5 ms·

I think you are straw-man'ing a bit. Of course giving people money results in them having more money. News at 11. But it's reasonable to question whether that'

by ip26 5y ago

I think you are straw-man'ing a bit. Of course giving people money results in them having more money. News at 11. But it's reasonable to question whether that's a good solution, a band-aid, or perhaps a short-term hack with future blowback, etc. Direct cash transfers are not exactly some foolproof, no-brainer solution to poverty. We've made a real mess in some third world countries with the cash spigot.

sofixa 5y ago
> We've made a real mess in some third world countries with the cash spigot. Has there been a comparable scenario of direct cash transfers to poor people?
- zozbot234 5y ago
  GiveDirectly has studied this, and it's absolutely not making a "mess". What makes a mess is foreign aid directed at corrupt, large-scale, government- or NGO-driven "development" schemes. Giving cash just leaves the choice as to how to use the money to those who are best equipped to make it.
  - dado3212 5y ago
    I agree with the former (GiveDirectly and other institutions like J-PAL have been huge in putting together randomized trials around aid effectiveness, [1] for a specific example). The latter I think is more up for debate. There are papers showing that aid is still effective in areas with high government corruption. Definitely a pretty debated area though in terms of effectiveness of foreign aid. [1]. https://www.povertyactionlab.org/case-study/giving-directly-support-poor-households https://www.povertyactionlab.org/case-study/giving-directly-...
User23 5y ago
The real issue is that the ledger game is a dynamic system. Just because the currency issuer credits certain persons’ accounts in one round doesn’t mean that those accounts won’t sooner or later be depleted in future rounds. The obvious example is how a UBI will assuredly drive up rents as landlords move to capture the additional capacity to pay. Frankly, the day that UBI passes Congress will be the day the rentier class realizes this. To use Taleb’s terminology, the rentier class have made themselves antifragile. Look how they’ve benefited from political chaos be it financial crises or pandemics.
- zozbot234 5y ago
  Rents are set at the margin. If UBI recipients can move to lower-rent/lower-cost areas while keeping their UBI, there's no reason for rents to rise.
- CasperDern 5y ago
  This can argument can be made for all essential products/services, what you are arguing seems to be effectively UBI causes additional inflation, which may or may not be true.
kevin__ 5y ago
The thing is, we have actual data on a lot of these policies. And we know what works and doesn't work. 1 dollar spent on increasing food stamps increases GDP by something like $1.75. For something like an expanded child tax credit, it's more like $1.25. And for tax cuts for top earners, it's around $0.30. Even just looking at it from a purely economic standpoint, one policy is drastically better than the other. But more importantly, the first two policies also have enormous positive and direct benefits - they drastically decrease things like child poverty. These are some of the most obvious public policy choices for any wealthy country, and for whatever reason we just refuse to take action until there's a massive recession or a global pandemic, and even then it's for like 6 months or a year.
- throwaway98211 5y ago
  >The thing is, we have actual data on a lot of these policies. And we know what works and doesn't work. Can you cite the 'actual data' -- has it held up to broad peer review? Can you provide examples of critique of these policies, and explain why detractors have concerns, and how we could address them? This isn't global warming (science is clear) -- social policy is inherently messy, with lots of tradeoffs, and is hard to prove empirically. There are lots of reasons why expanding the welfare state might be beneficial for society, but please stop with the moral grandstanding -- it does nothing to further real dialogue.
- rsj_hn 5y ago
  > The thing is, we have actual data on a lot of these policies. I am very skeptical of this - not that we have data, but that the data suggests such a clear and simple relationship that is open to exploitation via policy. There is a long history of people trying to exploit correlations and realizing that the correlation breaks down whenever they try to turn this into a policy lever. There is also the issue that foodstamps might be beneficial up to a point, but when you flood the system with foodstamps they are no longer beneficial and can be harmful -- there are regimes of effectiveness.
heavyset_go 5y ago
> Direct cash transfers are not exactly some foolproof, no-brainer solution to poverty. We've made a real mess in some third world countries with the cash spigot. There's a huge difference between giving poor people some money with no strings attached, versus giving governments and ruling classes money with or without expectations, or IMF and World Bank-style economic imperialism.
mensetmanusman 5y ago
Actually, we made a real mess of things in other countries by attempting everything except direct cash payments. There is really interesting history around the food rationing program from the Red Cross that actually just increased human trafficking. It may turn out that direct cash payments are the most efficient means because then you parallelize the distribution of decisions.

by ip26 5y ago

sofixa 5y ago

> We've made a real mess in some third world countries with the cash spigot. Has there been a comparable scenario of direct cash transfers to poor people?

zozbot234 5y ago
GiveDirectly has studied this, and it's absolutely not making a "mess". What makes a mess is foreign aid directed at corrupt, large-scale, government- or NGO-driven "development" schemes. Giving cash just leaves the choice as to how to use the money to those who are best equipped to make it.
- dado3212 5y ago
  I agree with the former (GiveDirectly and other institutions like J-PAL have been huge in putting together randomized trials around aid effectiveness, [1] for a specific example). The latter I think is more up for debate. There are papers showing that aid is still effective in areas with high government corruption. Definitely a pretty debated area though in terms of effectiveness of foreign aid. [1]. https://www.povertyactionlab.org/case-study/giving-directly-support-poor-households https://www.povertyactionlab.org/case-study/giving-directly-...

User23 5y ago

The real issue is that the ledger game is a dynamic system. Just because the currency issuer credits certain persons’ accounts in one round doesn’t mean that those accounts won’t sooner or later be depleted in future rounds. The obvious example is how a UBI will assuredly drive up rents as landlords move to capture the additional capacity to pay. Frankly, the day that UBI passes Congress will be the day the rentier class realizes this. To use Taleb’s terminology, the rentier class have made themselves antifragile. Look how they’ve benefited from political chaos be it financial crises or pandemics.

zozbot234 5y ago
Rents are set at the margin. If UBI recipients can move to lower-rent/lower-cost areas while keeping their UBI, there's no reason for rents to rise.
CasperDern 5y ago
This can argument can be made for all essential products/services, what you are arguing seems to be effectively UBI causes additional inflation, which may or may not be true.

kevin__ 5y ago

The thing is, we have actual data on a lot of these policies. And we know what works and doesn't work. 1 dollar spent on increasing food stamps increases GDP by something like $1.75. For something like an expanded child tax credit, it's more like $1.25. And for tax cuts for top earners, it's around $0.30. Even just looking at it from a purely economic standpoint, one policy is drastically better than the other. But more importantly, the first two policies also have enormous positive and direct benefits - they drastically decrease things like child poverty. These are some of the most obvious public policy choices for any wealthy country, and for whatever reason we just refuse to take action until there's a massive recession or a global pandemic, and even then it's for like 6 months or a year.

throwaway98211 5y ago
>The thing is, we have actual data on a lot of these policies. And we know what works and doesn't work. Can you cite the 'actual data' -- has it held up to broad peer review? Can you provide examples of critique of these policies, and explain why detractors have concerns, and how we could address them? This isn't global warming (science is clear) -- social policy is inherently messy, with lots of tradeoffs, and is hard to prove empirically. There are lots of reasons why expanding the welfare state might be beneficial for society, but please stop with the moral grandstanding -- it does nothing to further real dialogue.
rsj_hn 5y ago
> The thing is, we have actual data on a lot of these policies. I am very skeptical of this - not that we have data, but that the data suggests such a clear and simple relationship that is open to exploitation via policy. There is a long history of people trying to exploit correlations and realizing that the correlation breaks down whenever they try to turn this into a policy lever. There is also the issue that foodstamps might be beneficial up to a point, but when you flood the system with foodstamps they are no longer beneficial and can be harmful -- there are regimes of effectiveness.

heavyset_go 5y ago

> Direct cash transfers are not exactly some foolproof, no-brainer solution to poverty. We've made a real mess in some third world countries with the cash spigot. There's a huge difference between giving poor people some money with no strings attached, versus giving governments and ruling classes money with or without expectations, or IMF and World Bank-style economic imperialism.

mensetmanusman 5y ago

Actually, we made a real mess of things in other countries by attempting everything except direct cash payments. There is really interesting history around the food rationing program from the Red Cross that actually just increased human trafficking. It may turn out that direct cash payments are the most efficient means because then you parallelize the distribution of decisions.