61–70 of 161 posts
Mostly because the pandemic caused panic stimulus spending, not because of permanent, structural changes to fiscal policy.
Not sure if you're aware but the US recently started sending checks to families every month.
I think this (COVID relief) is the closest America is going to get to a legitimate domestic experiment on UBI we're going to get for a while so it's rather heartening to see the drop in family poverty.
That might be true. But the payouts were more limited than a nominal UBI program, and the costs were astronomical. The US added 20% of GDP in debt in a single year. [1] The US Fed added 4 Trillion to it's balance sheet in 2 years [2] which is ballpark maybe 25% of GDP. Obviously there was more than just wealth distribution in there, but what becomes clear in the calculation is the gigantic expense of UBI. UBI doesn't…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Using Lotto Winners as your experiment has the problem of selecting only the people who play the lotto. Your data will be biased towards less fiscal responsibility.
While I'm certain that there are people who spend an irresponsible amount on lottery tickets, I don't know if those are also the lottery winners. I'd be very interested in any statistics for that. Where I am lottery tickets cost about the same as a Starbucks coffee, and I'd bet the average lottery player buys tickets less than the average Starbucks drinker buys coffee, making me wonder about the label of "less fiscal…
The coffee purchase is just that, a purchase: spend money, get coffee.
The amounts might be similar but the transaction class is totally different.
> depending on how it is measured, somewhere between one in six or one in five children counted as poor This is an alarmingly high number. I've been primed by media to blame this on an inverse relationship between income and number-of-children (i.e. poor people have many babies, rich people have few babies). Does anyone have an alternative explanation for the surprisingly high child poverty rate?
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That's why you need to fight asset inflation, reduce red tapes and increasing housing opportunities.
Sure, but it behoves advocates to UBI to say: "We have a solution that not only includes handing outs cash to everyone forever, but to fight the associated, unavoidable rent inflation we will introduce sweeping changes to hard-earned building standards, negatively alter the character of many many neighbourhoods, and add a massive beurocracy to introduce and enforce with the power of the state all sorts of price contr…
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Monthly lottery winners are a pretty poor basis for evaluating UBI since that is promoting an arbitrary individual to wealth - rather than providing a baseline income to a whole community. The effects of the later can easily be conceived to be quite different from targeted welfare. One of the common counter-arguments against UBI is that because the boon is applied across the board (and not just effecting the needy) t…
> providing a baseline income to a whole community The rich oil sheikdoms in the Gulf are already providing a good income to all their citizens (not the working class gastarbeiters). We should definitely observe them and learn from their experience. It is not precisely the same as UBI, but closer than anything else I can think of.
> depending on how it is measured, somewhere between one in six or one in five children counted as poor This is an alarmingly high number. I've been primed by media to blame this on an inverse relationship between income and number-of-children (i.e. poor people have many babies, rich people have few babies). Does anyone have an alternative explanation for the surprisingly high child poverty rate?
I think the relationship between fertility and income generally goes the other way: the richer you are, the fewer children you choose to have. You can see this broadly by comparing different countries.
There are serious structural problems with the American economy that make class mobility difficult. Two obvious ones, healthcare and child care, should be treated as urgent crises. We have policies that discourage the poor from working. And that's before even getting into the sexism and racism. (The child poverty rate is MUCH higher in female-led households or black households.)
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Here's my wording for anyone who can't see it due to it being flagged: """ *Temporarily, and partially thanks to the previous administration The infrastructure bill is about to fail due to a few corrupt corporate Democrats. """ It's more than just Sinema and Manchin, that's why I said a few corporate democrats: https://www.businessinsider.com/house-democrats-threaten-hol... I'm pretty left leaning by American standar…
I absolutely understand what you were saying and I don't think you're incorrect - I just wanted to highlight that the wording was poorly chosen and could easily be misread. I personally have problems with clear communications myself all the time so I just wanted to provide a bit of feedback as to why it was called out as being flamebait - your core statement wouldn't start a flame war - but the way you said it wasn't…
This is just PR from the Economists, so that we think everything is fine. Its NOT! Just Google and find the mountain of evidence how the US fails its children and families.
> depending on how it is measured, somewhere between one in six or one in five children counted as poor This is an alarmingly high number. I've been primed by media to blame this on an inverse relationship between income and number-of-children (i.e. poor people have many babies, rich people have few babies). Does anyone have an alternative explanation for the surprisingly high child poverty rate?
> I've been primed by media ...
The media isn't responsible for what I believe; I am. If I know I'm being "primed", then I don't believe it. Also, I'm not sure what media the parent refers to, but it's much different from what I read.