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Nobody can ever answer the question of "What happens when someone blows their UBI and cant afford to eat?" Will we let them starve? You'd almost have to from th

Nobody can ever answer the question of "What happens when someone blows their UBI and cant afford to eat?" Will we let them starve? You'd almost have to from the government side of things. How about 5 years after when someone introduces another entitlement program to help single mothers/seniors/etc and then criticizes everyone else as heartless for not supporting it? Will we just end up where we are now with even more entitlements? >“I know Jeff Bezos is probably worth $50 million. I know for a fact that he’s not worth $150 billion. The rest of that money is mine. Yeah that says it all right there. This guy feels entitled to someone else's money.

undersuit 7y ago
What happens now? What about the people right now that cannot afford to eat? And I'm not talking about the panhandler on the street. There are families right now who cannot afford to feed themselves, even with federal assistance.
- tomschlick 7y ago
  How so? The average family of 4 on Snap benefits receives $465/mo for food. If you can't buy groceries on that then you're doing something wrong.
  - undersuit 7y ago
    Please answer the question. If you can't live on $1000 a month from the federal government I think you're doing something wrong.
    - tomschlick 7y ago
      Right now we have multiple federal programs (Welfare, SNAP, Disability, etc). Most of these UBI programs get rid of those in favor a monthly cash payment... So how are you disagreeing with me that people mismanaging money would result in them asking for more? And eventually someone would start adding those programs back costing us even more...
      - undersuit 7y ago
        If we have all these federal programs now, why are there people that are food insecure in the United States now?
        tomschlick 7y ago
        There will always be people who either fall through the cracks or just simply people who are bad at managing their resources. I don't know if there is any real solution to fix that.
        undersuit 7y ago
        Then why would you attack UBI over this issue?
        tomschlick 7y ago
        Because I don't think UBI will help in the long term. It will lead to inflation of commodities (rent, food, cars, etc) and will lead to us having a bigger entitlement burden in the long run.
        undersuit 7y ago
        You really didn't answer my question though, and now we're on a different, tired series of questions that always get asked in regards to UBI.
        tomschlick 7y ago
        I did. I dont think it would work because UBI requires getting rid of those other social safety net programs. $1k/mo will barely cover rent/food a month for things like single mother households and would lead to the reintroduction of other social programs to help those cases. Leading us right back to where we are now with more entitlement / debt.
  - gremlinsinc 7y ago
    Have you priced baby formula lately? $40 bucks a can, our baby goes through like $200 a month. We have a 2 year old and a 5 month old. $265 for 3 square meals for 1 child and 2 adults is rough. I think we spend close to 700 on food. I don't even want to think about when the kids get older, two teenage boys could easily bankrupt a family on snap. We struggle some months because I freelance and am not the best marketer of my dev services, and the hurt is real. I have a valuable service I can provide and usually we eek through the hard times. But most others are not so fortunate, WE were not so fortunate before I self-taught myself to code 8-10 years ago. We had a stint of homelessness for about 2-3 weeks. Not by choice. We had no drug or addiction issues we (were) Mormon at the time and abstaining from coffee, tea, tobacco, alcohol, drugs -- wife still is (Mormon). Anyone can fall on hard times, it's not just junkies and shitty people. And yes, not everybody is going to be great at managing their money, but if they at least had more of it, then they'd have less stress and worry. Less stress would lead to less anger and domestic violence, or robberies, and other crimes making society overall safer. Less crimes = less inmates in prison = less money from taxes going to that. Less inmates = more potential workers adding value to the economy, or at the very least helping raise their kids to be better adults because they can afford to give them quality time because they don't need to hold down two jobs. There've been studies done that show when certain occupations have feast/famine episodes, i.e. you get large amount of cash at a specific time of year, and have to make it last the rest of the year -- when you get toward the end of the year and begin struggling your actual IQ can go down by as much as 40 points. Stress from poverty actually causes IQ to drop. If we can end poverty we make society's aggregated IQ rise, making us experience more progress. It benefits everybody not just a few as the current system is rigged to do.
basch 7y ago
I've asked this elsewhere recently but here it goes again. Im sure Im wrong, but wouldnt it make sense to start with like "all rice, bean, potatoes, and broccoli consumption at the personal level is free" and start with a food stamp / ebt that buys unlimited of something very specific? It wouldnt be a currency thats worth trading to other people, landlords couldnt collect ebt credits in lieu of rent, because everyone would already have unlimited. I guess I dont understand why UBI proponents think CASH is the best idea, compared to more specific tiers like "600 for healthy food, 100 to treat yourself, 300 for xxxxx." I guess I also find it confusing why it has to be nothing or 100% without any sort of gradual experimentation. Why does the program have to immediately ramp up to the full plan?
- world32 7y ago
  Because of the massive cost and buerocracy around maintaining a gradation system of handouts like you describe. By some calculations it can even be cheaper for the gov to go all or nothing than it is to run a system of checks with specific tiers based on need.
  - basch 7y ago
    Are we including the cost difference of health care considering: subsidized anything-you-want-for-dinner compared to healthy-food-for-free? Cuz I'll be honest, with $1000 a month in cash, I would eat less healthy than $500 cash, and $500 in healthful grocery credits.
- slowmovintarget 7y ago
  Destroying the value of rice, beans, potatoes, and broccoli would signal to producers that they should grow something more valuable. The next inclination would naturally be to say "Well, you just force the growing of rice, beans, potatoes, and broccoli." You have now landed on a planned economy, which doesn't work very well. So healthy staples can't actually be "free for all". I do think that providing the food directly for people who need it would be a better idea, but you get associated issues of government price-fixing and dumping of lower quality food-stuffs. Federalism is all about experimentation. One of the features is to permit the autonomy for local governments to attempt local solutions to the specifics of the problem as it is faced locally. There may be something to be said for a central (federal) facilitation of local programs, but this almost always takes the form of funding.
viklove 7y ago
> Yeah that says it all right there. This guy feels entitled to someone else's money. Yeah, and that guy is Bezos (and you, it seems). Where did that $150 billion come from? Are you really suggesting one man created it?
- tomschlick 7y ago
  > Are you really suggesting one man created it? No of course not. The company he built from the ground up did. Those workers are paid as per their employment contract. That's it. That doesn't give them rights to take pieces of ownership in that company.
  - mathgladiator 7y ago
    The way we value ownership may be something to think about. I'm very capitalistic, but I'm not happy. I'm reading "tribe: homecomings and belonging" (subtitle paraphrased due to poor memory). I am a millionaire and I am thinking about how to use it to build a community, and while I dont think we should use force to take wealth, I did believe we need a new leadership class to inspire and influence how ownership is shared.
    - tomschlick 7y ago
      I believe that in the context of small communities, programs for the less fortunate can work very well. Mostly because the resources are attached to something/someone they know and they would feel to social pressure not to abuse those resources. For instance, I'm not a religious person but that's one of the true virtues of a religious community. Giving to the less fortunate but you feel the pressure to do good with it, and you're expected to give back when you have the means to. If you abused that generosity, it would become apparent fast and your community would cut you off. When you do this at a national level though, the tragedy of the commons come into play and no one cares who the money is coming from so long as they get it. There is very little social pressure not to game the system at that point. I don't pretend to have a complete solution for all of these problems, I just think giving everyone a blank check each month is just adding more fuel to the fire.
umadon 7y ago
But where does that value come from? Did Bezos create it?
- tomschlick 7y ago
  Yes. He created Amazon and employed the people who helped to build it bigger. Those people are/were paid as a part of their employment and that's all they are entitled to as per their contracts.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
danaris 7y ago
> Nobody can ever answer the question of "What happens when someone blows their UBI and cant afford to eat?" Will we let them starve? You'd almost have to from the government side of things. This seems to be a strawman to me. I've never seen it argued that UBI should come with any kind of requirement that it be spent in certain ways, or that further monitoring would be required to ensure that people didn't do stupid things with it. Yeah, some people will do with UBI what they do with their wages now: spend it on booze, gambling, video games, whatever their addiction of choice is. But...that's not a problem that should be solved with strings on UBI, or anything like that. It's a problem that should be solved by trying destigmatize addiction, treat it as a disease, not a personal moral failing, and address the root causes that lead to it. Those things aren't easy, but that doesn't really matter for whether we should enact a UBI, because they're out of its scope. However, if you reason through to some logical conclusions, it seems likely that, over time, a UBI that genuinely provides enough for people to live on, not in luxury but not in squalor, will tend to lead to these people having more opportunity to get themselves out of the negative spirals of addiction. It can give them hope. It can prevent many others from ending up in that situation to begin with.
- tomschlick 7y ago
  > This seems to be a strawman to me. I've never seen it argued that UBI should come with any kind of requirement that it be spent in certain ways, or that further monitoring would be required to ensure that people didn't do stupid things with it. Given that UBI replaces most other social programs, you'd have to consider if you let people who waste their stipend go hungry or not. If a single mom waste's theirs, do we now introduce SNAP/WIC back into play to cover that? How about disabled people? In my mind all of these programs will slowly be reintroduced to cover edge cases and then we are back where we started.
  - danaris 7y ago
    Do you consider that for people with full-time jobs now?
  - undersuit 7y ago
    If a single mom wastes their SNAP/WIC now do we give them more SNAP/WIC?
dllthomas 7y ago
> Nobody can ever answer the question of "What happens when someone blows their UBI and cant afford to eat?" Will we let them starve? I've answered it a few times in comment sections such as this one, but I can do it again. If someone cannot meet their needs in a situation where they have a BI that's substantial compared to the cost of essentials, they clearly need more help, and I don't think they are undeserving of more help, but I think circumstance has demonstrated that the help they need is not simply more cash. Assistance at that point should take other forms and address the underlying issues.

undersuit 7y ago

What happens now? What about the people right now that cannot afford to eat? And I'm not talking about the panhandler on the street. There are families right now who cannot afford to feed themselves, even with federal assistance.

tomschlick 7y ago
How so? The average family of 4 on Snap benefits receives $465/mo for food. If you can't buy groceries on that then you're doing something wrong.
- undersuit 7y ago
  Please answer the question. If you can't live on $1000 a month from the federal government I think you're doing something wrong.
  - tomschlick 7y ago
    Right now we have multiple federal programs (Welfare, SNAP, Disability, etc). Most of these UBI programs get rid of those in favor a monthly cash payment... So how are you disagreeing with me that people mismanaging money would result in them asking for more? And eventually someone would start adding those programs back costing us even more...
    - undersuit 7y ago
      If we have all these federal programs now, why are there people that are food insecure in the United States now?
      - tomschlick 7y ago
        There will always be people who either fall through the cracks or just simply people who are bad at managing their resources. I don't know if there is any real solution to fix that.
        undersuit 7y ago
        Then why would you attack UBI over this issue?
        tomschlick 7y ago
        Because I don't think UBI will help in the long term. It will lead to inflation of commodities (rent, food, cars, etc) and will lead to us having a bigger entitlement burden in the long run.
        undersuit 7y ago
        You really didn't answer my question though, and now we're on a different, tired series of questions that always get asked in regards to UBI.
        tomschlick 7y ago
        I did. I dont think it would work because UBI requires getting rid of those other social safety net programs. $1k/mo will barely cover rent/food a month for things like single mother households and would lead to the reintroduction of other social programs to help those cases. Leading us right back to where we are now with more entitlement / debt.
- gremlinsinc 7y ago
  Have you priced baby formula lately? $40 bucks a can, our baby goes through like $200 a month. We have a 2 year old and a 5 month old. $265 for 3 square meals for 1 child and 2 adults is rough. I think we spend close to 700 on food. I don't even want to think about when the kids get older, two teenage boys could easily bankrupt a family on snap. We struggle some months because I freelance and am not the best marketer of my dev services, and the hurt is real. I have a valuable service I can provide and usually we eek through the hard times. But most others are not so fortunate, WE were not so fortunate before I self-taught myself to code 8-10 years ago. We had a stint of homelessness for about 2-3 weeks. Not by choice. We had no drug or addiction issues we (were) Mormon at the time and abstaining from coffee, tea, tobacco, alcohol, drugs -- wife still is (Mormon). Anyone can fall on hard times, it's not just junkies and shitty people. And yes, not everybody is going to be great at managing their money, but if they at least had more of it, then they'd have less stress and worry. Less stress would lead to less anger and domestic violence, or robberies, and other crimes making society overall safer. Less crimes = less inmates in prison = less money from taxes going to that. Less inmates = more potential workers adding value to the economy, or at the very least helping raise their kids to be better adults because they can afford to give them quality time because they don't need to hold down two jobs. There've been studies done that show when certain occupations have feast/famine episodes, i.e. you get large amount of cash at a specific time of year, and have to make it last the rest of the year -- when you get toward the end of the year and begin struggling your actual IQ can go down by as much as 40 points. Stress from poverty actually causes IQ to drop. If we can end poverty we make society's aggregated IQ rise, making us experience more progress. It benefits everybody not just a few as the current system is rigged to do.

basch 7y ago

I've asked this elsewhere recently but here it goes again. Im sure Im wrong, but wouldnt it make sense to start with like "all rice, bean, potatoes, and broccoli consumption at the personal level is free" and start with a food stamp / ebt that buys unlimited of something very specific? It wouldnt be a currency thats worth trading to other people, landlords couldnt collect ebt credits in lieu of rent, because everyone would already have unlimited. I guess I dont understand why UBI proponents think CASH is the best idea, compared to more specific tiers like "600 for healthy food, 100 to treat yourself, 300 for xxxxx." I guess I also find it confusing why it has to be nothing or 100% without any sort of gradual experimentation. Why does the program have to immediately ramp up to the full plan?

world32 7y ago
Because of the massive cost and buerocracy around maintaining a gradation system of handouts like you describe. By some calculations it can even be cheaper for the gov to go all or nothing than it is to run a system of checks with specific tiers based on need.
- basch 7y ago
  Are we including the cost difference of health care considering: subsidized anything-you-want-for-dinner compared to healthy-food-for-free? Cuz I'll be honest, with $1000 a month in cash, I would eat less healthy than $500 cash, and $500 in healthful grocery credits.
slowmovintarget 7y ago
Destroying the value of rice, beans, potatoes, and broccoli would signal to producers that they should grow something more valuable. The next inclination would naturally be to say "Well, you just force the growing of rice, beans, potatoes, and broccoli." You have now landed on a planned economy, which doesn't work very well. So healthy staples can't actually be "free for all". I do think that providing the food directly for people who need it would be a better idea, but you get associated issues of government price-fixing and dumping of lower quality food-stuffs. Federalism is all about experimentation. One of the features is to permit the autonomy for local governments to attempt local solutions to the specifics of the problem as it is faced locally. There may be something to be said for a central (federal) facilitation of local programs, but this almost always takes the form of funding.

viklove 7y ago

> Yeah that says it all right there. This guy feels entitled to someone else's money. Yeah, and that guy is Bezos (and you, it seems). Where did that $150 billion come from? Are you really suggesting one man created it?

tomschlick 7y ago
> Are you really suggesting one man created it? No of course not. The company he built from the ground up did. Those workers are paid as per their employment contract. That's it. That doesn't give them rights to take pieces of ownership in that company.
- mathgladiator 7y ago
  The way we value ownership may be something to think about. I'm very capitalistic, but I'm not happy. I'm reading "tribe: homecomings and belonging" (subtitle paraphrased due to poor memory). I am a millionaire and I am thinking about how to use it to build a community, and while I dont think we should use force to take wealth, I did believe we need a new leadership class to inspire and influence how ownership is shared.
  - tomschlick 7y ago
    I believe that in the context of small communities, programs for the less fortunate can work very well. Mostly because the resources are attached to something/someone they know and they would feel to social pressure not to abuse those resources. For instance, I'm not a religious person but that's one of the true virtues of a religious community. Giving to the less fortunate but you feel the pressure to do good with it, and you're expected to give back when you have the means to. If you abused that generosity, it would become apparent fast and your community would cut you off. When you do this at a national level though, the tragedy of the commons come into play and no one cares who the money is coming from so long as they get it. There is very little social pressure not to game the system at that point. I don't pretend to have a complete solution for all of these problems, I just think giving everyone a blank check each month is just adding more fuel to the fire.

umadon 7y ago

But where does that value come from? Did Bezos create it?

tomschlick 7y ago
Yes. He created Amazon and employed the people who helped to build it bigger. Those people are/were paid as a part of their employment and that's all they are entitled to as per their contracts.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

danaris 7y ago

> Nobody can ever answer the question of "What happens when someone blows their UBI and cant afford to eat?" Will we let them starve? You'd almost have to from the government side of things. This seems to be a strawman to me. I've never seen it argued that UBI should come with any kind of requirement that it be spent in certain ways, or that further monitoring would be required to ensure that people didn't do stupid things with it. Yeah, some people will do with UBI what they do with their wages now: spend it on booze, gambling, video games, whatever their addiction of choice is. But...that's not a problem that should be solved with strings on UBI, or anything like that. It's a problem that should be solved by trying destigmatize addiction, treat it as a disease, not a personal moral failing, and address the root causes that lead to it. Those things aren't easy, but that doesn't really matter for whether we should enact a UBI, because they're out of its scope. However, if you reason through to some logical conclusions, it seems likely that, over time, a UBI that genuinely provides enough for people to live on, not in luxury but not in squalor, will tend to lead to these people having more opportunity to get themselves out of the negative spirals of addiction. It can give them hope. It can prevent many others from ending up in that situation to begin with.

tomschlick 7y ago
> This seems to be a strawman to me. I've never seen it argued that UBI should come with any kind of requirement that it be spent in certain ways, or that further monitoring would be required to ensure that people didn't do stupid things with it. Given that UBI replaces most other social programs, you'd have to consider if you let people who waste their stipend go hungry or not. If a single mom waste's theirs, do we now introduce SNAP/WIC back into play to cover that? How about disabled people? In my mind all of these programs will slowly be reintroduced to cover edge cases and then we are back where we started.
- danaris 7y ago
  Do you consider that for people with full-time jobs now?
- undersuit 7y ago
  If a single mom wastes their SNAP/WIC now do we give them more SNAP/WIC?

dllthomas 7y ago

> Nobody can ever answer the question of "What happens when someone blows their UBI and cant afford to eat?" Will we let them starve? I've answered it a few times in comment sections such as this one, but I can do it again. If someone cannot meet their needs in a situation where they have a BI that's substantial compared to the cost of essentials, they clearly need more help, and I don't think they are undeserving of more help, but I think circumstance has demonstrated that the help they need is not simply more cash. Assistance at that point should take other forms and address the underlying issues.