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I wonder about non-payout social programs, especially those aimed at children, like Head Start or SNAP (food stamps) in the USA. Will basic income enable recipi

I wonder about non-payout social programs, especially those aimed at children, like Head Start or SNAP (food stamps) in the USA. Will basic income enable recipients to make more efficient choices? Or will recipients squander it, diverting money away from nutrition and child development?

derefr 11y ago
Now you've got me imagining children receiving their own basic incomes, with the government getting to decide how some proportion (30%? 100%?) of their monthly allocation gets spent, and the parents getting handed the rest. Something interesting with basic income is that it erases the traditional "income flow" that makes it make sense for parents to have one bank account that they own, and pay for all family members out of it. Under basic income, I could see each family member defaulting to having their own bank account to receive deposits. You could go way more wild in the "enforcing spending on childen" with that setup than anything food stamps do. You could require that e.g. the government gets to audit the expenses on all "child" accounts to ensure they're for the child; and additionally require that parents only buy things "for" their children by first transferring money from their own account to the child's, and only then spend what is now the child's money on the item.
- adrianN 11y ago
  Such an audit scheme would introduce huge bureaucracy and cost immense amounts of money. It also opens the door for all kinds of corruption. Who decides which things are ok to spend money on "for children"? Lobbyists?
  - yummyfajitas 11y ago
    Without audits you also get corruption. Some parents are quite willing to pick their children's pockets. It's far from clear why you want to give our most vulnerable people absolutely no protection from the corrupt. We could also save money by abolishing the SEC, FINRA, and the EPA - do you also favor this?
- tehmaco 11y ago
  If everyone in the country gets the income, children have a government ran bank account which the money pays into (possibly with interest?) until they reach 18, then they move the money into a normal account of their choosing. That way they have a sizeable amount of cash to start their adult lives with (Uni, buying a house, starting a business, travelling the world, etc).
  - ptaipale 11y ago
    That doesn't make sense. The children's basic income is really meant for their living costs. If you don't trust their parents with this amount of money, perhaps you should take away the children from them altogether...
- ptaipale 11y ago
  > Under basic income, I could see each family member defaulting to having their own bank account to receive deposits. This is in fact already very common in Finland. As a rule, each family member indeed has their own bank account. Each parent also typically manages their own money and then common costs like housing and car maintenance are agreed upon; sometimes this leads to habits that are perceived as totally weird by foreigners. E.g. parents splitting up the bill after an extended family dinner at a restaurant, and rent splitting agreements where a complex formula is used for deciding what is the fair share of each parent as their incomes are not the same. Children's benefits are paid to accounts assigned by parents (typically they go to the mother but some families are able to save them for a nest egg which the child gets to keep when turning 18). There is already an unconditional child benefit (approximately 95 € for one child, the per child amount increases so that for five children it is altogether 665 € per month.) However, this is under constant attack because "rich people don't need it". There is no child deduction whatsoever in taxation. The "enforcing spending on children" is generally implemented by having a daycare system at low cost to parents.

derefr 11y ago

Now you've got me imagining children receiving their own basic incomes, with the government getting to decide how some proportion (30%? 100%?) of their monthly allocation gets spent, and the parents getting handed the rest. Something interesting with basic income is that it erases the traditional "income flow" that makes it make sense for parents to have one bank account that they own, and pay for all family members out of it. Under basic income, I could see each family member defaulting to having their own bank account to receive deposits. You could go way more wild in the "enforcing spending on childen" with that setup than anything food stamps do. You could require that e.g. the government gets to audit the expenses on all "child" accounts to ensure they're for the child; and additionally require that parents only buy things "for" their children by first transferring money from their own account to the child's, and only then spend what is now the child's money on the item.

adrianN 11y ago
Such an audit scheme would introduce huge bureaucracy and cost immense amounts of money. It also opens the door for all kinds of corruption. Who decides which things are ok to spend money on "for children"? Lobbyists?
- yummyfajitas 11y ago
  Without audits you also get corruption. Some parents are quite willing to pick their children's pockets. It's far from clear why you want to give our most vulnerable people absolutely no protection from the corrupt. We could also save money by abolishing the SEC, FINRA, and the EPA - do you also favor this?
tehmaco 11y ago
If everyone in the country gets the income, children have a government ran bank account which the money pays into (possibly with interest?) until they reach 18, then they move the money into a normal account of their choosing. That way they have a sizeable amount of cash to start their adult lives with (Uni, buying a house, starting a business, travelling the world, etc).
- ptaipale 11y ago
  That doesn't make sense. The children's basic income is really meant for their living costs. If you don't trust their parents with this amount of money, perhaps you should take away the children from them altogether...
ptaipale 11y ago
> Under basic income, I could see each family member defaulting to having their own bank account to receive deposits. This is in fact already very common in Finland. As a rule, each family member indeed has their own bank account. Each parent also typically manages their own money and then common costs like housing and car maintenance are agreed upon; sometimes this leads to habits that are perceived as totally weird by foreigners. E.g. parents splitting up the bill after an extended family dinner at a restaurant, and rent splitting agreements where a complex formula is used for deciding what is the fair share of each parent as their incomes are not the same. Children's benefits are paid to accounts assigned by parents (typically they go to the mother but some families are able to save them for a nest egg which the child gets to keep when turning 18). There is already an unconditional child benefit (approximately 95 € for one child, the per child amount increases so that for five children it is altogether 665 € per month.) However, this is under constant attack because "rich people don't need it". There is no child deduction whatsoever in taxation. The "enforcing spending on children" is generally implemented by having a daycare system at low cost to parents.