7 ms·

It's not just smarter it's the only possible solution out of the two. Many people wrongly discuss the premise of basic income in the context of whether it's a

It's not just smarter it's the only possible solution out of the two. Many people wrongly discuss the premise of basic income in the context of whether it's a better solution for for the job market. I.e. as a better way to solve unemployment fluctuations which in this view are still going up. But the whole point about Basic Income is what we do about there being fewer and fewer jobs that pay a proper salary.

paulpauper 11y ago
Proponents of the UBI make the generous assumption that recipients will be as careful with money as they (the proponents) are . Choosing between food & housing credits vs. cash, the former has less room for abuse. Its like "I would never use my UBI on alcohol"...well you're not "most people"
- Karunamon 11y ago
  Given the frankly despair-inducing statistics of what happens to poor people when they acquire a sudden cash windfall (and if you're flat broke and living on the streets, a few hundred every couple weeks is HUGE), I intend to agree. Most UBI implementations I've seen require gutting existing welfare systems - okay, fine, but what happens to the person who inevitably squanders their money?
  - quietwhisper 11y ago
    Sorry, what statistics? http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/09/welfare-reform-direct-cash-poor/407236/ http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/09/wel... http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/10/25/240590433/what-happens-when-you-just-give-money-to-poor-people http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/10/25/240590433/what-...
    - spinlock 11y ago
      I do think that's a different issue but I'm with you that the assumption that poor people will spend money on drugs or alcohol is pretty far off base. After all, aren't most people in the US forced into debt because of healthcare? Getting sick shouldn't be viewed as a vice.
      - Karunamon 11y ago
        Who said anything about drugs or alcohol?
        ThomPete 11y ago
        Read the first answer to my post to see an example.
  - empath75 11y ago
    I think probably the only thing that would have to go along with UBI is extreme restrictions on credit and borrowing for people that are relying on it. It's not really a huge problem for someone to blow all their UBI money for a month or two because they'll have more coming in. If they compound that with high-interest debt, they can dig themselves into a whole they can't get out of of.
    - fucking_tragedy 11y ago
      Are you implying that receivers of government aid can't decide for themselves how to use their money? The point of UBI is to do away with those restrictions, because people usually know how to allocate their available funds towards their needs.
    - Rylinks 11y ago
      Just make UBI payments unrecoverable by lenders and let the market sort it out.
    - knodi123 11y ago
      > extreme restrictions on credit and borrowing for people that are relying on it Everyone relies on it. It's an equal amount of cash in pocket for every person. If you want to talk about restrictions on borrowing- well, what idiot is lending this money to a person with minimum income without checking into their background ? I think we can leave that one up to the banks.
  - OntheFlipside33 11y ago
    We bail them out the same way we do the rich? I'm curious how this is of any real value or concern outside the usual "Well because it's MY tax dollars so I should have a say." Why focus on poor people spending their social welfare when the result will be far less harmful to humanity as a whole than how the rich spend their social welfare? The superfluous resource consumption by the wealthy, and I include not just the uber wealthy, but also those that can afford to fly around fairly regularly, buy new iPhones every 12-24 months, lease new vehicles ad naseum, is a much more dangerous situation. If anyone is about to say well they earned their money and the right to spend it how they see fit, come on. It's social welfare that allows their wealth in the first place. It's government subsidized hand me downs from generation to generation. It's not at all acquired by the creation of novel goods and services. But hey, let's focus on the cost of giving away money to people that will spend it on liquor. Not on how giving away money to support our wholesale destruction of the environment is going to wreck the species as a whole. There are more immediate impacts to my own pocket book to consider, vis-à-vis the negligible increase to my tax bill!
    - Karunamon 11y ago
      That's some fine whataboutism, but a poor answer to my relatively straightforward question. Again, every UBI implementation I've ever seen includes basically destroying the existing welfare structure. If someone blows their UBI due to, not just drugs/alcohol, but just plain old poor finanical management skills, what happens to them? They've got nowhere to turn for two weeks or more because we tore all that shit up.
      - ThomPete 11y ago
        How is that different than today? The very point is that less people will be in this situation because getting your basic needs met is shown to make your more responsible. Se further up in thread for some of the studies.
        Karunamon 11y ago
        If you have no cash, and you've used up the meager funds TANF gives you, there are other programs still available to cover the necessities of life.. SNAP comes to mind, as do overnight shelters. It's not much of a life, but at least you're not out in the cold. A safety net for the safety net if you will. Okay, now that stuff goes away, and you just get the one (significantly increased, but still, just the one) payout every so often. There is no safety net under the safety net anymore. Those two stories I see linked reference other countries with radically different cultures. How many studies have been done with families that live in the USA and are subject to its cultural norms? Culture drives spending and expectations. I say this as someone that thinks UBI is a Great Idea, but this is a question that from what I can tell remains unanswered.
  - tankenmate 11y ago
    UBI is supposed to fix the issue of moderate or worse levels of poverty. It's not going to fix mental health issues, addiction issues, and/or family breakdown. However over time it will sort out issues of grinding poverty, which then means that fixes for other social ills will have a better chance of succeeding.
- andreasklinger 11y ago
  imo the benefit of UBI is that you remove that whole disfunctional layer of figuring out who should and should not receive support.
- athenot 11y ago
  It's easy to knock on the poor for making bad choices with their resources. But what the well-off percieve as "frivolous" or "irresponsible" may very well be the most cost-effective way to maintain sanity when undergoing stress that is not unlike what founders experience when struggling to keep a company afloat.
  - knodi123 11y ago
    Let's not portray alcoholics as reasonable people making the best mental-health decisions available to them.
    - ThomPete 11y ago
      Lets not assume that the definition of an alcoholic is well defined. To most americans, Danes would be considered raging alcoholics , yet nothing make them less rational than their american counterparts.
      - knodi123 11y ago
        Fine, but we were discussing someone talking about how it's rational to blow your UBI on alcohol in order to deal with the stress of running a business. Drinking your entire basic income away is not a rational decision, no matter how stressed you are.
        fucking_tragedy 11y ago
        How much money and red tape do you propose we print and roll out to ensure welfare recipients only drink an acceptable amount of alcohol?
        knodi123 11y ago
        none. I'm not sure what you think I said, but I suggest you re-read my comment and notice how narrow my point was.
        11y ago
- empath75 11y ago
  People are perfectly capable of trading food-stamp bought groceries for booze right now.
  - imtringued 11y ago
    It's also a good source of some passive income. Source: http://nypost.com/2013/07/28/nyc-welfare-food-is-shipped-in-barrels-to-the-dominican-republic-then-sold-on-the-black-market/ http://nypost.com/2013/07/28/nyc-welfare-food-is-shipped-in-...
- fucking_tragedy 11y ago
  Why do you care if someone spends it on alcohol? Where does this paternal instinct to tell someone else how to spend money come from?
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - Lawtonfogle 11y ago
    I don't much care where people spend their own money. But welfare money isn't the same as their own money.
    - fucking_tragedy 11y ago
      It is the recipient's money once it's in their name. Where does this attitude towards how someone spends their income come from? Is it the assumption that someone who receives aid is incompetent? Is it the assumption that you can handle someone else's finances better? How does disability, illness or losing your job warrant being micromanaged by the state? UBI proposes to do away with monitoring/restrictions on recipients of such income because it's inefficient and based on the assumption that someone else knows how to allot another's limited funds better than that person. You are caring hard about how someone spends their pennies and it leaves me here wondering, why? Aren't there bigger fish to fry?
- ThomPete 11y ago
  The assumption by proponents is that if more people get their most basic needs met, they won't be making as bad choices for themselves and their families. No one is claiming 100% perfect solution but unless you are claiming people choose to be poor you are basically saying that the current situation is better which I find quite unsubstantiated.
- tikhonj 11y ago
  Is it that generous? My understanding is that in empirical trials, direct cash transfers are one of the most effective programs for alleviating poverty. Of course, I've seen this evidence in a different context that might be somewhat biased: GiveDirectly[1] provides some credible research and are supported by Effective Altruist organizations like GiveWell[2]. There have also been experiments specific to basic income with similar conclusions[3]. To be fair, none of these studies are remotely bulletproof. Further research would help significantly, as is almost always true in the social sciences. But, in this light, the default position should be that the poor largely wouldn't waste their money—I'd put even shaky studies up against "common sense" any day. [1]: https://www.givedirectly.org/research-on-cash-transfers https://www.givedirectly.org/research-on-cash-transfers [2]: http://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities http://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities [3]: Unfortunately, I can't find the summary I was thinking of. The Canadian Mincome study[4] is one such experiment and the conclusions, tentative as they may be, are worth a look. [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincome
crdoconnor 11y ago
>But the whole point about Basic Income is what we do about there being fewer and fewer jobs that pay a proper salary. The fact that there are few jobs rebuilding America's crumbling infrastructure is due to a political choice, not some sort of inevitable outcome of a 'fair' and just market. Likewise, the fact that China makes most of the cheap things we buy at Walmart was thanks to a series of political choices (trade policy). There's absolutely no reason why we couldn't reverse those policies to bring the jobs back. Moreover, our infrastructure is going to keep crumbling and China isn't going to sell us cheap manufactured goods forever.
- ThomPete 11y ago
  Well you are entitled to that opinion but I frankly don't see where you find the evidence that this is political. Every country in the west wether socialist leaning or capitalist leaning is experiencing exactly the same problems. Uber is affecting all countries the same way. Technology is disrupting even the nationstate and it's ability to control it politically. And yes there are plenty of reasons why you couldn't bring back the jobs because even in China they are not really there anymore. The Chinese are loosing jobs to the robots in ever expanding phase. So yes you can get production back but it wont be coming with any jobs.
  - crdoconnor 11y ago
    >Well you are entitled to that opinion And you're entitled to believe in the coming androidjobpocalypse. >The Chinese are loosing jobs to the robots Would love to see what sort of anecdotes you come up with for this gem. It's a convenient fairy tale - pretending that reversing the trade deals that sent 5-10 million jobs overseas wouldn't matter anyway because strong AI is going to steal those returning jobs. Just a little light on evidence.

paulpauper 11y ago

Proponents of the UBI make the generous assumption that recipients will be as careful with money as they (the proponents) are . Choosing between food & housing credits vs. cash, the former has less room for abuse. Its like "I would never use my UBI on alcohol"...well you're not "most people"

Karunamon 11y ago
Given the frankly despair-inducing statistics of what happens to poor people when they acquire a sudden cash windfall (and if you're flat broke and living on the streets, a few hundred every couple weeks is HUGE), I intend to agree. Most UBI implementations I've seen require gutting existing welfare systems - okay, fine, but what happens to the person who inevitably squanders their money?
- quietwhisper 11y ago
  Sorry, what statistics? http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/09/welfare-reform-direct-cash-poor/407236/ http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/09/wel... http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/10/25/240590433/what-happens-when-you-just-give-money-to-poor-people http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/10/25/240590433/what-...
  - spinlock 11y ago
    I do think that's a different issue but I'm with you that the assumption that poor people will spend money on drugs or alcohol is pretty far off base. After all, aren't most people in the US forced into debt because of healthcare? Getting sick shouldn't be viewed as a vice.
    - Karunamon 11y ago
      Who said anything about drugs or alcohol?
      - ThomPete 11y ago
        Read the first answer to my post to see an example.
- empath75 11y ago
  I think probably the only thing that would have to go along with UBI is extreme restrictions on credit and borrowing for people that are relying on it. It's not really a huge problem for someone to blow all their UBI money for a month or two because they'll have more coming in. If they compound that with high-interest debt, they can dig themselves into a whole they can't get out of of.
  - fucking_tragedy 11y ago
    Are you implying that receivers of government aid can't decide for themselves how to use their money? The point of UBI is to do away with those restrictions, because people usually know how to allocate their available funds towards their needs.
  - Rylinks 11y ago
    Just make UBI payments unrecoverable by lenders and let the market sort it out.
  - knodi123 11y ago
    > extreme restrictions on credit and borrowing for people that are relying on it Everyone relies on it. It's an equal amount of cash in pocket for every person. If you want to talk about restrictions on borrowing- well, what idiot is lending this money to a person with minimum income without checking into their background ? I think we can leave that one up to the banks.
- OntheFlipside33 11y ago
  We bail them out the same way we do the rich? I'm curious how this is of any real value or concern outside the usual "Well because it's MY tax dollars so I should have a say." Why focus on poor people spending their social welfare when the result will be far less harmful to humanity as a whole than how the rich spend their social welfare? The superfluous resource consumption by the wealthy, and I include not just the uber wealthy, but also those that can afford to fly around fairly regularly, buy new iPhones every 12-24 months, lease new vehicles ad naseum, is a much more dangerous situation. If anyone is about to say well they earned their money and the right to spend it how they see fit, come on. It's social welfare that allows their wealth in the first place. It's government subsidized hand me downs from generation to generation. It's not at all acquired by the creation of novel goods and services. But hey, let's focus on the cost of giving away money to people that will spend it on liquor. Not on how giving away money to support our wholesale destruction of the environment is going to wreck the species as a whole. There are more immediate impacts to my own pocket book to consider, vis-à-vis the negligible increase to my tax bill!
  - Karunamon 11y ago
    That's some fine whataboutism, but a poor answer to my relatively straightforward question. Again, every UBI implementation I've ever seen includes basically destroying the existing welfare structure. If someone blows their UBI due to, not just drugs/alcohol, but just plain old poor finanical management skills, what happens to them? They've got nowhere to turn for two weeks or more because we tore all that shit up.
    - ThomPete 11y ago
      How is that different than today? The very point is that less people will be in this situation because getting your basic needs met is shown to make your more responsible. Se further up in thread for some of the studies.
      - Karunamon 11y ago
        If you have no cash, and you've used up the meager funds TANF gives you, there are other programs still available to cover the necessities of life.. SNAP comes to mind, as do overnight shelters. It's not much of a life, but at least you're not out in the cold. A safety net for the safety net if you will. Okay, now that stuff goes away, and you just get the one (significantly increased, but still, just the one) payout every so often. There is no safety net under the safety net anymore. Those two stories I see linked reference other countries with radically different cultures. How many studies have been done with families that live in the USA and are subject to its cultural norms? Culture drives spending and expectations. I say this as someone that thinks UBI is a Great Idea, but this is a question that from what I can tell remains unanswered.
- tankenmate 11y ago
  UBI is supposed to fix the issue of moderate or worse levels of poverty. It's not going to fix mental health issues, addiction issues, and/or family breakdown. However over time it will sort out issues of grinding poverty, which then means that fixes for other social ills will have a better chance of succeeding.
andreasklinger 11y ago
imo the benefit of UBI is that you remove that whole disfunctional layer of figuring out who should and should not receive support.
athenot 11y ago
It's easy to knock on the poor for making bad choices with their resources. But what the well-off percieve as "frivolous" or "irresponsible" may very well be the most cost-effective way to maintain sanity when undergoing stress that is not unlike what founders experience when struggling to keep a company afloat.
- knodi123 11y ago
  Let's not portray alcoholics as reasonable people making the best mental-health decisions available to them.
  - ThomPete 11y ago
    Lets not assume that the definition of an alcoholic is well defined. To most americans, Danes would be considered raging alcoholics , yet nothing make them less rational than their american counterparts.
    - knodi123 11y ago
      Fine, but we were discussing someone talking about how it's rational to blow your UBI on alcohol in order to deal with the stress of running a business. Drinking your entire basic income away is not a rational decision, no matter how stressed you are.
      - fucking_tragedy 11y ago
        How much money and red tape do you propose we print and roll out to ensure welfare recipients only drink an acceptable amount of alcohol?
        knodi123 11y ago
        none. I'm not sure what you think I said, but I suggest you re-read my comment and notice how narrow my point was.
      - 11y ago
empath75 11y ago
People are perfectly capable of trading food-stamp bought groceries for booze right now.
- imtringued 11y ago
  It's also a good source of some passive income. Source: http://nypost.com/2013/07/28/nyc-welfare-food-is-shipped-in-barrels-to-the-dominican-republic-then-sold-on-the-black-market/ http://nypost.com/2013/07/28/nyc-welfare-food-is-shipped-in-...
fucking_tragedy 11y ago
Why do you care if someone spends it on alcohol? Where does this paternal instinct to tell someone else how to spend money come from?
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- Lawtonfogle 11y ago
  I don't much care where people spend their own money. But welfare money isn't the same as their own money.
  - fucking_tragedy 11y ago
    It is the recipient's money once it's in their name. Where does this attitude towards how someone spends their income come from? Is it the assumption that someone who receives aid is incompetent? Is it the assumption that you can handle someone else's finances better? How does disability, illness or losing your job warrant being micromanaged by the state? UBI proposes to do away with monitoring/restrictions on recipients of such income because it's inefficient and based on the assumption that someone else knows how to allot another's limited funds better than that person. You are caring hard about how someone spends their pennies and it leaves me here wondering, why? Aren't there bigger fish to fry?
ThomPete 11y ago
The assumption by proponents is that if more people get their most basic needs met, they won't be making as bad choices for themselves and their families. No one is claiming 100% perfect solution but unless you are claiming people choose to be poor you are basically saying that the current situation is better which I find quite unsubstantiated.
tikhonj 11y ago
Is it that generous? My understanding is that in empirical trials, direct cash transfers are one of the most effective programs for alleviating poverty. Of course, I've seen this evidence in a different context that might be somewhat biased: GiveDirectly[1] provides some credible research and are supported by Effective Altruist organizations like GiveWell[2]. There have also been experiments specific to basic income with similar conclusions[3]. To be fair, none of these studies are remotely bulletproof. Further research would help significantly, as is almost always true in the social sciences. But, in this light, the default position should be that the poor largely wouldn't waste their money—I'd put even shaky studies up against "common sense" any day. [1]: https://www.givedirectly.org/research-on-cash-transfers https://www.givedirectly.org/research-on-cash-transfers [2]: http://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities http://www.givewell.org/charities/top-charities [3]: Unfortunately, I can't find the summary I was thinking of. The Canadian Mincome study[4] is one such experiment and the conclusions, tentative as they may be, are worth a look. [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincome

crdoconnor 11y ago

>But the whole point about Basic Income is what we do about there being fewer and fewer jobs that pay a proper salary. The fact that there are few jobs rebuilding America's crumbling infrastructure is due to a political choice, not some sort of inevitable outcome of a 'fair' and just market. Likewise, the fact that China makes most of the cheap things we buy at Walmart was thanks to a series of political choices (trade policy). There's absolutely no reason why we couldn't reverse those policies to bring the jobs back. Moreover, our infrastructure is going to keep crumbling and China isn't going to sell us cheap manufactured goods forever.

ThomPete 11y ago
Well you are entitled to that opinion but I frankly don't see where you find the evidence that this is political. Every country in the west wether socialist leaning or capitalist leaning is experiencing exactly the same problems. Uber is affecting all countries the same way. Technology is disrupting even the nationstate and it's ability to control it politically. And yes there are plenty of reasons why you couldn't bring back the jobs because even in China they are not really there anymore. The Chinese are loosing jobs to the robots in ever expanding phase. So yes you can get production back but it wont be coming with any jobs.
- crdoconnor 11y ago
  >Well you are entitled to that opinion And you're entitled to believe in the coming androidjobpocalypse. >The Chinese are loosing jobs to the robots Would love to see what sort of anecdotes you come up with for this gem. It's a convenient fairy tale - pretending that reversing the trade deals that sent 5-10 million jobs overseas wouldn't matter anyway because strong AI is going to steal those returning jobs. Just a little light on evidence.