8 ms·

There is unfortunately a large political danger with giving cash. If you give cash, then it becomes possible for pundits to agitate for more assistance on the t

There is unfortunately a large political danger with giving cash. If you give cash, then it becomes possible for pundits to agitate for more assistance on the theory that "you can't live on $X". When poor people are explicitly given a room, 3 square meals/day, and government issue poor-people sweats, it's pretty hard to argue that they are somehow lacking anything necessary to live. Based on this article, there is also no reason to believe that cash assistance rather than in-kind assistance is necessary. The proposed mechanism is "Parents are happier because they have more money, leading to less fighting within the family. This lowers stress on kids..." But in-kind assistance would also lower stress since parents wouldn't need money. In-kind assistance has the added benefit that parents can't divert public assistance intended for children's welfare into other goods (e.g. alcohol, tobacco, drugs, junk food).

smt88 11y ago
> When poor people are explicitly given a room, 3 square meals/day, and government issue poor-people sweats What if someone inherited a place to live, but has no money? What if she grows her own food, but she can't afford the suit she needs to interview for jobs? Premise 1: Each person's situation is distinct. In other words, there is no standard group of benefits that would solve everyone's problems. Premise 2: Poor people will use cash to improve their lives in the long term, rather than just blowing the money on short-term pleasures. That second premise is exactly what's being demonstrated in small studies, national programs outside the US, and surveys.
- yummyfajitas 11y ago
  What if someone inherited a place to live, but has no money? If someone has wealth I'd generally expect them to consume that wealth before receiving wealth transfers. But more generally, if people have some of their needs being met but not all, then they can consume only some of the available in-kind benefits. E.g., a wealthy person with no income (like you described above) might provide their own housing but get their food from the government cafeteria. Premise 2 is both debunked in the US. Google the consumer expenditure survey and witness poor folks spending money on short term pleasures. Your premise 2 also conflicts with the article: Even if bad behavior does make poverty worse, it’s also the case that poverty causes bad behavior in the first place. Now you can try to improve the choices that poor folks make. But you can also just eliminate the bad choices and directly manage their lives until they develop the ability to manage their own life.
  - chongli 11y ago
    If someone has wealth I'd generally expect them to consume that wealth before receiving wealth transfers. You don't need to make it so complicated. Just tax people on their wealth and income, then pay everybody the basic income. Those at the very top will end up paying far more in taxes than what they receive in basic income.
    - smt88 11y ago
      Recent article about this: http://www.fastcoexist.com/3040832/world-changing-ideas/a-universal-basic-income-is-the-bipartisan-solution-to-poverty-weve-bee http://www.fastcoexist.com/3040832/world-changing-ideas/a-un...
CuriousSkeptic 11y ago
UNHCR has some experience with this http://www.unhcr.org/515a959e9.pdf http://www.unhcr.org/515a959e9.pdf
Mz 11y ago
When poor people are explicitly given a room, 3 square meals/day, and government issue poor-people sweats, it's pretty hard to argue that they are somehow lacking anything necessary to live. That's extremely gross. Most poor people are poor in part because of serious health problems. Giving people "3 square meals/day" implies forcing them to accept some standard issue, probably godawful cafeteria food that they have no control over. This can make health problems far, far worse, driving up medical expenses and driving down their ability to be productive. To me, that sounds like a) hell and b) permanent underclass in the making. And if you think in-kind assistance cannot be diverted to other goods, you are really, really clueless as to how creative people can be about converting the things they can get into the things they want to get. The reason we have all kinds of laws about how you can use food stamps is because so many people find ways to convert them to guns, alcohol, you name it.
- 13thLetter 11y ago
  "Most poor people are poor in part because of serious health problems." Citation needed? There was a study a while back purporting to state that most bankruptcies in the United States were due to medical costs, but that turned out to not be the case upon further examination.
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    Not a citation and not a proof, just pointing out an additional group - there is a whole class of mental problems that can lead one to poverty and keep them there. They often need money and stable situation (have time to visit a doctor, have money to buy drugs OR have a job to have an insurance to get drugs) to be kept at bay, and if they force you into bad situation it becomes very hard to get out of it. Some people are employable only because huge inefficiencies that exist in job market (e.g. it's easy to pass a programming test and hard for your employer to determine your actual productivity) and that would be better off on an UBI, providing some value without the stresses of not getting paid for being unable to e.g. maintain 9-5 schedule, or your employer not understanding that you have random periods of downtime due to depression.
  - cookiecaper 11y ago
kragen 11y ago
Among the things I needed — and had — when I was growing up, but that aren't on your list: books, a computer, a bicycle, moving away from the kids who were beating me up, a root canal, fillings, tooth sealant, an appendectomy, methylphenidate, clothes that weren't itchy, electronic components, music recordings, travel out of the inner city to get into nature and visit family members, a telephone number. My parents got those things with money. In many cases, they were better ways of spending money than more government-issue poor-people sweats would have been. It might surprise you that putting poor people into gray government housing devoid of life or joy and under the control of administrators not accountable to those people generally results not only in abuses but also in crime inside that housing. But that's what you find, not only in the housing projects you're proposing, but also in military barracks (often in the form of gang rape) and in prisons. It turns out that, in practice, parents do a better job of assigning resources to their children's welfare than governments do. This is true despite both the occasional glaring exception and the general situation that nearly all parents spend some money on things like tobacco or junk food. Of course, it would be great to have government or community institutions that serve as a safety net for the kids whose parents aren't providing their needs, for whatever reason. Unfortunately, as a society, we do a terrible job of providing accountability to any kind of institution whose job is ostensibly to care for people without political power — whether we're talking about mental hospitals, prisons, nursing homes, housing projects, or schools. Public schools are only as good as they are because of pressure from parents.
- yummyfajitas 11y ago
  Your reply demonstrates perfectly why in-kind benefits are politically superior to cash. You've now demanded that specific goods be added to the list and we can explicitly have a debate on the merits of those goods. I've lived in housing far worse, in terms of material living conditions, than what I'm proposing. I'll happily do it again, most likely next Jan. The main problem you describe (people committing gang rapes) is a problem with the people rather than the environment. Folks aren't materially deprived, they are just bad people. Now consider these folks: http://www.zostel.com/media/photo/Jaipur_Zostel_Common_Room_Travellers_Fun16.jpg http://www.zostel.com/media/photo/Jaipur_Zostel_Common_Room_... Suddenly, materially worse living conditions don't seem so bad. Instead of "gray government housing devoid of life or joy", it's a fun youth hostel. (In contrast, my experience staying in real poverty (aka a nice building in an average Maharashtran village) was far less fun. The lack of mosquito netting, power, internet and running water made life quite unpleasant.)
jellicle 11y ago
I don't understand the conservative desire to centrally manage the lives of the poor, taking away choice and freedom in favor of centralized bureaucracy.
- yummyfajitas 11y ago
  In the explicit explanation I gave above, what specifically do you not understand?
  - ThomPete 11y ago
    He doesn't understand your desire. I think he is noticing a certain tendency in posts like yours.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- Turing_Machine 11y ago
  What? I assure you that the the meddling, micromanaging social services bureaucracies are not run by "conservatives". Far from it. A conservative or libertarian model would tend more toward a negative income tax or guaranteed basic income than what we have now. In fact, Milton Friedman was a big advocate of the NIT.
  - TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
    Neither of which are examples of centralised bureaucracy? That aside, conservative politicians aren't famous for demanding that the poor be given free money. The current British conservative government seems intent - quite literally - on starving the poor to death. That seems to be more usual for conservatives than aggressive agitation for a guaranteed basic income.
    - Turing_Machine 11y ago
      "That aside, conservative politicians aren't famous for demanding that the poor be given free money." Milton Friedman is just about the most famous conservative/libertarian economist there is. Nobel Prize, even.
dikaiosune 11y ago
I would disagree on the relative merits of in-kind vs. cash assistance, for reasons that have mostly been explored by other replies. There is a specific problem, I see though, and it's what all of these quotes have in common: "When poor people are explicitly given a room, 3 square meals/day, and government issue poor-people sweats" "You've now demanded that specific goods be added to the list and we can explicitly have a debate on the merits of those goods." "then they can consume only some of the available in-kind benefits" "But you can also just eliminate the bad choices and directly manage their lives until they develop the ability to manage their own life." All of these things have massive overhead at the administrative, procurement, and distribution tiers. Each of these things costs a lot of money: 1. Deciding on what to distribute 2. Subsequently arguing with recipients over the addition of items to the available benefits, and subsequently approving new items 3. Selecting and procuring the available options for each benefit item or type. 4. Distributing each item. 5. Tracking inventory of each in-kind benefit. 6. Negotiating returns of each in-kind benefit. 7. Balancing stock levels of available benefits to match the partial consumption of some recipients. While I haven't seen a specific evaluation, I would be completely flabbergasted if this overhead was somehow a lesser cost than the potential loss of cash benefits to pleasure spending. EDIT: To summarize, why manage this all centrally instead of relying on market dynamics that are well understood and efficient retail and distribution infrastructures that already exist?
- yummyfajitas 11y ago
  Once the minimum benefit is determined, you can of course rely on market dynamics to provide it. The government can put out an RFP for caring for poor people and the lowest bidder can service the contract. As for determining the actual minimum benefit, that's really just the job for a few bureaucrats. Once the basics are specified, the rest reverts to (free) political pundits - e.g., kragen arguing that books should be included. And note that the losses due to pleasure spending can be HUGE in some cases, mainly relating to location. For example, consider the various housing projects in the east village, upper west side, etc. The cost of pleasure spending is $manhattan 2 bedroom - $cheaper location dormitory (living in Manhattan without roommates is a consumption choice).
  - 11y ago
dllthomas 11y ago
"In-kind assistance has the added benefit that parents can't divert public assistance intended for children's welfare into other goods" This can always be done, sometimes at tremendous inefficiency. http://www.fns.usda.gov/tags/water-dumping http://www.fns.usda.gov/tags/water-dumping '"Water dumping" involves buying beverages that require a container deposit and immediately dumping out the contents in order to return the container and receive the deposit credit in cash.'
Shivetya 11y ago
besides being given cash they government fees that people below a certain threshold of income need to be adjusted. There are far too many such fees which hammer the income of those least able to afford it.
PhasmaFelis 11y ago
> There is unfortunately a large political danger with giving cash. If you give cash, then it becomes possible for pundits to agitate for more assistance on the theory that "you can't live on $X". I'm not clear why that's a problem.
- yummyfajitas 11y ago
  It's not clear why wasting more money than necessary on a government program is a problem?
  - PhasmaFelis 11y ago
    I should clarify. I don't see the problem with pundits saying "You can't live on $X" when you really, demonstrably can't raise children well on $X, where "raising children well" is defined as positive psychological and employment outcomes. The article suggests that this is the situation we're in right now; therefore I'm fine with people agitating to improve that situation. If, as you fear, America should at some point find itself giving too much to the poor, then perhaps proposals to limit that would be appropriate, but right now (and for most of recorded history) we have the opposite problem, and your fear does not look at all realistic.
- cookiecaper 11y ago
  Why is the minimum wage never sufficient? Do you think it'll actually stop at $15/hr? It's insufficient because people always want more free money, and there are always politicians that are willing to exploit that for personal gain.
  - PhasmaFelis 11y ago
    The minimum wage is never sufficient because it's never, to date, been enough to comfortably support a family, as the article we're commenting on demonstrates. Fortunately for you, your "damn these lazy, greedy poors" rhetoric is still quite popular.

smt88 11y ago

> When poor people are explicitly given a room, 3 square meals/day, and government issue poor-people sweats What if someone inherited a place to live, but has no money? What if she grows her own food, but she can't afford the suit she needs to interview for jobs? Premise 1: Each person's situation is distinct. In other words, there is no standard group of benefits that would solve everyone's problems. Premise 2: Poor people will use cash to improve their lives in the long term, rather than just blowing the money on short-term pleasures. That second premise is exactly what's being demonstrated in small studies, national programs outside the US, and surveys.

yummyfajitas 11y ago
What if someone inherited a place to live, but has no money? If someone has wealth I'd generally expect them to consume that wealth before receiving wealth transfers. But more generally, if people have some of their needs being met but not all, then they can consume only some of the available in-kind benefits. E.g., a wealthy person with no income (like you described above) might provide their own housing but get their food from the government cafeteria. Premise 2 is both debunked in the US. Google the consumer expenditure survey and witness poor folks spending money on short term pleasures. Your premise 2 also conflicts with the article: Even if bad behavior does make poverty worse, it’s also the case that poverty causes bad behavior in the first place. Now you can try to improve the choices that poor folks make. But you can also just eliminate the bad choices and directly manage their lives until they develop the ability to manage their own life.
- chongli 11y ago
  If someone has wealth I'd generally expect them to consume that wealth before receiving wealth transfers. You don't need to make it so complicated. Just tax people on their wealth and income, then pay everybody the basic income. Those at the very top will end up paying far more in taxes than what they receive in basic income.
  - smt88 11y ago
    Recent article about this: http://www.fastcoexist.com/3040832/world-changing-ideas/a-universal-basic-income-is-the-bipartisan-solution-to-poverty-weve-bee http://www.fastcoexist.com/3040832/world-changing-ideas/a-un...

CuriousSkeptic 11y ago

UNHCR has some experience with this http://www.unhcr.org/515a959e9.pdf http://www.unhcr.org/515a959e9.pdf

Mz 11y ago

When poor people are explicitly given a room, 3 square meals/day, and government issue poor-people sweats, it's pretty hard to argue that they are somehow lacking anything necessary to live. That's extremely gross. Most poor people are poor in part because of serious health problems. Giving people "3 square meals/day" implies forcing them to accept some standard issue, probably godawful cafeteria food that they have no control over. This can make health problems far, far worse, driving up medical expenses and driving down their ability to be productive. To me, that sounds like a) hell and b) permanent underclass in the making. And if you think in-kind assistance cannot be diverted to other goods, you are really, really clueless as to how creative people can be about converting the things they can get into the things they want to get. The reason we have all kinds of laws about how you can use food stamps is because so many people find ways to convert them to guns, alcohol, you name it.

13thLetter 11y ago
"Most poor people are poor in part because of serious health problems." Citation needed? There was a study a while back purporting to state that most bankruptcies in the United States were due to medical costs, but that turned out to not be the case upon further examination.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  Not a citation and not a proof, just pointing out an additional group - there is a whole class of mental problems that can lead one to poverty and keep them there. They often need money and stable situation (have time to visit a doctor, have money to buy drugs OR have a job to have an insurance to get drugs) to be kept at bay, and if they force you into bad situation it becomes very hard to get out of it. Some people are employable only because huge inefficiencies that exist in job market (e.g. it's easy to pass a programming test and hard for your employer to determine your actual productivity) and that would be better off on an UBI, providing some value without the stresses of not getting paid for being unable to e.g. maintain 9-5 schedule, or your employer not understanding that you have random periods of downtime due to depression.
- cookiecaper 11y ago

kragen 11y ago

Among the things I needed — and had — when I was growing up, but that aren't on your list: books, a computer, a bicycle, moving away from the kids who were beating me up, a root canal, fillings, tooth sealant, an appendectomy, methylphenidate, clothes that weren't itchy, electronic components, music recordings, travel out of the inner city to get into nature and visit family members, a telephone number. My parents got those things with money. In many cases, they were better ways of spending money than more government-issue poor-people sweats would have been. It might surprise you that putting poor people into gray government housing devoid of life or joy and under the control of administrators not accountable to those people generally results not only in abuses but also in crime inside that housing. But that's what you find, not only in the housing projects you're proposing, but also in military barracks (often in the form of gang rape) and in prisons. It turns out that, in practice, parents do a better job of assigning resources to their children's welfare than governments do. This is true despite both the occasional glaring exception and the general situation that nearly all parents spend some money on things like tobacco or junk food. Of course, it would be great to have government or community institutions that serve as a safety net for the kids whose parents aren't providing their needs, for whatever reason. Unfortunately, as a society, we do a terrible job of providing accountability to any kind of institution whose job is ostensibly to care for people without political power — whether we're talking about mental hospitals, prisons, nursing homes, housing projects, or schools. Public schools are only as good as they are because of pressure from parents.

yummyfajitas 11y ago
Your reply demonstrates perfectly why in-kind benefits are politically superior to cash. You've now demanded that specific goods be added to the list and we can explicitly have a debate on the merits of those goods. I've lived in housing far worse, in terms of material living conditions, than what I'm proposing. I'll happily do it again, most likely next Jan. The main problem you describe (people committing gang rapes) is a problem with the people rather than the environment. Folks aren't materially deprived, they are just bad people. Now consider these folks: http://www.zostel.com/media/photo/Jaipur_Zostel_Common_Room_Travellers_Fun16.jpg http://www.zostel.com/media/photo/Jaipur_Zostel_Common_Room_... Suddenly, materially worse living conditions don't seem so bad. Instead of "gray government housing devoid of life or joy", it's a fun youth hostel. (In contrast, my experience staying in real poverty (aka a nice building in an average Maharashtran village) was far less fun. The lack of mosquito netting, power, internet and running water made life quite unpleasant.)

jellicle 11y ago

I don't understand the conservative desire to centrally manage the lives of the poor, taking away choice and freedom in favor of centralized bureaucracy.

yummyfajitas 11y ago
In the explicit explanation I gave above, what specifically do you not understand?
- ThomPete 11y ago
  He doesn't understand your desire. I think he is noticing a certain tendency in posts like yours.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
Turing_Machine 11y ago
What? I assure you that the the meddling, micromanaging social services bureaucracies are not run by "conservatives". Far from it. A conservative or libertarian model would tend more toward a negative income tax or guaranteed basic income than what we have now. In fact, Milton Friedman was a big advocate of the NIT.
- TheOtherHobbes 11y ago
  Neither of which are examples of centralised bureaucracy? That aside, conservative politicians aren't famous for demanding that the poor be given free money. The current British conservative government seems intent - quite literally - on starving the poor to death. That seems to be more usual for conservatives than aggressive agitation for a guaranteed basic income.
  - Turing_Machine 11y ago
    "That aside, conservative politicians aren't famous for demanding that the poor be given free money." Milton Friedman is just about the most famous conservative/libertarian economist there is. Nobel Prize, even.

dikaiosune 11y ago

I would disagree on the relative merits of in-kind vs. cash assistance, for reasons that have mostly been explored by other replies. There is a specific problem, I see though, and it's what all of these quotes have in common: "When poor people are explicitly given a room, 3 square meals/day, and government issue poor-people sweats" "You've now demanded that specific goods be added to the list and we can explicitly have a debate on the merits of those goods." "then they can consume only some of the available in-kind benefits" "But you can also just eliminate the bad choices and directly manage their lives until they develop the ability to manage their own life." All of these things have massive overhead at the administrative, procurement, and distribution tiers. Each of these things costs a lot of money: 1. Deciding on what to distribute 2. Subsequently arguing with recipients over the addition of items to the available benefits, and subsequently approving new items 3. Selecting and procuring the available options for each benefit item or type. 4. Distributing each item. 5. Tracking inventory of each in-kind benefit. 6. Negotiating returns of each in-kind benefit. 7. Balancing stock levels of available benefits to match the partial consumption of some recipients. While I haven't seen a specific evaluation, I would be completely flabbergasted if this overhead was somehow a lesser cost than the potential loss of cash benefits to pleasure spending. EDIT: To summarize, why manage this all centrally instead of relying on market dynamics that are well understood and efficient retail and distribution infrastructures that already exist?

yummyfajitas 11y ago
Once the minimum benefit is determined, you can of course rely on market dynamics to provide it. The government can put out an RFP for caring for poor people and the lowest bidder can service the contract. As for determining the actual minimum benefit, that's really just the job for a few bureaucrats. Once the basics are specified, the rest reverts to (free) political pundits - e.g., kragen arguing that books should be included. And note that the losses due to pleasure spending can be HUGE in some cases, mainly relating to location. For example, consider the various housing projects in the east village, upper west side, etc. The cost of pleasure spending is $manhattan 2 bedroom - $cheaper location dormitory (living in Manhattan without roommates is a consumption choice).
- 11y ago

dllthomas 11y ago

"In-kind assistance has the added benefit that parents can't divert public assistance intended for children's welfare into other goods" This can always be done, sometimes at tremendous inefficiency. http://www.fns.usda.gov/tags/water-dumping http://www.fns.usda.gov/tags/water-dumping '"Water dumping" involves buying beverages that require a container deposit and immediately dumping out the contents in order to return the container and receive the deposit credit in cash.'

Shivetya 11y ago

besides being given cash they government fees that people below a certain threshold of income need to be adjusted. There are far too many such fees which hammer the income of those least able to afford it.

PhasmaFelis 11y ago

> There is unfortunately a large political danger with giving cash. If you give cash, then it becomes possible for pundits to agitate for more assistance on the theory that "you can't live on $X". I'm not clear why that's a problem.

yummyfajitas 11y ago
It's not clear why wasting more money than necessary on a government program is a problem?
- PhasmaFelis 11y ago
  I should clarify. I don't see the problem with pundits saying "You can't live on $X" when you really, demonstrably can't raise children well on $X, where "raising children well" is defined as positive psychological and employment outcomes. The article suggests that this is the situation we're in right now; therefore I'm fine with people agitating to improve that situation. If, as you fear, America should at some point find itself giving too much to the poor, then perhaps proposals to limit that would be appropriate, but right now (and for most of recorded history) we have the opposite problem, and your fear does not look at all realistic.
cookiecaper 11y ago
Why is the minimum wage never sufficient? Do you think it'll actually stop at $15/hr? It's insufficient because people always want more free money, and there are always politicians that are willing to exploit that for personal gain.
- PhasmaFelis 11y ago
  The minimum wage is never sufficient because it's never, to date, been enough to comfortably support a family, as the article we're commenting on demonstrates. Fortunately for you, your "damn these lazy, greedy poors" rhetoric is still quite popular.