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In addition to not having an unstable society with high crime: 1. Poor people on welfare wouldn't be dis-incentivized to work more. 2. It reduces the cost of

In addition to not having an unstable society with high crime: 1. Poor people on welfare wouldn't be dis-incentivized to work more. 2. It reduces the cost of those programs like welfare that cost a lot in bureaucracy for no gain. 3. Lower income people have money velocity that stimulates the rest of the economy. > Democrats seem to have no problem with illegal immigration which reduces the ability for those poor and unemployed to gets jobs Illegal immigration doesn't do that... automation is a big factor in that. If your job is being taken away by an uneducated illegal immigrant then you are not competing for highly paid jobs. > If I want to donate to charity, I will. Charity has been shown to be less efficient than just giving money directly to poor people.

lkbm 10y ago
> Charity has been shown to be less efficient than just giving money directly to poor people. Can you provide sources for this? Also, what do you mean "efficient"? If you mean there's no overhead, sure, so long as you don't spend any time trying to determine where the need is and just hand cash to the homeless guy you see on the street, but I care about effectiveness, and that's very likely not going to be "give money to the guy on the street near my office". GveDirectly is better than most charities (which is mostly just giving money to poor people, but is a charity that does it intelligently). Additionally, the Against Malaria Foundation probably has a higher effectiveness. The problem with depending 100% on people giving to charity is not that it's worse than depending on them giving money to the poor. It's that it completely ignores the various externalities that can be corrected through taxes and government spending. Would the world be better off if we cut government spending in half and send that money to AMF, GiveDirectly, and similar programs? Sure. But would the world be better off if we just cut government spending and hoped rich people would become more altruistic? Probably not.
- weaksauce 10y ago
  GiveDirectly is precisely the model I was talking about. I don't think of that model as a traditional charity. The overhead on charities is absurd a lot of the time and there are quite a few scams out there. I have a hunch that a government based BI would be better than what we have right now. Though, to make that happen we would need universal health care for all and eliminate all the social safety nets other than BI and health care.

lkbm 10y ago

> Charity has been shown to be less efficient than just giving money directly to poor people. Can you provide sources for this? Also, what do you mean "efficient"? If you mean there's no overhead, sure, so long as you don't spend any time trying to determine where the need is and just hand cash to the homeless guy you see on the street, but I care about effectiveness, and that's very likely not going to be "give money to the guy on the street near my office". GveDirectly is better than most charities (which is mostly just giving money to poor people, but is a charity that does it intelligently). Additionally, the Against Malaria Foundation probably has a higher effectiveness. The problem with depending 100% on people giving to charity is not that it's worse than depending on them giving money to the poor. It's that it completely ignores the various externalities that can be corrected through taxes and government spending. Would the world be better off if we cut government spending in half and send that money to AMF, GiveDirectly, and similar programs? Sure. But would the world be better off if we just cut government spending and hoped rich people would become more altruistic? Probably not.

weaksauce 10y ago
GiveDirectly is precisely the model I was talking about. I don't think of that model as a traditional charity. The overhead on charities is absurd a lot of the time and there are quite a few scams out there. I have a hunch that a government based BI would be better than what we have right now. Though, to make that happen we would need universal health care for all and eliminate all the social safety nets other than BI and health care.