41–50 of 188 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
But this is not what basic income is about, is it? As far as I know, basic income means that everybody receives a fixed income, rich or poor. What happens in Denver is just a social project, the only thing mildly special about it is that recipients didn't have to do anything in return. But there have been many of such projects in countries all over the world.
When you drill into it basic income advocates are just pushing for less punitive welfare.
It’s a noble goal but not especially novel.
What we need is a job guarantee:
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 .
$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.
But this is not what basic income is about, is it? As far as I know, basic income means that everybody receives a fixed income, rich or poor. What happens in Denver is just a social project, the only thing mildly special about it is that recipients didn't have to do anything in return. But there have been many of such projects in countries all over the world.
In a similar vein, this is not the Alan Partridge Project, which is a band, and that fact was not mentioned in this article, furthering my initial confusion.
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How would one predict who is going to have children that contribute to society and who is not? If the idea is to stop them reproducing then you have predict ahead of time, after all.
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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.
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.
Why's that ridiculous? Testing a small scale trial on the people most likely to be effected by a larger scale program seems pretty reasonable to me.