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Poor parents receiving universal payments increase spending on kids

131 points by rustoo 5y ago

phasehosiery 5y ago
What if universal income was distributed to parents based on their kid performance in school? For example, if your kid gets straight As you get $500 a month. If your kid gets straight C's, you get $100 a month.
- psychlops 5y ago
  Every student would be straight A's soon after. No person with a heart would want to deprive people of free money.
  - mc32 5y ago
    Collusion would be a problem but you could involve compliance along with loss of access to the program if a violation is found. I mean we can use statistics effectively to suss out cheaters.
    - psychlops 5y ago
      You are no doubt correct about finding cheaters. My point is that the entire system would eventually normalize around maximizing the amount of free money given to children. There would be no hero's made of those who took the money away.
      - mc32 5y ago
        Maybe. In reality not passing kids means their prospects in life are slimmer. Obviously once they hit the job market an inflated grade would be detected in many industries but not all.
    - klyrs 5y ago
      Ah, yes, the old "punish people for responding rationally to perverse incentives" schtick.
    - jollybean 5y ago
      There is absolutely no pragmatic way to manage this, and it would be politically nuclear. The notion of 'money for grades', while a neat idea for discussion, is definitely macabre, just another version of 'Squid Games'. A small child bonus, maybe a bit means tested, but not enough to perversely incent people to want children for that reason (some people think like that), would be worth it. In fact it's probably one of the best ways to spend surpluses that we have. Early childhood education and formation is really foundational and the marginal value of a few extra dollars for those who materially need it can go a very long way. It'd be political tennable if the Left were not in a civil war between traditional leftist and progressives, and the right were not at war between populists and the groups of traditional republicans.
      - mc32 5y ago
        It seems we abandoned the vision for greater good that we had in the seventies: EPA, endangered species, Title IX. Nixon gets maligned but he pushed through some good regulations back then.
- hardwaregeek 5y ago
  That’s…so cruel. There’s plenty of wonderful children who just don’t work well with the traditional schooling model. Not to mention that’s so much pressure on the child to do well. That’s not fair to the kid.
  - phasehosiery 5y ago
    I didn't intend on this to be a cruel suggestion. I should've put in more context to the suggestion. As someone that grew up in a poor household, I was working unofficially babysitting, pet sitting before 10 and a real job at 13. The thought was rather than forcing kids into side hustles to help out at home, make school their income.
  - Dracophoenix 5y ago
    How is it cruel? What the poster is describing is, in its most essential form, a merit-based scholarship.
    - hardwaregeek 5y ago
      I see it akin to having everybody run a race and giving them cash according to how they place. Except what about this kid who's in a wheelchair? Or the kid who has cerebral palsy? Or the kid who's staying up all night to help run his parents' restaurant and comes to school exhausted? There's plenty of people who don't get good grades for reasons outside of their control.
- MrPatan 5y ago
  You may end up with very happy or very unhappy teachers
  - animal_spirits 5y ago
    Agreed, this would push parents against teachers even more.
- yunohn 5y ago
  Weird that you want to apply this horrible idea to the poorest strata of society. Maybe we should try it on the richest and see what happens? Or we drop the idea that parents should be responsible for their child’s academic performance; moreso when they’re struggling with low wage jobs and scraping by.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - b9a2cab5 5y ago
    The idea that parents are not responsible for their children's education is why American education is a failure despite spending the most per capita. We should look to Asia for a good model. The culture promotes parents taking an active role in education and schools publicly rank students to motivate achievement. The results show in international competitions, college admissions, and grad school admissions.
    - yunohn 5y ago
      I come from an Asian country and I would argue that parental involvement is not that much different than the USA. Parental pressure and resultant stress is much worse though, so it’s not really a good thing. Ranking and comparisons are also very demotivating at the same time. Some parents have time and others don’t - just like the USA. The main difference is the style of education itself, and the way that children are taught. While I don’t have a solution to the USA problem, it’s definitely not because “parents are uninvolved”.
- cassianoleal 5y ago
  That would needlessly create classes within kids. It would also send the wrong incentives to parents and put the burden of livelihood on the children. School is not work and should not be rewarded based on productivity.
  - phasehosiery 5y ago
    why shouldn't school be more like work? IMHO, we get educations so we can get a job and live well.
- knuthsat 5y ago
  Then you have private schools charging more for a straight A education that is guaranteed and suck the cash.
- sieabahlpark 5y ago
  You'd get the same argument that marginalized groups in bad areas will ultimately get paid less because of systemic racism.
- kingkawn 5y ago
  So transparently a bad idea its amazing you wrote it
  - phasehosiery 5y ago
    why?
    - kingkawn 5y ago
      Other comments have explained the problem already but basically its just setting up a lazy moral judgement against the poor who will inevitably make up the majority of the "failures."
- vlunkr 5y ago
  An interesting idea, but children from poor families already statistically do worse in school. They are less likely to have a stable home environment, access to good learning resources, parents with higher education, among other things. So this system would reward families who are already doing fine. Not to mention it sounds a bit like child labor...
  - mc32 5y ago
    There is no reason they could not adjust for that. Poor parents get a handicap so to speak.
    - nielsbot 5y ago
      Then why bother at all?
      - mc32 5y ago
        Because it would help the kids do relatively better?
        nielsbot 5y ago
        Sorry, maybe too snarkily expressed... My point was, why make such a complicated system? Just give the benefit to everyone and raise taxes on higher earners. Universal benefits are more durable. Sure, some well off people would get an undeserved benefit, however there's way fewer of them in number.
- mhalle 5y ago
  I would suspect that the stress of kids risking their family's income is not conducive to better learning or social outcomes, especially for kids with learning challenges or non-traditional strengths (said as a B-C level elementary school student now PhD). Teachers, parents, or caseworkers don't need that stress either.
- spdustin 5y ago
  What if the kids with lower performance are the ones who could stand to benefit the most from a more financially stable household? In many (if not most) cases, their lower performance is directly attributable to the socioeconomic status of their parents, and their parents’ ability to be present and proactively supportive, rather than in a constant state of reactive anxiety over housing and grocery expenses.
  - t-writescode 5y ago
    Or their access to, for example, food, showers, and so on. I'm not sure non-teachers fully grasp the poverty that a surprisingly large percentage of children in the United States experience.
- klyrs 5y ago
  So rich parents who can afford tutors get the most money, and poor parents who can't feed their kids get none? What problem is this meant to solve?
- kgwxd 5y ago
  That wouldn't be universal
- thanatos519 5y ago
  Goodhart's law would apply.
bryanrasmussen 5y ago
which is what you would normally expect, on the other hand following the conservative narrative on these kinds of things my parents definitely would have spent it on gambling, drugs, and alcohol.
- yardie 5y ago
  Conservatives != conservative politicians != conservative donors. UBI is incredibly popular amongst conservatives, except for 2 particular groups: conservative pols and their rich conservative donors.
  - jandrese 5y ago
    There is a big contingent that believes UBI would only increase "laziness". How are you supposed to staff an incredibly shitty low paying job if people aren't literally starving? Offering more money or better working conditions is a nonstarter, they would rather just move the work offshore.
    - mythrwy 5y ago
      Also a strong contingent that believes it makes poor macroeconomic sense as it simply increases inflation with no gains (but probable losses) in net societal standard of living.
      - kfprt 5y ago
        This is of course ridiculous. UBI money is much more likely to be spent increasing the velocity of money in the economy than if it were spent bailing out companies. It's very hard to run a consumer economy whilst making the consumers too poor to afford to spend much.
    - what_is_orcas 5y ago
      I can't tell if this is satire, so I'll respond to it as though it is not. > How are you supposed to staff an incredibly shitty low paying job if people aren't literally starving? Why should anyone be forced to do that shitty of a job? Why can't the wage be increased and/or the quality of treatment be increased? > Offering more money or better working conditions is a nonstarter, they would rather just move the work offshore. This works for things like software developers, but not for the majority of food & service industry.
MrPatan 5y ago
I have another headline for you: "Taxing parents reduce their spending on their kids". How's that for "policy implications"?
- t-writescode 5y ago
  It's a lie. Low income people already are almost not taxed at all, given how our tax structure works. The parents that are taxed enough to matter in the first place are making enough money that they can freely give their kids what they want, in general.
  - cwkoss 5y ago
    There are many taxes besides income tax. Consumption taxes tend to hit low income people hardest.
    - iammisc 5y ago
      There are several states without sales tax. Do they have better outcomes for poor people? (I have no idea... genuinely curious). EDIT: s/income/sales
      - t-writescode 5y ago
        The whole United States has income tax at the federal level. I assume most states that have income tax have that tax stratified like the US does, where less money demands less percentage tax
        iammisc 5y ago
        sorry I should have said 'sales tax', a consumption tax.
      - devonkim 5y ago
        The states without income tax tend to have consumption taxes that are much higher to offset them as well as property taxes. I've lived in two of them (WA, TN sans dividends) and study after study shows the poor in those states along with NV and TX are some of the worst off compared to states with income taxes because they share a disproportionate funding into state coffers compared to other quintiles when compared to states with modest income taxes. This isn't to say things are great in WV and Mississippi everywhere, but there's some commons trends across very politically different states only joined by lack of income taxes.
sieabahlpark 5y ago
Selection bias?
animal_spirits 5y ago
I think an important paragraph is here: > While the study does have policy implications, Amorim cautioned that the Alaska program is not a perfect model for universal basic income policies. The Alaskan dividend is a one-time payment which affects the way people spend their money. For instance, research suggests that spending on electronics increases when people receive a lot of money at one time because they can afford those big-ticket items. If they were receiving a smaller amount of money every month, parents may choose to spend on items with smaller or more spread out costs, such as books or monthly lessons. It should be emphasized that this model is a one time payment per year, as opposed to a monthly payment that most UBI models propose.
- Someone1234 5y ago
  Or the new monthly child tax credit program (i.e. IRS sends you cash each month) they've got funded for 2021.
rasapetter 5y ago
>The findings contradict a common argument in the U.S. that poor parents cannot be trusted to receive cash to use however they want, said Amorim. How utterly depressing if this truly is a common belief.
- ceejayoz 5y ago
  It's a common belief deliberately stoked for decades. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_queen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_queen
- mbg721 5y ago
  It's America--everybody thinks everybody else is living their lives the wrong way.
  - iammisc 5y ago
    That's because America is defined by its cultural pluralism. When you have cultural pluralism, welfare does not work as well, because you are now taking money from members of one culture and giving it to another, and the cultures may be at odds with each other. For example, i am a conservative Catholic. You can tax me sure, and spend it on welfare for atheists who love abortion (or whatever other group... just making up a culture I have little in common with), but then I, and others like myself, will want to have opinions on how my money is spent. If you didn't take my money, I wouldn't care. A lot of strife over welfare in this country is due to the fact that we hold several cultures that are at odds with each other. For example, the amish don't like war, yet they pay taxes. If you asked the amish, they'd vote against war, but conveniently, they are outnumbered, so their money is co-opted. If the amish believed in protesting, and making a big fuss, this would be a major issue. Luckily for the powers that be, they don't. Ultimately, the more government programs / spending one has in a pluralistic society, the more civic strife there will be. This is unavoidable
    - what_is_orcas 5y ago
      Hey how do you reconcile your beliefs about Jesus with your stance on welfare for non-christians? I'm just curious and I don't know any conservative catholics in real life.
jonstaab 5y ago
On the other hand, communism generally results in parents spending less on their kids.
- jonstaab 5y ago
  For those of you downvoting me: - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)... - https://www.thoughtco.com/communist-countries-overview-1435178 https://www.thoughtco.com/communist-countries-overview-14351... UBI isn't communist, it's socialist — but it's a step in the wrong direction. Meanwhile, the FedAccount proposal[0] (for example) is both communist and authoritarian. [0] https://www.gwlr.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/89-Geo.-Wash.-L.-Rev.-113.pdf https://www.gwlr.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/89-Geo.-Wash...
- artificialLimbs 5y ago
  They don't cost anything when you shoot them in the head in empty fields.
literallyaduck 5y ago
UBI can be modeled in SimCity. Turn off disasters. First build a town with surplus cash with enough Healthcare, jobs, industrial areas, police and fire. Now grow your city until you unlock the ability to tax specific segments. Make sure your city is still in good condition before you start the experiment. Clone the save file so you can run a control. City A change nothing an let the Sim run for a year. City B lower taxes for the low income to 0. Your city should have enough surplus income to make you not go into the red starting this experiment. Post your results for the Tale of Two Cities simulation. Edit: Someone posted this: https://www.polygon.com/videos/2021/4/1/22352583/simcity-hidden-politics-ideology-urban-dynamics https://www.polygon.com/videos/2021/4/1/22352583/simcity-hid... And then deleted it, probably for fear of reputation or downvotes. Chilling discussion doesn't serve to educate or bring us closer together. I am happy to see the link from Will Wright and it make a point perhaps we shouldn't trust the initial Sim City engine to modeling, but I would much prefer a person who never flew a plane but has spent time in a flight sim trying to emergency land a plane rather than someone who never flew a plane or used a flight sim.
- spywaregorilla 5y ago
  you can also use rollercoaster tycoon to model the collapse of the human psyche when trapped in a haunted funhouse Turn on infinite money cheat Build a cool park, make sure it has lots of wild rides Clone the save file Let park A run for a year and change nothging Remove all exits, food stalls, and bathrooms in park b and runf or a year post results for a year. be sure to show that the happy meteres.
- wikibob 5y ago
  Sun City is absolutely not an appropriate tool for modeling societal policy. One of the original authors, Will Wright, gave an interview many years ago expressing his horror when he found out that city planners were doing precisely what you suggest. Quote: “I think if we tried to make it realistic, we would be doing something that we wouldn’t want to do,” Wright said in an interview in 1999. But that didn’t stop companies from believing Maxis could design realistic simulations. Will Wright didn’t believe that was even possible. “Many people come to us and say, ‘You should do the professional version,'” he continued. “That really scares me because I know how pathetic the simulations are, really, compared to reality. The last thing I want people to come away with is that we’re on the verge of being able to simulate the way that a city really develops, because we’re not.” https://obscuritory.com/sim/when-simcity-got-serious/ https://obscuritory.com/sim/when-simcity-got-serious/
tombert 5y ago
I'm a little ambivalent on the entire concept of UBI, specifically in regards using it instead of other social safety nets (e.g. food stamps). I believe this study, and I believe that a vast majority of poor people would spend the money reasonably, but I do think there is a small subset of poor people who will be "perpetually poor." They have little/no financial literacy, they'll spend the money in a fairly frivolous way, and I think giving them raw cash instead of something more or less boxed-in like food stamps can lead to a lot of issues. I think a lot of people see the majority of poor people acting extremely responsibly and just assume that irresponsible people don't exist. The problem is that they do, even if they are a minority, and we do need to help them too. I am much more open to a UBI if we have it in addition to our current welfare programs, a lot of people would definitely benefit from having a guaranteed safety net, but I think we shouldn't forget that "the majority" doesn't mean "everyone". ---- EDIT: It appears that I didn't explain myself very well. I'm not trying to give a Reagan-esque welfare-queen thing, specifically because I actually would prefer we increase welfare/safety-net spending instead of reducing it. I'm not trying to shift a burden of blame on anyone, I'm sure there are socioeconomic reasons to why some people lack financial literacy. I guess what I'm trying to say (and this may come off as hyperbolic) is that I get a little bit of a social-darwinism vibe when people act like people mismanaging money don't need to be addressed in topics of UBI. Obviously not everyone says this, but there is at least a subset of people who pretend that nearly everyone, given enough money, is this hyper-rational actor who always spends their money efficiently and that we shouldn't worry about the 1% of people who aren't. Even if it is just 1%, these are still humans, these are still people we should take care of, and these are people that depend on the current level of social safety nets.
- Waterluvian 5y ago
  I think people spend WAY too much effort worrying about the "small subset of people" who misuse a social system. To the point that their fixation on this small subset causes more waste than just being okay with the fact that some people will misuse a system. When Covid began, the Ontario Government just handed out cash. You could go to a website and 5 minutes later be set up for a $400 direct deposit into your bank account. You didn't need to prove anything. You just gave them your bank information and personal information and how many kids you have. People got anxious about the hypothetical kind of person who could abuse this. The response was basically: if we try to carefully scrutinize every person, it's going to cost us more, and we're not going to get the money out fast enough. This is for parents who suddenly have to buy Chromebooks and other school supplies for their kids. If you ask me, I think it all stems from a deep feeling all humans have, but that some cultures greatly amplify: the anxiety that someone isn't rowing while you are.
legitster 5y ago
> Amorim found that after the lump sum payments, low- and middle-income parents made more education, clothing, recreation and electronic purchases for their children. > “Low-income parents do need to spend a greater part of the money they received on basic necessities—for instance to catch up on bills or to fix a broken car—but they still managed with the leftover amount to invest in their children.” Is the only correlation here that when people are given money, some of it was spent on kids?
- klyrs 5y ago
  Keep in mind, paying bills, auto repairs, etc., can help keep a parent employable. Just because that money wasn't directly spent on children doesn't mean it didn't improve their quality of life.
howmayiannoyyou 5y ago
I must point out the US has $28 trillion in debt, or about $200k per American, or enough that if the wealth of every US billionaire were confiscated the debt would remain monolithic. This doesn't include State's 1.2 trillion in debts which are equally insurmountable. Medicare/Medicaid, Social Security & Defense are the largest share of the spending contributing to this debt, but the proposals for more welfare spending continue unabated & our adversaries have reached or surpassed defense parity in either quality or quantity, or both. At what point, if ever, do Americans acknowledge the horrific fiscal situation the Baby Boomer generation bequeathed to us and accept that painful & deep spending cuts must be made, instead of piling more spending atop expenditures this country cannot afford? You can make a deeply compelling argument for welfare spending on an emotional or data-driven basis. The merits aren't the issue. The issue is affordability and prioritization at a time when US politico-economic-military stability and sustainability is at serious risk.
- voxl 5y ago
  Why is the debt bad? Can you explain it without using the false analogy of citizen debt?
  - howmayiannoyyou 5y ago
    I'm not your economics teacher. Research it yourself. You can start here: - The need to find buyer's for your country's debt at rates that don't greatly exacerbate the problem. - The surprising frequency with which countries were forced to default on their debt & the implications for social order. - How government debt impacts corporate & personal debt appetites & rates. - What uncontrolled debt & spending does to your currency and the cost of necessary imports.
  - brink 5y ago
    Why is the analogy of citizen debt false?
    - kube-system 5y ago
      For one, people have different stages of their life. People, at some point, no longer earn income, and so, it makes sense to plan your debt within your lifecycle of income generation. While you may retire or die some day, there is no date at which the US government stops taxation. The whole idea of "paying back a loan" really only makes sense in the context of a borrower who has limited time to do so. Secondly, when you borrow money, you borrow it from other people. Most US debt is in the form of treasuries issued to American people and businesses. The people offering the loans to the US government are the often same ones benefiting from it. It's less like "buying a pizza on a credit card" and more like "lending my wife $20 to pick up groceries for dinner". Thirdly, the US government controls monetary policy. If you want rack up debt on your credit card, you have to pay the interest rate that the credit card company wants, and you have to pay it in the denominations they ask for. The US government controls the monetary supply and the interest rate at which they obtain debt. And there are many more differences, like the fact that institutions trust storing their wealth in debt issued to global nuclear powers, more so than they trust issuing it to the average Joe on the street.
Beaver117 5y ago
I used to be a proponent of universal basic income, but after this past year it's become clear, rent and housing prices will just increase to match whatever extra income people receive. Unless there is real housing reform (not treating housing as an investment) UBI won't be effective.
- spywaregorilla 5y ago
  I don't think this a complete problem. More broadly is that wages will need to rise and prices will need to rise until an equilibrium is reached such that poor people need to work to survive. While wages rise, other countries with no universal income gain a competitive advantage in labor costs, across the board.
- brutal_chaos_ 5y ago
  Disagreed. We have corpoeations/Private Equity Firms buying up property to squeeze out as much money possible from these places. Creating an artificial inflation of housing costs and making a UBI look untenable. If the property rush wasn't happening we wouldn't see this. A decent UBI would adjust with the cost of living. Including handling a price surge like this. Edit to add: More than just a UBI would be needed for the surges probably. Perhaps a more functional Congress would be needed too, at this point.
  - zbobet2012 5y ago
    This represents a small amount of the property in the US. Investors own 16% of US housing. And keep in mind that includes investors with 1 or 2 additional properties that they rent secondary to their own home. https://www.nationalmortgagenews.com/news/investors-bought-more-single-family-homes-than-ever-in-q2 https://www.nationalmortgagenews.com/news/investors-bought-m... It's just not true. Housing prices are rising due to record low interest rates (most people folks on monthly payments, not net cost) and demand shifts due to covid. Housing prices in core cities have largely fallen.
    - james4k 5y ago
yumraj 5y ago
My biggest concern with some of such programs, including UBI and child tax credits, which rely on the number of children in a family, is that it incentivizes poorer families to have more kids. It may not be a popular opinion, but I generally see poorer families with more kids, regardless of the race, while more affluent families generally have fewer kids. This puts more economic pressure on poorer families and such kids generally don't end up getting good education or going to college. Unfortunately, I don't have an alternate solution.
- baq 5y ago
  this is true. OTOH the birth rate is below replacement rate, sometimes much below, in quite a lot of developed countries. increased immigration will lead to social unrest; not increasing the birth rate leads to demography of Japan (now) and China (in 20-30 years). children should be a pressing political issue no matter which way you look at the problem. if you add environmental impact of every child, even more so...
- dlp211 5y ago
  There is so much to unpack about your biases in that first sentence.
  - yumraj 5y ago
    I sincerely apologize if you feel that way, though that was not my intention. It if matters at all, not that I need to defend my comment in such a way, I'm a social liberal. It is an observation and I will accept if there is a different reason, causation vs correlation.
    - zajd 5y ago
      > a social liberal "I hate the problems but love the causes"
    - dlp211 5y ago
      There is no proof that credits incentivize poor people to have kids and plenty of proof that credits help poor. working, middle, and upper-middle class people afford the children that they do have or want. It's the welfare queen mythos repackaged all over again. Additionally, what is the problem with having more children if the family is able to support them at some baseline with these credits? If a credit allows a family to plan for and have a child that they wanted, what is the harm to society and you caused by this?
web2sucks 5y ago
Tax people less, repeal all welfare, repeal zoning laws, and increase minimum wage
a-dub 5y ago
i wonder how many kids will get new or first computers. :)
ebanana 5y ago
thats what i would do if i could, i haven't seen my one kid since he was 6 months old due to getting arrested and serving probation. my finances were and still are terrible, i had a terrible alcohol dependency and was hooked on drugs for years. i finally got out of that addiction but i only turned to drugs and alcohol because of undiagnosed depression and add. i couldn't get out of my funk, i was broke when he was conceived and remained broke because nobody wants to hire someone with a record, so i stayed out of his life in order to hopefully become the father who could one day put him through college. he is 9 now, i still havent seen him and i work all the time, it gets me nowhere, no matter how many self help positive thinking books and actions i take, i am still extremely poor and on the verge of homelessness. i started to finally catch up, i started a business and it looked like i was gonna finally gonna prove everyone wrong about me, you know, have self respect but the pandemic wiped out my business and delayed the reunification with my son. i not a victim but i don't you know anyone who can give me advice and tell me it's gonna be okay, people see their kids and no matter how hard i try, its like i an pushing a boulder uphill only to have it come rolling back down, each and everyday, i dont watch tv, i dont play games, i dont look at memes all day. i literally work from sun up to sun down and apply for jobs only to have people discredit me based on lack of experience in the field and probably how small my apartment looks on zoom. side note, i got arrested and thrown in the drunk tank overnight, i was stuck on probation longer because i could not make my payments. and what i got arrested for was punching someone while drunk, so i regret that, tremendously. before that i had no record. but i also lived in one of the worst states when it came to criminal justice. i did ard and my record is clean so i have that going for me at least

131 points by rustoo 5y ago

What if universal income was distributed to parents based on their kid performance in school? For example, if your kid gets straight As you get $500 a month. If your kid gets straight C's, you get $100 a month.

psychlops 5y ago
Every student would be straight A's soon after. No person with a heart would want to deprive people of free money.
- mc32 5y ago
  Collusion would be a problem but you could involve compliance along with loss of access to the program if a violation is found. I mean we can use statistics effectively to suss out cheaters.
  - psychlops 5y ago
    You are no doubt correct about finding cheaters. My point is that the entire system would eventually normalize around maximizing the amount of free money given to children. There would be no hero's made of those who took the money away.
    - mc32 5y ago
      Maybe. In reality not passing kids means their prospects in life are slimmer. Obviously once they hit the job market an inflated grade would be detected in many industries but not all.
  - klyrs 5y ago
    Ah, yes, the old "punish people for responding rationally to perverse incentives" schtick.
  - jollybean 5y ago
    There is absolutely no pragmatic way to manage this, and it would be politically nuclear. The notion of 'money for grades', while a neat idea for discussion, is definitely macabre, just another version of 'Squid Games'. A small child bonus, maybe a bit means tested, but not enough to perversely incent people to want children for that reason (some people think like that), would be worth it. In fact it's probably one of the best ways to spend surpluses that we have. Early childhood education and formation is really foundational and the marginal value of a few extra dollars for those who materially need it can go a very long way. It'd be political tennable if the Left were not in a civil war between traditional leftist and progressives, and the right were not at war between populists and the groups of traditional republicans.
    - mc32 5y ago
      It seems we abandoned the vision for greater good that we had in the seventies: EPA, endangered species, Title IX. Nixon gets maligned but he pushed through some good regulations back then.
hardwaregeek 5y ago
That’s…so cruel. There’s plenty of wonderful children who just don’t work well with the traditional schooling model. Not to mention that’s so much pressure on the child to do well. That’s not fair to the kid.
- phasehosiery 5y ago
  I didn't intend on this to be a cruel suggestion. I should've put in more context to the suggestion. As someone that grew up in a poor household, I was working unofficially babysitting, pet sitting before 10 and a real job at 13. The thought was rather than forcing kids into side hustles to help out at home, make school their income.
- Dracophoenix 5y ago
  How is it cruel? What the poster is describing is, in its most essential form, a merit-based scholarship.
  - hardwaregeek 5y ago
    I see it akin to having everybody run a race and giving them cash according to how they place. Except what about this kid who's in a wheelchair? Or the kid who has cerebral palsy? Or the kid who's staying up all night to help run his parents' restaurant and comes to school exhausted? There's plenty of people who don't get good grades for reasons outside of their control.
MrPatan 5y ago
You may end up with very happy or very unhappy teachers
- animal_spirits 5y ago
  Agreed, this would push parents against teachers even more.
yunohn 5y ago
Weird that you want to apply this horrible idea to the poorest strata of society. Maybe we should try it on the richest and see what happens? Or we drop the idea that parents should be responsible for their child’s academic performance; moreso when they’re struggling with low wage jobs and scraping by.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- b9a2cab5 5y ago
  The idea that parents are not responsible for their children's education is why American education is a failure despite spending the most per capita. We should look to Asia for a good model. The culture promotes parents taking an active role in education and schools publicly rank students to motivate achievement. The results show in international competitions, college admissions, and grad school admissions.
  - yunohn 5y ago
    I come from an Asian country and I would argue that parental involvement is not that much different than the USA. Parental pressure and resultant stress is much worse though, so it’s not really a good thing. Ranking and comparisons are also very demotivating at the same time. Some parents have time and others don’t - just like the USA. The main difference is the style of education itself, and the way that children are taught. While I don’t have a solution to the USA problem, it’s definitely not because “parents are uninvolved”.
cassianoleal 5y ago
That would needlessly create classes within kids. It would also send the wrong incentives to parents and put the burden of livelihood on the children. School is not work and should not be rewarded based on productivity.
- phasehosiery 5y ago
  why shouldn't school be more like work? IMHO, we get educations so we can get a job and live well.
knuthsat 5y ago
Then you have private schools charging more for a straight A education that is guaranteed and suck the cash.
sieabahlpark 5y ago
You'd get the same argument that marginalized groups in bad areas will ultimately get paid less because of systemic racism.
kingkawn 5y ago
So transparently a bad idea its amazing you wrote it
- phasehosiery 5y ago
  why?
  - kingkawn 5y ago
    Other comments have explained the problem already but basically its just setting up a lazy moral judgement against the poor who will inevitably make up the majority of the "failures."
vlunkr 5y ago
An interesting idea, but children from poor families already statistically do worse in school. They are less likely to have a stable home environment, access to good learning resources, parents with higher education, among other things. So this system would reward families who are already doing fine. Not to mention it sounds a bit like child labor...
- mc32 5y ago
  There is no reason they could not adjust for that. Poor parents get a handicap so to speak.
  - nielsbot 5y ago
    Then why bother at all?
    - mc32 5y ago
      Because it would help the kids do relatively better?
      - nielsbot 5y ago
        Sorry, maybe too snarkily expressed... My point was, why make such a complicated system? Just give the benefit to everyone and raise taxes on higher earners. Universal benefits are more durable. Sure, some well off people would get an undeserved benefit, however there's way fewer of them in number.
mhalle 5y ago
I would suspect that the stress of kids risking their family's income is not conducive to better learning or social outcomes, especially for kids with learning challenges or non-traditional strengths (said as a B-C level elementary school student now PhD). Teachers, parents, or caseworkers don't need that stress either.
spdustin 5y ago
What if the kids with lower performance are the ones who could stand to benefit the most from a more financially stable household? In many (if not most) cases, their lower performance is directly attributable to the socioeconomic status of their parents, and their parents’ ability to be present and proactively supportive, rather than in a constant state of reactive anxiety over housing and grocery expenses.
- t-writescode 5y ago
  Or their access to, for example, food, showers, and so on. I'm not sure non-teachers fully grasp the poverty that a surprisingly large percentage of children in the United States experience.
klyrs 5y ago
So rich parents who can afford tutors get the most money, and poor parents who can't feed their kids get none? What problem is this meant to solve?
kgwxd 5y ago
That wouldn't be universal
thanatos519 5y ago
Goodhart's law would apply.

bryanrasmussen 5y ago

which is what you would normally expect, on the other hand following the conservative narrative on these kinds of things my parents definitely would have spent it on gambling, drugs, and alcohol.

yardie 5y ago
Conservatives != conservative politicians != conservative donors. UBI is incredibly popular amongst conservatives, except for 2 particular groups: conservative pols and their rich conservative donors.
- jandrese 5y ago
  There is a big contingent that believes UBI would only increase "laziness". How are you supposed to staff an incredibly shitty low paying job if people aren't literally starving? Offering more money or better working conditions is a nonstarter, they would rather just move the work offshore.
  - mythrwy 5y ago
    Also a strong contingent that believes it makes poor macroeconomic sense as it simply increases inflation with no gains (but probable losses) in net societal standard of living.
    - kfprt 5y ago
      This is of course ridiculous. UBI money is much more likely to be spent increasing the velocity of money in the economy than if it were spent bailing out companies. It's very hard to run a consumer economy whilst making the consumers too poor to afford to spend much.
  - what_is_orcas 5y ago
    I can't tell if this is satire, so I'll respond to it as though it is not. > How are you supposed to staff an incredibly shitty low paying job if people aren't literally starving? Why should anyone be forced to do that shitty of a job? Why can't the wage be increased and/or the quality of treatment be increased? > Offering more money or better working conditions is a nonstarter, they would rather just move the work offshore. This works for things like software developers, but not for the majority of food & service industry.

MrPatan 5y ago

I have another headline for you: "Taxing parents reduce their spending on their kids". How's that for "policy implications"?

t-writescode 5y ago
It's a lie. Low income people already are almost not taxed at all, given how our tax structure works. The parents that are taxed enough to matter in the first place are making enough money that they can freely give their kids what they want, in general.
- cwkoss 5y ago
  There are many taxes besides income tax. Consumption taxes tend to hit low income people hardest.
  - iammisc 5y ago
    There are several states without sales tax. Do they have better outcomes for poor people? (I have no idea... genuinely curious). EDIT: s/income/sales
    - t-writescode 5y ago
      The whole United States has income tax at the federal level. I assume most states that have income tax have that tax stratified like the US does, where less money demands less percentage tax
      - iammisc 5y ago
        sorry I should have said 'sales tax', a consumption tax.
    - devonkim 5y ago
      The states without income tax tend to have consumption taxes that are much higher to offset them as well as property taxes. I've lived in two of them (WA, TN sans dividends) and study after study shows the poor in those states along with NV and TX are some of the worst off compared to states with income taxes because they share a disproportionate funding into state coffers compared to other quintiles when compared to states with modest income taxes. This isn't to say things are great in WV and Mississippi everywhere, but there's some commons trends across very politically different states only joined by lack of income taxes.

sieabahlpark 5y ago

Selection bias?

animal_spirits 5y ago

I think an important paragraph is here: > While the study does have policy implications, Amorim cautioned that the Alaska program is not a perfect model for universal basic income policies. The Alaskan dividend is a one-time payment which affects the way people spend their money. For instance, research suggests that spending on electronics increases when people receive a lot of money at one time because they can afford those big-ticket items. If they were receiving a smaller amount of money every month, parents may choose to spend on items with smaller or more spread out costs, such as books or monthly lessons. It should be emphasized that this model is a one time payment per year, as opposed to a monthly payment that most UBI models propose.

Someone1234 5y ago
Or the new monthly child tax credit program (i.e. IRS sends you cash each month) they've got funded for 2021.

rasapetter 5y ago

>The findings contradict a common argument in the U.S. that poor parents cannot be trusted to receive cash to use however they want, said Amorim. How utterly depressing if this truly is a common belief.

ceejayoz 5y ago
It's a common belief deliberately stoked for decades. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_queen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_queen
mbg721 5y ago
It's America--everybody thinks everybody else is living their lives the wrong way.
- iammisc 5y ago
  That's because America is defined by its cultural pluralism. When you have cultural pluralism, welfare does not work as well, because you are now taking money from members of one culture and giving it to another, and the cultures may be at odds with each other. For example, i am a conservative Catholic. You can tax me sure, and spend it on welfare for atheists who love abortion (or whatever other group... just making up a culture I have little in common with), but then I, and others like myself, will want to have opinions on how my money is spent. If you didn't take my money, I wouldn't care. A lot of strife over welfare in this country is due to the fact that we hold several cultures that are at odds with each other. For example, the amish don't like war, yet they pay taxes. If you asked the amish, they'd vote against war, but conveniently, they are outnumbered, so their money is co-opted. If the amish believed in protesting, and making a big fuss, this would be a major issue. Luckily for the powers that be, they don't. Ultimately, the more government programs / spending one has in a pluralistic society, the more civic strife there will be. This is unavoidable
  - what_is_orcas 5y ago
    Hey how do you reconcile your beliefs about Jesus with your stance on welfare for non-christians? I'm just curious and I don't know any conservative catholics in real life.

jonstaab 5y ago

On the other hand, communism generally results in parents spending less on their kids.

jonstaab 5y ago
For those of you downvoting me: - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)... - https://www.thoughtco.com/communist-countries-overview-1435178 https://www.thoughtco.com/communist-countries-overview-14351... UBI isn't communist, it's socialist — but it's a step in the wrong direction. Meanwhile, the FedAccount proposal[0] (for example) is both communist and authoritarian. [0] https://www.gwlr.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/89-Geo.-Wash.-L.-Rev.-113.pdf https://www.gwlr.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/89-Geo.-Wash...
artificialLimbs 5y ago
They don't cost anything when you shoot them in the head in empty fields.

literallyaduck 5y ago

UBI can be modeled in SimCity. Turn off disasters. First build a town with surplus cash with enough Healthcare, jobs, industrial areas, police and fire. Now grow your city until you unlock the ability to tax specific segments. Make sure your city is still in good condition before you start the experiment. Clone the save file so you can run a control. City A change nothing an let the Sim run for a year. City B lower taxes for the low income to 0. Your city should have enough surplus income to make you not go into the red starting this experiment. Post your results for the Tale of Two Cities simulation. Edit: Someone posted this: https://www.polygon.com/videos/2021/4/1/22352583/simcity-hidden-politics-ideology-urban-dynamics https://www.polygon.com/videos/2021/4/1/22352583/simcity-hid... And then deleted it, probably for fear of reputation or downvotes. Chilling discussion doesn't serve to educate or bring us closer together. I am happy to see the link from Will Wright and it make a point perhaps we shouldn't trust the initial Sim City engine to modeling, but I would much prefer a person who never flew a plane but has spent time in a flight sim trying to emergency land a plane rather than someone who never flew a plane or used a flight sim.

spywaregorilla 5y ago
you can also use rollercoaster tycoon to model the collapse of the human psyche when trapped in a haunted funhouse Turn on infinite money cheat Build a cool park, make sure it has lots of wild rides Clone the save file Let park A run for a year and change nothging Remove all exits, food stalls, and bathrooms in park b and runf or a year post results for a year. be sure to show that the happy meteres.
wikibob 5y ago
Sun City is absolutely not an appropriate tool for modeling societal policy. One of the original authors, Will Wright, gave an interview many years ago expressing his horror when he found out that city planners were doing precisely what you suggest. Quote: “I think if we tried to make it realistic, we would be doing something that we wouldn’t want to do,” Wright said in an interview in 1999. But that didn’t stop companies from believing Maxis could design realistic simulations. Will Wright didn’t believe that was even possible. “Many people come to us and say, ‘You should do the professional version,'” he continued. “That really scares me because I know how pathetic the simulations are, really, compared to reality. The last thing I want people to come away with is that we’re on the verge of being able to simulate the way that a city really develops, because we’re not.” https://obscuritory.com/sim/when-simcity-got-serious/ https://obscuritory.com/sim/when-simcity-got-serious/

tombert 5y ago

I'm a little ambivalent on the entire concept of UBI, specifically in regards using it instead of other social safety nets (e.g. food stamps). I believe this study, and I believe that a vast majority of poor people would spend the money reasonably, but I do think there is a small subset of poor people who will be "perpetually poor." They have little/no financial literacy, they'll spend the money in a fairly frivolous way, and I think giving them raw cash instead of something more or less boxed-in like food stamps can lead to a lot of issues. I think a lot of people see the majority of poor people acting extremely responsibly and just assume that irresponsible people don't exist. The problem is that they do, even if they are a minority, and we do need to help them too. I am much more open to a UBI if we have it in addition to our current welfare programs, a lot of people would definitely benefit from having a guaranteed safety net, but I think we shouldn't forget that "the majority" doesn't mean "everyone". ---- EDIT: It appears that I didn't explain myself very well. I'm not trying to give a Reagan-esque welfare-queen thing, specifically because I actually would prefer we increase welfare/safety-net spending instead of reducing it. I'm not trying to shift a burden of blame on anyone, I'm sure there are socioeconomic reasons to why some people lack financial literacy. I guess what I'm trying to say (and this may come off as hyperbolic) is that I get a little bit of a social-darwinism vibe when people act like people mismanaging money don't need to be addressed in topics of UBI. Obviously not everyone says this, but there is at least a subset of people who pretend that nearly everyone, given enough money, is this hyper-rational actor who always spends their money efficiently and that we shouldn't worry about the 1% of people who aren't. Even if it is just 1%, these are still humans, these are still people we should take care of, and these are people that depend on the current level of social safety nets.

Waterluvian 5y ago
I think people spend WAY too much effort worrying about the "small subset of people" who misuse a social system. To the point that their fixation on this small subset causes more waste than just being okay with the fact that some people will misuse a system. When Covid began, the Ontario Government just handed out cash. You could go to a website and 5 minutes later be set up for a $400 direct deposit into your bank account. You didn't need to prove anything. You just gave them your bank information and personal information and how many kids you have. People got anxious about the hypothetical kind of person who could abuse this. The response was basically: if we try to carefully scrutinize every person, it's going to cost us more, and we're not going to get the money out fast enough. This is for parents who suddenly have to buy Chromebooks and other school supplies for their kids. If you ask me, I think it all stems from a deep feeling all humans have, but that some cultures greatly amplify: the anxiety that someone isn't rowing while you are.

legitster 5y ago

> Amorim found that after the lump sum payments, low- and middle-income parents made more education, clothing, recreation and electronic purchases for their children. > “Low-income parents do need to spend a greater part of the money they received on basic necessities—for instance to catch up on bills or to fix a broken car—but they still managed with the leftover amount to invest in their children.” Is the only correlation here that when people are given money, some of it was spent on kids?

klyrs 5y ago
Keep in mind, paying bills, auto repairs, etc., can help keep a parent employable. Just because that money wasn't directly spent on children doesn't mean it didn't improve their quality of life.

howmayiannoyyou 5y ago

I must point out the US has $28 trillion in debt, or about $200k per American, or enough that if the wealth of every US billionaire were confiscated the debt would remain monolithic. This doesn't include State's 1.2 trillion in debts which are equally insurmountable. Medicare/Medicaid, Social Security & Defense are the largest share of the spending contributing to this debt, but the proposals for more welfare spending continue unabated & our adversaries have reached or surpassed defense parity in either quality or quantity, or both. At what point, if ever, do Americans acknowledge the horrific fiscal situation the Baby Boomer generation bequeathed to us and accept that painful & deep spending cuts must be made, instead of piling more spending atop expenditures this country cannot afford? You can make a deeply compelling argument for welfare spending on an emotional or data-driven basis. The merits aren't the issue. The issue is affordability and prioritization at a time when US politico-economic-military stability and sustainability is at serious risk.

voxl 5y ago
Why is the debt bad? Can you explain it without using the false analogy of citizen debt?
- howmayiannoyyou 5y ago
  I'm not your economics teacher. Research it yourself. You can start here: - The need to find buyer's for your country's debt at rates that don't greatly exacerbate the problem. - The surprising frequency with which countries were forced to default on their debt & the implications for social order. - How government debt impacts corporate & personal debt appetites & rates. - What uncontrolled debt & spending does to your currency and the cost of necessary imports.
- brink 5y ago
  Why is the analogy of citizen debt false?
  - kube-system 5y ago
    For one, people have different stages of their life. People, at some point, no longer earn income, and so, it makes sense to plan your debt within your lifecycle of income generation. While you may retire or die some day, there is no date at which the US government stops taxation. The whole idea of "paying back a loan" really only makes sense in the context of a borrower who has limited time to do so. Secondly, when you borrow money, you borrow it from other people. Most US debt is in the form of treasuries issued to American people and businesses. The people offering the loans to the US government are the often same ones benefiting from it. It's less like "buying a pizza on a credit card" and more like "lending my wife $20 to pick up groceries for dinner". Thirdly, the US government controls monetary policy. If you want rack up debt on your credit card, you have to pay the interest rate that the credit card company wants, and you have to pay it in the denominations they ask for. The US government controls the monetary supply and the interest rate at which they obtain debt. And there are many more differences, like the fact that institutions trust storing their wealth in debt issued to global nuclear powers, more so than they trust issuing it to the average Joe on the street.

Beaver117 5y ago

I used to be a proponent of universal basic income, but after this past year it's become clear, rent and housing prices will just increase to match whatever extra income people receive. Unless there is real housing reform (not treating housing as an investment) UBI won't be effective.

spywaregorilla 5y ago
I don't think this a complete problem. More broadly is that wages will need to rise and prices will need to rise until an equilibrium is reached such that poor people need to work to survive. While wages rise, other countries with no universal income gain a competitive advantage in labor costs, across the board.
brutal_chaos_ 5y ago
Disagreed. We have corpoeations/Private Equity Firms buying up property to squeeze out as much money possible from these places. Creating an artificial inflation of housing costs and making a UBI look untenable. If the property rush wasn't happening we wouldn't see this. A decent UBI would adjust with the cost of living. Including handling a price surge like this. Edit to add: More than just a UBI would be needed for the surges probably. Perhaps a more functional Congress would be needed too, at this point.
- zbobet2012 5y ago
  This represents a small amount of the property in the US. Investors own 16% of US housing. And keep in mind that includes investors with 1 or 2 additional properties that they rent secondary to their own home. https://www.nationalmortgagenews.com/news/investors-bought-more-single-family-homes-than-ever-in-q2 https://www.nationalmortgagenews.com/news/investors-bought-m... It's just not true. Housing prices are rising due to record low interest rates (most people folks on monthly payments, not net cost) and demand shifts due to covid. Housing prices in core cities have largely fallen.
  - james4k 5y ago

yumraj 5y ago

My biggest concern with some of such programs, including UBI and child tax credits, which rely on the number of children in a family, is that it incentivizes poorer families to have more kids. It may not be a popular opinion, but I generally see poorer families with more kids, regardless of the race, while more affluent families generally have fewer kids. This puts more economic pressure on poorer families and such kids generally don't end up getting good education or going to college. Unfortunately, I don't have an alternate solution.

baq 5y ago
this is true. OTOH the birth rate is below replacement rate, sometimes much below, in quite a lot of developed countries. increased immigration will lead to social unrest; not increasing the birth rate leads to demography of Japan (now) and China (in 20-30 years). children should be a pressing political issue no matter which way you look at the problem. if you add environmental impact of every child, even more so...
dlp211 5y ago
There is so much to unpack about your biases in that first sentence.
- yumraj 5y ago
  I sincerely apologize if you feel that way, though that was not my intention. It if matters at all, not that I need to defend my comment in such a way, I'm a social liberal. It is an observation and I will accept if there is a different reason, causation vs correlation.
  - zajd 5y ago
    > a social liberal "I hate the problems but love the causes"
  - dlp211 5y ago
    There is no proof that credits incentivize poor people to have kids and plenty of proof that credits help poor. working, middle, and upper-middle class people afford the children that they do have or want. It's the welfare queen mythos repackaged all over again. Additionally, what is the problem with having more children if the family is able to support them at some baseline with these credits? If a credit allows a family to plan for and have a child that they wanted, what is the harm to society and you caused by this?

web2sucks 5y ago

Tax people less, repeal all welfare, repeal zoning laws, and increase minimum wage

a-dub 5y ago

i wonder how many kids will get new or first computers. :)

ebanana 5y ago

thats what i would do if i could, i haven't seen my one kid since he was 6 months old due to getting arrested and serving probation. my finances were and still are terrible, i had a terrible alcohol dependency and was hooked on drugs for years. i finally got out of that addiction but i only turned to drugs and alcohol because of undiagnosed depression and add. i couldn't get out of my funk, i was broke when he was conceived and remained broke because nobody wants to hire someone with a record, so i stayed out of his life in order to hopefully become the father who could one day put him through college. he is 9 now, i still havent seen him and i work all the time, it gets me nowhere, no matter how many self help positive thinking books and actions i take, i am still extremely poor and on the verge of homelessness. i started to finally catch up, i started a business and it looked like i was gonna finally gonna prove everyone wrong about me, you know, have self respect but the pandemic wiped out my business and delayed the reunification with my son. i not a victim but i don't you know anyone who can give me advice and tell me it's gonna be okay, people see their kids and no matter how hard i try, its like i an pushing a boulder uphill only to have it come rolling back down, each and everyday, i dont watch tv, i dont play games, i dont look at memes all day. i literally work from sun up to sun down and apply for jobs only to have people discredit me based on lack of experience in the field and probably how small my apartment looks on zoom. side note, i got arrested and thrown in the drunk tank overnight, i was stuck on probation longer because i could not make my payments. and what i got arrested for was punching someone while drunk, so i regret that, tremendously. before that i had no record. but i also lived in one of the worst states when it came to criminal justice. i did ard and my record is clean so i have that going for me at least