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The main problem with government poverty programs is that they usually focus on spending money instead of giving money to people who need it. That is, the gover

The main problem with government poverty programs is that they usually focus on spending money instead of giving money to people who need it. That is, the government spends money on things, but this is a very inefficient or even counterproductive way to help. And a lot of the time it just means that the money is going to whoever is politically connected. A much more efficient way to help people is just to give them money directly, and then people can spend it on whatever they think they need.

cptskippy 4y ago
This stems from the fundamental conservative beliefs that the system is fair and your station in life is a result of your actions or efforts. Thus a fundamental opposition to actually charity and instead dangling opportunities for people to help themselves. Running those programs is of course non trivial so the capitalist naturally offer to run them for the government at a modest fee.
- brodouevencode 4y ago
  That’s not a conservative take per se, meritocracy was a notion whose popularity came directly from the Enlightenment.
  - cptskippy 4y ago
    No one said that it was a creation of conservatives, just that it was a belief. People's beliefs are usually impressed upon them by externalities like the community that raised them or traumas they endured.
- PragmaticPulp 4y ago
  > This stems from the fundamental conservative beliefs that the system is fair and your station in life is a result of your actions or efforts. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a conservative say that life is fair. It’s more common to hear talk about “life isn’t fair” and how people shouldn’t expect every unfair thing to be corrected for them by someone else.
  - plokiju 4y ago
    There’s definitely still some who believe in the American dream idea, where anyone who comes to America and works hard can pull themselves up by their bootstraps and become successful. That often leads to the idea that if you’re poorer than me, you’re probably not working as hard as I am. And giving you handouts is unfair and offensive, because you just need to work for it
    - PragmaticPulp 4y ago
      > There’s definitely still some who believe in the American dream idea America is objectively and statistically one of the better places to succeed in this way, despite the shortcomings. If you believe that nobody or very few people think the “American Dream” is real, you’re probably in a bubble. This kind of out of touch cynicism is only really rampant on social media.
      - Timon3 4y ago
        Objectively and statistically speaking, it's really not. The Global Social Mobility Index 2020 places it at 27th place. Considering its economic place in the world that's pretty bad. At best you could say it's slightly above-average.
    - ThrowawayR2 4y ago
      > "There’s definitely still some who believe in the American dream idea, where anyone who comes to America and works hard can pull themselves up by their bootstraps and become successful." Which, in the case of immigrants coming to the United States, is often exactly what happens, proving that it is still mostly true. Americans don't appreciate how good they have it.
      - AniseAbyss 4y ago
        [dead]
- softjobs 4y ago
  https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Just_world_hypothesis https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Just_world_hypothesis
Nifty3929 4y ago
Just replying to myself to make what I hope is an obvious point: Yet, giving money does not in itself create any new stuff to buy. It pushed prices up, and (at least temporarily) profits for those businesses providing the stuff. Nevertheless, it does even things out, and the higher profits will spur more competition in those industries that produce the things poor people are buying (if allowed), which ultimately achieves the desired result. But any which way you look at it, and even if not perfect, giving money is the best way to help of the available options.
- AniseAbyss 4y ago
  [dead]
whitemary 4y ago
Close, but the most efficient way to help people is to provide the services they need without depending on the private sector to deliver them. For example, if cash benefits are universally increased by $500, low-end rents will also increase by approximately that same amount, like clock work. UBI would be a catastrophe for many reasons, but this is the most straightforward of them.
- ISL 4y ago
  If low-end rents double, building housing looks a lot more attractive.
  - polygamous_bat 4y ago
    Except current landlords have local governments in a stranglehold and you can't build any new housing at all.
    - sologoub 4y ago
      That’s not the entire picture -Builder’s Remedy apperently is working: “ For example, after Santa Monica failed to pass a compliant housing development plan, developers employed the builder's remedy to move forward with the construction of approximately 4,000 new housing units spread across 12 new development sites.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Builder%27s_remedy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Builder%27s_remedy That’s nearly an 8.8% increase from the current 45,487 units total (including all houses) https://scag.ca.gov/sites/main/files/file-attachments/santa-monica-he-0421.pdf?1620767629 https://scag.ca.gov/sites/main/files/file-attachments/santa-...
      - catiopatio 4y ago
        It’s “working” insofar as it represents a giveaway to value-extracting development interests, nearly all of which seek to grow the permanent renter class. It remains to be seen whether that will reduce housing costs.
bigtex88 4y ago
UBI will always be the best answer. MLK advocated for it as the best way to alleviate poverty. Even Milton Friedman believed in a pseudo-UBI through his Negative Income Tax.
- skeeter2020 4y ago
  The biggest problem is that NIT or even UBI is supported by many on the right as an alternative to the "government knows best" spending programs and as an addition by many on the left. For someone like me who ends up paying the majority of any social program, the former is a good idea and the latter a non-starter, but politically you'll never find an elected (or even electable) politician who will advocate for replacing existing, entrenched programs with direct cash payments.
- peanuty1 4y ago
  Why should we care what MLK thought about UBI?
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - jobs_throwaway 4y ago
    His great moral standing and wisdom
  - glhaynes 4y ago
    MLK is largely seen as a virtuous, wise person. A lot of moral sentiment enters into people's opinions on social economics. Also, people look to group sentiment to calibrate whether a proposal is more extreme than they want to think of themselves/be thought of. MLK having expressed a favorable opinion about it makes UBI less susceptible to "that's evil, naive communism"-style attacks.
    - rhaway84773 4y ago
      It also helps fight against the reverse, a knee jerk “that’s evil, hyper capitalism in disguise” sentiments.
salawat 4y ago
>A much more efficient way to help people is just to give them money directly, and then people can spend it on whatever they think they need. Capital tends to accrete capital. If you aren't actively hostile to passive capital accretion, eventually you'll end up with a handful of people making most of the capital allocation decisions.
- mordae 4y ago
  I don't believe it works like that when everyone has their needs met, specifically with UBI. Possible losses from breaking the law and getting caught would drive the price of white-collar crime up non-linearly. It would also be easier to unionize, which would help combat inequality.
  - imtringued 4y ago
    What he means is that in a system with exponential growth, people who reinvest will eventually become a much bigger part of the economy than those who don't (for whatever reason). People with a disproportionate amount of power may use that power to get rid of UBI.
- ModernMech 4y ago
  > making most of the capital allocation decisions. Unfortunately "making the most" sometimes (usually) means manufacturing fidget spinners for direct landfill deposit, instead of allocating resources for housing, healthcare, food, and education.
  - salawat 4y ago
    ...or creating transaction opportunities by inserting transaction processing medium where none previously existed. See the bloody scooter rental people, printer companies trying to funnel people to ink by subscription, Keurig/Juicero. Practically every fintech ever.
snapplebobapple 4y ago
That's the same problem with pretty much all government programs. A recent example that has affected me is the childcare subsidy brought in by the federal government here in Canada. It was supposed to be an extra 300-900 a month to make childcare cost 10 dollars a day. Instead it has became a large bureaucracy directly ruining an ok private system that existed previously by driving up costs substantially everywhere and making the experience much worse for my kids via spurious regulation. Specifically my day home now charges 70 dollars more a month to cover the onerous additional paperwork and filing requirements of the program (I don't blame them, given the extra work I would have expected more of a cost increase), my day home had to remove perfectly fine play equipment from the backyard because it was 1800 dollar Costco play equipment rather than the multi hundred thousand dollar professional public park grade stuff, and there are a substantial number of additional bureaucrats employed by my government making more and more busy work for everyone, which may ruin the much better day home style care system in favor of large institutional day cares (up to six kids, one care giver that stays constant vs 20+ kids and a string of day care workers that can and does change regularly). If they had just given the money to the parents and kept the existing regulatory regime things would have been better, instead the government made it worse.
- zapdrive 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - snapplebobapple 4y ago
    Yah, it's kind of embarrassing that the second half of the 20th century was a story of electing and then recovering from electing a trudeau and we were dumb enough to do it all again making that the main theme of the first half of the 21st century as well.
    - soperj 4y ago
      He gets less than a 1/3 of the actual voters. Way less than a 1/3 of people who are eligible to vote, and less of the popular vote of the conservatives in the last election. The voting system is flawed. He knew that and actually ran on changing it, and then !!surprise!! didn't change a thing.
ams92 4y ago
Yep, the cost to run these programs is more than it would be to have a 20k UBI given how to each person living in poverty.
tootie 4y ago
Is it? SNAP, TANF and EITC are very much giving people money. The biggest missing piece by far is universal healthcare followed closely by housing scarcity.
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
  Yeah... Add in HUD and SSI. This is the majority of spending on poverty, and it's literally direct transfers. So I'm really confused by this comment. The reason we spend money on special programs is because things like job training and drug addiction would never be taken care of by just handing out free money.
- dfxm12 4y ago
  You really don't understand snap if you think it's "giving people money", between the restrictions on what you can buy with it and all confusing red tape to sign up. Based on the criticism I read about it, I think these clearing up these misconceptions is important if the USA is going to have a working welfare system.
  - tootie 4y ago
    I didn't say they were perfect and fair, only that they were payments.
Spooky23 4y ago
That’s how the critics of these programs spiked the programs. “Welfare Queens” were supposedly driving around with Cadillacs, so controls had to be in place. I spent several years working on social services IT. The biggest welfare beneficiaries are companies like IBM, CSC, Accenture, Unisys, Northrup Grumman, etc and their employees. That’s why some politicians were so terrified of the COVID relief programs. The government efficiently provided direct cash aid to millions of people with minimal fraud while the complex controlled systems like unemployment insurance were just raided by fraudsters. We made people’s lives measurably better, saved the economy from collapse, etc, and then took it all away.
- vinyl7 4y ago
  Less than 35% of the $800 billion in PPP loans actually went to workers, say economists https://www.fastcompany.com/90713747/workers-800-billion-ppp-loans-economists https://www.fastcompany.com/90713747/workers-800-billion-ppp...
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - pnutjam 4y ago
    Sure, now do the tax credits to parents and the pandemic EBT. These are what we're talking about. PPP was a giveaway to moneyed interests because god forbid we pay it directly to workers.
  - red-iron-pine 4y ago
    Jesus, $800 billion?
- orzig 4y ago
  > Minimal fraud You’re going to have to be more specific or offer some evidence, because a cursory search suggests there was massive fraud. To take the least sensationalized source: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-takes-action-against-covid-19-fraud https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-takes-acti... They’re estimating more than half a billion dollars and are just getting started.
arenaninja 4y ago
I disagree to an extent. I know people on WIC, TANF, etc. who get subsidized internet, discounted property taxes, etc. Almost all of the ones I know game the system to their advantage one way or another. I see people stop working because they'd rather not deal with others when they already have their needs met - I have no problem with this. I see people who continuously pop more kids to keep the gravy train running - this is an issue. I have seen people sell the products (a lot of it is food) they get for free and people who sell the vouchers because they already have too much; this to me is an issue too. I see people who lie all of the time to get benefits they wouldn't qualify for otherwise; literally millionaires lying to get free stuff from the government. I don't have a big social circle but it seems everyone I come into contact with is on the take and sucking hard on the government teat. I think the approach needs to be more holistic and consider all of the different programs people qualify for - between WIC/TANF most people will get more food than they can consume. I think they should be nontransferable (maybe it already is, I don't understand how people end up selling them) and I don't think they should be progressive. Means-testing should be ended and everybody should qualify for these programs.
- lthornberry 4y ago
  I also support a shift to UBI, but your description of TANF/WIC is not grounded in reality. TANF has a 5 year lifetime, and many states actually have lower limits food stamps do not come close to covering the costs of feeding a family People do sell food stamps sometimes, not because they have more than they need, but because they are desperate for cash to pay for other necessities such as utilities. The idea that people are getting by for years and years based on these as sources of income is a myth.
  - Aloha 4y ago
    We also make staying on benefits functionally a full time job too. The programs are too complex, they also don't cover all basic needs.
  - arenaninja 4y ago
    Thanks, to clarify I don't begrudge TANF/WIC but those two are a short list of benefits that are available. Rent assistance ($), daycare assistance ($), free healthcare that's better than what I can get on the market regardless of $$$$, etc. I explained in other comments how a lot of it works, and I think rather than means testing I would like to see a different form of enforcement for these programs.
winstonprivacy 4y ago
Ugh, I completely disagree with this. The government should NOT be handing out money to anyone. I also believe that they should be spending far, far less on public programs (though I do think that public healthcare is worthy of consideration). Promoting affluence and the individual pursuit of happiness are two essential core values of the USA.
- User23 4y ago
  > The government should NOT be handing out money to anyone Well, then we better get rid of our entire banking, payments, and public debt financing system. It was a bit of a mind bender to learn that Treasury auctions cannot fail. The Primary Dealers have to make a market, the the Fed has to provide them with whatever additional reserves they require to do so. That also puts the lie to the nonsense about what happens if China stops buying our debt. Directly of course the answer is absolutely nothing. The Primary Dealers will continue to make a market. We would however notice if China embargoed us. And that’s something a lot of people somehow miss by focusing on the financial shenanigans. At some point economic activity has to be about real production. And that’s the best argument for UBI. Postulate that the productive side of our economy is running considerably below capacity and then increasing demand via monthly helicopter drops isn’t crazy. I have my doubts about the truth of that postulate though in the real economy.
  - 818ikdhh 4y ago
    [flagged]
anovikov 4y ago
I strongly believe the opposite. Fighting poverty should focus on things intended to prevent people from becoming poor, including in the next generation, not helping those already poor - more often than not, they have their life choices already made and they are impossible or incredibly difficult to alter, that's not a good allocation of resources.
- throwaway173738 4y ago
  I really don’t believe it’s impossible. And providing a way out of poverty for someone’s parents also necessarily lifts that child out of poverty. Even a thousand dollars is a life-changing amount, and we shouldn’t overlook the impact that extra resources can have on someone’s life. Buying breathing room to make different choices is one of the most powerful things we can do to lift people out of poverty.
compsciphd 4y ago
I'd argue that is the same reason we should simply have vouchers for education, instead of pouring money into a public school system, simply enable the people to spend money on education in how they think is best for their children.
- Nifty3929 4y ago
  Typically vouchers have the money going to the school, and therefore becoming a price floor. And once again looks like govt spending instead of giving. Much better would be to give everybody $1000 (or pick your number) per month directly, when they attend a private school. Regardless of how much that school costs. This preserves everybody’s full agency, as well as healthy competition.
PontifexMinimus 4y ago
Indeed. If someone's problem is lack of money, money will fix that problem.
logicalmonster 4y ago
> they usually focus on spending money instead of giving money to people who need it From my perspective, the issue is that a lot of politicians operate as goal-oriented rather than systems-oriented problem solvers. Many government programs generally operate as "give a man food" rather than "teach that man to fish". It's no wonder that many problems are far further from being solved despite decades of cash pumped into them. PS: If you're feeling butt-hurt about a comment, I welcome constructive feedback. Downvotes are fine, but do nothing to enhance mutual understanding. Tell me why goals are better than systems: I'd love to understand what the issue is.
analog31 4y ago
Perhaps overly simplistic, but my suggestion is to spend money where there are true economies of scale, or services that individuals can't manage on their own such as education and health care. And in all other cases, just give money. For instance the food industry is already scaled up.
Consultant32452 4y ago
The government, advocacy groups, etc. need the problem of poverty more than they need the solutions to poverty. This is consistently true for every societal problem: racism, sexism, immigration, etc.
Haga 4y ago
[dead]
dfxm12 4y ago
I don't know if you can identify just one main problem. Another big issue is the all the means testing and second order effects of work requirements, etc. These make it hard to get aid to the people who need it and to allow people to find or train for better jobs. It's totally systemic. America has socialism for the rich and rugged individualism for everyone else.

cptskippy 4y ago

This stems from the fundamental conservative beliefs that the system is fair and your station in life is a result of your actions or efforts. Thus a fundamental opposition to actually charity and instead dangling opportunities for people to help themselves. Running those programs is of course non trivial so the capitalist naturally offer to run them for the government at a modest fee.

brodouevencode 4y ago
That’s not a conservative take per se, meritocracy was a notion whose popularity came directly from the Enlightenment.
- cptskippy 4y ago
  No one said that it was a creation of conservatives, just that it was a belief. People's beliefs are usually impressed upon them by externalities like the community that raised them or traumas they endured.
PragmaticPulp 4y ago
> This stems from the fundamental conservative beliefs that the system is fair and your station in life is a result of your actions or efforts. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a conservative say that life is fair. It’s more common to hear talk about “life isn’t fair” and how people shouldn’t expect every unfair thing to be corrected for them by someone else.
- plokiju 4y ago
  There’s definitely still some who believe in the American dream idea, where anyone who comes to America and works hard can pull themselves up by their bootstraps and become successful. That often leads to the idea that if you’re poorer than me, you’re probably not working as hard as I am. And giving you handouts is unfair and offensive, because you just need to work for it
  - PragmaticPulp 4y ago
    > There’s definitely still some who believe in the American dream idea America is objectively and statistically one of the better places to succeed in this way, despite the shortcomings. If you believe that nobody or very few people think the “American Dream” is real, you’re probably in a bubble. This kind of out of touch cynicism is only really rampant on social media.
    - Timon3 4y ago
      Objectively and statistically speaking, it's really not. The Global Social Mobility Index 2020 places it at 27th place. Considering its economic place in the world that's pretty bad. At best you could say it's slightly above-average.
  - ThrowawayR2 4y ago
    > "There’s definitely still some who believe in the American dream idea, where anyone who comes to America and works hard can pull themselves up by their bootstraps and become successful." Which, in the case of immigrants coming to the United States, is often exactly what happens, proving that it is still mostly true. Americans don't appreciate how good they have it.
    - AniseAbyss 4y ago
      [dead]
softjobs 4y ago
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Just_world_hypothesis https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Just_world_hypothesis

Nifty3929 4y ago

Just replying to myself to make what I hope is an obvious point: Yet, giving money does not in itself create any new stuff to buy. It pushed prices up, and (at least temporarily) profits for those businesses providing the stuff. Nevertheless, it does even things out, and the higher profits will spur more competition in those industries that produce the things poor people are buying (if allowed), which ultimately achieves the desired result. But any which way you look at it, and even if not perfect, giving money is the best way to help of the available options.

AniseAbyss 4y ago
[dead]

whitemary 4y ago

Close, but the most efficient way to help people is to provide the services they need without depending on the private sector to deliver them. For example, if cash benefits are universally increased by $500, low-end rents will also increase by approximately that same amount, like clock work. UBI would be a catastrophe for many reasons, but this is the most straightforward of them.

ISL 4y ago
If low-end rents double, building housing looks a lot more attractive.
- polygamous_bat 4y ago
  Except current landlords have local governments in a stranglehold and you can't build any new housing at all.
  - sologoub 4y ago
    That’s not the entire picture -Builder’s Remedy apperently is working: “ For example, after Santa Monica failed to pass a compliant housing development plan, developers employed the builder's remedy to move forward with the construction of approximately 4,000 new housing units spread across 12 new development sites.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Builder%27s_remedy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Builder%27s_remedy That’s nearly an 8.8% increase from the current 45,487 units total (including all houses) https://scag.ca.gov/sites/main/files/file-attachments/santa-monica-he-0421.pdf?1620767629 https://scag.ca.gov/sites/main/files/file-attachments/santa-...
    - catiopatio 4y ago
      It’s “working” insofar as it represents a giveaway to value-extracting development interests, nearly all of which seek to grow the permanent renter class. It remains to be seen whether that will reduce housing costs.

bigtex88 4y ago

UBI will always be the best answer. MLK advocated for it as the best way to alleviate poverty. Even Milton Friedman believed in a pseudo-UBI through his Negative Income Tax.

skeeter2020 4y ago
The biggest problem is that NIT or even UBI is supported by many on the right as an alternative to the "government knows best" spending programs and as an addition by many on the left. For someone like me who ends up paying the majority of any social program, the former is a good idea and the latter a non-starter, but politically you'll never find an elected (or even electable) politician who will advocate for replacing existing, entrenched programs with direct cash payments.
peanuty1 4y ago
Why should we care what MLK thought about UBI?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- jobs_throwaway 4y ago
  His great moral standing and wisdom
- glhaynes 4y ago
  MLK is largely seen as a virtuous, wise person. A lot of moral sentiment enters into people's opinions on social economics. Also, people look to group sentiment to calibrate whether a proposal is more extreme than they want to think of themselves/be thought of. MLK having expressed a favorable opinion about it makes UBI less susceptible to "that's evil, naive communism"-style attacks.
  - rhaway84773 4y ago
    It also helps fight against the reverse, a knee jerk “that’s evil, hyper capitalism in disguise” sentiments.

salawat 4y ago

>A much more efficient way to help people is just to give them money directly, and then people can spend it on whatever they think they need. Capital tends to accrete capital. If you aren't actively hostile to passive capital accretion, eventually you'll end up with a handful of people making most of the capital allocation decisions.

mordae 4y ago
I don't believe it works like that when everyone has their needs met, specifically with UBI. Possible losses from breaking the law and getting caught would drive the price of white-collar crime up non-linearly. It would also be easier to unionize, which would help combat inequality.
- imtringued 4y ago
  What he means is that in a system with exponential growth, people who reinvest will eventually become a much bigger part of the economy than those who don't (for whatever reason). People with a disproportionate amount of power may use that power to get rid of UBI.
ModernMech 4y ago
> making most of the capital allocation decisions. Unfortunately "making the most" sometimes (usually) means manufacturing fidget spinners for direct landfill deposit, instead of allocating resources for housing, healthcare, food, and education.
- salawat 4y ago
  ...or creating transaction opportunities by inserting transaction processing medium where none previously existed. See the bloody scooter rental people, printer companies trying to funnel people to ink by subscription, Keurig/Juicero. Practically every fintech ever.

snapplebobapple 4y ago

That's the same problem with pretty much all government programs. A recent example that has affected me is the childcare subsidy brought in by the federal government here in Canada. It was supposed to be an extra 300-900 a month to make childcare cost 10 dollars a day. Instead it has became a large bureaucracy directly ruining an ok private system that existed previously by driving up costs substantially everywhere and making the experience much worse for my kids via spurious regulation. Specifically my day home now charges 70 dollars more a month to cover the onerous additional paperwork and filing requirements of the program (I don't blame them, given the extra work I would have expected more of a cost increase), my day home had to remove perfectly fine play equipment from the backyard because it was 1800 dollar Costco play equipment rather than the multi hundred thousand dollar professional public park grade stuff, and there are a substantial number of additional bureaucrats employed by my government making more and more busy work for everyone, which may ruin the much better day home style care system in favor of large institutional day cares (up to six kids, one care giver that stays constant vs 20+ kids and a string of day care workers that can and does change regularly). If they had just given the money to the parents and kept the existing regulatory regime things would have been better, instead the government made it worse.

zapdrive 4y ago
[flagged]
- snapplebobapple 4y ago
  Yah, it's kind of embarrassing that the second half of the 20th century was a story of electing and then recovering from electing a trudeau and we were dumb enough to do it all again making that the main theme of the first half of the 21st century as well.
  - soperj 4y ago
    He gets less than a 1/3 of the actual voters. Way less than a 1/3 of people who are eligible to vote, and less of the popular vote of the conservatives in the last election. The voting system is flawed. He knew that and actually ran on changing it, and then !!surprise!! didn't change a thing.

ams92 4y ago

Yep, the cost to run these programs is more than it would be to have a 20k UBI given how to each person living in poverty.

tootie 4y ago

Is it? SNAP, TANF and EITC are very much giving people money. The biggest missing piece by far is universal healthcare followed closely by housing scarcity.

onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
Yeah... Add in HUD and SSI. This is the majority of spending on poverty, and it's literally direct transfers. So I'm really confused by this comment. The reason we spend money on special programs is because things like job training and drug addiction would never be taken care of by just handing out free money.
dfxm12 4y ago
You really don't understand snap if you think it's "giving people money", between the restrictions on what you can buy with it and all confusing red tape to sign up. Based on the criticism I read about it, I think these clearing up these misconceptions is important if the USA is going to have a working welfare system.
- tootie 4y ago
  I didn't say they were perfect and fair, only that they were payments.

Spooky23 4y ago

That’s how the critics of these programs spiked the programs. “Welfare Queens” were supposedly driving around with Cadillacs, so controls had to be in place. I spent several years working on social services IT. The biggest welfare beneficiaries are companies like IBM, CSC, Accenture, Unisys, Northrup Grumman, etc and their employees. That’s why some politicians were so terrified of the COVID relief programs. The government efficiently provided direct cash aid to millions of people with minimal fraud while the complex controlled systems like unemployment insurance were just raided by fraudsters. We made people’s lives measurably better, saved the economy from collapse, etc, and then took it all away.

vinyl7 4y ago
Less than 35% of the $800 billion in PPP loans actually went to workers, say economists https://www.fastcompany.com/90713747/workers-800-billion-ppp-loans-economists https://www.fastcompany.com/90713747/workers-800-billion-ppp...
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- pnutjam 4y ago
  Sure, now do the tax credits to parents and the pandemic EBT. These are what we're talking about. PPP was a giveaway to moneyed interests because god forbid we pay it directly to workers.
- red-iron-pine 4y ago
  Jesus, $800 billion?
orzig 4y ago
> Minimal fraud You’re going to have to be more specific or offer some evidence, because a cursory search suggests there was massive fraud. To take the least sensationalized source: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-takes-action-against-covid-19-fraud https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-takes-acti... They’re estimating more than half a billion dollars and are just getting started.

arenaninja 4y ago

I disagree to an extent. I know people on WIC, TANF, etc. who get subsidized internet, discounted property taxes, etc. Almost all of the ones I know game the system to their advantage one way or another. I see people stop working because they'd rather not deal with others when they already have their needs met - I have no problem with this. I see people who continuously pop more kids to keep the gravy train running - this is an issue. I have seen people sell the products (a lot of it is food) they get for free and people who sell the vouchers because they already have too much; this to me is an issue too. I see people who lie all of the time to get benefits they wouldn't qualify for otherwise; literally millionaires lying to get free stuff from the government. I don't have a big social circle but it seems everyone I come into contact with is on the take and sucking hard on the government teat. I think the approach needs to be more holistic and consider all of the different programs people qualify for - between WIC/TANF most people will get more food than they can consume. I think they should be nontransferable (maybe it already is, I don't understand how people end up selling them) and I don't think they should be progressive. Means-testing should be ended and everybody should qualify for these programs.

lthornberry 4y ago
I also support a shift to UBI, but your description of TANF/WIC is not grounded in reality. TANF has a 5 year lifetime, and many states actually have lower limits food stamps do not come close to covering the costs of feeding a family People do sell food stamps sometimes, not because they have more than they need, but because they are desperate for cash to pay for other necessities such as utilities. The idea that people are getting by for years and years based on these as sources of income is a myth.
- Aloha 4y ago
  We also make staying on benefits functionally a full time job too. The programs are too complex, they also don't cover all basic needs.
- arenaninja 4y ago
  Thanks, to clarify I don't begrudge TANF/WIC but those two are a short list of benefits that are available. Rent assistance ($), daycare assistance ($), free healthcare that's better than what I can get on the market regardless of $$$$, etc. I explained in other comments how a lot of it works, and I think rather than means testing I would like to see a different form of enforcement for these programs.

winstonprivacy 4y ago

Ugh, I completely disagree with this. The government should NOT be handing out money to anyone. I also believe that they should be spending far, far less on public programs (though I do think that public healthcare is worthy of consideration). Promoting affluence and the individual pursuit of happiness are two essential core values of the USA.

User23 4y ago
> The government should NOT be handing out money to anyone Well, then we better get rid of our entire banking, payments, and public debt financing system. It was a bit of a mind bender to learn that Treasury auctions cannot fail. The Primary Dealers have to make a market, the the Fed has to provide them with whatever additional reserves they require to do so. That also puts the lie to the nonsense about what happens if China stops buying our debt. Directly of course the answer is absolutely nothing. The Primary Dealers will continue to make a market. We would however notice if China embargoed us. And that’s something a lot of people somehow miss by focusing on the financial shenanigans. At some point economic activity has to be about real production. And that’s the best argument for UBI. Postulate that the productive side of our economy is running considerably below capacity and then increasing demand via monthly helicopter drops isn’t crazy. I have my doubts about the truth of that postulate though in the real economy.
- 818ikdhh 4y ago
  [flagged]

anovikov 4y ago

I strongly believe the opposite. Fighting poverty should focus on things intended to prevent people from becoming poor, including in the next generation, not helping those already poor - more often than not, they have their life choices already made and they are impossible or incredibly difficult to alter, that's not a good allocation of resources.

throwaway173738 4y ago
I really don’t believe it’s impossible. And providing a way out of poverty for someone’s parents also necessarily lifts that child out of poverty. Even a thousand dollars is a life-changing amount, and we shouldn’t overlook the impact that extra resources can have on someone’s life. Buying breathing room to make different choices is one of the most powerful things we can do to lift people out of poverty.

compsciphd 4y ago

I'd argue that is the same reason we should simply have vouchers for education, instead of pouring money into a public school system, simply enable the people to spend money on education in how they think is best for their children.

Nifty3929 4y ago
Typically vouchers have the money going to the school, and therefore becoming a price floor. And once again looks like govt spending instead of giving. Much better would be to give everybody $1000 (or pick your number) per month directly, when they attend a private school. Regardless of how much that school costs. This preserves everybody’s full agency, as well as healthy competition.

PontifexMinimus 4y ago

Indeed. If someone's problem is lack of money, money will fix that problem.

logicalmonster 4y ago

> they usually focus on spending money instead of giving money to people who need it From my perspective, the issue is that a lot of politicians operate as goal-oriented rather than systems-oriented problem solvers. Many government programs generally operate as "give a man food" rather than "teach that man to fish". It's no wonder that many problems are far further from being solved despite decades of cash pumped into them. PS: If you're feeling butt-hurt about a comment, I welcome constructive feedback. Downvotes are fine, but do nothing to enhance mutual understanding. Tell me why goals are better than systems: I'd love to understand what the issue is.

analog31 4y ago

Perhaps overly simplistic, but my suggestion is to spend money where there are true economies of scale, or services that individuals can't manage on their own such as education and health care. And in all other cases, just give money. For instance the food industry is already scaled up.

Consultant32452 4y ago

The government, advocacy groups, etc. need the problem of poverty more than they need the solutions to poverty. This is consistently true for every societal problem: racism, sexism, immigration, etc.

Haga 4y ago

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dfxm12 4y ago

I don't know if you can identify just one main problem. Another big issue is the all the means testing and second order effects of work requirements, etc. These make it hard to get aid to the people who need it and to allow people to find or train for better jobs. It's totally systemic. America has socialism for the rich and rugged individualism for everyone else.