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Why a Universal Basic Income Will Not Solve Poverty

nytimes.com

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Re: Why a Universal Basic Income Will Not Solve Poverty

#191

Post by pavel_lishin »

sgnelson wrote: post #188
pavel_lishin wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's probably a significant percentage of homeless people who are homeless because they have untreated mental illnesses. They'd likely be homeless even if they weren't monetarily impoverished.

And what if they could afford health care (or rather the state stepped in) to help with that addiction/mental illness? A study just done about a year ago in the City I live in, housed a fairly large number of the non-temporary homeless people (between 20 and 50 I want to say, the numbers escape me) in an apartment complex that provided basic social services and access to health care. They found that in actuality, thi…

> I'm pretty sure you don't know what you're talking about.

I'm 100% sure I don't know what I'm talking about! That's why I couched my opinion in all the weasel words like "probably" and "likely".

Re: Why a Universal Basic Income Will Not Solve Poverty

#192

Post by dvtv75 »

refurb wrote: post #59
RamshackleJ wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, and it doesn't even bother talking about the $21–32tn of untaxed assets( http://www.taxjustice.net/cms/upload/pdf/Price_of_Offshore_R... ). Or that we tax the rich too little while we tax everyone else too much to keep public perception focused on taxes being too high( https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Historical_Marginal_... ).

Or that we tax the rich too little The top 3% of income earners pay 51% of all income taxes.[1] You think that's too little? What should that number be? [1] http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/04/13/high-income-...

I'll take your bait: I do think 51% of all income tax is too little for the top 3% of earners, because they are paid such a large piece of the pie; you're looking at it in terms of number of people paying tax and not percentage of total income made.

Think of it this way: "The top 10% (in my country) pay 74% of all taxes," really translates to "This group makes 90% of all income and but only pays 74% of taxes."

That means that those who make 10% of the total income (again, in my country) pay 26% of taxes. It's not the top that are hurting because they're paying tax in excess of their means, they're getting off lightly.

Re: Why a Universal Basic Income Will Not Solve Poverty

#193

Post by ascagnel_ »

technofire wrote: post #164
arprocter wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But wouldn't that lead to people living in the middle of nowhere where there aren't many jobs? Edit: also what happens to all the people living in projects in what would otherwise be expensive areas? Ship them off to a sparsely populated non desirable area? Good luck with that

If a bunch of people move to the middle of nowhere, they will need goods and services, and thus jobs will be created as enterprising people move to provide them.

But those customers don't have money to spend -- why would anything but the most predatory business (rent-to-own/layaway firms, payday loans, etc) move to service them?

Re: Why a Universal Basic Income Will Not Solve Poverty

#194

Post by serge2k »

> Where would that money come from? It amounts to nearly all the tax revenue collected by the federal government. Nothing in the history of this country suggests Americans are ready to add that kind of burden to their current taxes

Taxes would have to go up, in some cases drastically. It's an easier sell if people immediately get a good chunk back.

> A universal basic income has many undesirable features, starting with its non-negligible disincentive to work. Almost a quarter of American households make less than $25,000. It would be hardly surprising if a $10,000 check each for mom and dad sapped their desire to work.

Except if they keep working the money just adds up. I certainly wouldn't want to stop working and give up my lifestyle.

Maybe instead of working to make enough money to just get by you keep working and put a chunk of that money into savings, or upgrading your lifestyle a bit. Maybe moving to a better area, fixing up some stuff around the house, get your kid a couple toys, etc...

Yeah, people in situations that make working hard might quit but maybe they should be allowed to. Or maybe they should quit for a while and come back when it makes more sense.

Re: Why a Universal Basic Income Will Not Solve Poverty

#195

Post by ktRolster »

jbmorgado wrote: post #12
ktRolster wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By some measures, poverty already is a solved problem in the United States. Relative poverty is all we have left to solve....

There are quite a lot of people in the USA that consistently starve. I'm quite sure that according to most definitions that's clearly absolute poverty, not a relative one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger_in_the_United_States

A quote from your link: "poverty is not a direct causation of hunger."

(Of course, that's referring to the United States)

Re: Why a Universal Basic Income Will Not Solve Poverty

#196

Post by Trundle »

carapace wrote: post #69
jbob2000 wrote: post #28

Something that is missing from the basic income/poverty debate is the notion of "learned helplessness"; after a long time in poverty, people get used to the lifestyle and have difficulty adjusting to "regular" life. For example, if you've been homeless your entire life, you've never had to lock your apartment door or carry a key around. My partner (a social worker) had a client who's apartment was always getting robb…

I was homeless for about four years, so I know exactly what you are talking about with people losing or never having the basic skills to cope with modern life. However, that's just not a reasonable argument against UBI. Consider: Having too much money is never a problem. Quoth the sage, "If it is money, it is good.", also "Too much is always better than not enough." Misspending that money is the problem. But if every…

>Helping others is hugely rewarding, fulfilling even, but most people are limited either by their real or perceived lack of funds, or by minor personal problems. With UBI the bottom Nth of people's BS is handled, freeing them up to help others whose BS is a little too formidable for them to cope with on their own.

Is there any data to support this? I'm genuinely curious. Thinking that people in general are innately good/helpful is a point where I seem to differ to a lot of others. It's just not something I see from looking at the world around me. The majority of people already have others around them with more formidable BS to deal with, and we all ignore them just fine.

Re: Why a Universal Basic Income Will Not Solve Poverty

#197

Post by jgdx »

nullsmack wrote: post #6

The very first argument in the article is flawed which leads me to wonder how much of it is or isn't flawed. It talks about a Universal Basic Income for everyone over 21.. then it complains that would cost 3 trillion dollars for all of the 300 million Americans. According to the Census Bureau as of 2015 there were 321 million Americans and 24% were under 18. No clue how many were under 21. But that still takes it dow…

He also haven't looked into the strong philosophical arguments for BI, dating back to Paine in the 18th century. Justice and freedom are keys to all of these arguments, e. g. that of Van Parijs, where if one looks at work as a fundamental resource, you should be free to take or not take a job.

There's so much literature on this—why not look into it?

Re: Why a Universal Basic Income Will Not Solve Poverty

#198

Post by prostoalex »

Grishnakh wrote: post #165
arprocter wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But wouldn't that lead to people living in the middle of nowhere where there aren't many jobs? Edit: also what happens to all the people living in projects in what would otherwise be expensive areas? Ship them off to a sparsely populated non desirable area? Good luck with that

>But wouldn't that lead to people living in the middle of nowhere where there aren't many jobs? In theory, no. A UBI is not a free pass for a luxurious lifestyle, it's a basic income. If you want more than that, you'll have to work. If you want to not work at all and sit on your ass, then sure, you can go move to Tornado Alley or frigid Minot or wherever and live cheap and make some extra cash doing odd jobs like sho…

> We'll probably see more movement to lower-cost, smaller cities

Some midwestern states already offer free land+settlement programs to anybody who's willing to move in http://www.freelandks.com/availableland.html and market distortions made real estate in some US cities extremely affordable http://www.nydailynews.com/life-style/real-estate/1-buy-hous...

Yet the economic activity in those geographies leaves much to be desired.

Re: Why a Universal Basic Income Will Not Solve Poverty

#199

Post by prostoalex »

Grishnakh wrote: post #167
jbattle wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a problem if the math behind UBI presumes savings from eliminating a ton of social programs and we later find that there are substantial numbers of people that still need those programs even with UBI for non-financial reasons. If we find that non-trivial numbers of parents blow all their UBI on XYZ, are we really going to let their kids starve? Or will we see that programs like SNAP need to remain in existence?

I think a good UBI program will eliminate the crappy social programs, and will keep some around to help transition people to the new society and also to help people who aren't helped just by having money to spend. For instance, child abuse: we have CPS for a reason, but giving everyone a monthly check isn't going to magically eliminate child abuse, so obviously we still need CPS for that. There's plenty of other plac…

Is over-hiring of social workers in welfare sector a problem in this country? It seems that applications for something like SNAP are handled online, distributions are done directly to debit cards, and a bunch of enforcement and fraud prevention work is offloaded to agencies like SSA and IRS.

Re: Why a Universal Basic Income Will Not Solve Poverty

#200

Post by prostoalex »

nullsmack wrote: post #6

The very first argument in the article is flawed which leads me to wonder how much of it is or isn't flawed. It talks about a Universal Basic Income for everyone over 21.. then it complains that would cost 3 trillion dollars for all of the 300 million Americans. According to the Census Bureau as of 2015 there were 321 million Americans and 24% were under 18. No clue how many were under 21. But that still takes it dow…

> eliminating excessive management of all of the existing programs

There are really just three - Social Security, Medicare+Medicaid, and EITC. Above you mentioned keeping Social Security around, so that really leaves just two programs, and it feels like the elephant in the room - Medicare - has been scrutinized by both parties so often, that one might wiggle a few percentage points of savings here and there, but nothing critical, especially in light of baby boomers retiring in larger numbers.

If you have a good plan for drastically cutting down the costs of Medicare, those are worth hearing about, whether or not UBI is involved.

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