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What Happens When the Poor Receive a Stipend?

opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com

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Re: What Happens When the Poor Receive a Stipend?

#71

Post by vectorsys »

1stop wrote: post #36
vinceguidry wrote: post #14

The problem with this, I think, is that people will quickly forget about the bad conditions that created the need for the stipend and only see the people using it for drugs. Politically, this works out to 'unfeasible'. After all, isn't this almost exactly what food stamps are? Technically not a stipend, but they're pretty readily converted to cash on the secondary market.

Australia has the equivalent of a "stipend" for poor, unemployed, students, single parents, etc. Plus free healthcare for everyone. It is a hugely successful program with a very low percentage of exploitation (i.e using the money for drugs, or contributing to unemployment rate). It has been constantly tweaked for the last 20 years. You don't need to look at obscure tribal examples within America, you can just look at…

The healthcare isn't free no matter how many times you people say that.

But you're also wrong about Australia being "a very similar society to the US". Maybe at one time, but Australia has some very authoritarian laws these days - from gun control to internet filters, etc..

Re: What Happens When the Poor Receive a Stipend?

#72

Post by dllthomas »

prawn wrote: post #69
dllthomas wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or a basic income: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income GMI is typically means-tested, which can mess up incentives.

And means testing adds to administrative overheads too.

True, but probably less than would be disbursed to those excluded by means testing. If it had no other downside, it might well be a good idea.

Re: What Happens When the Poor Receive a Stipend?

#73

Post by 1stop »

vectorsys wrote: post #71
1stop wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Australia has the equivalent of a "stipend" for poor, unemployed, students, single parents, etc. Plus free healthcare for everyone. It is a hugely successful program with a very low percentage of exploitation (i.e using the money for drugs, or contributing to unemployment rate). It has been constantly tweaked for the last 20 years. You don't need to look at obscure tribal examples within America, you can just look at…

The healthcare isn't free no matter how many times you people say that. But you're also wrong about Australia being "a very similar society to the US". Maybe at one time, but Australia has some very authoritarian laws these days - from gun control to internet filters, etc..

Healthcare is free in that anyone anywhere can go to a hospital with anything and be treated for it without paying anything. (And everyone who earns enough money pays taxes).

You really want to argue that healthcare isn't 'free'?

Gun control isn't 'authoritarian' it's sensible. Only with a screwed up U.S agg-prop point of view could you construe it as 'authoritarian', there is no mention of guns as a "right" in any of Australia's (or almost every other country in the worlds) constitution or case law... So could you justify how you came to your point of view?

There are no active internet filters in australia... Though there is talk of them, and some ISPs filter stuff... Do I need to remind you about Wikileaks getting it's Amazon servers shutdown... Even if there was a filter in Australia, it would be 'closer' to the US not further in similarities.

Re: What Happens When the Poor Receive a Stipend?

#74

Post by 1stop »

dllthomas wrote: post #37
1stop wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Australia has the equivalent of a "stipend" for poor, unemployed, students, single parents, etc. Plus free healthcare for everyone. It is a hugely successful program with a very low percentage of exploitation (i.e using the money for drugs, or contributing to unemployment rate). It has been constantly tweaked for the last 20 years. You don't need to look at obscure tribal examples within America, you can just look at…

"You don't need to look at obscure tribal examples within America, you can just look at Australia" You need to look at all the data you can reasonably get. There are a lot of similarities between the US and Australia, but there are certainly differences. The more unrelated tests of the idea we get, the more confident we can be that our conclusions generalize.

Sure, agreed. I guess I meant: Australia would be a more useful comparison.

Re: What Happens When the Poor Receive a Stipend?

#75

Post by notdrunkatall »

rauljara wrote: post #54
notdrunkatall wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correction: this is what happens when poor Cherokee receive a stipend, but let's not pretend that the Cherokee are the ones we're worried about here. There are differences between the subcultures, and those differences almost certainly extend to how they treat money. Furthermore, the psychological and social difference between receiving money from a source which a population would consider to be 'theirs' cannot be ov…

You left out poor white people in your discussion. While white people do have a lower rate of poverty than blacks or latinos, they actually make up a very large majority (68.5% as of 2009) of the people living under the poverty line in the United States. [1] "... let's not pretend that the Cherokee are the ones we're worried about here." "Successfully repeating this experiment in poor black and latino populations a f…

Forgive me for offending your politically correct sensibilities, but it seems that I'm going to have to be even more blunt: if you want to convince white people in this country that doling out free money to the poor is a good idea, you're going to have to convince them that blacks and latinos aren't going to abuse that system en masse. The only way to do that is to try something similar in neighborhoods that are comprised predominately of minorities and cross your fingers that it is a success. It doesn't matter whether those below the poverty line are 65% or 5% white - it's the minorities that they're concerned with. That's just the political reality of the situation.

And while we're on the subject of statistics, I may as well go ahead and ask about yours: where did you get that figure from? Because I found something much different:

http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/income_weal...

According to this, only about 25% of people living in poverty were white, and that includes the somewhat dubious category 'white, not hispanic.' (It's near the bottom, Table B)

That also includes white retirees, which inflates the figure as you're taking the number of retirees from a large category and sticking them into a smaller category, which means they will be over-represented in the smaller category.

And that's not even mentioning the rate of poverty or welfare participation, which is where the common perception that blacks and latinos abuse the welfare system comes from in the first place. It's much higher than it is or other races. When you dig into the data, it usually turns out that stereotypes exist for a reason, and this appears to be no exception.

Re: What Happens When the Poor Receive a Stipend?

#76

Post by Kroem3r »

1stop wrote: post #73
vectorsys wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The healthcare isn't free no matter how many times you people say that. But you're also wrong about Australia being "a very similar society to the US". Maybe at one time, but Australia has some very authoritarian laws these days - from gun control to internet filters, etc..

Healthcare is free in that anyone anywhere can go to a hospital with anything and be treated for it without paying anything. (And everyone who earns enough money pays taxes). You really want to argue that healthcare isn't 'free'? Gun control isn't 'authoritarian' it's sensible. Only with a screwed up U.S agg-prop point of view could you construe it as 'authoritarian', there is no mention of guns as a "right" in any o…

Did you mean "agitprop"?

It's been a while since I've seen that. Thanks for the belly-laugh.

Re: What Happens When the Poor Receive a Stipend?

#78

Post by Schwolop »

vectorsys wrote: post #71
1stop wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Australia has the equivalent of a "stipend" for poor, unemployed, students, single parents, etc. Plus free healthcare for everyone. It is a hugely successful program with a very low percentage of exploitation (i.e using the money for drugs, or contributing to unemployment rate). It has been constantly tweaked for the last 20 years. You don't need to look at obscure tribal examples within America, you can just look at…

The healthcare isn't free no matter how many times you people say that. But you're also wrong about Australia being "a very similar society to the US". Maybe at one time, but Australia has some very authoritarian laws these days - from gun control to internet filters, etc..

Healthcare is free if:

* you need emergency care and make your own way to a public hospital

* you're prepared to wait for a non-essential treatment

* you see a bulk-billing general practitioner

* you earn enough such that the cost of medical insurance (plus out of pocket expenses if you do need treatment, making this calculation tricky) is less than the dollar value of the additional 1.0 to 1.5% tax you would otherwise pay as a Medicare Levy Surcharge. (Ballpark figure is >$120k individual or >$200k as a family)

Re: What Happens When the Poor Receive a Stipend?

#79

Post by wwweston »

chc wrote: post #8
jusben1369 wrote: post #3

This is really interesting stuff. I know they touched upon it but these studies, if they really want to change things, need to do a much better job of showing an "ROI". Too often these studies seem goaled around showing that poverty has a negative impact and assume the logical next step is so we'll address that. However, many people don't have an issue with others being in poverty; particularly if they believe they'r…

No. Most staunch opponents of wealth redistribution oppose it on principle, not practical terms. You can tell them in very concrete terms that their tax dollars will benefit them more than it would hurt them and their reply will be, "Well, then you should let me distribute my money that way instead of taking it and doing it yourself."

> Well, then you should let me distribute my money that way instead of taking it and doing it yourself."

And AFAICT, the US tax code is at least half decent about recognizing charitable giving -- that is, letting people distribute their money that way or other ways -- as a legitimate offset to a personal tax burden.

Possible it could be better.

It looks to me like we don't see a lot of personal stipend style charitable giving, though.

(There's a significant presumption in the phrase "my money", but that conversation usually goes about as well as threading the proverbial camel through the eye of a needle, probably for much the same reasons.)

Re: What Happens When the Poor Receive a Stipend?

#80

Post by gruseom »

notdrunkatall wrote: post #43
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #34

The researcher supposed that the reduced stressors in poor parents' lives allowed them to be more nurturing, resulting in reduced problems with their children. Seems like a no-brainer to do, considering this analysis: "Bearing that in mind, Randall Akee, an economist at the University of California, Los Angeles, and a collaborator of Professor Costello’s, argues that the supplements actually save money in the long ru…

Correction: this is what happens when poor Cherokee receive a stipend, but let's not pretend that the Cherokee are the ones we're worried about here. There are differences between the subcultures, and those differences almost certainly extend to how they treat money. Furthermore, the psychological and social difference between receiving money from a source which a population would consider to be 'theirs' cannot be ov…

the psychological and social difference between receiving money from a source which a population would consider to be 'theirs' cannot be overstated

It can be overstated; you've overstated it. In contrast to the careful research described in the article, you've just made a bunch of stuff up. Your rush to assume race as the dominant factor is another example.

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