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 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
“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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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!
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?”
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.
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.
A 17 year old kid is forced into taking on debt to attend college with, at the time they agree to it, no way of paying it off. It’s a gamble any which way you slice it. And they have no frame of reference to understand the decision they’re making.
The school isn’t on the hook to ensure they get gainful employment that would pay them enough to manage that debt. The loan servicer isn’t either. Only the kid is going to be held to anything, yet the shitty take is always, “They knew what they were signing up for, so fuck em. I want them to suffer for their bad decision.”
With all sincerity, I hope you encounter misfortune through no fault of your own that ruins your financial security for the next 20 years.
A 17 year old kid is forced into taking on debt to attend college
No they’re not! No is forced to go to college, and no is forced to go into debt to do it! Those are both choices they made! The premise of your whole argument is not true!
With all sincerity, I hope you encounter misfortune through no fault of your own that ruins your financial security for the next 20 years.
Unlikely, I plan ahead and don’t make stupid financial decisions.
This shit is bad for society, and by extension you. Loan services and schools suck up vast wealth that… goes into rich pockets and widens the income gap. Money that could go to purchasing goods and services, or supporting businesses of any size, or buying houses, or having kids, or paying taxes that could be used on useful things like decent roads (how taxes are used specifically is outside the scope of this discussion, just an example).
Your whole world could be better through loan forgiveness, just not specific to you. Just everything around you better. Just requires a little less “got mine”.
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
What’s your opinion on bailing out Mega Corporations who didn’t responsibly save their money? Or is it ok to bail out Mega Corps but not ok to bail out your mechanic?
it’s not my responsibility to bail them out of their problems.
Counter argument: Yes it is. As much as any responsibility exists at all, you have a responsibility to your fellow people.
“Well it’s not my responsibility” leads to a shittier world. And since you apparently have a degree and no debt, you can spare the energy to be better.
I’ll just assume your family is penniless, sent you to poorly funded K-12 schools, and kicked you out on your ass onto the street the day you turned 18 with no warning or support of any kind, and you still somehow got a degree without debt.
Otherwise, you’d be a raging hippocrite born on third base crowing like you hit a triple! Clearly though that can’t be the case.
I’m sorry your family did you like that though, that’s rough.
Then don’t call the police when your house gets robbed because you chose not to build the walls and doors out of nearly unbreakable titanium, build the windows out of nearly unbreakable 6 inch plexiglass, and install the best available security system in the world. I don’t want to be paying for your choices, and this is your problem now.
Don’t call the fire department when it burns down, either. Especially if you didn’t install a halon fire suppression system in every room and closet. Sorry for the loss of your house, neighbor, but your choices, your problem.
Quit driving on public roads. Getting around without using them is your problem and I don’t want to pay for it.
You’d better send your kids to private schools. It’s expensive, but hey, that’s your problem.
Fortify the hell out of your home. If we ever get invaded, I don’t want the military defending it. It would suck if it got attacked and destroyed, but that’s your problem; I’m not bailing you out.
In fact, you know what? You should just drop out of society, go buy your own island, and declare yourself sovereign. There, you will only ever have to deal with your own choices and problems. You’ll never have responsibility for anyone else’s, and no one will have responsibility for yours.
The rest of us will be over here enjoying something called civilization, where people join together for their mutual benefit and aid.
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.”
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.
Does he have any grandchildren? Sometimes people feel this way only about “others” and have considerably different feelings about how “we” should be treated.
We know these programs work, but the American public won’t admit it has a sadist streak. We delight in the suffering of those we have decided deserve suffering. It’s part of the culture to engage in shaming and punishing one another to the point where it’s ritual. We repeat verbatim paradigmatic lines of justification. We actively reject opportunities that function better than (in)formal punishment in a wide variety of areas: parenting, teaching, criminal justice, jobs, etc. At some point, if we don’t own and improve upon that programming, I don’t see what else would change our trajectory, save for tragedy.
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.
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 😉
I know Imma get down voted for this opinion. But from what I can see the Study says that 100% (that means people in the experiment and control group) applied for a job so there is really cute 0% difference in people that got money and people that didnt.
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.
So how many of these “experiments” do we need to have until we make some policies based on the results? I see this all the time, but it’s always just that: an “experiment”
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!
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.
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.
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’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.
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.
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.
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 😬
I am a fan of a UBI (Universal Basic Income) but these limited CBI (Conditional Basic Income) trials are not really comparable to a long-term implementation of either version.
Taking a specific number of people and giving them cash is certainly going to improve their lives. Giving cash to everyone in a city or state, including new arrival, is asking for local inflation and a population explosion. If the area is empty and has abundant natural resources that can be converted into jobs it will probably work out, at least for a while. If it is a major city with most of the resources and land already in use, and there is not much demand for workers, then the program’s budget is likely to be overrun fairly quickly.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Add comment