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What Happens When the Poor Receive a Stipend?
- protomyth 13y agoI should point out that not all state compacts with tribes that enable casinos allow for direct payments to tribal members. This is generally done to "allow the money to go into social programs", but it generally increases corruption to some amazing levels.
- icelancer 13y agoCorrect. In WA state they force the tribes to spend it "within the community," which ends up as huge hotels and other ridiculous expenses that don't help the poor members of the tribe.
- vl 13y agoI live in WA and I don't understand why local city casinos are choked, but we allow some specific groups to run casinos 30 minutes away by different rules. How is it making any sense? Lets run casinos on the same enabling rules and get taxes back to communities. The situation now is that members of all communities play, 3 communities pocket the profits.
- protomyth 13y agoBecause your ancestors signed a treaty taking all the other land but that spot that gets to run differently. It probably still is a good trade.
- icelancer 13y agoWell... my point was a bit different. WA state grants tribal casinos better licensing for gambling as well as other breaks, but X% of the profits must be "re-invested" into the tribe by law. Although the tribes by and large fund education, medical expenses, and other stuff rather well, it still leaves a huge surplus of money they are forced to spend on community "reinvestment." And that's how you get the ridiculous Tulalip hotel, and there's tons of outrage at the tribe for this - when in reality the law is forcing them to spend it.
- vl 13y agoAre you talking about hotel on top of the casino? Why is it ridiculous? It seems like natural and good business development for casinos to have hotel near by. Or are they pissed about funds reappropriation back into business instead of being spent on community needs?
- jusben1369 13y agoThis is really interesting stuff. I know they touched upon it but these studies, if they really want to change things, need to do a much better job of showing an "ROI". Too often these studies seem goaled around showing that poverty has a negative impact and assume the logical next step is so we'll address that. However, many people don't have an issue with others being in poverty; particularly if they believe they're being asked to have to take anything out of their pocket to solve that problem. Generalizing; those that are against wealth redistribution aren't going to be convinced otherwise based on the decrease in mental illness amongst the poor or higher grades in school. The numbers around the cost of someone spending a year or more incarcerated is well known. The cost of a transfer is well known. IF you can show "You really want to ensure that a family of 4 has this much coming into the household to ensure it doesn't cost you much more later" then you could go a long way to bringing new supporters into the fray.
- chc 13y agoNo. Most staunch opponents of wealth redistribution oppose it on principle, not practical terms. You can tell them in very concrete terms that their tax dollars will benefit them more than it would hurt them and their reply will be, "Well, then you should let me distribute my money that way instead of taking it and doing it yourself."
- nickff 13y ago>" Most staunch opponents of wealth redistribution oppose it on principle, not practical terms." Please provide a citation for this claim, I have not seen any evidence either way.
- frogpelt 13y agoWhy do we even need to ask what happens when the poor receive a stipend? Go look in the inner cities. Go to the rural communities and find a trailer park. It's happening now. What has the result been?
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- paperwork 13y agoNot clear what you mean by "It's happening now." What's happening?
- bluedevil2k 13y agoWelfare, food stamps, Social Security disability
- rtpg 13y agoThose are not nearly enough for someone to exist out of the pit of despair. Obviously someone against these services will probably think it's too much. Welcome to politics
- danudey 13y agoThose three programs are, in most cases, barely enough to live on, especially not to live comfortably. Even if you make good choices, being on welfare and food stamps still provides you almost no opportunities other than getting as many minimum-wage jobs as you can. You're talking about programs designed essentially to keep people alive and nothing more; to prolong life for its own sake. Minimum income is a way of ensuring that people can remove the stress and worry of being constantly broke and hungry so that they can focus on bettering their lives - going to school, choosing a good job, being able to afford a car, feeding their kids proper meals, and so on. There is no comparison between the minimum subsistence that welfare provides and the programs that are being discussed here.
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- mathgeek 13y agoI would think one of the important elements here is that the sample is so small, allowing for less fraud and less room for overlooking errors in the payments. I think the effects would be similar on a larger scale, just as a guess, but the "headline making" fraud and mistakes would draw more negative reaction than they should.
- vinceguidry 13y agoThe problem with this, I think, is that people will quickly forget about the bad conditions that created the need for the stipend and only see the people using it for drugs. Politically, this works out to 'unfeasible'. After all, isn't this almost exactly what food stamps are? Technically not a stipend, but they're pretty readily converted to cash on the secondary market.
- 1stop 13y agoAustralia has the equivalent of a "stipend" for poor, unemployed, students, single parents, etc. Plus free healthcare for everyone. It is a hugely successful program with a very low percentage of exploitation (i.e using the money for drugs, or contributing to unemployment rate). It has been constantly tweaked for the last 20 years. You don't need to look at obscure tribal examples within America, you can just look at Australia (a very similar society to the U.S) to see this is a good policy with extremely positive outcomes for society.* * I'll caveat this with, if you can afford it. Australia is in a super good position with regards to it's GDP/Capita and has been for the last 20-30 years, so it's difficult to say whether this is sustainable in the (even) longer term, or in countries without the same advantages.
- dllthomas 13y ago"You don't need to look at obscure tribal examples within America, you can just look at Australia" You need to look at all the data you can reasonably get. There are a lot of similarities between the US and Australia, but there are certainly differences. The more unrelated tests of the idea we get, the more confident we can be that our conclusions generalize.
- 1stop 13y agoSure, agreed. I guess I meant: Australia would be a more useful comparison.
- vectorsys 13y agoThe healthcare isn't free no matter how many times you people say that. But you're also wrong about Australia being "a very similar society to the US". Maybe at one time, but Australia has some very authoritarian laws these days - from gun control to internet filters, etc..
- TempleOSV2 13y agoJust wait until everyone starts paying a 10% tithe, rich and poor. God says... duck_the_shoe recipe quite geek left_field nasty do_you_have_a_problem Zap
- pasbesoin 13y agoThe outfall of WWII could perhaps be considered one of the largest instances of "stipends" (both domestically for the U.S. and overseas) ever perpetrated. The outcomes, from my perspective, were "not so bad". From my perspective, the question can be broken down to two points or serial steps: 1) Do people have the resources to take care of and improve themselves? 2) Do they use and apply those resources well? Without 1), you can't have 2). And research appears to be showing that, given 1), people and extant systems are or can actually be pretty good at getting 2) right. Otherwise, it seems to come down to poverty as the reason and excuse for perpetuating poverty. (AKA they -- or/and we -- aren't capable of any better. (And in some cases, don't appear to want any better -- "my, me, mine".)) I, for one, am not willing to accept and settle for such a perspective and approach.
- gjmulhol 13y agoWell said. I think there are valid arguments on each side. What, to me, seems to hold back a lot of healthy discussion is a reliance on anecdotes by both sides. It is very easy to assume that if you give an alcoholic father some money, he will spend it on alcohol. I am sure this is the case in some situations, but I think your point about applying resources well, especially when children are involved, is critical and true.
- logicallee 13y agoI wonder what would happen if you gave a stipend to kids with a high IQ, just take a test monthly and get a bit of cash no questions asked. They could eat and support their family or wahtever. start a business with it. Also would motivate them to study hard. Steve Jobs was supposedly given a few dollars in exchange for performing his schoolwork, by one of his teachers. Could that have had a positive effect on establishing a virtuous cycle of hard work for him?
- bluedevil2k 13y agoThe problem with this idea is that in general, smart kids come from smart parents, and in general, smart adults earn more income (and thus are less in need of a supplemental income)
- clavalle 13y agoThe problem with your analysis is 'in general'. There are a lot of kids who fall into the Mariana trench size cracks of 'in general'.
- bluedevil2k 13y ago"In general" is good for macroeconomic proposals - I'm saying if you give money to all smart kids, it would end up on average transferring money to higher income families.
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- bluedevil2k 13y agoI didn't say nobody on welfare is smart, I said "in general". The OP posted a macroeconomic proposal, which is built upon "in generals". Read the Bell curve for all kinds of IQ related studies.
- dahart 13y agoThis idea was explored a bit more thoroughly in an episode of This American Life http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/08/16/212645252/episode-480-the-charity-that-just-gives-people-money http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/08/16/212645252/episode-... They discuss and question the validity of the very deeply held belief that if you "give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." While its very hard to argue with this logic, and it seems so true and obvious, it also implicitly assumes that the poor are poor due to lack of education, rather than due to lack of money. I can't defend GiveDirectly or stand by any claims made on either side, but apparently the results they're achieving is some evidence that the poor really do just need some seed funding to launch from, much like startup companies need inital funding in order to launch. One thing I'm sure of, whether you're poor or trying to start a company is that its very hard to start your virtuous growth cycle without a little money.
- JoeAltmaier 13y agoThe researcher supposed that the reduced stressors in poor parents' lives allowed them to be more nurturing, resulting in reduced problems with their children. Seems like a no-brainer to do, considering this analysis: "Bearing that in mind, Randall Akee, an economist at the University of California, Los Angeles, and a collaborator of Professor Costello’s, argues that the supplements actually save money in the long run. He calculates that 5 to 10 years after age 19, the savings incurred by the Cherokee income supplements surpass the initial costs — the payments to parents while the children were minors. That’s a conservative estimate, he says, based on reduced criminality, a reduced need for psychiatric care and savings gained from not repeating grades." That means, its not only a good idea, its free.
- loceng 13y agoActually if you look at it that way, you're being "paid" to do it - and then you can use that new money for other things that are beneficial for society.
- notdrunkatall 13y agoCorrection: this is what happens when poor Cherokee receive a stipend, but let's not pretend that the Cherokee are the ones we're worried about here. There are differences between the subcultures, and those differences almost certainly extend to how they treat money. Furthermore, the psychological and social difference between receiving money from a source which a population would consider to be 'theirs' cannot be overstated. If you're a poor black person (or latino, or Cherokee, or whatever), and you're living in a land that's dominated by a group that's not like you, you are less likely to respect that money than if a) that money came from a source that was yours, and b) you knew that if that source believed that you were disrespecting that money, they would cut it off. Both stipulations apply here. Giving a small band of Cherokee profits from one of their own casinos =/= giving poor blacks and latinos federal assistance. They aren't even close. Successfully repeating this experiment in poor black and latino populations a few times would go a long ways towards convincing the skeptical that free money for the majority of the poor is actually a good idea. Anything else, as I said in another thread, is half-measures.
- af3 13y agoSomeone, put it on the pastebin please!
- sirsar 13y agoView page source.
- ChrisNorstrom 13y agoJust copy the URL and paste it into a Google Chrome Incognito Window.
- nnq 13y agoAnother restatement of the obvious. Hopefully the studies' data will help convince people once and for all that: MONEY matters a lot, in all aspects of life: it makes people healthier (both physically and mentally), improves actual/usable creativity and intelligence, leads to better education and better social webs, ESPECIALLY when coupled with MORE FREE TIME (yes, it matters a lot that the Cherokee that got that money didn't have to spend more time working in order to get it). Doing what you love matters, but until a certain wealth threshold, being better compensated for what you do (whether you like it or not) and having enough free time, matters more (an no, people that get more by working more don't get all the benefits of that "more" they get, it also matters to "get more by giving less").
- protomyth 13y agoI have a sever problem with equating what is a dividend from a group owned business with welfare. It is insulting in the extreme. There is a sense if ownership that is not present in our welfare system.
- randall 13y agoAs a weird startup parallel: As a bootstrapped company, you make very very different decisions than you would as a company who has even the tiniest bit of runway. I imagine (not to trivialize poverty) things would be similar. Instead of seeing bigger picture, you're trying to figure out how to pay the bills already owed, etc.
- programminggeek 13y agoI'm not exactly sure where the meme of giving a minimal guaranteed income came from (and I only mention it because this seems to be along the similar lines). However, it is worth noting that income inequality has as much to do with the middle class as it does the poor. I'm not exactly pro-union as they tend to outlive their usefulness, but in the absence of something similar, the average employee basically gave up their bargaining rights probably decades ago and since then the people at the top who know how to bargain are getting ahead faster than anyone else. I don't know if a guaranteed income for the poor would help out a lot and I don't know how you would even pay for such a program. What I do know is in a consumer driven economy, more money is made by all if people are spending it, and the people at the top who get paid the most just don't spend enough to keep things moving up and to the right forever. I do agree with the idea that somehow people lower on the economic ladder need to get paid more and that would benefit society as a whole. Heck, even Henry Ford seemed to understand that point. Somehow, that notion has been lost on modern society and I find that to be somewhat sad.
- beedogs 13y agoOne thing that happens is that conservatives pitch a hissy-fit.
- splitrocket 13y agoGive a man a fish, he will eat for a day. Teach him to fish, he and his family will eat fish the rest of his life. Give a man a consistent supply of fish and maybe, instead of fishing all day to feed his family, he could go to trade school and learn to be an HVAC engineer, send his kids to MIT and retire at 55 to Naples Florida.
- mattgibson 13y agoFYI: View with JS turned off to avoid the paywall overlay and stop the article from disappearing.
- splitrocket 13y agoFrom Milton Friedman, archmage of conservative, supply side economics: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax
- GotAnyMegadeth 13y ago> Today, more than one in five American children live in poverty. Wow
- fuckpig 13y agoAnother cherry-picked study that will be refuted in the coming years. What happens when you distribute money: it dissipates and poverty for all results. But don't take it from me, Comrades!
- kiddz 13y agoI read through a lot of the comments so far and they expectedly turned into a stream of educated opining for and against the validity of stipends for the poor. Although many points are well said, do they really matter? Seems like the fundamental point is the ongoing lack of experimentation around poverty alleviation that leads to a Duke researcher only having a small Indian community that she has been studying who then gets a casino to be the only opportunity to see potentially innovative policy initiatives. I'd love to see block grants distributed to states for a competitive process of poverty reduction (or pick any another long term social cost) where such experimentation could become institutionalized and there'd be a lot more to talk about.
- nickthemagicman 13y agoThis. Every libertarian has some anecdote about a lazy poor person driving a lincoln navigator on food stamps and every democrat has an anecdote about some old lady shivering at a bus stop with starving kids. What we need here is science! We're in the stone ages stil.
- mratzloff 13y agoEvery time a sociological or economic scientific study hits the front page of HN, there are people who try to argue against it based on one or two anecdotes, often second- or third-hand even. It's so silly.
- nathanvanfleet 13y agoIt's sad that long-term programs just don't happen. And if they ever do happen they don't survive forever due to "austerity" measures.