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$750 a month, no questions asked, improved the lives of homeless people

latimes.com

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Re: $750 a month, no questions asked, improved the lives of homeless people

#91

Post by ecommerceguy »

The top federal income tax rate was 91 percent in 1950 and 1951, and between 1954 and 1959. In 1952 and 1953, the top federal income tax rate was 92 percent. (USA)

We need to go back to this. Wealth inequality is damaging society far more than ever. From Onlyfans to Bitcoins Scams, social media platforms has only exacerbated the issue. Will the pendulum swing back to morality and just cause away from lawlessness and perversion? Is there a singular root cause for this behavior? Gen Z maybe the last hope.

Re: $750 a month, no questions asked, improved the lives of homeless people

#93

Post by bidandanswer »

SeanAnderson wrote: post #53
datadrivenangel wrote: post #30

"About 2% of the total went to alcohol, cigarettes and drug expenses — the largest portion of which was cigarettes" I'm pretty sure that the average American spends more than 2% of their income on drugs.

Google says avg American makes ~$60k/yr and spends ~$600/yr on drinking. 2% of 60k is 1200. So they'd need to be spending as much on weed/cigs/hard drugs as they do on alcohol. I think it's close, but unlikely?

The average is a really misleading statistic here, because alcohol and drug use seem to follow a power law distribution.

The top X% of drinkers drink orders of magnitude more than the average. They skew the average much, much higher than what people think of as how much the "average person" drinks.

According to this news article [1], the "average person" drinks (73.85 + 15.28 + 6.25 + 2.17 + 0.63 + 0.14 + 0.02) / 10 = 9.834 drinks per week!

But the fifth decile (the middle of the distribution) drinks only 0.14 drinks per week --- less than one per month!

I appreciate your analysis but I think the average is too lossy of a statistic to make a good argument here.

1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/09/25/think...

Re: $750 a month, no questions asked, improved the lives of homeless people

#95

Post by renewiltord »

advael wrote: post #24
hehhehaha wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the people who say this never live in areas with homeless people

Weird, I do. I live within a minute's walk of three separate encampments of homeless people, most of whom seem reasonably sane when I talk to them, and if they have drug problems they certainly aren't more apparent than those of my coworkers on average

Can you state the location of one of these encampments? If it is within a short distance of San Francisco, I will have someone visit it in the new year and provide someone there with $500 (picked randomly as the kth person met, k generated by random.org) if they meet this criterion of being reasonably sane.

I'm waiting for a direct action org organized by a friend to receive 501c3 status, so it'll have to be after that. But I am curious to see where these people who are sane are on the streets. The objective is to identify those who can be self-sustaining in time. For the moment, I want to see if that is feasible.

From my experience here in San Francisco, many people have more money and resources than I have had at various times in my life. $500 would have sustained me in North Carolina a long time. I will see what decisions they make and see how feasible this operation is.

Re: $750 a month, no questions asked, improved the lives of homeless people

#96

Post by mkaic »

ciguy wrote: post #39
narcindin wrote: post #33

I am happy for Las Angeles to perform a widespread trial of this kind of initiative. Attract people to Southern California that might be homeless elsewhere, help them get on their feet via $750/person/month, then they will get off the subsidy and contribute back to the community! If it works I will encourage a similar system in my hometown. If it does not work then I'm glad we did a trial run first. Note: I'm paywall…

This is a hilariously naive and silly take because SF did exactly this and continues to do so. Spoiler alert, they have massively exacerbated their homeless problems and very few are being reintegrated back into society.

San Francisco also refuses to enforce basic rule of law and has hamstringed its police department, so this doesn't surprise me. Crime rates are through the roof, and a housing crisis has been ongoing for years because of restrictive zoning. I don't think it's fair to assume that basic income for homeless folks is the cause of SF's devolution into a hellhole. There are a lot of other confounding factors.

Re: $750 a month, no questions asked, improved the lives of homeless people

#97

Post by Alyoshi »

TriangleEdge wrote: post #40
paulpauper wrote: post #2

Of course it did. The question or debate is not if unconditional money helps, but if it's better than alternatives which may be cheaper, such as food credits. Even middle class people would benefit, like $750 to buy groceries. Inflation obviously will erode some of this new purchasing power.

Question for economists: If you give everybody in the US $500 in food credits per month, do food prices go up, or do wages go down? Edit: Let's say there's an expiry function on the credits. Something like you get to keep 50% of the credits if they rollover.

in general that scenario means both go up, although i’m sure you can find weird edge cases.

edit: for example, expiration of credit funds could lead to a reduction in wages if it meant less money is spent in the economy than taxed in it.

Re: $750 a month, no questions asked, improved the lives of homeless people

#98

Post by ejb999 »

everfree wrote: post #43
ciguy wrote: post #3

The headline as written should surprise no-one. Anyone receiving free money would probably have their life improved along some dimension, even if it just means they're not doing as many dangerous things to get money to buy more drugs. The implicit assumption seems to be that giving homeless people money to improve their lives is inherently a moral good. Unlike many homeless advocates, I don't think it is a given that…

Cash is sometimes the most efficient way to distribute aid to ill people. Unless - do you believe we shouldn’t aid ill people at all?

cash is a great way to aid ill people, if you want to produce a steady stream of new 'ill' people to line up for it.

Re: $750 a month, no questions asked, improved the lives of homeless people

#100

Post by altruios »

ciguy wrote: post #17
advael wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a lot of productive hardworking people's money has been spent on propaganda whose sole intention is to ensure that people equate homeless people to "mentally ill drug addicts" rather than, say, "private equity real estate buyup refugees"

How many homeless people do you interact with daily? Because I'm forced to interact with many of them on a daily basis to simply go about my life in the Bay Area. And almost all of them, with very very few exceptions are both mentally ill and drug addicts. I used to think like you, but being forced to deal with them in real life on a daily basis has a way of killing preconceived convenient notions.

The tone and energy you are sending is kinda sus.

You are arguing you would rather treat them worse. Cruelty for the sake of it... because anything else would be 'undeserving burdens' on the 'honest working class folk'. If helping one group hurts another (in your mind), of course that's how you would think. Powers that be conditioned you to think (falsely) it's a zero sum game.

People that have mental health issues need help they are not getting on the streets, there just isn't enough to go around.

Addiction is a weird one for me. people call it a disease, your brain undergoes physical changes. disease is a loosy-goosy word I've come to learn (psychological disorders count as diseases apparently?). Addiction doesn't have to start with 'a choice (on the user's part)', but commonly does - which is why I comprehend that some people blame the user for their addiction.

But the core reason people turn to stuff on the streets is: the streets suck. Get people off the streets... suddenly their outlook improves. Funny that!

And yes, the reduced crime/asset rate probably is worth $X coming from taxes spend on this. That's an easy calculation - human live /comfort should be priced fairly high.

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