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

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

#81

Post by red_trumpet »

recursivecaveat wrote: post #64
grumple wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't think you can have a $0 control group just because you have to pay the controls to fill out your surveys and such, otherwise their stats will be very out of whack.

Wouldn't it make more sense to compare to existing welfare programs (if there are any?). A bit like new drugs often are not tested against placebo, but against existing drugs which already treat the same condition.

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

#82

Post by asdff »

onion2k wrote: post #38
INTPenis wrote: post #23

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 .

It allows for profit seeking if you allow it to be used on for profit necessities. This is why socialized housing, healthcare, education, and all else of life's essentials is so important. No one should be allowed to profit on what you need just to exist in the modern world, that seems so perverse while we have this technological society capable of lifting up so many if incentives were merely adjusted from the individual to the collective.

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

#83

Post by pdonis »

asdff wrote: post #76
webdood90 wrote: post #29

[flagged]

This is only because we have decided life's necessities should be sold to you with a healthy profit margin. It says a lot about our society when we say that no, poor people should not get more money, it would just be gobbled up by increased rents. Things like socialized housing, medicine, transportation, communication, education, as well as food, would do a lot to solve this, but since we've decided that these essent…

> we have decided life's necessities should be sold to you with a healthy profit margin

First, profit margins on things like groceries are pretty small. That's why grocery store chains are heavily consolidated: the only way to make a decent overall income in this business is with volume.

Second, both basic economics and all human history teach us that the best way to maximize the quantity and quality of "life's necessities" that are available is through a free market, where people provide these "necessities" because they want to earn a profit.

Third, to the people who provide "life's necessities", what you call "profit" is their income. If you're saying people should provide "life's necessities" with no profit, you're saying those people should have no income. Is that your position?

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

#84

Post by ProjectArcturis »

I'm actually amazed at how little basic income helps people. The study had a control group which only received $50/month in aid (vs treatment groups that got $1000 a month or $6500 upfront and then $500 a month). The control group improved nearly as much as either of the treatment groups!

In terms of housing, the $1000 a month group only improved by 6% more than the $50 group. That is to say, even if you just give people enough money every month to get an apartment with a roommate, only 6% will actually use it that way.

In the actual report [0], they measure financial well-being, which improves across the board but does not differ between treatment and control. Surprisingly, measures of stress and anxiety actually increased for the treatment groups and decreased for controls.

There were a few positives - the treatment groups were somewhat more likely to get jobs, and used fewer services.

Obviously the organizers of the study want to promote its success, but I think most of what we see here is that homeless is a transient condition for some people, who find housing regardless of intervention. Mainly it's a demonstration that the extra $950 per month does surprisingly little in this population.

[0]https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gqtOfZG2sSanWgUdzn-lx-pwSXZ...

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

#85

Post by galleywest200 »

ffgjgf1 wrote: post #75
aimor wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is still a study about UBI, it's looking at differences based on how the income is delivered. A part of UBI, different from other types of aid, is that the recipient can spend the money however they see fit. There are question about how well this will work. Will the recipients benefit or suffer by not being restricted in how they spend? Will they benefit or suffer by being given the money all at once at the begi…

If you only include homeless people statistically you can expect that they will make poorer financial decisions than the rest of the population. Also there are other implications, I’m not even sure what’s the point in calling this UBI (the data might of course be still valuable for other purposes).

> If you only include homeless people statistically you can expect that they will make poorer financial decisions than the rest of the population.

Where are you getting this? The article is indicating that only people experiencing homelessness were given this, and its indicating quite a few of the participants of the study got off the streets and even out of shelters.

Not everybody is homeless due to their financial mismanagement, some people just get runs of bad luck.

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

#87

Post by lawlessone »

mongol wrote: post #55
webdood90 wrote: post #29

[flagged]

I don't think UBI is a politically stable idea. It will be diluted by different initiatives to favour certain groups over others, and the actual UBI income will soon be eaten by inflation. Fast forward 10 years and the same problems will remain.

i imagine if we tried to introduce this there would be a huge campaign by companies like food delivery apps against it.

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

#88

Post by pdonis »

yummypaint wrote: post #51
webdood90 wrote: post #29

[flagged]

Historically, "contributing to society" meant directly or indirectly contributing to resource extraction. Now that we are coming to understand that model is not sustainable, perhaps we should re-think what it means to contribute to society. I could see an argument that people who constantly fly internationally are more of a net harm than people who don't, for instance.

> Historically, "contributing to society" meant directly or indirectly contributing to resource extraction.

No, it meant contributing to production of goods and services. Some amount of "resource extraction" is necessary for that, but historically, the amount of production for a given amount of resources has increased dramatically, so we get far more value out of the same resources.

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

#89

Post by davidrupp »

Aurornis wrote: post #67
misja111 wrote: post #4

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.

> As far as I know, basic income means that everybody receives a fixed income, rich or poor. People frame it like that, but in practice it would be offset by increased taxes for most. For example, everyone gets $20,000 per year as "universal" basic income. However, your taxes go up $20,000 per year or more because you weren't in the lowest tax bracket. We have to pay for the UBI somehow. UBI of a substantial amount w…

What's a scenario in which adding $20K to my income results in more than $20K in additional taxes? The highest marginal tax rate in the U.S. for 2023 is 37%, and it kicks in after about $578K for a single filer. So increasing my income by $20K increases my tax bill by at most 37% of $20K.

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

#90

Post by pdonis »

jampekka wrote: post #63
webdood90 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I participate in the economy, I pay taxes, I don't break laws.

That doesn't mean you're contributing, at least positively.

It does if he has a job. Which he must since he says he pays taxes. Having a job means you are producing something that's of enough value to others that people will pay you for it. That's contributing to society.
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