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The article doesn’t say much about what would help. One thing that helps the poor a lot (everyone, but especially the poor) is functioning, competent instituti

The article doesn’t say much about what would help. One thing that helps the poor a lot (everyone, but especially the poor) is functioning, competent institutions. Things like effective policing and crime prevention, a functional healthcare system, competent teaching in schools, sufficient childcare options, little to no corruption, wide availability of credit, a good transportation network, zoning laws that permit cheap and sufficient housing, employment laws that don’t make low-value labour too expensive to employ, etc. When these institutions are not working well, they represent a “drag coefficient” that well-off people can just pay their way out of (complicated tax forms? Pay an accountant $2k, solved) - but for poorer people these can represent existential hurdles. Making institutions perform better (or offering entrepreneurial alternatives) is measurable, empirical, and does not rely on any psychosocial assumptions to produce an effect. Example: “How hard is it for someone who is barely literate and is working 50 hours per week to get and keep a driving license?” If the answer is “hard” that’s a big drag on poor people. If they could do minimal paperwork, do the test for free on nights or weekends in cheap rental cars close to where they live or work, etc. that is a massive boon to someone whose next step up the ladder is to get a driving job.

FollowingTheDao 5y ago
>The article doesn’t say much about what would help. A Universal Basic Income would be a good start.
- DoreenMichele 5y ago
  I don't think so. It was once thought that student loans would be some panacea lifting poor people out of poverty by giving them access to education and the end result is lots of people overburdened by debt while waiting tables because so many people have degrees that a degree isn't remotely some kind of reasonable assurance that you can get a job in a particular field.
  - adventured 5y ago
    Absolutely. We'd be so much better off by semi copying Germany's culture of vocational training. And it wouldn't be expensive to do compared to the rather crazy sums we presently throw at higher education. Plus we very much need the skilled labor in a vast array of fields.
    - zozbot234 5y ago
      Fix K12 education first - that's where the highest plausible effects are. Vocational education can be a part of the picture, but it's actually really hard to do well.
    - analog31 5y ago
      You also have to fix the vocations themselves with better workplace safety laws, non-discrimination, health care, retirement, safety net, unions. A trades person is exposed to high risk if something happens to their bodies and prevents them from working a full career, or there's a cyclic downturn in something like construction.
  - FollowingTheDao 5y ago
    UBI is not a loan. Student loans have to be paid back and they also only resulted sun universities rising tuition. Education does not fix poverty. Money fixes poverty.
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      > UBI is not a loan Right: UBI together with any reasonable funding mechanism is a structural force working against economic inequality.
      - NovemberWhiskey 5y ago
        In other words: a large-scale income redistribution that has no realistic probability of adoption in the American political landscape.
        dragonwriter 5y ago
        There are lots of large-scale income redistributions that have been adopted in the US (including EITC, which, while not a UBI, was directly inspired by Negative Income Tax, and earlier name for a policy exactly equivalent to UBI), and the American political landscape changes over time, largely through activism; civil rights, or even abolition, were once things with “no realistic probability of adoption in the American political landscape”, too.
        NovemberWhiskey 5y ago
        The EITC is a $70-75bn program in the context of a $1.5tn income tax - it is not, as such, the kind of large-scale redistribution that we're talking about for a UBI. I also would characterize it as the absolute opposite of a UBI: it is paid only to people who are working; and is more rooted in the history of offsetting increasing FICA taxes for low-income households than in the NIT experiments. Obviously it's hard to prognosticate about the future, but right now the "more left" of the parties with credible possibilities of election success in the U.S. has chosen $400,000 as the income level above which taxes can increase. There's simply no way you can create a UBI on that basis.
  - farmerstan 5y ago
    The problem is Clinton making student loans undischargeable via bankruptcy. That meant it was risk free for lenders to give student loans. That meant institutions could double or triple tuition without any fears because everyone could get an easy loan. The entire system is predatory and cancelling student debt is not the solution because it just means the lenders make all their profits off the backs of taxpayers. The real solution is to make student loans dischargable and for lenders to bear the risk of debt again. Then the markets will return back to normal.
    - FollowingTheDao 5y ago
      Agreed. This is what is called "Socialism for the Rich".
    - malandrew 5y ago
      > undischargeable via bankruptcy What I don't get is why more people trapped by student loans don't just leave the country and set up life elsewhere. Debt is country specific. If you're in debt in country A, you can move to country B and start anew. Undischargeable debt is only an encumbrance on income earned in the country in which you owe the debt.
      - doktorhladnjak 5y ago
        First, it’s a lot to ask of someone to leave the country where their friends and family live. Many aren’t interested in doing that. Immigrating elsewhere is also not easy if you’re in a less in demand profession. Of course these are the ones where it’s most likely to have unsupportable amounts of debt. If you’re a US citizen, you are still required to pay taxes on your global income no matter where you live in the world. If you ever get a tax refund, it can be garnished for federal student loans that are in default.
        inglor_cz 5y ago
        "If you’re a US citizen, you are still required to pay taxes on your global income no matter where you live in the world." The first 108 000 dollars that you make elsewhere are exempt. You can live quite comfortably in most of Europe on 108 000 dollars brutto.
  - DarylZero 5y ago
    Giving people money earmarked for education doesn't lift them out of poverty, because education is just a relative advantage in the job market.* A rising tide does not lift any boat's level relative to the water. [*] In theory, education makes a society produce more on an absolute level -- but only in theory. Giving people UBI is completely different. UBI is in itself a direct cure to poverty. The people receiving UBI are no longer poor at all. UBI abolishes poverty. You no longer have the issue of "the poor" anymore, as it's a category that does not exist. UBI is like giving food to a starving person. It directly cures the starvation. It reverses the very condition of starvation itself. Unlike the indirect approach to addressing poverty, there's no question about whether it would work. The remaining question is whether our economy depends on poverty as a negative incentive much like it depends on prison.
    - jesusofnazarath 5y ago
    - tomp 5y ago
      You explained why UBI wouldn't work in your own answer! "Money is just a relative advantage in the market." If everybody has $x, then competitive products/services will increase by $x in cost! (By "competitive" I mean those than cannot be easily scaled, like housing, education, medicine.)
      - DarylZero 5y ago
        That doesn't make any sense at all. You need to do some thinking.
      - hattmall 5y ago
        All of those can be easily scaled though. They are all simply protected industries with entrenched incumbents weilding political power to maintain their status quo at the expense of everyone else. We could easily have 10x more doctors, houses, and quality educators if the artificial barriers to entry were lowered or removed.
  - chernevik 5y ago
    It doesn't help that we are sending to college a lot of people who don't actually need it and won't profit by it. The obsession with sending everyone to college was based on a correlation/causation mistake with college degrees and income levels.
- alfiedotwtf 5y ago
  People keep talking about UBI, but I've never seen a) who will pay for it and b) who will do the work if you don't need to. Are you able to point to some sources for both answers? From an economics PoV I'm genuinely interested, yet haven't seen any resources take those two problems together seriously. e.g. "our oil industry will pay for it", but then who would work the oil rigs?
  - FollowingTheDao 5y ago
    a) Who would pay for it? We just spent TRILLIONS of dollars propping up businesses during COVID. No one asked "who will pay for it". We have the money and should think of it as an investment. So who would pay for it? We all would. Why? Because it is worth it and it is compassionate and it will make this country (U.S.) a better, happier place. https://www.covidmoneytracker.org https://www.covidmoneytracker.org b) Who will do the work? All the automation will do the work. They have kiosks up in McDonalds right now that mean they only need one person needs to be at a register. But as far as it disincentivizes work..nit has been show it does not, but still people cannot believe this. https://rooseveltinstitute.org/publications/no-strings-attached-behavioral-effects-us-unconditional-cash-transfer-ubi/ https://rooseveltinstitute.org/publications/no-strings-attac... "Overall, the programs analyzed suggest either no effect on labor market supply or a slight reduction in work and earnings. The evidence does not suggest an average worker will drop out of the labor force when provided with unconditional cash, even when the transfer is large."
    - alfiedotwtf 5y ago
      > The evidence does not suggest an average worker will drop out of the labor force when provided with unconditional cash Ok, that's fair. So the average income earner won't stop working. But what about the bottom end of the spectrum i.e someone just above UBI but who has to get up early and travel two hours each way to get to work, or who is just working to put food on the table - with UBI they now have a great reason to stay home. So... what happens if a good chunk of people earning just above UBI rates just stops working because it's just not worth the ROI. You've ended up creating a vacuum which has to be filled. And how do you fill it? Traditionally you either import cheap labor or raise pay to incentivise applicants. Congratulations, you've just started the inflation engine.
- adventured 5y ago
  In a system with so many failing institutions, universal basic income would not only fail to achieve the desired results but would be an economic disaster. You can't fix what ails the US by generically throwing money at it. If the people are being poorly educated, poorly trained, poorly policed, and the culture is rotting, and then you dump an enormous amount of loose money on that garbage fire, what do you expect to get as a return result? It's exceptionally obvious what would happen. For example the biggest problem the US has in healthcare (and education) is cost, not lack of spending. If our costs were more in line with other affluent nations, you could expand Medicaid to cover 40-45% of the population with little additional expenditure. Nobody with a prominent position is brave enough to say it much less attempt to do anything about it (which would involve smashing incomes and jobs in the healthcare field). Some pretend we can spend our way to universal healthcare, ignoring the $1.2+ trillion in costs that have to be slashed before it can be implemented (which is why California can't implement it, they can't come close to affording it without cutting healthcare costs first). That's typical of what goes on in the US, it's a hyper irrational nation, incapable of even basic reasoning + action when it comes to solving big problems. Start by fixing the broken, corrupt institutions. But that's a super hard problem that will take two generations of grinding persistent effort, whereas printing money is easy, which is why so many people love the fantasy of universal basic income.
  - FollowingTheDao 5y ago
    I never said UBI was the only thing that needed to be fixed. But it this basic effort to show we actually care about other people's suffering. Next Universal Healthcare (get rid of the insurers to lower costs)...etc etc...
  - hattmall 5y ago
    Artificial barriers to entry are the problem 100%.
- gnz11 5y ago
  I think it starts with a return to a progressive tax system with higher tax rates on upper incomes. In today's political climate, UBI would be dead on arrival.
  - farmerstan 5y ago
    My marginal tax rate is already 50%. Why in God’s name do people think that the government deserves more of my earnings than I do? Every additional dollar I make busting my ass results in the government taking more than me. That’s sick. I’m all for a flat tax with no tax loopholes but to increase my taxes more than I’m already paying is something I will never vote for.
    - SamoyedFurFluff 5y ago
      A flat tax with no loopholes hurts the poor more than it would hurt you, so I think advocating for it is antithetical to the goal of helping the poor.
      - dnautics 5y ago
        I think most people who advocate for flat tax advocate for a single bracket: a flat percentage with a single income deduction, which is asymptotically flat. So e.g. take 15% of (your income - 40k). This would not hurt the poor.
        kelseyfrog 5y ago
        > This would not hurt the poor. Not sure I follow. I get the first order effects, but I'm hesitant to agree without an explanation of the second-order and systemic-level effects of such a policy.
        dnautics 5y ago
        There are other first order effects that government does (e.g Inflation, arraignments for infractions, vehicle infraction revenue cutting) that drown out those second order effects. Fix those first.
- chordalkeyboard 5y ago
  doubtful, it would just capture more surplus from those who are fortunate enough to have jobs and redirect it to people who could not find work, thereby making them dependent on UBI, worsening the problem.
- farmerstan 5y ago
  I used to believe that UBI was a solution and even donated to Andrew Yang. After seeing the results of the pandemic and all the free money, I have changed my mind. I think UBI did everything that the critics thought it would, namely massive inflation because no one wanted to work and prices had to rise and now everyone is suffering from out of control inflation. UBI is dead in the water.
  - tsimionescu 5y ago
    The current rise of inflation is unlikely to be caused by the meager 2k checks that people got during the pandemic. It is much more likely to be a product of the supply chain crisis, which in turn was caused to a great extent by the known failure mode of just-in-time inventory management. Also, the massive death toll of the pandemic, combined with singinificant behavior changes caused by fear of the same death toll, have left many industries reeling and redistributed wealth allocations in many people's budgets (away from dining out and tourism and into other places like gaming or real-estate), which had hard to measure outcomes. Not to mention, prices for most goods are currently controlled by a handful of companies like Amazon and Walmart, who are in a perfect position to silently collaborate on increasing prices instead of taking a hit on profits like they would normally be forced to if they were in tight competition.
    - briHass 5y ago
      It was more than 2K. States tapped into the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program, which added up to 600/week to existing unemployment rates, as long as your job loss was 'covid related'. In PA, for example, many were receiving over $1000/week. While that certainly doesn't make you rich, it's a strong incentive to not seek out other employment if your regular job only pays around that amount or less.
- dukeofdoom 5y ago
  No it would be better to have cities employ these people as gardeners in the park department. Or have them plant trees or work to restore habitat.
Mikeb85 5y ago
Or how about infrastructure? The fact someone needs a car is itself a failure.
- settrans 5y ago
  Got it. So how should people get to their jobs at the farms? Or the mines? Or the oil fields? Or the factories? Or the mills?
  - jmknoll 5y ago
    For sure rural jobs aren’t a great fit for public transportation. But most people commuting to work by car are commuting to offices, retail stores, restaurants, and other places in semi-densely populated areas that could be better served by public transit.
    - settrans 5y ago
      OK, then how do people commute to their jobs (restaurants, shoe stores, or schools) in the small towns that support farms, mines, factories or mills?
      - nanomonkey 5y ago
        At human speeds: walk, bike, tractor, hitch a ride on a lorry (max speed 45mph), horse. Trains are useful for connecting longer distances at specific times of the day (commuting). Highways create an artificial monopoly on travel. You cannot easily travel along them, or cross them if you can't drive over 45mph. This speed is only getting higher. There are studies showing that travel has actually gone down in areas like Mexico with the addition of modern Highways. The poor just can't participate.
        giardini 5y ago
        nanomonkey says>"There are studies showing that travel has actually gone down in areas like Mexico with the addition of modern Highways. The poor just can't participate."< More likely the poor used the highway once - to get out of the country and to the city. It isn't that they "can't participate", it's that they are gone.
kiawe_fire 5y ago
This is a good point that isn't given enough attention by either side. I grew up in poverty and faced homelessness many times, and my experience anytime a public/government program was offered to help people like me specifically, it only made things worse, either directly or indirectly. Every single time. Extra policing meant more poor people pulled over in their raggedy cars and ticketed for vain things. Food assistance meant lots of forms being filled out, and the risk that your inconsistent income might go just above the threshold next month and kick you off for the whole year when your income drops immediately thereafter. Healthcare assistance meant even more forms, confusing jargon, and always started with "don't worry, we'll take care of it" and ended with "you now owe $5000". I could write posts full of examples. Even worse, once I identified this, I could then be labeled "too stupid to know what was best for me" or "just sticking up for the rich" when I expressed my concern for this around (mostly more privileged) friends. Naturally I tend toward libertarian hands-off opinions on things like this now as a result, but not because I don't think food assistance or satiation of basic healthcare needs could be helpful. Quite the contrary, they could make a huge difference if done in the right balance and the right way. But given the realities of how these things work, and have worked my entire life, the institutions creating and promoting these things are either incompetent or corrupt, or both. If all of these caring researchers and think tanks put more effort into retrospectively finding out what is going wrong with these programs as they exist today, and found a way to restore competence and trust to the programs and the institutions behind them -- if everyone could be honest about the actual results of their efforts rather than just patting themselves on the back for doing what felt good while ignoring the people they caused to suffer -- then I'd likely feel differently. It makes me wonder if my problem growing up weren't the supposed "safety nets" that blew up in my face each time, but rather the institutions behind them, and that they should be the first problem solved before we move on to the assistance itself.
- ModernMech 5y ago
  My favorite example of the safety net not working is when my wife applied for unemployment, she was told she didn't make enough while she was employed to qualify for assistance. That's right, she was too poor to qualify for help. Their solution? Go get a job and make more money, then she could qualify for unemployment. Gee thanks, I wish I had thought of that plan.
newbamboo 5y ago
American poor are still richer than the average person in many places. The cheapest housing in California is triple the median rent in many other states. Not everyone can relocate, many become poor instead. Competition creates poor and rich, and the system requires competition for growth.
clairity 5y ago
it's magical thinking to believe that 'fixing' institutions will somehow fix society, especially for the poor. greater institutional efficiency will simply concentrate wealth faster. the same for UBI, which would lock in disparity rather than relieve it (by making extractive businesses more profitable, exacerbating inequalities). poverty isn't simply about money or possessions, but rather is fundamentally about opportunity and esteem, to meaningful work and fair wages first and foremost. that means, most importantly, lower profits and a radically different economic dynamic that doesn't place capital on a singular pinnacle. this is the elephant in the room that no politician really wants to address around poverty, because it'd directly oppose all of their wealthy backers in one fell swoop. it's exactly why we never get any movement, except hair-brained policies, like UBI, that are meant to surreptitiously funnel public funds into greedy private hands and make things worse for the poor in the long run.
- vorpalhex 5y ago
  The US, and most first world nations, have very low poverty compared to other nations - and that poverty has decreased over time. > that means, most importantly, lower profits and a radically different economic dynamic that doesn't place capital on a singular pinnacle Capitalism has been the most effective vehicle to reduce poverty in the 20th and 21st century. Communism, socialism and most hybrid attempts have been outright failures in comparison. That politicians don't want to embrace some other economic model isn't some conspiracy. It's just plain sense.
  - clairity 5y ago
    11% isn't 'low poverty', especially in the richest of nations. it's vulgar. capitalism isn't some miracle that created the current american politicoeconomic environment. the single biggest (but not sole) factor (i.e., luck) in that was geographic: it just so happened 2 huge oceans separated us from the biggest war in history. cheerleading for capitalism is at best a non sequitur.
    - vorpalhex 5y ago
      11% is amazingly low when huge parts of the world are at 50% [1]. Obviously we should strive to be better still, but let's not pretend that isn't a huge accomplishment that wasn't possible for the last several millenia of modern human existence. This isn't the case just for the US but also for the UK and our fellow Europeans who also practiced Capitalism - even the ones who had to endure the great wars. You are welcome to suggest an alternative but you will have to support it. The choice of Capitalism seems critically important, along with the choice of some sort of Democracy. [1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/poverty-rate-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/poverty-r...
coldtea 5y ago
>The article doesn’t say much about what would help. Jobs that pay well, and don't require the poor to fuck their work/life balance or drive them to neglect/feel their kids as a burden. Inflation-adjusted minimum wage imposed to all businesses/states. If they can't afford, they can go bust, like with any other cost of doing business. Cheap rents and affordable housing. Protective nets for periods of illness/unemployment/etc. School districts equally equipped, with good teachers. Free (or very affordable, no-loan-based) college education if their kid passes a hard tamper-proof exam. Taxes on outsourcing work outside the country.
- Skunkleton 5y ago
  As an engineer, I have many privileges. Two that stand out here are salary, and the power dynamic I enjoy with my employer. I am well paid, enough said. I also am not beholden to the whims of my management. I can take time off, they need me to be happy, I can effect change on my management as they can effect change on their subordinates. High pay is great, but to a point, I place a higher value on the dignity that I enjoy in my employment. > Inflation-adjusted minimum wage imposed to all businesses/states. I can't say I have a better idea here, but the whole concept of a minimum wage seems like a problem. It strongly implies that there are a large class of jobs where the employer has all of the power, and does not have to compete to attract employees. Also strongly implied is that minimum wage workers do not have an alternative means of supporting themselves. Practically speaking, raising minimum wage regularly should help keep workers out of poverty. Still, these people will still have to contend with employers that treat them like commodities, with no real alternative way to support themselves.
  - e40 5y ago
    Your two points are so incredibly key. I've felt and known this for a long time. The last 5-6 years has made me thing so much of _why_ this is the case is rooted in: 1. Race and how people are perceived--the rise of race issues in the referenced period is so confusing to me, as I thought we were getting past them, but it is very clear that a huge percentage of the US population is still have 19th century views on race. 2. Certain companies (like Amazon) who few low-skilled workers as machines to use up and throw away. As for the "inflation-adjusted minimum wage" ... the argument used to be "small businesses will suffer" but strangely I haven't heard that in a long time. In fact, I don't hear anyone refuting the idea of IAMW. It's so insane to me that we don't do this. Maybe that would give politicians an incentive to keep inflation low? (Because they want to keep the minimum wage as low as possible?)
sfblah 5y ago
I don't fully understand why so many people can't accept the notion that people have different levels of capability to succeed. Maybe most folks who are poor just don't have the mental capacity to do much more than they're doing. If that's true, then definitionally nothing will really "help" short of something like UBI. And even that might fail since recipients will get swindled out of the money. To me, it's unfortunate that the notion of different levels of capability has been transmuted into some kind of social ill that "must" be solved. It'd be like reading articles about why not everyone can run a 5 minute mile and what can be done about it. Not everyone can run a 5 minute mile! It's not fixable!
- fartboi 5y ago
- amrocha 5y ago
  This is a straw man. Nobody is saying everyone should be genius Olympian. The argument is that the janitor, the fast food worker, the cashier deserve a livable wage. They don't deserve to have decades slashed off their life expectancy because they're poor. They shouldn't have to ration insulin because they're poor. They shouldn't have to commute for 2 hours because they're poor.
  - tomjakubowski 5y ago
    > deserve a livable wage Is a "market wage", supplemented by payments from public money to reach decent living standards, acceptable? That's what UBI would be, in theory at least.
    - amrocha 5y ago
      A better solution imo would be a society where necessities are free, and people can work for anything above that. But really, anything other than what we have right now would be an improvement.
  - sfblah 5y ago
    It's not at all a straw man. Large swaths of the political spectrum in the US now reject the notion that there are different levels of intellectual capability.
bumby 5y ago
>wide availability of credit I think I know the intent of why this is on your list, but, honestly, my family members who are in a cycle of poverty are there in no small part because of a cycle of debt. And I'm not talking about unavoidable debt like from a medical condition, but rather from debt from buying depreciating assets they cannot afford (cars, tvs, etc.) Widely available credit, IMO, makes the situation worse.
devmor 5y ago
Paying your way out of inconvenience is a huuuge privilege that some of us I think forget we have. I grew up extremely poor so I end up doing a lot of annoying things myself and a lot of my colleagues ask things like "why don't you just pay someone to fix your washing machine". Or like your example of driving tests. I let my license lapse when I first started working from home and had to retest to get it. If I hadn't been able to pay $300 for a private driving test I'd have had to take time off work to do it - and a poor person generally can't afford time off work, that goes unpaid for an hourly job.
andrei_says_ 5y ago
Cash. Cash helps. https://www.ted.com/talks/rutger_bregman_poverty_isn_t_a_lack_of_character_it_s_a_lack_of_cash?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/rutger_bregman_poverty_isn_t_a_lac...
neurotech1 5y ago
I live in San Francisco, and while I largely agree with you, one of the larger challenges is the lack of accountability for the organisations and the staff that provide services to the poor and homeless. It seems they spend more money doing a lousy job than providing the services to a higher standard so more of the poorer people can get the assistance they need and find good, stable jobs.

FollowingTheDao 5y ago

>The article doesn’t say much about what would help. A Universal Basic Income would be a good start.

DoreenMichele 5y ago
I don't think so. It was once thought that student loans would be some panacea lifting poor people out of poverty by giving them access to education and the end result is lots of people overburdened by debt while waiting tables because so many people have degrees that a degree isn't remotely some kind of reasonable assurance that you can get a job in a particular field.
- adventured 5y ago
  Absolutely. We'd be so much better off by semi copying Germany's culture of vocational training. And it wouldn't be expensive to do compared to the rather crazy sums we presently throw at higher education. Plus we very much need the skilled labor in a vast array of fields.
  - zozbot234 5y ago
    Fix K12 education first - that's where the highest plausible effects are. Vocational education can be a part of the picture, but it's actually really hard to do well.
  - analog31 5y ago
    You also have to fix the vocations themselves with better workplace safety laws, non-discrimination, health care, retirement, safety net, unions. A trades person is exposed to high risk if something happens to their bodies and prevents them from working a full career, or there's a cyclic downturn in something like construction.
- FollowingTheDao 5y ago
  UBI is not a loan. Student loans have to be paid back and they also only resulted sun universities rising tuition. Education does not fix poverty. Money fixes poverty.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > UBI is not a loan Right: UBI together with any reasonable funding mechanism is a structural force working against economic inequality.
    - NovemberWhiskey 5y ago
      In other words: a large-scale income redistribution that has no realistic probability of adoption in the American political landscape.
      - dragonwriter 5y ago
        There are lots of large-scale income redistributions that have been adopted in the US (including EITC, which, while not a UBI, was directly inspired by Negative Income Tax, and earlier name for a policy exactly equivalent to UBI), and the American political landscape changes over time, largely through activism; civil rights, or even abolition, were once things with “no realistic probability of adoption in the American political landscape”, too.
        NovemberWhiskey 5y ago
        The EITC is a $70-75bn program in the context of a $1.5tn income tax - it is not, as such, the kind of large-scale redistribution that we're talking about for a UBI. I also would characterize it as the absolute opposite of a UBI: it is paid only to people who are working; and is more rooted in the history of offsetting increasing FICA taxes for low-income households than in the NIT experiments. Obviously it's hard to prognosticate about the future, but right now the "more left" of the parties with credible possibilities of election success in the U.S. has chosen $400,000 as the income level above which taxes can increase. There's simply no way you can create a UBI on that basis.
- farmerstan 5y ago
  The problem is Clinton making student loans undischargeable via bankruptcy. That meant it was risk free for lenders to give student loans. That meant institutions could double or triple tuition without any fears because everyone could get an easy loan. The entire system is predatory and cancelling student debt is not the solution because it just means the lenders make all their profits off the backs of taxpayers. The real solution is to make student loans dischargable and for lenders to bear the risk of debt again. Then the markets will return back to normal.
  - FollowingTheDao 5y ago
    Agreed. This is what is called "Socialism for the Rich".
  - malandrew 5y ago
    > undischargeable via bankruptcy What I don't get is why more people trapped by student loans don't just leave the country and set up life elsewhere. Debt is country specific. If you're in debt in country A, you can move to country B and start anew. Undischargeable debt is only an encumbrance on income earned in the country in which you owe the debt.
    - doktorhladnjak 5y ago
      First, it’s a lot to ask of someone to leave the country where their friends and family live. Many aren’t interested in doing that. Immigrating elsewhere is also not easy if you’re in a less in demand profession. Of course these are the ones where it’s most likely to have unsupportable amounts of debt. If you’re a US citizen, you are still required to pay taxes on your global income no matter where you live in the world. If you ever get a tax refund, it can be garnished for federal student loans that are in default.
      - inglor_cz 5y ago
        "If you’re a US citizen, you are still required to pay taxes on your global income no matter where you live in the world." The first 108 000 dollars that you make elsewhere are exempt. You can live quite comfortably in most of Europe on 108 000 dollars brutto.
- DarylZero 5y ago
  Giving people money earmarked for education doesn't lift them out of poverty, because education is just a relative advantage in the job market.* A rising tide does not lift any boat's level relative to the water. [*] In theory, education makes a society produce more on an absolute level -- but only in theory. Giving people UBI is completely different. UBI is in itself a direct cure to poverty. The people receiving UBI are no longer poor at all. UBI abolishes poverty. You no longer have the issue of "the poor" anymore, as it's a category that does not exist. UBI is like giving food to a starving person. It directly cures the starvation. It reverses the very condition of starvation itself. Unlike the indirect approach to addressing poverty, there's no question about whether it would work. The remaining question is whether our economy depends on poverty as a negative incentive much like it depends on prison.
  - jesusofnazarath 5y ago
  - tomp 5y ago
    You explained why UBI wouldn't work in your own answer! "Money is just a relative advantage in the market." If everybody has $x, then competitive products/services will increase by $x in cost! (By "competitive" I mean those than cannot be easily scaled, like housing, education, medicine.)
    - DarylZero 5y ago
      That doesn't make any sense at all. You need to do some thinking.
    - hattmall 5y ago
      All of those can be easily scaled though. They are all simply protected industries with entrenched incumbents weilding political power to maintain their status quo at the expense of everyone else. We could easily have 10x more doctors, houses, and quality educators if the artificial barriers to entry were lowered or removed.
- chernevik 5y ago
  It doesn't help that we are sending to college a lot of people who don't actually need it and won't profit by it. The obsession with sending everyone to college was based on a correlation/causation mistake with college degrees and income levels.
alfiedotwtf 5y ago
People keep talking about UBI, but I've never seen a) who will pay for it and b) who will do the work if you don't need to. Are you able to point to some sources for both answers? From an economics PoV I'm genuinely interested, yet haven't seen any resources take those two problems together seriously. e.g. "our oil industry will pay for it", but then who would work the oil rigs?
- FollowingTheDao 5y ago
  a) Who would pay for it? We just spent TRILLIONS of dollars propping up businesses during COVID. No one asked "who will pay for it". We have the money and should think of it as an investment. So who would pay for it? We all would. Why? Because it is worth it and it is compassionate and it will make this country (U.S.) a better, happier place. https://www.covidmoneytracker.org https://www.covidmoneytracker.org b) Who will do the work? All the automation will do the work. They have kiosks up in McDonalds right now that mean they only need one person needs to be at a register. But as far as it disincentivizes work..nit has been show it does not, but still people cannot believe this. https://rooseveltinstitute.org/publications/no-strings-attached-behavioral-effects-us-unconditional-cash-transfer-ubi/ https://rooseveltinstitute.org/publications/no-strings-attac... "Overall, the programs analyzed suggest either no effect on labor market supply or a slight reduction in work and earnings. The evidence does not suggest an average worker will drop out of the labor force when provided with unconditional cash, even when the transfer is large."
  - alfiedotwtf 5y ago
    > The evidence does not suggest an average worker will drop out of the labor force when provided with unconditional cash Ok, that's fair. So the average income earner won't stop working. But what about the bottom end of the spectrum i.e someone just above UBI but who has to get up early and travel two hours each way to get to work, or who is just working to put food on the table - with UBI they now have a great reason to stay home. So... what happens if a good chunk of people earning just above UBI rates just stops working because it's just not worth the ROI. You've ended up creating a vacuum which has to be filled. And how do you fill it? Traditionally you either import cheap labor or raise pay to incentivise applicants. Congratulations, you've just started the inflation engine.
adventured 5y ago
In a system with so many failing institutions, universal basic income would not only fail to achieve the desired results but would be an economic disaster. You can't fix what ails the US by generically throwing money at it. If the people are being poorly educated, poorly trained, poorly policed, and the culture is rotting, and then you dump an enormous amount of loose money on that garbage fire, what do you expect to get as a return result? It's exceptionally obvious what would happen. For example the biggest problem the US has in healthcare (and education) is cost, not lack of spending. If our costs were more in line with other affluent nations, you could expand Medicaid to cover 40-45% of the population with little additional expenditure. Nobody with a prominent position is brave enough to say it much less attempt to do anything about it (which would involve smashing incomes and jobs in the healthcare field). Some pretend we can spend our way to universal healthcare, ignoring the $1.2+ trillion in costs that have to be slashed before it can be implemented (which is why California can't implement it, they can't come close to affording it without cutting healthcare costs first). That's typical of what goes on in the US, it's a hyper irrational nation, incapable of even basic reasoning + action when it comes to solving big problems. Start by fixing the broken, corrupt institutions. But that's a super hard problem that will take two generations of grinding persistent effort, whereas printing money is easy, which is why so many people love the fantasy of universal basic income.
- FollowingTheDao 5y ago
  I never said UBI was the only thing that needed to be fixed. But it this basic effort to show we actually care about other people's suffering. Next Universal Healthcare (get rid of the insurers to lower costs)...etc etc...
- hattmall 5y ago
  Artificial barriers to entry are the problem 100%.
gnz11 5y ago
I think it starts with a return to a progressive tax system with higher tax rates on upper incomes. In today's political climate, UBI would be dead on arrival.
- farmerstan 5y ago
  My marginal tax rate is already 50%. Why in God’s name do people think that the government deserves more of my earnings than I do? Every additional dollar I make busting my ass results in the government taking more than me. That’s sick. I’m all for a flat tax with no tax loopholes but to increase my taxes more than I’m already paying is something I will never vote for.
  - SamoyedFurFluff 5y ago
    A flat tax with no loopholes hurts the poor more than it would hurt you, so I think advocating for it is antithetical to the goal of helping the poor.
    - dnautics 5y ago
      I think most people who advocate for flat tax advocate for a single bracket: a flat percentage with a single income deduction, which is asymptotically flat. So e.g. take 15% of (your income - 40k). This would not hurt the poor.
      - kelseyfrog 5y ago
        > This would not hurt the poor. Not sure I follow. I get the first order effects, but I'm hesitant to agree without an explanation of the second-order and systemic-level effects of such a policy.
        dnautics 5y ago
        There are other first order effects that government does (e.g Inflation, arraignments for infractions, vehicle infraction revenue cutting) that drown out those second order effects. Fix those first.
chordalkeyboard 5y ago
doubtful, it would just capture more surplus from those who are fortunate enough to have jobs and redirect it to people who could not find work, thereby making them dependent on UBI, worsening the problem.
farmerstan 5y ago
I used to believe that UBI was a solution and even donated to Andrew Yang. After seeing the results of the pandemic and all the free money, I have changed my mind. I think UBI did everything that the critics thought it would, namely massive inflation because no one wanted to work and prices had to rise and now everyone is suffering from out of control inflation. UBI is dead in the water.
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  The current rise of inflation is unlikely to be caused by the meager 2k checks that people got during the pandemic. It is much more likely to be a product of the supply chain crisis, which in turn was caused to a great extent by the known failure mode of just-in-time inventory management. Also, the massive death toll of the pandemic, combined with singinificant behavior changes caused by fear of the same death toll, have left many industries reeling and redistributed wealth allocations in many people's budgets (away from dining out and tourism and into other places like gaming or real-estate), which had hard to measure outcomes. Not to mention, prices for most goods are currently controlled by a handful of companies like Amazon and Walmart, who are in a perfect position to silently collaborate on increasing prices instead of taking a hit on profits like they would normally be forced to if they were in tight competition.
  - briHass 5y ago
    It was more than 2K. States tapped into the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program, which added up to 600/week to existing unemployment rates, as long as your job loss was 'covid related'. In PA, for example, many were receiving over $1000/week. While that certainly doesn't make you rich, it's a strong incentive to not seek out other employment if your regular job only pays around that amount or less.
dukeofdoom 5y ago
No it would be better to have cities employ these people as gardeners in the park department. Or have them plant trees or work to restore habitat.

Mikeb85 5y ago

Or how about infrastructure? The fact someone needs a car is itself a failure.

settrans 5y ago
Got it. So how should people get to their jobs at the farms? Or the mines? Or the oil fields? Or the factories? Or the mills?
- jmknoll 5y ago
  For sure rural jobs aren’t a great fit for public transportation. But most people commuting to work by car are commuting to offices, retail stores, restaurants, and other places in semi-densely populated areas that could be better served by public transit.
  - settrans 5y ago
    OK, then how do people commute to their jobs (restaurants, shoe stores, or schools) in the small towns that support farms, mines, factories or mills?
    - nanomonkey 5y ago
      At human speeds: walk, bike, tractor, hitch a ride on a lorry (max speed 45mph), horse. Trains are useful for connecting longer distances at specific times of the day (commuting). Highways create an artificial monopoly on travel. You cannot easily travel along them, or cross them if you can't drive over 45mph. This speed is only getting higher. There are studies showing that travel has actually gone down in areas like Mexico with the addition of modern Highways. The poor just can't participate.
      - giardini 5y ago
        nanomonkey says>"There are studies showing that travel has actually gone down in areas like Mexico with the addition of modern Highways. The poor just can't participate."< More likely the poor used the highway once - to get out of the country and to the city. It isn't that they "can't participate", it's that they are gone.

kiawe_fire 5y ago

This is a good point that isn't given enough attention by either side. I grew up in poverty and faced homelessness many times, and my experience anytime a public/government program was offered to help people like me specifically, it only made things worse, either directly or indirectly. Every single time. Extra policing meant more poor people pulled over in their raggedy cars and ticketed for vain things. Food assistance meant lots of forms being filled out, and the risk that your inconsistent income might go just above the threshold next month and kick you off for the whole year when your income drops immediately thereafter. Healthcare assistance meant even more forms, confusing jargon, and always started with "don't worry, we'll take care of it" and ended with "you now owe $5000". I could write posts full of examples. Even worse, once I identified this, I could then be labeled "too stupid to know what was best for me" or "just sticking up for the rich" when I expressed my concern for this around (mostly more privileged) friends. Naturally I tend toward libertarian hands-off opinions on things like this now as a result, but not because I don't think food assistance or satiation of basic healthcare needs could be helpful. Quite the contrary, they could make a huge difference if done in the right balance and the right way. But given the realities of how these things work, and have worked my entire life, the institutions creating and promoting these things are either incompetent or corrupt, or both. If all of these caring researchers and think tanks put more effort into retrospectively finding out what is going wrong with these programs as they exist today, and found a way to restore competence and trust to the programs and the institutions behind them -- if everyone could be honest about the actual results of their efforts rather than just patting themselves on the back for doing what felt good while ignoring the people they caused to suffer -- then I'd likely feel differently. It makes me wonder if my problem growing up weren't the supposed "safety nets" that blew up in my face each time, but rather the institutions behind them, and that they should be the first problem solved before we move on to the assistance itself.

ModernMech 5y ago
My favorite example of the safety net not working is when my wife applied for unemployment, she was told she didn't make enough while she was employed to qualify for assistance. That's right, she was too poor to qualify for help. Their solution? Go get a job and make more money, then she could qualify for unemployment. Gee thanks, I wish I had thought of that plan.

newbamboo 5y ago

American poor are still richer than the average person in many places. The cheapest housing in California is triple the median rent in many other states. Not everyone can relocate, many become poor instead. Competition creates poor and rich, and the system requires competition for growth.

clairity 5y ago

it's magical thinking to believe that 'fixing' institutions will somehow fix society, especially for the poor. greater institutional efficiency will simply concentrate wealth faster. the same for UBI, which would lock in disparity rather than relieve it (by making extractive businesses more profitable, exacerbating inequalities). poverty isn't simply about money or possessions, but rather is fundamentally about opportunity and esteem, to meaningful work and fair wages first and foremost. that means, most importantly, lower profits and a radically different economic dynamic that doesn't place capital on a singular pinnacle. this is the elephant in the room that no politician really wants to address around poverty, because it'd directly oppose all of their wealthy backers in one fell swoop. it's exactly why we never get any movement, except hair-brained policies, like UBI, that are meant to surreptitiously funnel public funds into greedy private hands and make things worse for the poor in the long run.

vorpalhex 5y ago
The US, and most first world nations, have very low poverty compared to other nations - and that poverty has decreased over time. > that means, most importantly, lower profits and a radically different economic dynamic that doesn't place capital on a singular pinnacle Capitalism has been the most effective vehicle to reduce poverty in the 20th and 21st century. Communism, socialism and most hybrid attempts have been outright failures in comparison. That politicians don't want to embrace some other economic model isn't some conspiracy. It's just plain sense.
- clairity 5y ago
  11% isn't 'low poverty', especially in the richest of nations. it's vulgar. capitalism isn't some miracle that created the current american politicoeconomic environment. the single biggest (but not sole) factor (i.e., luck) in that was geographic: it just so happened 2 huge oceans separated us from the biggest war in history. cheerleading for capitalism is at best a non sequitur.
  - vorpalhex 5y ago
    11% is amazingly low when huge parts of the world are at 50% [1]. Obviously we should strive to be better still, but let's not pretend that isn't a huge accomplishment that wasn't possible for the last several millenia of modern human existence. This isn't the case just for the US but also for the UK and our fellow Europeans who also practiced Capitalism - even the ones who had to endure the great wars. You are welcome to suggest an alternative but you will have to support it. The choice of Capitalism seems critically important, along with the choice of some sort of Democracy. [1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/poverty-rate-by-country https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/poverty-r...

coldtea 5y ago

>The article doesn’t say much about what would help. Jobs that pay well, and don't require the poor to fuck their work/life balance or drive them to neglect/feel their kids as a burden. Inflation-adjusted minimum wage imposed to all businesses/states. If they can't afford, they can go bust, like with any other cost of doing business. Cheap rents and affordable housing. Protective nets for periods of illness/unemployment/etc. School districts equally equipped, with good teachers. Free (or very affordable, no-loan-based) college education if their kid passes a hard tamper-proof exam. Taxes on outsourcing work outside the country.

Skunkleton 5y ago
As an engineer, I have many privileges. Two that stand out here are salary, and the power dynamic I enjoy with my employer. I am well paid, enough said. I also am not beholden to the whims of my management. I can take time off, they need me to be happy, I can effect change on my management as they can effect change on their subordinates. High pay is great, but to a point, I place a higher value on the dignity that I enjoy in my employment. > Inflation-adjusted minimum wage imposed to all businesses/states. I can't say I have a better idea here, but the whole concept of a minimum wage seems like a problem. It strongly implies that there are a large class of jobs where the employer has all of the power, and does not have to compete to attract employees. Also strongly implied is that minimum wage workers do not have an alternative means of supporting themselves. Practically speaking, raising minimum wage regularly should help keep workers out of poverty. Still, these people will still have to contend with employers that treat them like commodities, with no real alternative way to support themselves.
- e40 5y ago
  Your two points are so incredibly key. I've felt and known this for a long time. The last 5-6 years has made me thing so much of _why_ this is the case is rooted in: 1. Race and how people are perceived--the rise of race issues in the referenced period is so confusing to me, as I thought we were getting past them, but it is very clear that a huge percentage of the US population is still have 19th century views on race. 2. Certain companies (like Amazon) who few low-skilled workers as machines to use up and throw away. As for the "inflation-adjusted minimum wage" ... the argument used to be "small businesses will suffer" but strangely I haven't heard that in a long time. In fact, I don't hear anyone refuting the idea of IAMW. It's so insane to me that we don't do this. Maybe that would give politicians an incentive to keep inflation low? (Because they want to keep the minimum wage as low as possible?)

sfblah 5y ago

I don't fully understand why so many people can't accept the notion that people have different levels of capability to succeed. Maybe most folks who are poor just don't have the mental capacity to do much more than they're doing. If that's true, then definitionally nothing will really "help" short of something like UBI. And even that might fail since recipients will get swindled out of the money. To me, it's unfortunate that the notion of different levels of capability has been transmuted into some kind of social ill that "must" be solved. It'd be like reading articles about why not everyone can run a 5 minute mile and what can be done about it. Not everyone can run a 5 minute mile! It's not fixable!

fartboi 5y ago
amrocha 5y ago
This is a straw man. Nobody is saying everyone should be genius Olympian. The argument is that the janitor, the fast food worker, the cashier deserve a livable wage. They don't deserve to have decades slashed off their life expectancy because they're poor. They shouldn't have to ration insulin because they're poor. They shouldn't have to commute for 2 hours because they're poor.
- tomjakubowski 5y ago
  > deserve a livable wage Is a "market wage", supplemented by payments from public money to reach decent living standards, acceptable? That's what UBI would be, in theory at least.
  - amrocha 5y ago
    A better solution imo would be a society where necessities are free, and people can work for anything above that. But really, anything other than what we have right now would be an improvement.
- sfblah 5y ago
  It's not at all a straw man. Large swaths of the political spectrum in the US now reject the notion that there are different levels of intellectual capability.

bumby 5y ago

>wide availability of credit I think I know the intent of why this is on your list, but, honestly, my family members who are in a cycle of poverty are there in no small part because of a cycle of debt. And I'm not talking about unavoidable debt like from a medical condition, but rather from debt from buying depreciating assets they cannot afford (cars, tvs, etc.) Widely available credit, IMO, makes the situation worse.

devmor 5y ago

Paying your way out of inconvenience is a huuuge privilege that some of us I think forget we have. I grew up extremely poor so I end up doing a lot of annoying things myself and a lot of my colleagues ask things like "why don't you just pay someone to fix your washing machine". Or like your example of driving tests. I let my license lapse when I first started working from home and had to retest to get it. If I hadn't been able to pay $300 for a private driving test I'd have had to take time off work to do it - and a poor person generally can't afford time off work, that goes unpaid for an hourly job.

andrei_says_ 5y ago

Cash. Cash helps. https://www.ted.com/talks/rutger_bregman_poverty_isn_t_a_lack_of_character_it_s_a_lack_of_cash?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/rutger_bregman_poverty_isn_t_a_lac...

neurotech1 5y ago

I live in San Francisco, and while I largely agree with you, one of the larger challenges is the lack of accountability for the organisations and the staff that provide services to the poor and homeless. It seems they spend more money doing a lousy job than providing the services to a higher standard so more of the poorer people can get the assistance they need and find good, stable jobs.