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Thank you for commenting. Poverty has more to do with a lack of rights, lack of knowledge, lack of connections, lack of opportunity, etc. Those things lead to

by Mz 10y ago

Thank you for commenting. Poverty has more to do with a lack of rights, lack of knowledge, lack of connections, lack of opportunity, etc. Those things lead to a lack of money. Giving people money does not tend to resolve those issues, but resolving those issues leads to more money. I think the UBI is a terrible idea. It is a theoretically easy answer. In reality, it would do more harm than good, for a great many reasons.

xg15 10y ago
Giving people money does not tend to resolve those issues Didn't the study in this article hint at the exact opposite though?
- Mz 10y ago
  Housing assistance is not the same thing as cash. Also, assisting poor families so they can raise their kids with more stability is not the same thing as just handing out money. The US needs to be doing a lot more for families than it currently does. We also need to actively work to solve the extreme lack of affordable housing generally. I don't understand how you are confusing housing assistance for poor families with minor children with just giving people money. These are very different things. Edit: I will add that we need to be doing more for families simply because they have minor children, completely unrelated to their income level. One of the problems in the US is that so much assistance is tied to being poor. This creates the nightmare situation we have where you have to continue to fail so you can continue to qualify for assistance. Assistsnce should be based on having human needs -- like a medical crisis or a dependent child or a handicap -- not on your income or lack thereof. This approach is generally more common in Europe and it is a more effective social safety net than one defined mostly by income level.
mjevans 10y ago
You are correct in that UBI alone won't magically solve the problem. I've thought that the primary goal for UBI is an attempt to solve wealth distribution inequality. Other things that also help with that issue are providing basic subsistence at a rate that the market is free to undercut; ideally also affordable with UBI. That would allow for competition, but provides a price cap for the market as well. If you say X cannot go above Y, or else the government will find a way to address this social need that society is not, then you can encourage competition while limiting predatory impacts.
- Mz 10y ago
  I think the UBI is a really short ride to hell for society. Time and energy put into discussing or developing the idea take away from a more vital, less popular and harder to solve problem: The lack of decent affordable housing, which is a huge and growing crisis in the US and has been for literally decades. I have written multiple pieces as to why I think UBI is a terrible idea. Here are two that I think are particularly pertinent to your remarks: http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2015/09/it-was-obsolete-before-we-opened.html http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2015/09/it-was-obsol... http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2016/07/minimum-decent-housing-not-minimum-wage.html http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2016/07/minimum-dece...
- mrec 10y ago
  > I've thought that the primary goal for UBI is an attempt to solve wealth distribution inequality. I disagree; I think the primary goal for UBI is to remove perverse incentives. For example, removing welfare traps (where you end up worse off if you start working), or expanding the reach of price discovery (social tenants have no incentive to move somewhere cheaper if the govt covers your rent either way, and landlords have no incentive to charge less than the HB ceiling because tenants on HB don't care). I think it's well worth doing even if it doesn't reduce inequality (though obviously it'd be nice if it did that too).
smogcutter 10y ago
Absolutely - poverty is a far more complex system than "not having enough money", and while UBI may (or may not) improve the standard of living for the very poor, alone it certainly wouldn't lift people out of poverty (or help them very much to lift themselves). But I believe the long term concern is different - what the hell do we do with an economy that no longer requires human labor to be productive? We're not there yet, but it doesn't look like the automation train is jumping the tracks any time soon. Truck and cab drivers have what, 15 or 20 years left? How long until factory labor is completely obsolete? Technological change eliminating jobs is nothing new, but this isn't farm workers moving to the city. This is jobs disappearing forever to be replaced by nothing. We need to start thinking about how we're going to divide up the stuff we produce when no one gets paid to produce it. Automation looks like the end of capitalism, and its up to us and our children how painful that's going to be. So no, UBI probably isnt the right answer, and anyway there won't be the political will for something like that until things get seriously worse. But as long as we continue to address our immediate problems it's an issue worth thinking about if we want to avoid much greater pain down the road.

by Mz 10y ago

xg15 10y ago

Giving people money does not tend to resolve those issues Didn't the study in this article hint at the exact opposite though?

Mz 10y ago
Housing assistance is not the same thing as cash. Also, assisting poor families so they can raise their kids with more stability is not the same thing as just handing out money. The US needs to be doing a lot more for families than it currently does. We also need to actively work to solve the extreme lack of affordable housing generally. I don't understand how you are confusing housing assistance for poor families with minor children with just giving people money. These are very different things. Edit: I will add that we need to be doing more for families simply because they have minor children, completely unrelated to their income level. One of the problems in the US is that so much assistance is tied to being poor. This creates the nightmare situation we have where you have to continue to fail so you can continue to qualify for assistance. Assistsnce should be based on having human needs -- like a medical crisis or a dependent child or a handicap -- not on your income or lack thereof. This approach is generally more common in Europe and it is a more effective social safety net than one defined mostly by income level.

mjevans 10y ago

You are correct in that UBI alone won't magically solve the problem. I've thought that the primary goal for UBI is an attempt to solve wealth distribution inequality. Other things that also help with that issue are providing basic subsistence at a rate that the market is free to undercut; ideally also affordable with UBI. That would allow for competition, but provides a price cap for the market as well. If you say X cannot go above Y, or else the government will find a way to address this social need that society is not, then you can encourage competition while limiting predatory impacts.

Mz 10y ago
I think the UBI is a really short ride to hell for society. Time and energy put into discussing or developing the idea take away from a more vital, less popular and harder to solve problem: The lack of decent affordable housing, which is a huge and growing crisis in the US and has been for literally decades. I have written multiple pieces as to why I think UBI is a terrible idea. Here are two that I think are particularly pertinent to your remarks: http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2015/09/it-was-obsolete-before-we-opened.html http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2015/09/it-was-obsol... http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2016/07/minimum-decent-housing-not-minimum-wage.html http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2016/07/minimum-dece...
mrec 10y ago
> I've thought that the primary goal for UBI is an attempt to solve wealth distribution inequality. I disagree; I think the primary goal for UBI is to remove perverse incentives. For example, removing welfare traps (where you end up worse off if you start working), or expanding the reach of price discovery (social tenants have no incentive to move somewhere cheaper if the govt covers your rent either way, and landlords have no incentive to charge less than the HB ceiling because tenants on HB don't care). I think it's well worth doing even if it doesn't reduce inequality (though obviously it'd be nice if it did that too).

smogcutter 10y ago

Absolutely - poverty is a far more complex system than "not having enough money", and while UBI may (or may not) improve the standard of living for the very poor, alone it certainly wouldn't lift people out of poverty (or help them very much to lift themselves). But I believe the long term concern is different - what the hell do we do with an economy that no longer requires human labor to be productive? We're not there yet, but it doesn't look like the automation train is jumping the tracks any time soon. Truck and cab drivers have what, 15 or 20 years left? How long until factory labor is completely obsolete? Technological change eliminating jobs is nothing new, but this isn't farm workers moving to the city. This is jobs disappearing forever to be replaced by nothing. We need to start thinking about how we're going to divide up the stuff we produce when no one gets paid to produce it. Automation looks like the end of capitalism, and its up to us and our children how painful that's going to be. So no, UBI probably isnt the right answer, and anyway there won't be the political will for something like that until things get seriously worse. But as long as we continue to address our immediate problems it's an issue worth thinking about if we want to avoid much greater pain down the road.