cross-posted from: https://lemmit.online/post/1021018
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The original was posted on /r/upliftingnews by /u/DyeZaster on 2023-10-05 17:58:02.
Every time I see an experiment like this it’s wildly successful and then never made into any kind of law or permanent social program.
Simply put, a lot of people hate socialism aka “I’m paying so you can get something for free”. I’m all for it.
My 73 year old father supports Trump (not one of the crazy people, just misguided) and hates Biden. He said one of the biggest things that Biden did that pissed him off was student loan forgiveness because my dad said he had to work 3 jobs in the early 70s to put himself through college (which he dropped out of and went into the electrical trade), so everyone else should have to struggle like he did, regardless of the fact that college cost him like $2,000 a semester and it costs like $12-15 grand now, assuming you’re not living on campus.
That’s such a sad argument. I heard a great counter to that line. Imagine we discovered a cure for cancer. This line of reasoning would say “well my mom suffered and died of cancer so why should others get a cure?”
My mom’s ghost would slap me so hard if I said that
I can imagine those people saying this
Pretty much.
Cancer is mostly random. Going into debt for school is a choice.
A choice typically made by 17 year old kids after having spent their entire life having it drummed into them that college is the correct step to take after school
Also 17 year old kids, the vast majority of which have never taken on significant debt and have no frame of reference for the scale of obligation they’re taking on.
It blows my mind that we look at an 17 year old and, as a government, we say, “Alcohol? Too young and immature. Handguns? Too young and immature. Tobacco products? Too young and immature. Voting? Too young and immature. Enlisting in the military or want to take on 5 or 6 figures of debt that will drive your major life decisions for the next few decades? Sign here.”
What causes you to go to school? Generally a hope to fulfill your basic survival functions these days, like eating, safety, and temperature regulation. Are those needs choices?
And what causes having those needs? Being born. Was that one’s own choice either?
I think this argument won’t work well on those who came of age when a highschool degree would cut it, but it is logically rather sound based on present realities.
I’m a younger millennial and went to school and got a degree. No debt. It’s a choice.
I love this argument. Absolutely no empathy for anyone who had different options and experiences, just straight up “I did it so anyone else can too.” You’re making the world a better place. /s
“Fuck you, I got mine.”
I can have empathy for people in different situations than me, but it’s not my responsibility to bail them out of their problems.
That is quite a selfish viewpoint. Perhaps reconsider what you mean. Are you really stating that all people should have the same fate as you regardless of their starting conditions?
No. But lots of people are bad financially and get themselves into too much debt without a way out and I don’t think I should be responsible for bailing them out.
You forgot this part of that claim - “And I didn’t get help from nobody neither”
I guess you’re against COVID treatments too because coming in contact with other human beings is also a choice. Lung Cancer cure? No thanks, they chose to smoke those cigarettes so I would like them to suffer.
Lung Cancer cure? No thanks, they chose to smoke those cigarettes so I would like them to suffer.
My mom died of Lung Cancer, didn’t smoke a single cigarette her whole life. So fuck you.
I don’t want them to suffer, but I’m not paying for their treatment.
I don’t want them to suffer,
but I’m not paying for their treatment.
I’m not trying to be spicy, but you must see how these two statements are contradictory.
No… No they don’t lol.
If you have insurance, private or public, you’re paying for them either way. That’s how insurance works.
Nobody wants to pay taxes bud, but if you don’t, the country will fall apart around you because of precisely that.
Big L take . Enjoy the ratio
It most certainly did not cost him $2000 per semester in the early 70s. It cost about $2000 for a full year at a private university. Around $500 if he went to a public school.
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d07/tables/dt07_320.asp
And that’s in 2007 money! $500 in 2007 converted to the early 70s is $90 to $100. Minimum wage was $1.60 per hour, so he would have to work 2 weeks at minimum wage to afford public school. 7 weeks for private school.
What a burden! He might have to give up part of his summer!
Yeah, maybe per year, I don’t remember.
I hate that THAT is the argument against loan forgiveness. No one is making the actual argument - that this doesn’t fix the systemic issues that caused the debt in the first place and will actually make it worse for future generations.
Student loan reform is what we need. Loan forgiveness without reform will cause tuition prices to increase for future generations.
It’s millenials doing a “fuck you, gen z, I got mine” and we should be better than that.
Certain states are making tuition free for public universities if you meet their requirements, I know NY State is one of them.
Does he have any grandchildren? Sometimes people feel this way only about “others” and have considerably different feelings about how “we” should be treated.
Yep, a 3, almost 4 year old niece.
And he thinks working 3 jobs will be good for her, right? After all, he turned out great.
so everyone else should have to struggle like he did
Remind him that as parents we’re supposed to leave the world a better place for our kids.
Boomers didn’t get that memo.
Boomers didn’t get that memo.
That’s why this Gen-Xer is telling him to remind his dad of that lesson.
The sad truth is current capitalism would ruin it.
If you have a whole city UBI then rent and prices would immediately inflate to siphon that away.
You’d need robust price laws beforehand, and that’s unpopular. Otherwise it’s just a tax-to-overlords pipeline
Funny how capitalism seems to always stand in the way of doing anything objectively good. I guess the homeless will just have to hold on until we figure out how to do welfare in a capitalist economy.
Sure, prices inflate… and the guy who had $0 to buy nothing at the cheaper prices, still has $1000 to buy something at inflated prices.
I think the problem here is that the guy who can now afford a non zero number of things is counterbalance by the person who is just outside of the threshold for receiving the $1000 stipend. The person who previously could afford very few things that is now able to afford even less. It averages everyone out which is good for those who have nothing it is a horrible slap in the face to people who are only slightly better off
the person who is just outside of the threshold
“Universal” means for everyone, no threshold. If there is a threshold, that’s a subsidy, not a UBI.
To keep content the likes of “I earn my money, so fuck those who don’t”, some subsidies complete people’s income “up to” some amount, like up to $1000/month. Guess it’s a slap to the face of those working to earn $1050… and maybe they deserve it, for not negotiating a better pay.
I believe they’re referring to an undefined threshold of buying power. E.g. if I earn $3000 but my take home is $200 after taxes, rent, food, utilities, and student loan repayments, abusive price hikes on basic needs could reduce my take home below the point of sustainability, even factoring in an extra $1000 on top of that. Basically, if rent, food, and utilities go up by 50% but I’m only earning 33% more.
Might be an extreme example, but I think it’s certainly a consideration that needs to be made when putting together the legislation. There needs to be some form of price control, otherwise those UBI checks could basically just become a free gift from the government to exploitative corporations and landlords.
The abusive price hikes scenario, is what happens when subsidies are tied to a specific purpose and income threshold: the providers of that particular service can increase their prices by the subsidy amount for everyone, while only those qualifying get the actual subsidy, and everyone else gets swindled. (This has also been tried, and proven)
There needs to be some form of price control
The price control with an UBI, is the lack of a single provider who can blindly increase prices without getting undercut out of the market, meaning the increase would get spread over all services, particularly those someone earning $0/month would spend their money on, like rent, food, and utilities.
Basically, if rent, food, and utilities go up by 50% but I’m only earning 33% more.
They wouldn’t go up “by 50%” (or more precisely, the % is irrelevant), they’d go up, taken together, by less than the UBI amount, which you’d also be receiving. Otherwise, those earning $0/month wouldn’t be able to afford them, and since it means a direct increase to provider margins, anyone trying to rise them more, would get undercut out of business by someone else who’d be fine with a slightly lower margin increase.
That means, the basic services you worry about, would increase by at most the same UBI amount which you’d also be getting, leading to a net zero or barely positive effect.
Your $200 take home wouldn’t change, and only if you wanted more rent, food, utilities, or whatever an UBI-only person would buy, you’d find those $200 would get you less of those… but only of those, not of services an UBI-only person wouldn’t purchase.
A jet ski would still cost almost the same, only increased by the extra amount business owners could pay due to increased profit margins.
Overall, it would mean a huge influx of cash to the top 1% through “trickle up”, which they could spend on more expensive toys, but it would still mean a night-and-day difference to those below the UBI level, little difference to non-business owners earning barely a few times above it, and a slight margin increase to business owners.
Basically a win-for-all scenario.
I do want to believe all of that, but I am also not going to underestimate the tendency for de facto oligopolies like ISPs to continue colluding on prices, or landlords disproportionately raising rents to “keep out the (probably non-white) poors” who have been gifted greater economic mobility.
I’m just not keen on any policy which assumes that the market can be trusted to course correct itself in a way that is healthy and fair for consumers, because that is so often not the case. I would honestly prefer a system with no UBI, where people simply do not need to buy basic necessities at all. Shelter, food, and utilities should be fundamental rights that people shouldn’t need to pay for in the first place, and income would just allow people to improve the quality of those things should they desire.
The idea behind a UBI is that it’s given to everyone (Universal), not just the poorest. So this wouldn’t be a problem with a true UBI
EDIT: I notice in the article that it was only given to certain people. In that case it’s not really a UBI, but maybe I’m just getting pedantic about the Universal bit
Yeah, I’m definitely glad we don’t have UBI that’s proven to help a lot of people people because if we did, landlords and corporations would theoretically raise rent. Instead, landlords and corporations are constantly raising rent in excess of inflation and we also don’t have UBI.
Every time I see this it’s a small group within a larger capitalist society. So of course the results are beneficial to the recipients; it’s not really proving anything in that respect.
The problem as I see it is how to make it work as its own self-sustaining economic system.
That’s a worthwhile point. However the whole trick with capitalism is to have some counterbalances in it so it doesn’t become an absolute jungle. The SNAP program is a minor program within the scope of capitalism but it’s aimed at preventing the absolute worst of the worst outcomes.
So small anti-capitalist programs are actually an essential part of capitalism. Unless you want to have absolutely no floor and watch 5-10% of people literally starve.
But programs such as the one in the OP are supposed to be prototypes for a universal basic income. I’ve seen a number of these experiments crop up in the news, and it’s always just proving that the recipients thrived more. Which, ok, is good in and of itself.
But wasn’t it obvious? Was it ever even really the question for UBI? Or is the real question about whether and how it can scale up and become self-sustaining?
Well the outcome might seem obvious to you but there are definitely those that say “they’ll just waste it on drugs and booze” or “if they knew how to manage their money they wouldn’t be homeless.” I’m not saying these are good arguments but they’re common. And I think there’s a reasonable amount of doubt that even compassionate people might have.
And aside from that, even if you believe totally in people’s good intentions and desire to thrive, there are many questions about how much is enough, who thrives more or less, how long it takes to show results… Many things we should rightly study to inform any future efforts.
So you seem to be objecting to running such a trial because “duh of course” but I disagree that it’s that simple.
And yes beyond that there are of course issues with how to scale it up. Personally I don’t consider UBI to mean that 100% of the population gets income. As with the COVID stimulus checks, we should exempt the affluent.
The problem as I see it is how to make it work as its own self-sustaining economic system.
Wouldn’t that be a loan?
I think part of it is that these might not have an effect on perception of homeless people quantity.
The people who are helped by the $1k were likely able to show up for it and otherwise be stable enough. If see them on the street walking around you might not realize they are homeless.
When people complain about homeless, they usually are talking about ‘mentally ill homeless people’. These people probably can’t finish this program
Complete what program the money was provided with no strings attached. I also saw no selection criteria so I don’t know why you think this group was hand selected for maximum results. Any decent study would randomize the participants so I’m sure a statistically proportional number of mentally ill homeless also got the payments.
And as for the part about it not effecting the perception of homelessness, directly from the article:
The guaranteed income also dramatically reduced visible homelessness
That’s because they often focus on those that just needed a few grand to get off the street which isn’t the cause of most homelessness. We should be doing this for those that need it but a program like this won’t help the chronically unhoused who tend to be mentally ill and/or have addiction issues.
Similarly, Colorado had a program to give out free birth control and it reduced abortions by like 30%. But Republicans shut the program down because it isn’t about saving babies, it’s about controlling women.
Yeah if it was possible they would have brought womens rights back to the 1930’s if they could.
That is completely ridiculous. Republicans have no interest in bringing civil rights back to the 1930’s.
Their goal is the 1830’s.
1630s gang represent! Back when men were men, knew how to wield a pike, and were willing to give their life for the Spanish crown.
True asf. If it was legal they would have brought back whipping as a punishment for crimes.
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This is a fantastic article and incredibly interesting:
Last October, more than 800 people were enrolled in the basic-income plan, but they didn’t all receive the same stipend. There are three groups: One receives $1,000 a month for a year; another receives $6,500 up front and then $500 a month from there; and another gets just $50 a month.
While cautioning that this was only an interim six-month follow-up for what is a yearlong program, the researchers nonetheless found stark and encouraging changes in participants’ material conditions. Those who received $500 a month or more had seen the biggest gains. At the start, fewer than 10% said they were living in their own home or apartment, while at the six-month point, more than a third said they lived in their own housing.
Edit: The results make me think of all of these programs that are trying to get people out of homelessness should cut way back and just do a basic income with that money (with life help classes and guidance of course).
Spend all the money that’s spent trying to find welfare cheats (and cost more than they could possibly save anyway) on basic income instead.
I mean, let’s not stop there. Our DOD could cut back, go after high income tax cheats and dodgers. There is a list for sure. FYI, Alaska has had Basic Income for awhile now. They call it something else and it fluctuates, but that’s generally what it is.
Alaska is super progressive on that front. It’s not UBI per se. It’s closer to what the Saudis and some other oil-based countries do.
The basic argument is that oil, as a natural resource, belongs to Alaskans in common in the same way as air and water does. Oil companies must pay for extracting the resource, and part of that pay is directly remitted to the citizens. I think both Alaska and Alaskans should be getting more than they are, but that’s the general idea and legal justification as I understand it in practice, I believe it comes out to only a few thousand per year per person, but I’m not Alaskan and am open to correction on any of these points. It’s just something I looked into as a UBI supporter myself.
It’s sort of the Libertarian version of the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund, if public income can exist in Libertarianism. Give everyone cash now instead of having a public agency invest it for the future.
And yeah, it probably should be higher. Per person oil and gas income for the state of Norway was $24 000 last year (at the current exchange rate). Although I haven’t checked per capita oil and gas extraction.
No not our military! Then we’ll have nothing to brag about and threaten other countries with! We don’t need to spend money on education or human welfare! We need more guns! More tanks! More jets! More drones!/s
To be fair, the military is almost a form of basic income. It’s mostly poor people who join to go to school, etc.
They need the poors to fight their wars and work on their factory floors.
“why don’t presidents fight the wars? Why do they always send the poor?”
So self-selected indentured servitude for the poor classes
Here’s the thing, there’s no need to cut back on anything, just be more accountable.
So you don’t support Ukraine?
Try looking at who they chose to give money to as they usually are not the chronically unhoused who represent much of the unhoused population
Are you reading a different article or do you have different sourced information? They were the most vulnerable and a lot of them living on the streets.
That’s the premise of a social experiment in Denver, where for the past few months several hundred of the city’s most vulnerable people have been given cash with no strings attached.
Edit: grabbed the wrong quote:
At the start, fewer than 10% said they were living in their own home or apartment, while at the six-month point, more than a third said they lived in their own housing.
Given the results mirror other experiments that target successfully recent unhoused people I suspect they aren’t targeting “the most vulnerable” and that phrase is the author’s choice.
If you work with unhoused people enough you would know “the most vulnerable people” aren’t lacking for money as much as they frequently are fighting significant mental illness. One guy that used to sleep in the parking lot if a store I worked at, Eddie, wasn’t just homeless and an alcoholic. Eddie was incredibly prone to violent hallucinations and handing guys like him $1k a month isn’t changing that.
They are almost certainly targeting the recent homeless who has a job or recently had a job, has a credit history, and the ability to get off the streets and just needs money to do so.
Im not saying we shouldn’t look into this as a solution to part of our unhoused problems only that we shouldn’t restrict other programs meant to address chronic homelessness in favor of this.
It said most were homeless.
To be considered homeless, you just need to be without a permanent place to live. Some people are living in their car and still employed, some are couch-surfing, some are sleeping on the sidewalk and have severe drug/mental health issues.
Housing first/financial aid is great for the first two people I mentioned, it’s not too helpful for the third. People often look at trials like this and think it’s an easy solution to homelessness while ignoring the problem just isn’t that simple because of that third group.
All that said, if the program does a simple evaluation to determine which group people fall into and gives money/housing to those best suited for it then it’s pretty much a no-brainer that it should be widely implemented. It won’t solve homelessness, but it’ll make a really big dent.
Most are homeless doesn’t describe their particular circumstances. There are people living in their cars who have jobs and credit histories who given a few grand can easily not be homeless . That is in contrast with the guy who is incredibly schizophrenic and constantly hallucinating who hasn’t held a job in years. That guy isn’t getting off the street because you gave him cash because he needs mental health care that he might not recognize.
Just saying they are homeless doesn’t describe who they chose and why.
the chronically unhoused who represent much of the unhoused population
You got a source? I found it’s only 30%
30% would count as “much of the population” IMO. I didn’t say most.
Those who received $500 a month or more had seen the biggest gains.
God I hate such empty bullshit. Of course the only group that got less, only 1/10th of the next group, saw by far the smallest gains. What a completely empty sentence.
It’s a study and they’re reporting the findings. That’s who science works, my guy.
One outcome could have been that those who received them most spent it all on cocaine and hookers. Now, some may say that’s gains, and some others may say that’s a loss, but in the end, they defined the parameters for what gains means, and cocaine and hookers ain’t it.
But more to the point, it has been demostrarte that wealth asking won’t give you the biggest gains. Just look up all the people who won the lottery and are worse off today.
It’s a finding. Not a statement. It’s an observation of the data. Opinions are not valid. If you feel that “of course that is obvious duuuhh” well you can’t actually make that claim unless you have data and the data reflects this. That’s how science works.
You are technically correct, but:
- When you already only compare 3 groups and 2 are fairly close to each other while one is far off, it is nonsensical to point out large differences between the 2 cohorts. They defined them to be that way.
- This is not a scientific paper, it is not even a STEM related newspaper. Leave such nonsense out of there. Nobody needs a study to find that more rain = more water.
It shows that giving people $50 is not nearly as effective as giving them more, so the program should shoot for a reasonable floor on the amount per month.
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They’re confusing the homeless welfare queens for themselves, the bailout welfare queens.
My first thought too, but at least it’s something. One day someone might be able to weave the mountain of evidence in support of UBI into their political campaign.
CAN YOU IMAGINE? HAVING A BASIC INCOME CAUSED PEOPLE TO GET HOUSING???
I bought a peanut butter and crack sammich
Landlords wet dream, they can double the rate on their shithole without functional utilities because ‘the market can support it’
You say that like landlords aren’t going to do it anyway. This argument is predicated on the idea that rates would not go up otherwise, and that’s certainly not true.
Imagine that! Actually having money allowing homeless people to get a home and increase their chances of going out and actually getting a job so they can keep their quality of life up from being homeless!
Who could have ever guessed that people with homes are more likely to try and get jobs to keep their homes? /s
getting a job so they can keep their quality of life up from being homeless!
And paying taxes while having that job. So even from a cold hearted financial perspective, this might be one of the cheapest ways to deal with the problem
This is what the “social security is communism!” crowd just just doesn’t get. Investing a tiny amount up front actually makes you money (or at least saves you exponentially more later). And hey, people get to not be homeless at the same time!
But then there would be no one to look down on!
people get to not be homeless at the same time!
There, you lost them.
I read a lot about this and I have a friend who does social work with homeless people.
There are so many different situations for homeless people. The ones who can better their situation with $1k/mo are truly down on their luck. They need a boost and they can get back on their feet. These are the “invisible homeless” because they are generally ashamed of their situation.
Then you have crackheads. The money won’t help them.
Then you have the mentally ill. They need medical treatment. Cash is less important.
Finally, you have people who have given up. They don’t want to leave their tent. They’ve been homeless so long it’s their life. They prefer it. It’s familiar. I don’t know how money affects this situation.
i honestly just hate reading stuff like this; the study is always a glowing success but we never ever do anything with the results
I swear there has been a big uptick on the other site of videos depicting and celebrating the brutalization of shoplifters.
I think people are increasingly inclined to just hate poor people.
The human brain is hardwired for an “Us vs. Them” viewpoint. As Bush once said, “You’re either with us, or you’re against us.”
Advertisers, politicians, and those that seek to influence, they know this. They don’t project any shades of grey or balance into their arguments. They attempt to “match groups” with you, and then point out that other group, over there, aren’t they terrible, we should do something about that.
So you get videos going, “Look at those shoplifters, doing wrong things! We’re glad that they’re getting their just desserts, aren’t we?”
They don’t show anything that might evoke some empathy in their target audience. You don’t want people to identify with your enemy, you want them to identify with you.
The human brain is hardwired for an “Us vs. Them” viewpoint.
I kinda wonder, is it? Asked in a non-antagonistic way. One often sees kids before they are taught to hate be generous and caring towards others. I wonder if it’s less hardwired and more ingrained in societal upbringings. Especially in the USA where binary thinking is quite profitable.
I can also see it being hardwired, however, as it would likely live adjacent to the base survival instinct.
Soft-wired , perhaps.
The brain is a lazy thing. It falls into patterns easily, it takes mental shortcuts whereever it can. All that comes from our evolutionary history, where energy (literal energy for thinking) was limited.
Your subconscious mind handles all the everyday trivia to maintain your existence in a low energy way, and your mind is very quick to shunt things down that low energy path. That path is all our “instincts” (fight or flight, nurturing instincts, forming into groups etc etc ) and is based upon nomadic living in the savannah plains of Africa three million years ago.
If someone presents something in a way that can easily fall into one of our evolutionary shortcuts then your subconscious will run with it without you even realising.
I think it’s part of the way we are socialized into a society based on economic competition. So it seems normal to us, but it’s just another way of saying “it’s not perfect, but it’s the best/only system we have!” as conservatives are so fond of saying. I don’t think it’s hardwired at all, but we’re intentionally taught that it is.
I took an anthropology class once and learned that there’s archeological evidence of early tribes taking care of disabled elderly (for the time) people. It would have taken a lot more energy to take care of a disabled person in a hunter gatherer society than it would now. I feel like a capitalist would have just left them to die in a cave because that’s what Ayn Rand would have done.
Yet anyone in a position of authority will still parrot giving ppl money will make them lazy
There are two major concerns I have with UBI.
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It’s highly inflationary.
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It fosters dependency, and it’s an economic-political death spiral. People on UBI vote for those who support higher UBI. Inflation increases due to increased monetary velocity. People demand higher UBI due to cost of living increases. Votes go to those who promise higher UBI, etc. The cycle continues until you’re wiping your ass with currency or some form of CBDC is implemented to stop the bleeding.
It fosters dependency
You’re going to have to source that. There is no cycle of dependency, lol. Everyone making it above survival level probably won’t even spur them to vote. These aren’t people rolling in money, it’s 12k per year.
Giving everyone 12k/year doesn’t foster dependency? Dude I make enough to not be homeless but if I had an extra 12k I’d spend it and my lifestyle would inflate. That’s dependency. I depend on it to live a nicer life.
And giving every person in America 12k/year would cost over 50% of the budget and produce almost no growth unless it was entirely funded by debt.
It might not foster dependency but it would be incredibly expensive.
You would have to start at the most vulnerable. Then eventually, you would have to target the adults who make 70k or less which is about 70% of the adult population. Then, taper it down up to 100k. This would be app. 2 trillion. I think what a lot of people are missing is, we may not have a choice to not have some kind of UBI with robots taking over quite a few jobs in the next 50 years. We have to get corporations and billionaires to pay more taxes as well. The bottom 80% are paying most of the taxes. Don’t forget that trump paid $0-$700 in taxes for quite a few years and I’m sure that’s more common than not.
The benefits of UBI would be:
- More people living in rural areas because they don’t have to go to the city to get jobs. They could work in a grocery store and live a decent life.
- Have the opportunity to develop new businesses.
- More people going to school because they could afford it.
- More money being spent and more taxes received from that.
Right now, our money is being funneled up to the rich shareholders of these huge companies instead of going to Americans who aren’t even getting by.
It’s over 3.5 trillion if given to everyone.
Source on the bottom 80% paying most of the taxes please?
Don’t forget redirecting over half the budget to fund a UBI significantly alters the US economy.
You obviously didn’t read what I said, it’s not to give to everyone.
If it isn’t for everyone it isn’t universal. Even at 2 trillion it would devastate our economy. We don’t have that much free money in the system.
Now please provide a source on your claim that the bottom 80% pay most of the taxes as Im fairly certain that is not true.
How would it not produce growth? Pretty much guaranteed that 100% of this money is spent back into the economy vs hoarded in investments
Because it is taken from the same economy. If I tax Bill $1 to give Bob $1 we didn’t see any net growth. The only way it produces growth is if we gave Bob $1 but never collected $1 from anyone which becomes unsustainable in the long term.
it would be incredibly expensive
And?
We cannot afford to ditch over 50% of the budget to replace it with a UBI that won’t produce much if any benefit?
Ah, you assume it won’t benefit people.
You’re wrong.
No Im saying it will provide little to no net benefit to the larger economy whereas redirecting over 50% of the budget to give $12k/yr to everyone would be catastrophic to the larger economy. I suspect the economy tanking would end up hurting more than the 12k helps.
The only way UBI doesn’t significantly harm the US economy, and to be clear Im talking about only the USA right now, is if the payments are either so small they don’t help, the payments are not universal and are targeted towards those that need money, or if the entire thing is financed by increasing the national debt which is unsustainable over the long run. None of these are as beneficial as they seem.
Do we have any sort of previous example of this happening? Was this ever tested? If no: a test is seemingly well worth it.
This isn’t directed at you, this is for the other dude, but also answers your question a little. The entire US was given checks during the pandemic, did it make you lazy?
That is an excellent analogy.
Not really. There is a big difference when the free money is guaranteed over a long period of time. I don’t think it takes any extraordinary leaps in logic that people would stop working if they were given a bunch of money every month.
There’s a big difference when its guaranteed over a period of time. Then you can actually feel justified in quitting whatever job you have since you know the money will keep coming in.
The entire US was given checks during the pandemic, did it make you lazy?
I mean, I spent a year wearing sweat pants and hardly leaving my house.
Because you were rolling in checks or because it was unhealthy to do so? Having worked full-time and part time as a freelancer, job burnout and needing recovery isn’t laziness.
It was a joke… I was still working full time, just from home. And I didn’t go anywhere because there was a pandemic going on and I didn’t want to be around people. But the fact that I was 100% in sweatpants and lounging around the house for a year did feel lazy, but had nothing to do with the checks coming in from the government.
Hey I take umbrage. Sweatpants are a vital part of attire for WFH / home gym enthusiasts, even post-lockdown.
Fuck yeah it did. I was making the same on unemployment as I would have being at work. I wanted to stay laid off.
What you wanted to do and what you did are 2 different things. You’re overworked and probably not doing a job that you want to do. That isn’t laziness, that’s job unsatisfaction.
Yeah, but that probably applies to a lot of people. Why would anyone choose to do all the bullshit (but necessary) jobs if they can get paid the same for sitting at home?
Is that what rich people do? Do billionaires sit home and do nothing? I think all of you saying it causes laziness aren’t living your best lives.
Do you have a link to the original source or the name of the authors? Neither is in your article only a statement that it was sourced from another site.
- It’s highly inflationary.
- False. It is only inflationary if the the government prints money to fund it. If instead the government funds it by cutting unnecessary spending or increasing tax revenue in some way than it is not inflationary. There is the same amount of money in circulation but it is just moving between hands instead of staying in a bank account.
cutting unnecessary spending or increasing tax revenue
You are technically correct, but in a practical sense: lol good luck with that.
Yep, unfortunately our politicians are bought and paid for by the rich.
Thanks Citizens United
So to summarize other people’s points, evidence shows that those concerns are not outcomes of UBI so there is no need to be worried.
- It’s highly inflationary.
I think this is a great example of what rich people think of us. This user would prefer that people stay homeless rather than cut back on their own luxuries so that others could have a more decent basic standard of living. Those with stable basic housing feel like they’re living the normal life they have earned, while a homeless person is someone that doesn’t want to put in the work to carry themselves. The wealthy think the same way about the middle class: we want vacation days, adequate healthcare, a proper justice system, and decent wages/fair business market without earning it. However, a person with a 1 bedroom apartment they can call home is a king to a homeless person.
- It fosters dependency, and it’s an economic-political death spiral. People on UBI vote for those who support higher UBI.
Here, we see the privilege. They argue that it would foster dependency because the poor would vote for better standards of living rather than contribute to society. To think this way, we have to ignore that someone cannot meaningfully contribute to society without adequate housing and stability. We would also have to ignore our own hypocrisy in that we argue that our standard of living is dependent on the exploitation of the homeless.
These are the very same arguments that the wealthy elite use. If they pay more taxes, then the poor will slippery slope the vote by electing politicians that continue to increase taxes on the rich, while also becoming dependent on that revenue.
I am in no way attacking this user. It’s a common mentality across the world. Instead, I’m using their comment to point out how this mentality works regardless of social class: 1) my efforts have created my wealth, while everyone else that is poorer just doesn’t work to earn it, and 2) helping the lazy poorer people makes them dependent on my work. Repeat these arguments in some fashion all the way down to the poorest person on Earth 🔁
Also the actual research on it is not as rosy as some seem to think.
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Basketball people
This is not a UBI Universal Basic Income; this is a CBI Conditional Basic Income. The conditions are currently being selected and being homeless.
Also this program basically already exists. It is just TANF selected for homelessness instead low-income families with children.
Edit: Universal not Unconditional
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Its usually cheaper to give everyone a small amount of money than it is to set up and pay a whole department of civil servants to figure out who qualifies and who doesn’t.
Also the poor and disabled suffer disproportionately when you start putting strict restrictions on financial aid. Just look at universal credit in the UK, in trying to save money/protect against the boogyman of welfare queens, they government has unqualified assessors trying to fail people even if they have serious disabilities.
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It’s not charity if everyone gets it, it’s levelling the field and making society fairer.
For the people who need it most it could mean life or death or being able to stay in their home or not have to choose between heat or food.
For those in the middle it might be a nice excuse to treat yourself.
For the richest it would be such an absurdly tiny amount of money they might not be able to spend it.
All we should care about is making sure as many people in the first group get the support. For basic income payments the most effective way to do that is to give it to everyone. By the government giving you that money instead of doing what I talked about above, more people were helped.
Also has the added bonus of countering slightly the siphoning of wealth from the poor to the rich that’s been happening the past while.
It’s not charity if everyone gets it, it’s levelling the field and making society fairer.
I like ubi a lot.
But I think this statement is not true actually. Removing UBI from the argument for a second, if we are children and we go find easter eggs and afterwards we take eggs from everyone and redistribute it so it’s more equal that’s charity.
Big Bill didn’t get as many eggs because he struggled with childhood diabetes.
Fast Francine got a lot of eggs because per parents put her on ADHD meds and she’s laser focused.
So if we take eggs from Francine and give them to bill now we’re doing charity.
Nah that’s not how the world works.
It’s closer to a school with 1000 students.
1 kid got 10000 eggs from their parents and refuses to share. Ther rest have 0-2 eggs each.
Maybe the students do chores but the pocket money they get only allows them to get 1 extra egg.
UBI is the school giving 2 eggs to every student. Now the egg distribution is more even since most students now have double the eggs or more but the richest students eggs only went up by a tiny percentage.
Is it really fair that one student has more eggs than they could possibly need and many kids have nothing just because they were born into a different family.
If you want to talk about really being fair you probably want to talk about proper wealth redistribution. If you took 5000 eggs off that one student and split it between everyone, every kid would be up 5 eggs. The kid with all the eggs would still have 5005 eggs which IMO is still more than any 1 kid should have to themselves.
I still wouldn’t call any of this charity since 99.9% of people benefit from it.
It gets even better when you ask where the parents got the money. Since its a closed loop you can’t really create money from nothing.
Let’s keep things simple, say the rich parents own all the shops and services in the town. All their money comes from the other parents of the town. The poorer parents have no choice where to buy things like food that they need, they can’t not pay their water bill or their heating. Buying their kids clothes and toys means giving more of their money to the rich parents. Now most of the parents can only afford a couple of eggs and the rich parents can afford a ridiculous number.
The ability for some to make large profits off humans basic needs is wrong and if you say any of this is fair then you should try and figure out why you think like this.
Charity: the voluntary giving of help, typically in the form of money, to those in need.
Sure Jan 😘
Great that it worked and all, but how are we supposed to punish the poor if we just give them money?
Or use them as a political demon to rally our base?
Couple UBI with various social services made easily available–homelessness/poverty can be stricken a devastating blow. Western economies shouldn’t even have the amount of poverty that they do. They’re in a position to completely transform that if they wished.
There are so many countries, like the aforementioned United States, where astronomical government spending can be cut and used for tending to citizen health and stability. The billions upon billions upon billions of dollars spent on things that ultimately don’t matter…
😤🤯😖😵
I read far too much fiction which builds hope in the kinds of society that we can become. But each time I close those books, I’m reminded of why reality hurts so much. If only those with power truly cared about what really matters. Life is so short and this is how we spend it. 😭
Ack!
No… I’ll continue hoping. It’s my nature. There are those few who keep trying. They press in. And historically, things are better for human kind. I just which I could have lived through the best of it.
This is consistent with what they were finding up in Ontario with their basic income pilot before their leader decided - with zero evidence or consequences - to eliminate the program illegally against contract and ethics.
People stepping out of poverty and able to give back to the community.
It really makes sense. Everyone needs x money for food and absolute basic necessities. Take y% tax from the sallary to cover those up.
If you get fired you still get a little bit of money. Or you propably more easily try to get a better work because you at least get some money if you are jobless for a while.
Another study, another proposed policy we’ll never see
It’s nice that homeless people were able to enjoy a significantly higher quality of life but inflation made my latte $7 so I don’t think we should be giving away free handouts.
/s
I put that /s because you ravenous Lemmy commies can’t read sarcasm even if it was written by Marx. I’m onto you guys 😉
Yeah these kinds of studies just keep happening, get the government refuses to do anything to make the problems go away. It’s almost as if the country is run by greedy capitalists who have no interest in seeing anyone of the working class survive without daily struggle and hardship. Weird.
I’m glad they are getting that money (or were?), but the fucked up thing is knowing that’s literally more than I get in a month working 30 hours a week of the hardest job I’ve had in 15 years. 🙃
I’m betting the two people who downvoted me would happily tell me to just get a better job. 😂
I wish you got that money too.
You are getting paid less than $8.33/hr at a challenging job?
Unless you’re getting hella personal satisfaction you need to pound pavement.
The hardest jobs I’ve had have all been the lowest paying.
Higher paying jobs tend to have higher entry requirements but it also means the employer actually values you (like, literally places a high monetary value on you because at the end of the day that is what capitalism demands)
This idea that low paying jobs are easy is wrong. Being replaceable makes you vulnerable to exploitation and abuse.
Yep.
It’s the way market forces work.
Markets aren’t moral. So while this is how it works, that doesn’t make it good. It’s so important for governments to protect workers for exactly this reason.
On this front, America is a literal joke.
I’m not joking when I say that I have put in at least 1-3 applications every single day for 3 months now and all the while making calls to the companies to check on the application process. I could go into elaborate detail about how much pavement pounding I’ve done, but honestly I’m just too tired and exhausted with life and just want to tell you to go fuck yourself.
I didn’t mean to sound like I was blaming you - I realize how it came across that way and I’m sorry.
Your situation sucks. And I know you’re not alone, there are tons of areas that have what basically works out to a labor surplus. It drives wages down because there’s no protection for workers and the minimum wage is a fucking joke.
Yeah, sorry, just feels like I get beat down every day and then people hit you with “just get a better job”, “just stop being depressed”, etc. It’s very exhausting to live these days.
How does that work?!
mind you if there was reasonable social security like a payment to the jobless, exploitation like that would be harder. It feels like countries like the US fight social security to make it easier to pay people almost nothing, by keeping the danger of homelessness and lack of healthcare real.
not presuming you’re in the US, that income would honestly make more sense in a less developed part of the world. I hope that’s not an insult 😬
It feels like an insult. I’m in Indiana.
sorry 😔
So a less developed part of the world, got it
Well you’re not wrong there. 😂
