7 ms·

Free Cash to Fight Income Inequality? Stockton, CA Is First in US to Try

22 points by watchdogtimer 8y ago

scarmig 8y ago
> “The trolls I’ve been dealing with on social media and in real life have very racialized views of how this is going to work,” Mr. Tubbs said. “As the first black mayor of this city, it would be very dangerous if the only people to get this were black.” > He wants to select participants who are most likely to spend their money wisely, generating stories of working poor people lifted by extra cash. Well, that's pretty worthless.
- undersuit 8y ago
  It's worthless if this is another one of the experiments that certain people always insist we need to actually validate Basic Income's tenets. It's brilliant if you're trying to demonstrate to people with deeply-held beliefs against BI that the principles actually work in real life.
- dahdum 8y ago
  It wouldn't really be UBI, but still worthwhile data for programs with work requirements. I'm rather fond of the idea of work based programs. For example, for every $1 of W2 income you earn you receive $1 bonus, up to a cap of say $7,500. This boosts wages on the low end and strongly encourages employment. Funding this through income taxes and you won't have to kill off risky / low profit small business with local living wage requirements.
  - lalos 8y ago
    How would you structure that bonus if you get a promotion that takes you to 7,501? You would get an impressive pay cut. If you structure it like taxes where only the first 7.5k get doubled then a bunch of people that don't need it will also get free money making the program cost more.
    - Kalium 8y ago
      You're right! That would be a major concern and an incredibly serious flaw in such a program. Maybe the description could be parsed slightly differently? Some might read parent's description to be proposing a bonus on W2 income the a limit on the bonus only of $7,500. Thus an income greater than that receives the full bonus. The structural problem you have correctly identified thus does not arise!
      - PurpleBoxDragon 8y ago
        So everyone is getting an extra $7,500, assuming they make at least that much? How isn't that just a tax credit on W2 taxes? It would make sense to assume there is some cut off, and given how government cut offs work in the past, it would be reasonable to assume the cut off will be implemented in a fashion that creates a graph where sometimes raises will result in less pay, at least when combined with existing government aid programs.
        Kalium 8y ago
        > So everyone is getting an extra $7,500, assuming they make at least that much? How isn't that just a tax credit on W2 taxes? Depends how it's implemented, probably. People react differently to larger paychecks and tax refunds, for example. And certainly people react differently if you call it a bonus, even if it is just a negative income tax that would please Friedman. > It would make sense to assume there is some cut off, and given how government cut offs work in the past, it would be reasonable to assume the cut off will be implemented in a fashion that creates a graph where sometimes raises will result in less pay, at least when combined with existing government aid programs. That's a completely, fully, absolutely 100% reasonable comment on how poorly implemented current government aid programs are far too often implemented. It might be a slightly less reasonable comment on the details as written of the proposition above.
        dahdum 8y ago
        I should clarify too the bonus should be paid along side W2 earnings as steadily as possible, not at the end of the year. End of year refunds / cash don’t help pay rent and groceries in June. The graph need not ever result in less pay, but Your rate per hour would decrease after the cap is earned out. Somewhat harebrained perhaps, I like Friedman’s negative income tax but also want to encourage both employment and small business growth.
  - tomschlick 8y ago
    > It wouldn't really be UBI None of these "experiments" are. They all fail to simulate the biggest downfall of UBI which is that when you do it at scale, prices go up. It happens for all the same reasons that guaranteed student loans have driven up the cost of college in the past 30 years.
- anchpop 8y ago
  I agree. It's just any other welfare system unless it's distributed universally or randomly
sonoffett 8y ago
As related material that folks here might appreciate: Andrew Yang’s (founder of Venture for America) recent book “The War on Normal People: The Truth About America's Disappearing Jobs and Why Universal Basic Income Is Our Future” lays out a compelling argument for UBI, given the rise of automation and AI, as well as current economic and cultural shifts. Yang is also running for president 2020 on a UBI platform, dubbed the freedom dividend.
- tomschlick 8y ago
  He also did a Reddit AMA where he only answered the softball questions about UBI instead of how he would actually make it work. IMO, the guy is only running so he can sell more of his books. https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/87aa2z/iama_andrew_yang_candidate_for_president_of_the/ https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/87aa2z/iama_andrew_ya...
peterwwillis 8y ago
I think removing red tape and allowing people to pay for things they need right now is an excellent way to speed people's recovery from poverty, but it needs nudges, and those nudges need to be informed by data and empirical evidence. We need to know what people are spending the money on so we know how to target the biggest problems as well as the corner cases. If you know what the actual problems are and where the money needs to be spent, you don't need to give everyone $10,000. You may only need to give this person $2,000 for this thing, and this person $7,000 for that thing. Giving them all a lump sum is just inefficient, and does not address the myriad edge cases. Collecting data on spending could help provide efficiency.
- bsder 8y ago
  Not it doesn't need nudges. The point is to be universal. The problem is that some of it will go to things you and I personally don't like. Too bad. However, that's a political disaster--especially when coupled with the toxic racial politics from the right wing in the US right now. Even the article is somewhat guilty of it. While it may play well to the New York Times audience, if you want to sell UBI, the overemphasis on minorities is not a winning PR move. It's even more irritating as Stockton is known also being a white trash meth epicenter. We need to get the fact that the problem is being POOR is the issue that needs to be fixed, period.
  - BadThink6655321 8y ago
    “Toxic racial politics from the right wing...” I agree that racial politics is toxic, but racial politics is just one subset of identity politics. The left has “sown the wind” and they’re going to “reap the whirlwind.” May $diety help us all.
  - pingpongproduct 8y ago
    > toxic racial politics > white trash People like you is why the right's popularity has surged and continues to climb.
  - peterwwillis 8y ago
    Most of this has nothing to do with my comment and is unnecessarily emotional and partisan. UBI does need nudges, not because I'm objecting to how people spend the money, but because it is _inefficient_. Do you want to raise people out of poverty? Great. How long would you like that to take? 100 years? 50? 20? 10? We don't have 100 trillion dollars just lying around, so we can't just give everyone a fortune _right now_. So it will take time for a UBI to have a lasting effect on society. If you don't want that to take 50 years, you have to try to be more efficient with that money, so that 50 years can maybe be shrunk down to 20 years, or even 10. To reach better efficiency you need to be smarter about how you solve problems with the money. To do that you can look at how the money is spent, and help people to spend it in a wise way. Some of those ways include financial literacy programs, help with getting into social programs, job training, hell even carpools. Sometimes it will be a more efficient health insurance plan, or tips on shopping or cooking. Maybe even investing some of the money in a savings program, or debt counseling. Some people may need more than the UBI, and some people may need less. This isn't a partisan judgmental thing, it's a simple fact that not everyone has the same financial problems. Maybe one person needs $2,000 a month, and maybe one person needs $50k right now. You don't know until you look at the bigger picture, and that requires data. I'm not being partisan or lecturing people on what they need to spend and how. Everyone in the world could benefit from having their spending analyzed and having suggestions on how to be more efficient with their money. I'm saying that if you're doling out a fixed amount of cash, maybe you might want to do it as well as you can so it can have the greatest effect possible, rather than just throw cash at the wind and hope it sticks the right way (because a lot of the time it won't, because people have different needs, and inequality is not just economic)
codebook 8y ago
I thought it is talking "California City" but Stockton. https://goo.gl/maps/o8fp1f18Hf32 https://goo.gl/maps/o8fp1f18Hf32
blang 8y ago
NPR did a good piece about the non-profit mentioned in the article: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2017/08/07/541609649/how-to-fix-poverty-why-not-just-give-people-money https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2017/08/07/5416096...
pmiller2 8y ago
I still haven't seen a good explanation for how UBI on a truly universal scale isn't going to just raise housing prices to capture the surplus. I mean, if my landlord knew I (and anybody else who could theoretically live in my apartment) had a spare $2000/month, forever, I'm pretty sure he'd want it.
- rarec 8y ago
  That's always been what I wondered as well. UBI solves everything, except for the part where an actor who knows explicitly that all of his tenants will be getting a flat amount per month, then why not raise prices to capture some of that as well? Why wouldn't everything just increase in price slightly, everyone can afford a little bit more now.
  - lr4444lr 8y ago
    I'd presume defenders would say, because with the increased purchasing power at hand, there would be more incentive for developers to build. When instead the money is squandered through public housing, homeless shelters, halfway houses, and other intermediaries, the housing is slow to be built, with low accountability for either landlord or tenant to get and receive their value.
  - pmiller2 8y ago
    I'm focused specifically on housing because approximately everybody needs somewhere to live. That ought to raise purchase prices and rent prices. In effect, it would mean anyone who bought before UBI raised the price would be subsidized by those who buy or rent afterward. It seems like roughly the same economics as rent control: if I, as a landlord, own rent controlled units, then I want to make as much money off them as if they were not rent controlled. Unless I can get them reclassified, the only way to do so is to raise the monthly price so that over the course of an average tenancy, the numbers add up to what I could have rented the unit for without rent control. What you end up with is effectively a Ponzi scheme.
  - stouset 8y ago
    These are really excellent points I hadn’t considered. On the other hand, let’s run the experiment the other way. We currently have significant numbers of people working with no hope of financial stability in their future. Will taxing them to fill the coffers of the rich improve their situation? Given the current situation of increasing wealth inequality seemingly exacerbating existing problems, I can’t imagine that this is a promising approach. Since UBI is essentially the most generalized form of a benefits program, I really have to hope that it works. If it doesn’t, that seems damning to other benefits programs which are inefficiently (and IMO ineffectively, due to perverse incentives) means-tested. If it doesn’t, and if anti-UBI is virtually axiomatically a bad idea, then I’m not sure what’s left.
JaceLightning 8y ago
I'm not sure this is "universal" basic income if it's only for 100 people...
- privacypoller 8y ago
  I'm more concerned that the elected mayor, who has an obvious vested interest in the project being a success, wants to target "those most likely to make good decisions" - how is that universal? The whole pretext of these plans is that there is no qualifying conditions or criteria for participation. If you only give money to a group filtered for a target outcome it's (a) just another social assistance program and (b) not an experiment
noddingham 8y ago
As a data point, Finland is ending their basic income program: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-43866700 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-43866700 I wish they'd release as much data as possible regarding the experiment so other cities and countries could have actual data to look at instead of hypotheses.
jpao79 8y ago
Honestly asking - would it be a good thing or a bad thing if the major high cost of living areas like cities in the CA such San Francisco, Orange County, etc., were actually significantly funding UBI to people with a permanent address in a lower cost of living Central California city long term?
- zach 8y ago
  Interesting. It would be similar to this concept in American sports, where a team like the New York Yankees (the San Francisco housing market of baseball) can keep their economic advantage but has to pay a tax on it, the proceeds going to less-profligate teams so they can remain somewhat competitive: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luxury_tax_(sports) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luxury_tax_(sports) I guess the real difficulty would be measuring how high San Francisco's housing-supply border wall is.
Ancalagon 8y ago
I feel like UBI is just a band-aid fix for all the real issues (in the US at least) that already have proven solutions in other parts of the world. Rather than giving people money, I'd prefer a higher tax rate for a single payer healthcare system. Reign in healthcare, pharma, and insurance companies. Put a cap on tuition increases, and fund education again. Slash the military budget. Cut down the red tape permitting insane zoning laws, and allow higher density housing where it is needed. Placing the onus of how to spend all this money on individuals might seem like a good idea, but if we instead invested that money in real, lasting, scalable solutions we'll be a lot better in the long run.
LinuxBender 8y ago
Another interesting theory was to create a resource based economy. One iteration of this idea was The Venus Project created by Jacque Fresco [0] whereby society would remove the need for a monetary system, as everything can be engineered in abundance. Have any countries attempted such a big fundamental change? [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacque_Fresco https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacque_Fresco
prewett 8y ago
This is first-order thinking. The problem with the poor is not that they have no money, it's that they have no ability to make money. So giving out money isn't going to fix things, you need to fix the lack of ability. In fact, giving out money is harmful, because it enslaves both the recipients and the givers. If everyone gets $100, prices will simply rise (as mentioned in other threads). But now you can't stop giving them the money, because they need it worse than before. The people doing this justify it that they will get "valid scientific data," but they won't get any valid scientific data on how UBI performs, because they aren't doing UBI. There's a big difference between giving 100 poor people money and giving all the poor people (or even everyone) money. A bit unrelated, but the article mentions that these ideas have been around a long time, citing Thomas More's "Utopia." However, they fail to follow up with the modern connation of the word, that utopia is unachievable. We've tried these ideas again and again, in American utopian societies of the 1800s, in communes, in Communism, and it doesn't work. Maybe it's time we stopped trying to do the same thing over and over again expecting different results the next time.
- peterwwillis 8y ago
  "The problem with the poor" is definitely multifaceted. You need to fix transportation, health care, availability of jobs, cost of housing, availability of essentials such as groceries/laundry, cost of utilities, availability and quality of public services such as schools and job training programs, and stem systemic incarceration of minorities, in addition to providing special services such as child care/day care, family planning, counseling, and so on. Imagining that $10k is going to solve these things is insane. Even if you took all the money you gave to each of the people in an area and added it all up, it still couldn't even pay for a fraction of the services mentioned above. This isn't to say UBI wouldn't be helpful. But let's face it, UBI is just some academic's moon-shot that they hope will magically improve everything, without thinking through all the complex logistical issues that require more than a bigger paycheck to solve. Sure, give people money, but don't imagine for a second that it will end poverty. It may make poverty more tolerable, possibly extending it.
RickJWagner 8y ago
My inclination is that money without work is a bad idea, but I'm happy to admit I might be wrong. I hope the results are described fairly and often, it'll be interesting to see how it turns out.

22 points by watchdogtimer 8y ago

> “The trolls I’ve been dealing with on social media and in real life have very racialized views of how this is going to work,” Mr. Tubbs said. “As the first black mayor of this city, it would be very dangerous if the only people to get this were black.” > He wants to select participants who are most likely to spend their money wisely, generating stories of working poor people lifted by extra cash. Well, that's pretty worthless.

undersuit 8y ago
It's worthless if this is another one of the experiments that certain people always insist we need to actually validate Basic Income's tenets. It's brilliant if you're trying to demonstrate to people with deeply-held beliefs against BI that the principles actually work in real life.
dahdum 8y ago
It wouldn't really be UBI, but still worthwhile data for programs with work requirements. I'm rather fond of the idea of work based programs. For example, for every $1 of W2 income you earn you receive $1 bonus, up to a cap of say $7,500. This boosts wages on the low end and strongly encourages employment. Funding this through income taxes and you won't have to kill off risky / low profit small business with local living wage requirements.
- lalos 8y ago
  How would you structure that bonus if you get a promotion that takes you to 7,501? You would get an impressive pay cut. If you structure it like taxes where only the first 7.5k get doubled then a bunch of people that don't need it will also get free money making the program cost more.
  - Kalium 8y ago
    You're right! That would be a major concern and an incredibly serious flaw in such a program. Maybe the description could be parsed slightly differently? Some might read parent's description to be proposing a bonus on W2 income the a limit on the bonus only of $7,500. Thus an income greater than that receives the full bonus. The structural problem you have correctly identified thus does not arise!
    - PurpleBoxDragon 8y ago
      So everyone is getting an extra $7,500, assuming they make at least that much? How isn't that just a tax credit on W2 taxes? It would make sense to assume there is some cut off, and given how government cut offs work in the past, it would be reasonable to assume the cut off will be implemented in a fashion that creates a graph where sometimes raises will result in less pay, at least when combined with existing government aid programs.
      - Kalium 8y ago
        > So everyone is getting an extra $7,500, assuming they make at least that much? How isn't that just a tax credit on W2 taxes? Depends how it's implemented, probably. People react differently to larger paychecks and tax refunds, for example. And certainly people react differently if you call it a bonus, even if it is just a negative income tax that would please Friedman. > It would make sense to assume there is some cut off, and given how government cut offs work in the past, it would be reasonable to assume the cut off will be implemented in a fashion that creates a graph where sometimes raises will result in less pay, at least when combined with existing government aid programs. That's a completely, fully, absolutely 100% reasonable comment on how poorly implemented current government aid programs are far too often implemented. It might be a slightly less reasonable comment on the details as written of the proposition above.
        dahdum 8y ago
        I should clarify too the bonus should be paid along side W2 earnings as steadily as possible, not at the end of the year. End of year refunds / cash don’t help pay rent and groceries in June. The graph need not ever result in less pay, but Your rate per hour would decrease after the cap is earned out. Somewhat harebrained perhaps, I like Friedman’s negative income tax but also want to encourage both employment and small business growth.
- tomschlick 8y ago
  > It wouldn't really be UBI None of these "experiments" are. They all fail to simulate the biggest downfall of UBI which is that when you do it at scale, prices go up. It happens for all the same reasons that guaranteed student loans have driven up the cost of college in the past 30 years.
anchpop 8y ago
I agree. It's just any other welfare system unless it's distributed universally or randomly

sonoffett 8y ago

As related material that folks here might appreciate: Andrew Yang’s (founder of Venture for America) recent book “The War on Normal People: The Truth About America's Disappearing Jobs and Why Universal Basic Income Is Our Future” lays out a compelling argument for UBI, given the rise of automation and AI, as well as current economic and cultural shifts. Yang is also running for president 2020 on a UBI platform, dubbed the freedom dividend.

tomschlick 8y ago
He also did a Reddit AMA where he only answered the softball questions about UBI instead of how he would actually make it work. IMO, the guy is only running so he can sell more of his books. https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/87aa2z/iama_andrew_yang_candidate_for_president_of_the/ https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/87aa2z/iama_andrew_ya...

peterwwillis 8y ago

I think removing red tape and allowing people to pay for things they need right now is an excellent way to speed people's recovery from poverty, but it needs nudges, and those nudges need to be informed by data and empirical evidence. We need to know what people are spending the money on so we know how to target the biggest problems as well as the corner cases. If you know what the actual problems are and where the money needs to be spent, you don't need to give everyone $10,000. You may only need to give this person $2,000 for this thing, and this person $7,000 for that thing. Giving them all a lump sum is just inefficient, and does not address the myriad edge cases. Collecting data on spending could help provide efficiency.

bsder 8y ago
Not it doesn't need nudges. The point is to be universal. The problem is that some of it will go to things you and I personally don't like. Too bad. However, that's a political disaster--especially when coupled with the toxic racial politics from the right wing in the US right now. Even the article is somewhat guilty of it. While it may play well to the New York Times audience, if you want to sell UBI, the overemphasis on minorities is not a winning PR move. It's even more irritating as Stockton is known also being a white trash meth epicenter. We need to get the fact that the problem is being POOR is the issue that needs to be fixed, period.
- BadThink6655321 8y ago
  “Toxic racial politics from the right wing...” I agree that racial politics is toxic, but racial politics is just one subset of identity politics. The left has “sown the wind” and they’re going to “reap the whirlwind.” May $diety help us all.
- pingpongproduct 8y ago
  > toxic racial politics > white trash People like you is why the right's popularity has surged and continues to climb.
- peterwwillis 8y ago
  Most of this has nothing to do with my comment and is unnecessarily emotional and partisan. UBI does need nudges, not because I'm objecting to how people spend the money, but because it is _inefficient_. Do you want to raise people out of poverty? Great. How long would you like that to take? 100 years? 50? 20? 10? We don't have 100 trillion dollars just lying around, so we can't just give everyone a fortune _right now_. So it will take time for a UBI to have a lasting effect on society. If you don't want that to take 50 years, you have to try to be more efficient with that money, so that 50 years can maybe be shrunk down to 20 years, or even 10. To reach better efficiency you need to be smarter about how you solve problems with the money. To do that you can look at how the money is spent, and help people to spend it in a wise way. Some of those ways include financial literacy programs, help with getting into social programs, job training, hell even carpools. Sometimes it will be a more efficient health insurance plan, or tips on shopping or cooking. Maybe even investing some of the money in a savings program, or debt counseling. Some people may need more than the UBI, and some people may need less. This isn't a partisan judgmental thing, it's a simple fact that not everyone has the same financial problems. Maybe one person needs $2,000 a month, and maybe one person needs $50k right now. You don't know until you look at the bigger picture, and that requires data. I'm not being partisan or lecturing people on what they need to spend and how. Everyone in the world could benefit from having their spending analyzed and having suggestions on how to be more efficient with their money. I'm saying that if you're doling out a fixed amount of cash, maybe you might want to do it as well as you can so it can have the greatest effect possible, rather than just throw cash at the wind and hope it sticks the right way (because a lot of the time it won't, because people have different needs, and inequality is not just economic)

codebook 8y ago

I thought it is talking "California City" but Stockton. https://goo.gl/maps/o8fp1f18Hf32 https://goo.gl/maps/o8fp1f18Hf32

blang 8y ago

NPR did a good piece about the non-profit mentioned in the article: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2017/08/07/541609649/how-to-fix-poverty-why-not-just-give-people-money https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2017/08/07/5416096...

pmiller2 8y ago

I still haven't seen a good explanation for how UBI on a truly universal scale isn't going to just raise housing prices to capture the surplus. I mean, if my landlord knew I (and anybody else who could theoretically live in my apartment) had a spare $2000/month, forever, I'm pretty sure he'd want it.

rarec 8y ago
That's always been what I wondered as well. UBI solves everything, except for the part where an actor who knows explicitly that all of his tenants will be getting a flat amount per month, then why not raise prices to capture some of that as well? Why wouldn't everything just increase in price slightly, everyone can afford a little bit more now.
- lr4444lr 8y ago
  I'd presume defenders would say, because with the increased purchasing power at hand, there would be more incentive for developers to build. When instead the money is squandered through public housing, homeless shelters, halfway houses, and other intermediaries, the housing is slow to be built, with low accountability for either landlord or tenant to get and receive their value.
- pmiller2 8y ago
  I'm focused specifically on housing because approximately everybody needs somewhere to live. That ought to raise purchase prices and rent prices. In effect, it would mean anyone who bought before UBI raised the price would be subsidized by those who buy or rent afterward. It seems like roughly the same economics as rent control: if I, as a landlord, own rent controlled units, then I want to make as much money off them as if they were not rent controlled. Unless I can get them reclassified, the only way to do so is to raise the monthly price so that over the course of an average tenancy, the numbers add up to what I could have rented the unit for without rent control. What you end up with is effectively a Ponzi scheme.
- stouset 8y ago
  These are really excellent points I hadn’t considered. On the other hand, let’s run the experiment the other way. We currently have significant numbers of people working with no hope of financial stability in their future. Will taxing them to fill the coffers of the rich improve their situation? Given the current situation of increasing wealth inequality seemingly exacerbating existing problems, I can’t imagine that this is a promising approach. Since UBI is essentially the most generalized form of a benefits program, I really have to hope that it works. If it doesn’t, that seems damning to other benefits programs which are inefficiently (and IMO ineffectively, due to perverse incentives) means-tested. If it doesn’t, and if anti-UBI is virtually axiomatically a bad idea, then I’m not sure what’s left.

JaceLightning 8y ago

I'm not sure this is "universal" basic income if it's only for 100 people...

privacypoller 8y ago
I'm more concerned that the elected mayor, who has an obvious vested interest in the project being a success, wants to target "those most likely to make good decisions" - how is that universal? The whole pretext of these plans is that there is no qualifying conditions or criteria for participation. If you only give money to a group filtered for a target outcome it's (a) just another social assistance program and (b) not an experiment

noddingham 8y ago

As a data point, Finland is ending their basic income program: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-43866700 http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-43866700 I wish they'd release as much data as possible regarding the experiment so other cities and countries could have actual data to look at instead of hypotheses.

jpao79 8y ago

Honestly asking - would it be a good thing or a bad thing if the major high cost of living areas like cities in the CA such San Francisco, Orange County, etc., were actually significantly funding UBI to people with a permanent address in a lower cost of living Central California city long term?

zach 8y ago
Interesting. It would be similar to this concept in American sports, where a team like the New York Yankees (the San Francisco housing market of baseball) can keep their economic advantage but has to pay a tax on it, the proceeds going to less-profligate teams so they can remain somewhat competitive: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luxury_tax_(sports) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luxury_tax_(sports) I guess the real difficulty would be measuring how high San Francisco's housing-supply border wall is.

Ancalagon 8y ago

I feel like UBI is just a band-aid fix for all the real issues (in the US at least) that already have proven solutions in other parts of the world. Rather than giving people money, I'd prefer a higher tax rate for a single payer healthcare system. Reign in healthcare, pharma, and insurance companies. Put a cap on tuition increases, and fund education again. Slash the military budget. Cut down the red tape permitting insane zoning laws, and allow higher density housing where it is needed. Placing the onus of how to spend all this money on individuals might seem like a good idea, but if we instead invested that money in real, lasting, scalable solutions we'll be a lot better in the long run.

LinuxBender 8y ago

Another interesting theory was to create a resource based economy. One iteration of this idea was The Venus Project created by Jacque Fresco [0] whereby society would remove the need for a monetary system, as everything can be engineered in abundance. Have any countries attempted such a big fundamental change? [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacque_Fresco https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacque_Fresco

prewett 8y ago

This is first-order thinking. The problem with the poor is not that they have no money, it's that they have no ability to make money. So giving out money isn't going to fix things, you need to fix the lack of ability. In fact, giving out money is harmful, because it enslaves both the recipients and the givers. If everyone gets $100, prices will simply rise (as mentioned in other threads). But now you can't stop giving them the money, because they need it worse than before. The people doing this justify it that they will get "valid scientific data," but they won't get any valid scientific data on how UBI performs, because they aren't doing UBI. There's a big difference between giving 100 poor people money and giving all the poor people (or even everyone) money. A bit unrelated, but the article mentions that these ideas have been around a long time, citing Thomas More's "Utopia." However, they fail to follow up with the modern connation of the word, that utopia is unachievable. We've tried these ideas again and again, in American utopian societies of the 1800s, in communes, in Communism, and it doesn't work. Maybe it's time we stopped trying to do the same thing over and over again expecting different results the next time.

peterwwillis 8y ago
"The problem with the poor" is definitely multifaceted. You need to fix transportation, health care, availability of jobs, cost of housing, availability of essentials such as groceries/laundry, cost of utilities, availability and quality of public services such as schools and job training programs, and stem systemic incarceration of minorities, in addition to providing special services such as child care/day care, family planning, counseling, and so on. Imagining that $10k is going to solve these things is insane. Even if you took all the money you gave to each of the people in an area and added it all up, it still couldn't even pay for a fraction of the services mentioned above. This isn't to say UBI wouldn't be helpful. But let's face it, UBI is just some academic's moon-shot that they hope will magically improve everything, without thinking through all the complex logistical issues that require more than a bigger paycheck to solve. Sure, give people money, but don't imagine for a second that it will end poverty. It may make poverty more tolerable, possibly extending it.

RickJWagner 8y ago

My inclination is that money without work is a bad idea, but I'm happy to admit I might be wrong. I hope the results are described fairly and often, it'll be interesting to see how it turns out.