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Your proposal is something other than universal basic income. You want to solve the problem of some people making bad choices with money. That's a different pro

by sowbug 11y ago

Your proposal is something other than universal basic income. You want to solve the problem of some people making bad choices with money. That's a different problem, and as you show in the case of your parents, it has little to do with how much money someone has. Most people are rational and will act rationally if given the option. UBI wants to give everyone the option.

zanny 11y ago
Money management education, of course, remains a gigantic problem in the way of adopting UBI schemes. Any country considering trying them needs to accept that they need to also give these people pervasive access to education on how to manage money. One interesting sociological change I imagine would happen if you had a UBI is a shift in cultural treatment of destitution. Today, being homeless is often being down on your luck - bad circumstances beyond your control can leave you on the streets, and you get sympathy for that. That sympathy can, and often does, reduce due blame for poor money management that got someone into that situation. Under a UBI you have no excuse anymore, assuming the allocated funds are proper to afford cheap poverty-level housing and food, if you are not able to live sustainably on that income that is entirely your fault, and you would correspondingly get much less sympathy. People macroscopically usually act in self interest. If you are poor, it is often rationalized as being a net positive to blow what you have and appeal to others for handouts using a mask of bad luck. Systemically, it can promote cultural absolution of responsibility for money management, which combined with the current welfare system (and its well documented extraordinary flaws) promote poor money management. We would have to see how a society adapted to basic income performs, but I imagine the incidence of poor money management would dramatically decline when social acceptance of it evaporates.
- vehementi 11y ago
  It's not in the way of UBI schemes any more than it is in the way of people earning employment income.
  - zanny 11y ago
    Of course it is in the way - it is meant to replace safety nets, and those exist in part for the employed with poor money management skills. If you change the source of income but do not solve the problem of people not budgeting their income well, it solves nothing and you lose a lot of the potential savings from UBI.
    - sowbug 11y ago
      Perhaps your original point -- that a UBI-like system would shift blame from luck/voodoo/society to the individual -- would provide societal pressure for individuals to take personal responsibility for their choices. That pressure might be a good-enough substitute for formal money-management education. It takes a village. UBI should be simple. Tying it to educational requirements[x] risks mucking it up with special-interest agendas, much as any other condition would. [x] You didn't say that individuals would be required to avail themselves of any UBI-related educational programs. But the entire program could be stalled if its implementation were conditional on the development of an educational program that established, once and for all, how a government believes its citizens should wisely spend money.
kethinov 11y ago
Exactly. Moreover there are models for how to handle stabilizing a person who has demonstrate gross negligence with managing their personal finances if they live on public money. For instance, in the U.S., if you are on disability and mismanage your money, you can be required to have a payee who makes sure that your money is spent first on basic needs (rent, food, and such) and then issues what remains as an allowance. I think a system like this would need to be in place to handle people who live solely on UBI and mismanage it, but it's clear that doing something like that would be far from unprecedented.

by sowbug 11y ago

zanny 11y ago

Money management education, of course, remains a gigantic problem in the way of adopting UBI schemes. Any country considering trying them needs to accept that they need to also give these people pervasive access to education on how to manage money. One interesting sociological change I imagine would happen if you had a UBI is a shift in cultural treatment of destitution. Today, being homeless is often being down on your luck - bad circumstances beyond your control can leave you on the streets, and you get sympathy for that. That sympathy can, and often does, reduce due blame for poor money management that got someone into that situation. Under a UBI you have no excuse anymore, assuming the allocated funds are proper to afford cheap poverty-level housing and food, if you are not able to live sustainably on that income that is entirely your fault, and you would correspondingly get much less sympathy. People macroscopically usually act in self interest. If you are poor, it is often rationalized as being a net positive to blow what you have and appeal to others for handouts using a mask of bad luck. Systemically, it can promote cultural absolution of responsibility for money management, which combined with the current welfare system (and its well documented extraordinary flaws) promote poor money management. We would have to see how a society adapted to basic income performs, but I imagine the incidence of poor money management would dramatically decline when social acceptance of it evaporates.

vehementi 11y ago
It's not in the way of UBI schemes any more than it is in the way of people earning employment income.
- zanny 11y ago
  Of course it is in the way - it is meant to replace safety nets, and those exist in part for the employed with poor money management skills. If you change the source of income but do not solve the problem of people not budgeting their income well, it solves nothing and you lose a lot of the potential savings from UBI.
  - sowbug 11y ago
    Perhaps your original point -- that a UBI-like system would shift blame from luck/voodoo/society to the individual -- would provide societal pressure for individuals to take personal responsibility for their choices. That pressure might be a good-enough substitute for formal money-management education. It takes a village. UBI should be simple. Tying it to educational requirements[x] risks mucking it up with special-interest agendas, much as any other condition would. [x] You didn't say that individuals would be required to avail themselves of any UBI-related educational programs. But the entire program could be stalled if its implementation were conditional on the development of an educational program that established, once and for all, how a government believes its citizens should wisely spend money.

kethinov 11y ago

Exactly. Moreover there are models for how to handle stabilizing a person who has demonstrate gross negligence with managing their personal finances if they live on public money. For instance, in the U.S., if you are on disability and mismanage your money, you can be required to have a payee who makes sure that your money is spent first on basic needs (rent, food, and such) and then issues what remains as an allowance. I think a system like this would need to be in place to handle people who live solely on UBI and mismanage it, but it's clear that doing something like that would be far from unprecedented.