system' is not accurate.
|
| The Federal Reserve created over $3.38 Trillion in 2020. Since
| that goes to banks that can lend 10x their reserves, they
| effectively created over $33 Trillion last year.
|
| That's about enough to give every US citizen $100,000 for the
| year. More than enough for a UBI.
|
| Not that I think that's a good idea. But a closed system
| suggests its a zero sum game when it clearly is not.
| syshum wrote:
| That is not really how that works...
| mhh__ wrote:
| Because the people receiving this should it be implemented
| nationwide shouldn't be paying those taxes anyway?
| isoskeles wrote:
| The "Universal" in UBI has a meaning, which intends that
| everyone is an unconditional recipient, including taxpayers.
|
| Edit:
|
| To add, I'm not sure why we think a real "experiment"
| wouldn't also include the actual payment into the program. Is
| there an explanation? All I can see is the intent of the
| "experiment" is to say, "UBI is good [no matter the cost]."
| This is unconvincing, to say anything is worth the effort
| regardless of the cost. But I don't want to set up a
| strawman. I'm curious if people have a good reason to say why
| the cost should not be accounted for, or if it somehow is,
| and I'm just not seeing it.
| skrowl wrote:
| Math to do this in the USA in case you're intererested:
|
| 210,000,000 working age adults * $5900 / mo * 12 months ~= 15
| TRILLION dollars per year.
|
| The annual GDP of the USA is about 21.5 trillion.
| ska wrote:
| This wasn't a monthly stipend (and it wasn't UBI) - it was one
| time payment.
|
| Even if we were talking UBI, this calculation is pretty
| meaningless; nobody believes a version of UBI would be rolled
| out without tax changes.
| syshum wrote:
| Money Printer go brrrrrr
|
| It is clear that the Modern Monetary policy is one of infinite
| spending so why not... by the end of the year we will probably
| 1/2 to that number in COVID relief anyway
| trash3 wrote:
| Non stop Yolo meme stonk market. Sign me up!
| arcticbull wrote:
| lol leverage me up
| odyssey7 wrote:
| This study gave a single (USD-equivalent) $5,900 payment, not a
| recurring monthly payment. The benefit was demonstrated to last
| a number of months.
|
| It's worth comparing this to the US median income. That's about
| $32k annually, which equals $2,666 / month. I wouldn't expect a
| universal basic income program to attempt to be an equivalent
| alternative to earning the median income.
| arcticbull wrote:
| FY2021 budget is about $5T. Private healthcare spending, which
| is basically just a private tax is another $1.2T. So, we're
| starting with a "real" budget of $6.2T.
|
| This is about 2-3X the budget.
|
| Then of course, you can begin walking the number backwards at
| tax time, and can recover more from folks at the top end of the
| wealth and income spectrum to offset.
| mhh__ wrote:
| I still don't see why this should be universal. It's a nice
| slogan but it's not unreasonable to have a cutoff.
| o_p wrote:
| You are adding costs and extra work because now you have to
| make sure everyone is on the income bracket and all the
| complexities of auditing. Its just much more simple and
| elegant to make it universal, those at the top brackets will
| have a negative net due to taxes anyway, so why bother?
| ska wrote:
| The argument is that it gets rid of as much of the
| bureaucratic nonsense.
|
| Say you send everyone a check, adjust income tax so it washes
| out at something like 2x or 3x the base rate. No extra
| bureaucracy because your tax authority already has to to
| that, and at the same time you can same money on
| administration of a bunch of current programs (and get rid of
| them). Note that it clearly doesn't replace all programs. But
| UBI + universal health care of some sort would sure make a
| dent (US specific).
|
| There are valid critiques of UBI's viability but universality
| isn't one of them.
| bluecalm wrote:
| Cutoffs create fiscal cliffs. This is not reasonable. You
| would need to make it so it's smoothly decreases with income
| and if you're at it you can just skip that step and deduct it
| from taxes paid.
| arcticbull wrote:
| It's convenient because you can kill off all of the
| "entitlements" programs at the same time. Drop SNAP,
| unemployment, disability, drop social security, medicaid,
| drop everything, and cut a check. This materializes in
| substantial administrative cost reductions.
|
| It's an efficiency.
|
| You can claw back from folks who don't need it at tax time.
| Tostino wrote:
| This is exactly what I was planning on typing out as an
| answer. Well put.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I hear this argument a lot but:
|
| 1. Some people on disability need far more than any
| reasonable UBI would provide
|
| 2. SNAP, Social Security, Medicaid: Debt is an issue here.
| Even if you shield UBI payments from bankruptcy, that would
| still require those with large debt burdens to declare
| bankruptcy. Libertarians will say that choosing to starve
| rather than file bankruptcy is a valid life choice, but
| proponents of the mentioned entitlement programs will
| probably disagree.
| arcticbull wrote:
| Genuine question:
|
| > 1. Some people on disability need far more than any
| reasonable UBI would provide
|
| Is that due to medical needs? Because if so, that would
| seem to be a job not for UBI but for a proper medical
| system, which this country is also woefully lacking.
|
| > 2. SNAP, Social Security, Medicaid: Debt is an issue
| here. Even if you shield UBI payments from bankruptcy,
| that would still require those with large debt burdens to
| declare bankruptcy. Libertarians will say that choosing
| to starve rather than file bankruptcy is a valid life
| choice, but proponents of the mentioned entitlement
| programs will probably disagree.
|
| While true, and I agree that it would have to be shielded
| from bankruptcy... Gallup found that
| voters who identify as libertarians ranged from 17 to 23%
| of the American electorate. However, a 2014 Pew Poll
| found that 23% of Americans who identify as libertarians
| have little understanding of libertarianism.
|
| I'm not sure I'm interested in blocking this proposal on
| 17% of Americans, 23% of whom don't even know what
| libertarianism actually is.
|
| At that point we're saying libertarians are the "10th
| dentist who hates Colgate."
|
| While I appreciate their principled stance today, I'm
| confident that given the choice to cash their UBI check
| or starve, they'll be the first ones in line at the bank.
| dfgdghdf wrote:
| Lots of libertarians like UBI; it's pretty much the
| smallest government you can have that still ensures a
| floor to everyone's quality of life. Milton Friedman
| advocated a negative income tax, which is similar.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| >> 1. Some people on disability need far more than any
| reasonable UBI would provide
|
| > Is that due to medical needs? Because if so, that would
| seem to be a job not for UBI but for a proper medical
| system, which this country is also woefully lacking.
|
| First of all, you suggested eliminating (among other
| things) medicaid in favor of UBI.
|
| Secondly, define "medical needs" if you are mentally
| incapable of managing your life, then someone has to care
| for you in a non-medical manner. As an extreme case,
| there are people who, if you walk up to them and say
| "please give me all your money," they will ... give you
| all their money.
| arcticbull wrote:
| > First of all, you suggested eliminating (among other
| things) medicaid in favor of UBI.
|
| Medicaid is a pretty predatory program in its
| implementation. It provides the bare minimum of care and
| comes after your personal effects to try and pay for it -
| for those over 55, states are required by law to recover
| whatever they spend on you, and they put a lien on your
| house. [1]
|
| This serves to lock in systemic inequalities by taking
| away the inheritance from poor children while wealthy
| folks see their estate tax burdens removed or eliminated
| - it's a regressive tax on the poorest.
|
| The program is an atrocity. It deserves to be nuked from
| orbit and replaced with something humane. It's only one
| step above "just let them die at the entrance to the
| hospital."
|
| There's two ways to move forward if you choose to
| eliminate Medicaid. You either take a portion of the UBI
| payments and purchase private care, or you expand
| Medicare to, well, All.
|
| > Secondly, define "medical needs" if you are mentally
| incapable of managing your life, then someone has to care
| for you in a non-medical manner. As an extreme case,
| there are people who, if you walk up to them and say
| "please give me all your money," they will ... give you
| all their money.
|
| I do actually consider those to be medical needs but
| understand the point of contention there.
|
| [1] https://aspe.hhs.gov/basic-report/medicaid-liens
| r00fus wrote:
| > You can claw back from folks who don't need it at tax
| time.
|
| Completely agree. Means-test the taxation, not the handout.
|
| If rich people are getting the handout and don't need it,
| adjust tax to offset the handout with a phaseout.
|
| We have a well developed process/venue to handle fairness
| of taxation - best place for means-testing.
| Filligree wrote:
| Because making it universal is cheaper.
|
| If you set the cutoff threshold high, then you're barely
| saving any money and end up spending a lot more on the
| bureaucracy than you'd save. On the flip side, if it's
| anywhere close to the income of a middle-class person then
| you could get an effect where earning more money makes you
| worse off.
|
| Of course you can taper it off instead of making it a sudden
| cut-off, but that makes the bureaucracy even bigger.
| trash3 wrote:
| Or 10 percent of US Army budget
| skrowl wrote:
| You honestly think the US military annual budget is 150
| trillion / year?
| arcticbull wrote:
| Honestly if someone told me that, I might believe them
| haha. $706B. Enough to provide basic income for $300/month.
| mminer237 wrote:
| Do you really think giving everyone $3,600 per year would
| be worth having no military whatsoever?
| arcticbull wrote:
| Nope, not at all, I was just pointing it out as a frame
| of reference to anchor the conversation.
| abfan1127 wrote:
| I'm no UBI proponent. However, I think most UBI proposals have
| tax adjustments for those with income (better proposals are
| gradients, not step functions). So not all 210 million adults
| get it long term...
| e-clinton wrote:
| Why do this for someone making 200k/year? I'd imagine we'd
| select people below a certain income level
| extrapickles wrote:
| Even if someone was making $1m/day, they still would get it.
|
| The reason behind giving it to everyone of working age is to
| prevent people from falling into cracks like what can happen
| with unemployment.
| bluecalm wrote:
| Cause then it will be more profitable to make 199k than 201k.
| Cut-offs are just a bad idea. If you want to phase it out
| with income you can just deduct it from taxes. It's easier
| and cheaper.
| thebean11 wrote:
| Because it's much easier to just subtract the UBI at tax time
| from the high earners than to create an entirely new
| bureaucracy deciding who gets UBI.
| [deleted]
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| So it's not really universal and ultimately it boils down
| to welfare and benefits as they exist, e.g. in Europe. So
| what's new?
|
| Edit: for example in France there is a minimum income
| benefit that everyone is entitled, one might call that
| 'universal basic income', then: https://en.wikipedia.org/wi
| ki/Revenu_de_solidarit%C3%A9_acti...
|
| The suggestion that this should be paid to everyone then
| clawed back from most people though taxes is rather odd. A
| lot of these discussions on UBI in the US seem to either be
| utopian or try to reinvent the wheel...
| thebean11 wrote:
| I'm not sure how much you know about existing welfare
| systems in the US, but they are nothing close to getting
| a $6k check every month..plenty of people earning <$40k
| aren't eligible for them. Some people earning $0 can't
| even get them, and the ones that are aren't getting
| anywhere near a livable amount of money.
|
| People in higher tax brackets probably wouldn't
| immediately benefit sure, but tax bracket isn't
| permanent.
| arcticbull wrote:
| Guaranteed minimum income on a regular basis.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| That's welfare and benefits as they exist in Europe (at
| least in some countries).
|
| So when American speak of convoluted UBI systems do they
| in fact just mean having an European level of welfare
| state?
| thebean11 wrote:
| Yes, it certainly wouldn't be "less" of a welfare state
| than the European countries you're referencing, that's
| pretty obvious. I don't think proponents of it are
| claiming otherwise.
|
| I'm not sure what you mean by convoluted though. To me it
| seems much less convoluted to the existing patchwork
| welfare we have in this country.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Welfare in many cases is hugely bureaucratic. It is
| there, but it means things like filling forms and sending
| your bank statements every 3 months to be reviewed. Not
| to mention the unemployment benefits you must claim first
| which can take weeks to process with no payments. That is
| if you decide to take short job.
|
| I would see it to be much simpler just to take some basic
| level of current benefits and last resort benefits and
| just giving it to everyone. And then claiming it back in
| some way like higher income tax.
| _Microft wrote:
| It was a one-time payment, not a monthly recurring one.
| nthitz wrote:
| Recipients in the video didn't receive 5,900 every month, just
| once.
| r00fus wrote:
| Yes, the GDP for the US in 2020 was ~21T and 15T is quite large
| in perspective.
|
| However, this UBI would generate tax income to offset. In fact,
| its been stated that welfare like food stamps (SNAP) actually
| brings in more 170% revenue vs. assistance provided [1]. If
| this is tax revenue positive (even if the return isn't as high
| as food stamps), why would the cost be a concern?
|
| [1] https://4thworldmovement.org/food-stamps-waste-money/
| joshuawright11 wrote:
| Definitely agree that doing this per month per citizen would be
| infeasible, though an interesting alternative is doing a
| negative income tax.
|
| Effectively UBI but declines as the person makes money.
|
| Some rough calculations:
|
| In 2019 there were 34m people in poverty[1], lets assume 2
| people per household (lower than nationwide average of ~3) so
| 17m households.
|
| Topping each of them up to above the poverty line
| (~13k/y/person) would be 26k / household / year would be 442bn
| (and that's assuming all people below poverty line make 0
| dollars).
|
| Not bad considering the government already spends over twice
| that (1tr) on welfare each year[3].
|
| Like others have said healthcare, housing issues etc would
| still be very damaging to some, but it's an interesting concept
| that could put every person in the country above the poverty
| line for not that much $$.
|
| I also like that it (theoretically) still encourages working
| since a) poverty line is still a lower quality of life. and b)
| when you're below the line and make more money, the government
| gives you less $$ but less than you are making. i.e. if you
| make an extra 2 dollars, the government stopped reduces by 1,
| or something akin to that.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax
|
| [2]
| https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2020/demo/p60-27...
|
| [3]
| https://www.budget.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/CRS%20Report%20-...
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| So basically like what exists e.g. in France: https://en.wiki
| pedia.org/wiki/Revenu_de_solidarit%C3%A9_acti...
| clavalle wrote:
| I wonder about the GDP, because it took $3 trillion dollars to
| keep the country humming when less than 30% of the workforce
| was thrown into turmoil for a few months.
| thebean11 wrote:
| I think UBI would work with half as much cash. Maybe 4k / month
| if it isn't in addition to free healthcare. $4k per month is
| how much I spent in NYC not including health insurance.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| And what most people seem to forget is that the vast bulk of
| the UBI money is immediately spent on local goods and
| services so it quite likely generates a lot of local economic
| activity.
| Ekaros wrote:
| I wonder could UBI actually be a special payment system
| that could only be used for buying things and services.
| Maybe some reasonable part like 10-20% for cash.
| thebean11 wrote:
| No thanks, whatever economic benefit you gain will
| probably be spent enforcing the rules.
| goodJobWalrus wrote:
| didn't give them $5,900 monthly, that was annual. $5,900
| monthly would be more than most people in US make after tax.
| jandrese wrote:
| Hence the reason the final total was above GDP. That should
| have been a red flag that there was a problem in the
| calculation.
| bogwog wrote:
| If UBI were to be implemented in the US, there's no way it'd be
| $5900/mo. Andrew Yang's plan (https://2020.yang2020.com/what-
| is-freedom-dividend-faq/), which was actually realistic,
| would've given out $1000 per month.
| La1n wrote:
| >which was actually realistic, would've given out $1000 per
| month.
|
| I am not from the US, would it be realistic to live on 1k USD
| a month?
| dfgdghdf wrote:
| A big advantage of UBI is that it allows a smooth
| transition from living only on UBI into better paid
| employment because you don't lose the income once you start
| working. A long term study would reveal if this lowers
| unemployement overall.
|
| Is it enough to live on? Well I think that depends on
| expectations, but it is a _start_ and it is certainly
| better than nothing.
| burlesona wrote:
| That would get you pretty far outside of the biggest
| cities. It wouldn't make for a glamorous life, but it would
| be enough that at minimum you wouldn't have to worry about
| food and housing.
|
| For context, during the recession I managed to survive one
| year of severe underemployment, living in Houston, on an
| income of less than $20k for the year. Things were tight,
| and I had no savings at the end of that year, so I'm glad
| it didn't last any longer. But if I imagine having that
| same experience with an extra $1k/mo in baseline income, it
| would have gone from "stressful" to "not where I want to
| be, but okay."
| bogwog wrote:
| Yes, especially with room mates, family, a spouse, etc. (if
| you split the bill of course)
|
| And again, that's only from the UBI. If you have even a
| crappy part-time minimum-wage job, your quality of life
| would increase by quite a lot.
| extrapickles wrote:
| That amount would likely require universal health care to
| make it comfortable to live off of. You would still not be
| able to afford decent housing in a major city though, as
| you would have to split a studio apartment with several
| people.
| Ekaros wrote:
| With UBI I always question should it even afford a decent
| housing in major city. Or is it more reasonable to expect
| it to pay for decent housing(a flat) and basic living
| expenses including food, clothing and other necessities
| in some town with reasonable basic services?
| carabiner wrote:
| Huge swaths (40% or so?) of the US live outside of big
| cities. It's just inconceivable that every one of them is
| seriously deprived and miserable doing so. They have
| friends, hobbies, lives that they can do outside of dense
| urban areas.
| mey wrote:
| For comparison the Federal Budget submitted for 2019 was 4.4
| Trillion dollars. Almost 1 Trillion was Military.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget
|
| Not sure how you calculate things like tax credits and other
| methods of inflation/printing money.
| aaron695 wrote:
| This has absolutely nothing to do with UBI.
|
| It's like the world has a mass delusion.
|
| This doesn't help homelessness in the convention sense -
|
| "Participants were identified as not struggling with significant
| mental health or substance abuse issues."
|
| Giving lumps of money of course helps the people you give it to.
| That would be a stupid experiment.
|
| What is of interest and has generally been shown to work is
| giving unconditional money is more efficient than conditional
| money or programs.
|
| The waste on bureaucracy is more than the good from helping
| people spend it.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| I'm a UBI skeptic but I think we need to keep running these
| experiments to gather data points. The pro-UBI crowd often times
| points out - and I think fairly - that a lot of these experiments
| are too small duration and scope to be very useful. It'd be
| interesting to see say an entire county try UBI for a year.
| anotheryou wrote:
| I'm quite disappointed in the video. What is the result of the
| study? No word about the control...
|
| All I get is that people don't spent it on booze (yea trust ppl,
| not all are addicts) , have more money for food and clothing (o
| really..) and that the one guy is doing a computer class.
|
| As said, I think it's just a bad video, the actual results might
| be great. Comparing it to using that money trying to help
| homeless people in other ways would be even more interesting
| (finding out if this the best way to invest in to minimizing
| homelessnes).
| solosoyokaze wrote:
| As a huge believer in UBI, I think it should also be paired with
| public healthcare, public housing and ideally public food
| allowances. Basically all living needs covered.
|
| UBI without all of that does risk inflating the price of
| everything as the excess capital would just get sucked up into
| private companies and landlords.
|
| It's an idea who's time has come though, wealth inequality is so
| extreme as to be essentially unfixable without a revolution, we
| have excess food production and the majority of "work" being done
| isn't actually to the benefit of humanity or even productive.
| Think about how much time is wasted in middle management, working
| on ad tech, marketing...
| ArkanExplorer wrote:
| What exactly then is the point of humanity? To sit around and
| consume bread and circuses?
|
| Isn't this immensely dysgenic, where the productive members of
| society labour all day to produce goods and services for the
| unproductive, who will use their ample spare time to reproduce
| and vote for an expansion of UBI?
|
| What need is there to even behave decently and civilly, when
| all of your needs and income are taken care of by the State?
| Why study or work hard as a child when your future (I will be a
| UBI recipient, as is my father, as was my father before him) is
| already established?
|
| If we wish to help the working classes of the West, then we
| need simply eliminate all unskilled immigration and refugee
| programs. Demand for workers will rise and pressure on
| infrastructure, Government services, agriculture and housing
| will decrease - boosting quality of life without UBI.
|
| The other major factor of poverty is of women having children
| out of wedlock. We should stop incentivizing single-motherhood,
| and offer universal access to family planning including further
| development of vasalgel.
| [deleted]
| tehwebguy wrote:
| There are plenty of financial motivations to labor other than
| the threat of shame, lack of healthcare, homelessness &
| starvation.
|
| There are even plenty of _non_ -financial motivations to
| labor!
| xvedejas wrote:
| The real thing UBI must be paired with is a Land Value Tax.
| This helps prevent landlords from extracting the wealth, since
| their land-based monopoly won't give them profits; it gets
| recycled back into state programs (like UBI).
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| Most places do have property taxes. Many of them are
| significant.
|
| Some of the UBI proposals are extremely expensive. It's not
| as simple as extracting wealth from a tiny fraction of
| wealthy people. The only way to make UBI work will require
| increasing taxes all the way down to middle class tax
| brackets.
|
| A middle class person might receive $10,000 of UBI, but see
| their taxes go up $11,000. Meanwhile a broke college student
| would receive the $10K UBI with $0 tax increase (or maybe a
| decrease in taxes)
| zanecodes wrote:
| I believe they mean Land Value Tax [0] in the
| Geoism/Georgism [1] sense, not in the traditional property
| tax sense; the main difference being that a land value tax
| does not take into account improvements to the property
| (e.g. buildings, parks, or any other development).
|
| Personally, I would be in favor of UBI, even as someone who
| would see a net loss on it after taxes, since it would mean
| that if I ever lose my job (or choose to quit), I will
| still have the UBI to support myself with while I look for
| a new one, making it a less stressful event.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism
| s3r3nity wrote:
| >... Think about how much time is wasted in middle management,
| working on ad tech, marketing...
|
| While I agree about the prevalence of "bullshit jobs" in
| general, who are you to decide what jobs are "productive?" I
| wouldn't trust any central authority to determine that, but
| rather the decentralized mechanisms that already exist in
| private enterprise / markets to determine that.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| Everyone is entitled to their opinion. They didn't say
| anything about banning specific jobs.
| hunter-gatherer wrote:
| > While I agree about the prevalence of "bullshit jobs" in
| general, who are you to decide what jobs are "productive?"
|
| I don't think OP stated which jobs are important or
| unimportant. There is some interesting research regarding
| this issue. I'm paid 6 figures, and the case for my job
| wouldn't stand up to a lot of scrutiny. There is an entire
| team of me.
| solosoyokaze wrote:
| No central authority has to decide which job is bullshit. I
| don't think people _like_ doing these bullshit jobs, they do
| them to survive. Give people UBI and they 'll simply quit
| their telemarketing, soulless middle management, ad tech
| job...
|
| Some of those people will play video games all day, some will
| create new tech, some will create art... and as you say, no
| one is in a position to judge which of those are
| "productive". It's just important to free people from the
| need to enrich others just to survive.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| And some of them will be re-hired in the same fields but to
| do those jobs that are not bullshit because of course some
| middle management jobs, advertising, etc., are useful.
|
| It might also allow people to take jobs that are currently
| not done because they have low status or are simply
| regarded as uninteresting by employers.
|
| I can easily imagine someone being willing to be a street
| cleaner if they had enough leverage to ensure that it was
| not a grindingly horrible job.
| s3r3nity wrote:
| > It's just important to free people from the need to
| enrich others just to survive.
|
| Before I criticize, in full disclosure: I support UBI
| experiments. I have my concerns, but until we have data
| they're just theory.
|
| That out of the way: I don't think it's wildly out of line
| to assume a social contract that you need to provide some
| value to society to get access to resources (food / shelter
| / etc.) created by others. If I'm making food from a farm,
| you can't just get food from me by existing, you need to
| offer something of value: working on my farm (services,) or
| exchanging goods I want to use, like better equipment. Or
| you give me money so that I can access those other two
| things.
|
| And at the end of the day, we still need janitors, waste
| management, customer support callers, etc etc - jobs people
| hate, but must be done. And they will continue to be done
| regardless of UBI.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| Bullshit jobs and unpleasant jobs aren't the same.
| solosoyokaze wrote:
| I don't agree that a social contract that requires that
| you provide value before you receive the bare
| necessities, is a good one. I think humanity as a whole
| benefits when everyone is alleviated of the need to worry
| about basic survival. We've reached the stage in our
| technological evolution where this is starting to be
| possible.
|
| Also, I'm not advocating for the complete erasure of
| private jobs and enterprise. Just that base level needs
| be met for all. You're free to take a customer support
| job if you want more money or it's your passion.
| rowanG077 wrote:
| > I think humanity as a whole benefits when everyone is
| alleviated of the need to worry about basic survival.
|
| Why do you think this? I really have no clue how it will
| turn out. However thinking logically about it I think a
| great many good things are done every day BECAUSE of the
| need for survival in one sense or another.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| Many bullshit jobs pay more and have better working
| conditions than many non bullshit jobs. Don't assume UBI
| would mean fewer people working in ad tech.
| clavalle wrote:
| >I don't think people like doing these bullshit jobs, they
| do them to survive. Give people UBI and they'll simply quit
| their telemarketing, soulless middle management, ad tech
| job
|
| I think you're forgetting half the equation...with the
| possible exception of telemarketing, those jobs go quite a
| bit beyond mere survival in terms of pay.
|
| People will still take those kinds of jobs because the
| value they get from pay. And that's fine.
|
| People value their free time and that's fine too. But I
| think it's not realistic to think that people in general
| value their free time so much that if they have enough for
| survival that they wouldn't take jobs that exchange hard
| currency for that time.
|
| What some combination of UBI/Basic Needs welfare will do,
| though, is prevent survival from weighing down that choice
| so people will demand more hard currency than they actually
| value that time without the infinite value sink of avoiding
| pain or death.
|
| I know plenty of well off people that don't have to worry
| too much about affording to survive who spend a lot of time
| working hard and it's perfectly rational considering that
| they consider themselves better off with the trade.
| solosoyokaze wrote:
| I agree with you, sorry I didn't state that clearly. I
| think private enterprise will continue to exist and
| people will willingly take jobs to make more money,
| accomplish something with others... the thing is with
| UBI, they won't _have_ to, like you say.
| moral-argument wrote:
| >Some of those people will play video games all day, some
| will create new tech, some will create art... and as you
| say, no one is in a position to judge which of those are
| "productive". It's just important to free people from the
| need to enrich others just to survive.
|
| I'm really not interested in funding this personally. And
| if I received UBI I would definitely play video games all
| day.
| doganengin wrote:
| Good point indeed. Healthcare related expenses can derail one's
| finances regardless of income level. How to finance both will
| be difficult for most countries but it is worth to experiment
| around the concept and fine tune over time.
| wtvanhest wrote:
| the hardest part of UBI for me to understand is how much of it
| will be eaten by inflation and how much will actually help
| people.
|
| I'd like to see a lot of research on that part of the topic.
| Maybe take a zip code and give everyone UBI in that zip and see
| how things like housing prices change within that zip.
| dfgdghdf wrote:
| Two of the most fundamental products people need are food and
| shelter, and both of these are low margin businesses (excluding
| high rent areas, but a UBI allows people to move more easily
| because you receive it regardless of employment status).
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| Don't forget to raise everyone's taxes within that zip code as
| well. You need the full experience.
| dillondoyle wrote:
| One of the ideas is that we wouldn't need to raise taxes -
| simply replace some of the social safety net spending with a
| baseline monthly income.
| avmich wrote:
| Or don't raise taxes, if you subscribe to the idea that
| lowering taxes pay for themselves (to the budget).
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| A zip code is too small, because mobility between zip codes is
| too high. It could cause housing inflation, say, but if you
| only give UBI to one zip code, they're trying to inflation the
| whole metro area's housing prices. Say the metro area is 20 zip
| codes. Then you only see 1/20th the effect, which means it's
| going to be much easier to miss.
| roenxi wrote:
| Inflation is a red herring metric for assessing a UBI. Pretty
| much all the major schools of economic thought agree that under
| the current financial market regulation inflation is an overall
| policy position by government separate from any one specific
| policy. If UBI pushes inflation up, changes elsewhere can push
| it down.
|
| So the actual negative effect of a UBI, in theory, would be
| declines in real goods and services as resources are directed
| from economically productive to economically unproductive
| people. Devilishly difficult to measure.
| redis_mlc wrote:
| The data exists already, since women are generally eligible for
| welfare (while men aren't.)
|
| For example, around 60% of the SF "homeless budget" goes to
| permanent housing, maintly for women. Add to that additional
| welfare benefits.
|
| In other words, one demographic already gets stealth UBI.
| papreclip wrote:
| It's not a UBI experiment until the taxation part of the equation
| is also included in the experiment. Injecting outside money like
| manna from heaven is not UBI
| robotresearcher wrote:
| Would you argue that:
|
| Missions before Apollo 11 were not moon landing experiments
| because they didn't land on the moon.
|
| Projects before ITER (hopes to be) are not nuclear fusion power
| experiments because the reaction is not self-sustaining.
|
| Movie previews aren't audience reaction experiments if the
| audience didn't pay for the tickets.
|
| Or are partial experiments to learn something in fact
| reasonable, normal and necessary?
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I believe the person you're responding to is saying that
| increased taxation is such a necessary component of any UBI
| system that any test which doesn't take that into account is
| flawed.
| robotresearcher wrote:
| I understand that and disagree.
| bumbada wrote:
| Agreed. People love socialism so much until they live inside a
| socialist country. They believe the mantra you will be able to
| receive without giving, everybody doing what they love, how
| better it will be spending time doing music or whatever you
| love doing.
|
| UBI is only possible if you have taxes way higher than social-
| democracies in Europe with the current economy we have. The
| reality is that the economy will tank with UBI and taxes would
| be higher and higher.
|
| Productive people like me will instantly move to a free country
| where UBI is not applied. That is where Universal in U comes.
| They want to force the entire world doing that, so people
| productive can't escape.
|
| It is nothing new, it was done by the first Christians or
| communists promising the lala land. In Russia they promised
| people will do whatever they wanted with their time after
| people give in.
|
| In reality the moment it was applied in Russia, forced labor
| was applied, and they took all your money and a terrible
| dictatorship followed.
|
| In the first Christian communities, they will take all your
| money first, as you had to sell everything you had for entering
| the community. Then as St Paul said, the one that does not work
| does not eat, from the money they had already taken from you.
|
| The experiment has been repeated so many times in the past only
| people that ignore History would love to repeat it.
|
| Right now, UBI idea comes from the financial elite. They want
| all your wealth, your autonomy and the power that comes from
| it.
| marcodiego wrote:
| I like the idea of UBI but for now, it seems viable only for
| countries with high GDP per capita. In Brazil, suppose GDP
| reaches 10 Trillion BRL[1] with about 14.1 million unemployed
| people[2] and 1% of the GDP is "distributed" for the unemployed
| people (actually making this a non-universal UBI), that gives
| around 7000 BRL (about 1200 USD) per person per year. It may
| reach a survivable amount with a lower unemployment rate and
| higher GDP.
|
| I really can only see UBI working for countries above a threshold
| GDP per capita.
|
| [1]
| https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?location...
|
| [2] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-brazil-economy-
| employment...
| Priem19 wrote:
| I wonder how Andrew Yang's going to make sense of his advocacy
| for bitcoin and Universal Basic Income.
| alfiedotwtf wrote:
| Can anyone explain to me how UBI is actually paid for, and who
| will do the work that nobody wants to do if we no longer need to
| work?
| newbie789 wrote:
| I believe it's funded by taxation.
|
| As for the second part, that's a good question. I haven't
| personally seen any UBI/direct payment studies that led to a
| significant reduction in people working so that question hasn't
| yet been studied as far as I'm aware.
|
| If there's a study that you've seen where cash payments to
| individuals led to a situation where everyone "no longer need
| to work" and the consequence was a labor shortage, I'd love to
| read it! That sounds like it'd have to have a pretty large
| sample size, decently long duration and some top notch analysis
| to posit a 1:1 "Providing basic housing and quality of life to
| individuals that may or may not need it" and "No labor is
| available" ratio.
| foolinaround wrote:
| Maybe the cash can be prioritized in terms of 1) Housing - a
| hotel kind of setup, where all need to pitch in somehow. 2) Daily
| healthy food vouchers - extra bonus if they are involved in food
| prep. 3) Full physical and mental checkups 4) Cash program for
| those are able to get off this, and earn their own living. This
| would get them started.
| o_p wrote:
| Even Hayek approved the idea of a universal basic income. The
| freedom that a free market provides can only exist when each side
| of the agreement are free to walk away, in reality many people
| are in a 'work for me for low pay and bad conditions or starve'
| kinda of deal which is effectively coercion and against any idea
| of freedom.
|
| Instead of directly giving people money they build highly
| inefficient aid programs full of bureaucracy just because of pure
| distrust, if you dont believe that the individual can make the
| best decisions for themselves and society then you dont really
| believe in capitalism.
| syshum wrote:
| Hayek as a proponent of Basic Income, not Unversal Basic Income
|
| Hayek believed Basic Income should only be offered to those who
| genuinely unable to work or provide for themselves in the
| economy
| [deleted]
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