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GiveDirectly Planning to Give $30M in Basic Income to East Africa

givedirectly.org

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Re: GiveDirectly Planning to Give $30M in Basic Income to East Africa

#121

Post by jrochkind1 »

okket wrote: post #39
troycarlson wrote: post #4

Recently fascinated by the thought of piping donations directly to poor populations and allowing them to use it as they wish. I watched the documentary Poverty, Inc. [0] regarding the "poverty industry" and how endless foreign aid in these countries is killing the economy. If Toms shoes dumps 1,000 pairs of shoes in the city center every week, how the hell would a cobbler stay in business. Or if the U.S. pumps an end…

Just giving money will not work, see Saudi Arabia. They have all the money they can dream of and did not evolve. If you want it to work it needs 3 things: 1) Free Education 2) High Taxes 3) Strong Unions Sounds leftist? It may astonish you which countries have the highest ratio of rich persons per capita live. This and a good explanation can be found in "Where in the world is it easiest to get rich? (TEDxOslo)" https…

what sort of 'evolution' are you looking for, what does that mean to you?

I'm not sure the OP program is meant to lead to any kind of 'evolution'. It's meant to lead to fewer poor people.

Re: GiveDirectly Planning to Give $30M in Basic Income to East Africa

#122

Post by dragonwriter »

ktRolster wrote: post #114
dragonwriter wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also worth considering are countries where a large portion of the economy is based on family members sending remittances back from the United States (or other country). In a sense, they already have a form of basic income for the people who remain at home. Only in that some of the people that remain home have a source of income. But that doesn't make it anything like a "basic income", anymore than the fact that som…

In both cases we're talking about an infusion of cash from the outside, distributed somewhat equally (as opposed to being given to banks and politicians). This can be useful for answering questions such as: * Will this discourage entrepreneurship? * Will this create a culture of dependency? * Will this boost the economy overall? * If the economy is boosted, how sustainable is it? These are the kinds of questions you'…

> In both cases we're talking about an infusion of cash from the outside, distributed somewhat equally

Remittances are not distributed even "somewhat equally".

Re: GiveDirectly Planning to Give $30M in Basic Income to East Africa

#123

Post by jonlucc »

kogepathic wrote: post #40

Interesting concept. I'll be interested to see if it works. I worked with a company building AC mini grids in East Africa. They connected around 130 households in each village to a 220V grid. The expectation was that people would use the electricity for basic needs (e.g. light, cell phone charging) but also for productive uses (e.g. grinding grain to flour, air compressors, saws, etc). The expectation was that as peo…

If I remember correctly, this charity already does monetary donations to people using the local mobile pay system (I think it's Mpesa?). If this is that organization, there is a Planet Money episode about the founders and why they went this way.

Re: GiveDirectly Planning to Give $30M in Basic Income to East Africa

#124

Post by mwambua »

I'm a Kenyan and I can tell you that this will do more harm than good. NGO money has been distorting our economy for years now... giving people livelihoods they can't sustain, making job opportunities that create no value and making our government vestigial. The poor people that you're supporting elect the same corrupt politicians every year because they have no idea that the government is supposed to be supporting them.

I pay 30% tax as a lower-middle income worker but I see very little of this used productively. The majority of voters don't pay taxes and rely on aid for everything from farm inputs to school fees. As a tax-payer who understands what taxes should do for me... I live with very poor infrastructure and amenities while the government squanders away money. If developed countries keep propping up our poor majority, they'll never learn to find innovative solutions to their problems and elect governments that will create sustainable wealth.

- Frustated Kenyan

Re: GiveDirectly Planning to Give $30M in Basic Income to East Africa

#125

Post by jxramos »

scottrogowski wrote: post #81

While I find UBI to be a fascinating idea worthy of consideration, I vehemently disagree with running this experiment in East Africa. The proposal seems to either be blind-to or minimizing the potential for unintended consequences. Decades of trying to alleviate poverty in Africa have taught us, more than anything else, that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Giving food tends to act as “dumping” and wea…

Unintended consequences for sure, makes me think of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dambisa_Moyo#Dead_Aid. I'm starting to give hearing to the common criticism I've heard Ramesh Ponnuru say a lot which is something along the lines of policies not "generating wealth"

Re: GiveDirectly Planning to Give $30M in Basic Income to East Africa

#126

Post by asuffield »

ppereira wrote: post #98
scottrogowski wrote: post #81

While I find UBI to be a fascinating idea worthy of consideration, I vehemently disagree with running this experiment in East Africa. The proposal seems to either be blind-to or minimizing the potential for unintended consequences. Decades of trying to alleviate poverty in Africa have taught us, more than anything else, that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Giving food tends to act as “dumping” and wea…

There is quite a bit of anger and little fact in this comment. GiveDirectly has been running UBI programs in East Africa for years now. They have an all-star cast of economists examining their performance. Their pilot programs were very successful, which is why they are scaling out further. East Africa, and Kenya in particular, was carefully chosen for two reasons. First, Kenya has a mobile phone network that makes i…

> GiveDirectly has been running UBI programs in East Africa for years now. They have an all-star cast of economists examining their performance. Their pilot programs were very successful, which is why they are scaling out further.

Possibly the most important detail here is one they call out explicitly in the article: this is the first time anybody's run a large scale experiment of this form which was not based on selecting candidates who were likely to benefit highly from receiving the extra money.

I am completely convinced that giving people extra money can cause a permanent, substantial increase in their income and living standards, if I get to pick the tiny fraction of the population who receive it. That's well-established and easy, and also not viable as a long term solution.

I really want to see if it works the same way when you aren't selecting the best candidates, but just distribute the money blindly. No matter what the answer is, this is really important research that will drive economic policy decisions. We're about to get the answer to one of the biggest economic policy questions of our time, and that's awesome.

Re: GiveDirectly Planning to Give $30M in Basic Income to East Africa

#127

Post by awt »

ThrustVectoring wrote: post #104
awt wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So let's say you give 1 bar of gold each to a group of 50 year olds, and 1 gold bar each to a group of 12 year olds. Each group is now equally wealthy and could each produce a cathedral of the same quality?

No, because money is not wealth. Owning money is equivalent to being considered to be owed something by society at large. Each group is roughly equally capable of trading that debt for the real goods and services they wish to receive in order to consider society's obligation satisfied. They're going to get different things, of course, but that's a side issue.

In that case, wouldn't you say though that if you receive money without working for it, you aren't really owed anything by society at large? Is it possible to transfer the "having done work" from one person to another? And no, investing does not fall into this category.

Re: GiveDirectly Planning to Give $30M in Basic Income to East Africa

#128

Post by zardo »

namenotrequired wrote: post #63
zardo wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Economies don't spring up out of a pile of free rice. Rice is a viable basis for a currency, it worked for China for a thousand years. Maybe the free rice piles just aren't big enough.

There's a big difference between an economy and a currency.

Giving people money isn't giving them an economy either, it's giving them currency. The economy comes when they trade, it doesn't really matter if it's dollars, gold, rice, or bitcoin, people just have to agree on it's value.

Re: GiveDirectly Planning to Give $30M in Basic Income to East Africa

#129

Post by dluan »

mwambua wrote: post #124

I'm a Kenyan and I can tell you that this will do more harm than good. NGO money has been distorting our economy for years now... giving people livelihoods they can't sustain, making job opportunities that create no value and making our government vestigial. The poor people that you're supporting elect the same corrupt politicians every year because they have no idea that the government is supposed to be supporting t…

Curious what you think about more independent schemes like microfinance or loans for education. Have you noticed any difference between that and outright aid?

Re: GiveDirectly Planning to Give $30M in Basic Income to East Africa

#130

Post by dragonwriter »

awt wrote: post #127
ThrustVectoring wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, because money is not wealth. Owning money is equivalent to being considered to be owed something by society at large. Each group is roughly equally capable of trading that debt for the real goods and services they wish to receive in order to consider society's obligation satisfied. They're going to get different things, of course, but that's a side issue.

In that case, wouldn't you say though that if you receive money without working for it, you aren't really owed anything by society at large? Is it possible to transfer the "having done work" from one person to another? And no, investing does not fall into this category.

> In that case, wouldn't you say though that if you receive money without working for it, you aren't really owed anything by society at large?

One perspective on UBI is that it is compensatory payment to those harmed by factors which enable greater aggregate economic performance at the result of concentrating returns in a narrower group and driving down real wages for the masses.

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