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LA County's guaranteed income program to give some foster youth $1k per month

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Re: LA County's guaranteed income program to give some foster youth $1k per month

#81
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do we know inflation was due to the stimulus checks, and not due to supply chain issues caused by covid/Ukraine? IIUC, "European nations largely avoided the one-time payments" [1] but suffered the same inflation [2]. [1] https://fox8.com/news/stimulus-checks-how-much-money-did-peo... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021%E2%80%932023_inflation_su... Edit: After a bit more research, this is less clear -- many Eur…

Inflation is the result of creating money to fund the deficit, it is not caused by supply chain issues.

Not true -- inflation can be caused by multiple things, including supply shocks or even future expectations of inflation ("wage price spiral").

It's Econ 101.

Re: LA County's guaranteed income program to give some foster youth $1k per month

#82
post #77
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I spent that $20k on drugs at once I would have been dead. Instead it supported years of poor decision making and avoiding building my future. I started getting my act together at 19 (money was long gone) and it wasn't until 23 that I stopped making really poor decisions. The best thing I did with it was use a couple thousand to buy a used car. The money should have gone into a trust with someone guaranteeing I us…

I'm not discounting your own experience, but in your anecdote you acknowledge that got you act together 2 years before anyone in this program would get the money. An example of a 16-19 year old being immature is not a good argument that 21-23 year olds aren't mature.

There's no point getting this in the details of my personal experience but I _started_ the path at 19 because I ran out of money. I was still doing incredibly dumb and destructive things until 23.

I really do think this program will help a lot of foster kids. I just wish we could acknowledge that stipulating how the money is used will prevent worse outcomes for some. Free money will give some of these kids the resources to destroy their lives because the money isn't their main problem yet. Both groups of people matter and I want to see programs that don't ignore the negative side effects of free money.

Means testing absolutism doesn't need to be the hill people die on. First we need take care of the people, and then we can figure out the most efficient way to administer it.

Re: LA County's guaranteed income program to give some foster youth $1k per month

#84
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would a $1,000 raise at your job have been as devastating? Surely you're not implying $12k/year in Los Angeles (a county with c. $3k/month median rent) is going to create a class of willfully unemployed former foster-kids with no drive? Should we also ban parents sending their kids money for the same reason? Or are foster kids uniquely prone to laziness?

Surely the difference between a $1,000/month raise at your job and a government stipend of $1,000 is that to continue to receive the extra $1k from your employer you cannot drink and smoke yourself into oblivion? While with the government stipend you can, which I believe is what the commenter you are replying to was getting at.

I'm surprised you and so many others are coming at this from such a negative point of view.

Why are you so certain foster kids are just going to drink themselves to death? What about not having a parent makes someone immediately at risk for that?

Re: LA County's guaranteed income program to give some foster youth $1k per month

#85
post #80
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since we're talking about people receiving public funds, I think it's correct that the recipient has to prove that they can handle it, not the other way around.

if only idiocy like your comment recognized that dumb ass margaret thatcher reagen esque measuring of who gets aid and who doesn't costs more than just fucking giving people the money. How are you idiots actually rehashing 90's austerity shit. Wtf? look no further than healthcare for all by every study[0], showing it would SAVE money. Hey idiots, turns out hiring a bunch of people to decide who is allowed to get a ch…

Please tone down the rhetoric if you want to have a productive, rational discussion. It's disappointing to come across comments like yours on HN.

> look no further than healthcare for all by every study[0], showing it would SAVE money

Your source lists, among others, a "study by the Koch-funded Mercatus Center"[0], which presumably would be the strongest argument against their position that "Medicare for All" would save money. It claims that even the aforementioned study found that M4A "would save around $2 trillion over a 10-year period", which they arrived at by the cumulative 10-year estimated savings on national healthcare expenditures, but fails to mention it also estimates that an additional $32T will need to be raised over the same time period to pay for it.

The UMass Amherst study[1], presumably more favorably inclined to M4A, estimates that an additional $20T will be needed over 10 years to finance it.

So all of those studies are really just saying that in the aggregate, we would spend less on the direct healthcare expenses through a combination of better drug pricing, removing redundant administration (both private and public), and paying providers less, but at the cost of needing to raise much more in taxes than we would save on those direct healthcare expenses. Which makes sense, since a lot more people would be covered under M4A than currently, and you may very well argue that that is an admirable goal; but it's a verbal sleight of hand to say that somehow the nation as a whole would save money. It's just shifting where the money is counted and who pays for what.

At the individual level, sure, some people may come out ahead, especially those not targeted by the burden of the additional required taxation.

Over the past 10 years, the health insurance industry as a whole made about $15B in profits per year[2] and spends another $81B a year on administration (salaries for workers, etc). Let's round that up to an even $100B a year and call it a "parasitic expense" that the for-profit health insurance industry charges on society as a whole and still leaves some people uninsured. If we remove that $100B and add the $2-3.2T a year that M4A would require, what happens? Your source says it'll save 68k lives a year, which would come at a cost of (taking $2.5T as the midpoint of the estimates) $36.8M per life. Fantastic! It's estimated that there are 27.6 million people who don't have health insurance currently. Great, now they will be insured at a cost of $90k a year. But of course, at least nobody would have to pay a dime out of pocket.

M4A is not a magic wand to be waved that will produce more and better healthcare for free. Honestly, a federally-funded mandatory fat camp would lower total health expenditures a lot more for a lot less money.

And more broadly speaking, welfare benefits in general also are not things that will improve society as a whole at no cost. When we're talking about the public's money, the costs and benefits have to be weighed carefully.

[0]: https://default.salsalabs.org/Ta48eb44d-4343-4204-9a7c-846ce...

[1]: https://default.salsalabs.org/T4931fba7-4f9b-4f24-a6f7-edfc3...

[2]: https://content.naic.org/sites/default/files/2021-Annual-Hea...

Re: LA County's guaranteed income program to give some foster youth $1k per month

#86
post #5

As a programmer from a bad family, group home, foster family background myself. $1k per month without working or struggle would have destroyed me. Imagine all the weed and whiskey I could have bought for that? (Which is what I would have done) Instead of working I would have been lazy. Homelessness and hunger was my major motivator and made me work in fast food while dreaming of computers. The lack of struggle would…

This is welfare queen Reagan-era propaganda. Pure nonsense.

Re: LA County's guaranteed income program to give some foster youth $1k per month

#87
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inflation is the result of creating money to fund the deficit, it is not caused by supply chain issues.

Not true -- inflation can be caused by multiple things, including supply shocks or even future expectations of inflation ("wage price spiral"). It's Econ 101.

Your Econ 101 professor is wrong.

The proof is simple. Why did we not have deflation when the supply shocks ended?

The value of money is subject to the Law of Supply and Demand like everything else is. Increase the number of dollars, and the value of a dollar goes down.

Re: LA County's guaranteed income program to give some foster youth $1k per month

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inflation is the result of creating money to fund the deficit, it is not caused by supply chain issues.

Supply chain issues definitely do cause inflation. Don't you remember what happened to car prices when the manufacturers couldn't buy enough chips for them?

Now that they can buy enough, why is there no corresponding drop in car prices and deflation?

Re: LA County's guaranteed income program to give some foster youth $1k per month

#89
post #85
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if only idiocy like your comment recognized that dumb ass margaret thatcher reagen esque measuring of who gets aid and who doesn't costs more than just fucking giving people the money. How are you idiots actually rehashing 90's austerity shit. Wtf? look no further than healthcare for all by every study[0], showing it would SAVE money. Hey idiots, turns out hiring a bunch of people to decide who is allowed to get a ch…

Please tone down the rhetoric if you want to have a productive, rational discussion. It's disappointing to come across comments like yours on HN. > look no further than healthcare for all by every study[0], showing it would SAVE money Your source lists, among others, a "study by the Koch-funded Mercatus Center"[0], which presumably would be the strongest argument against their position that "Medicare for All" would s…

You're right, sorry about the rhetoric, i was extremely angry at such "welfare queen" rhetoric. I've calmed down and read your comment twice. Of course it's not magic. Of course it shifts the burden elsewhere (9 people own more wealth than 3.6 billion combined, there's plenty of burden that need be fricken shifted). Of course it would require new taxes (mostly on the rich, most people end up paying less for care, i'll pay 500 in taxes over 1k in premiums any day of the week). We will spend more on healthcare either way as you note, this is the cheapest way through the storm with the best allocation of the tax burden.

I also completely agree with the prophylactic notion of reducing medical burden by increasing healthiness. Idk about fat camp specifically but shit like better healthier foods in schools and killing food deserts and reducing poverty would all go a great extend to help. Like you are agreeing with me in a different form, "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" and early healthcare before problems get bad is part of that.

>And more broadly speaking, welfare benefits in general also are not things that will improve society as a whole at no cost.

Who said they would do it at no cost? I think i simply noted it would be cheaper than the inhumane way we do it now. So it's more humane AND the math is better. Literally the only reason to think like that crab in a bucket i replied to does is if you're a meanie who wants the poor to suffer instead of accepting a poor might get some healthcare or not starve on their tax dime. that's what made me so mad. I am still sorry for commenting in the manner as I did. I was fully prepared to be quickly flagged lol.

Re welfare benefits, they produce some of the best return of dollars spent by the government. Like besides the irs, (quick search shows 400$ in revenue per 1$ spent on irs, 6:1 $ gain if we spent more on enforcement) nothing comes back quicker per dollar spent than giving poor people money. It goes straight in to the economy.

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/08/golden-truth-behind-w...

Re: LA County's guaranteed income program to give some foster youth $1k per month

#90
post #43

We tried UBI with the multiple stimulus checks. The result was inflation, which more than ate that all up.

Sadly UBI will probably work best when it's not U.

Given 300 million people in the US and $1000/mo UBI, that works out to $3.6 trillion a year.

So ya, that's not going to work.

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