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Is giving people cash working? Six months of Denver's Basic Income Project

denverite.com

31–40 of 188 posts

Re: Is giving people cash working? Six months of Denver's Basic Income Project

#31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need a small apartment to get out of homelessness, you just need a room What's the cheapest shared room (roommate wanted) where you live? e.g. https://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/roo?max_price=500#search...

You obviously have never lived with unstable people who often live just above the poverty line. There’s a reason why share houses and shelters don’t work.

We live just barely above that line, and recently got $600/mo of food stamps revoked, which did an order of magnitude more harm than the pitiful raise that got us there.

Re: Is giving people cash working? Six months of Denver's Basic Income Project

#32

The massive increase seen in the control group seems to indicate that either ~5% of the money delivers >50% of the benefit, or there were some other factors that were more significant than the money.

It looks like regression to the mean.

Re: Is giving people cash working? Six months of Denver's Basic Income Project

#33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Giving everyone a basic income is more commonly called Universal Basic Income.

But they are not giving it to everyone, just to homeless people. That does not warrant the "Universal" part of the name. EDIT: I think I misread the whole thing, it really does not say "Universal" anywhere :) Anyway, I think someone, soon will try to use this project as an argument in favor of UBI, which is ridiculous.

Right, which is why it doesn't...have "Universal" in the name, and is referred to as a "Basic Income Project"

Re: Is giving people cash working? Six months of Denver's Basic Income Project

#34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Giving everyone a basic income is more commonly called Universal Basic Income.

But they are not giving it to everyone, just to homeless people. That does not warrant the "Universal" part of the name. EDIT: I think I misread the whole thing, it really does not say "Universal" anywhere :) Anyway, I think someone, soon will try to use this project as an argument in favor of UBI, which is ridiculous.

Exactly which is why the complaint the OP is making makes no sense. It’s Denver’s Basic Income Project and explicit in who gets it so complaining that it’s not universal is silly.

Re: Is giving people cash working? Six months of Denver's Basic Income Project

#36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Giving everyone a basic income is more commonly called Universal Basic Income.

But they are not giving it to everyone, just to homeless people. That does not warrant the "Universal" part of the name. EDIT: I think I misread the whole thing, it really does not say "Universal" anywhere :) Anyway, I think someone, soon will try to use this project as an argument in favor of UBI, which is ridiculous.

That's probably why it's called "Basic Income Project" and not "Universal Basic Income Project".

Re: Is giving people cash working? Six months of Denver's Basic Income Project

#37

$1,000 a month won't even get you a small apartment where I live. You'd need double that just to rent one. Denver citizens must be lucky. My current home costs around $1,600 a month, utilities not included.

Your takeaway from this should not be Denver has a low COL. It does not.

Even if it did, the cost of moving would be far too prohibitive for me. Even moving between two apartments in the same complex, when someone flooded our building, would have costed over $5,000 if we hadn't made their insurance cover it.

Re: Is giving people cash working? Six months of Denver's Basic Income Project

#38

It's just a band aid on a bleeding wound. UBI needs to be implemented as a large scale bureaucracy. A network of subsidizations that ensure citizens have social housing, rent payed, and enough to sustain themselves. Like it or not, it requires government regulation. Because otherwise renters will never accept social housing, or tenant who's rent is being subsidized. You can't just hand out money to people.

Somewhat counterintuitively, UBI reduces bureaucracy. It's far simpler to just give everyone the same basic income than having government agencies checking who should or shouldn't get welfare, which saves vast amounts of wasted money. In some studies it's been suggested that UBI would actually be cheaper to fund that all government social welfare - in other words, under a system of UBI, taxes could go down.

Re: Is giving people cash working? Six months of Denver's Basic Income Project

#39
post #21

Wow, interesting that just $50/month did almost just as well as $1000/month.

That's basically the control group (but how do you perform a study like this without an actual control group and expect your data to be taken seriously?). 50/month being almost totally meaningless in terms of income. So really this study says that the larger payments goes a long way towards eliminating people sleeping outside and has a small/moderate effect on how many are able to rent/buy housing.

Re: Is giving people cash working? Six months of Denver's Basic Income Project

#40
post #21

Wow, interesting that just $50/month did almost just as well as $1000/month.

It doesn't help that they don't have any control group data to compare to. Group C was referred to as "Active comparison group" in their one-pager, which I assumed was a control group, but it isn't. Also pretty small sample sizes involved.
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