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YC set to launch one-year minimum income pilot project to figure out logistics

arstechnica.com

181–190 of 251 posts

Re: YC set to launch one-year minimum income pilot project to figure out logistics

#181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lets interpret the claim charitably - people on welfare have reduced work effort, increased fertility, and increased drug consumption. Do you assert that any of those claims are false?

Drug consumption is definitely wrong. Poor people can't afford drugs. People on welfare in states that require drug testing of welfare recipients have much lower rates of drug use than the population at large. http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2015/02/26/3624447/tanf-dru...

Did we read the same article?

Consider their headline number - Missouri. Testing cost $336k and found 48 drug users. Assuming welfare costs $10k/person, it saved $480k making it a net positive. All the other states they discuss had significantly higher returns (5-10x).

This all assumes not a single drug user was deterred from applying and also that not a single welfare recipient was deterred from using drugs.

Further, none of these measure the question of whether poor people do more or less drugs. Most of these programs only drug test some people and have expensive human-administered programs to decide who to test: "complete a written questionnaire about drug use" “suspicion-based drug testing for each applicant”, “reasonable suspicion exists” that they might be illegally using “a controlled substance or controlled substance analog.”

The fact that these programs found very few drug users is merely due to the fact that welfare recipients aren't dumb enough to put "yes I do drugs" on a written test.

This article is pulling the social sciences shuffle - find a socially undesirable conclusion, write an abstract hinting that it's false, and bury the truth in the data tables.

Re: YC set to launch one-year minimum income pilot project to figure out logistics

#182
post #98
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The assertion is that none of those are inherent qualities of a group. Reduced work effort is a chicken egg issue. Of course people on welfare are going to have reduced "work effort" -- joblessness is probably what made you have to get it in the first place. Same with drug consumption. I would question any "higher drug use" measure as selection bias -- investment bankers aren't generally being drug tested are they? T…

Poor people use illegal drugs at a lower rate than wealthy people. Probably because drugs are expensive and they don't have as much leisure time. The notion that we should drug test welfare recipients is just an outgrowth of condescending Calvinist morality.

Wrong on all counts. Poor people have more leisure time and do more drugs.

http://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publication...

https://www.nber.org/chapters/c11165.pdf

Why not just spend 2 minutes googling like I did before posting ?

Re: YC set to launch one-year minimum income pilot project to figure out logistics

#183
post #17

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. Along with the daily fish, does it makes sense to provide some sort of vocational training that an otherwise healthy person can take advantage of? If a person was not able to take advantage of early education for whatever reason, but is currently physically healthy, there is still opportunity to provide for himself and…

> Maybe even a reversal of the automation movement in favor of using basic labor for many repetitive tasks in order to achieve this altruistic goal. That would be horrific, doing "work for works sake" knowing that the only reason you are doing it instead of a machine is because someone decided you needed the nobleness of having a 'job'.

> That would be horrific, doing "work for works sake" knowing that the only reason you are doing it instead of a machine is because someone decided you needed the nobleness of having a 'job'.

We automate many things to squeeze the absolute last penny out of it. That can have deleterious effects, too.

For example, many fruits and vegetables have been bred to be harvested by machine. These foods have been shown to have fewer nutrients and taste differently from those which much be harvested by hand.

Employing some people to harvest some of the non-automatable crops would be a good thing.

Re: YC set to launch one-year minimum income pilot project to figure out logistics

#184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very negative opinion of human nature, and a big reason I thought Wall-E was bullshit. Humans enjoy their bodies. We play sports because it's fun and feels good. We enjoy the burn of a good run. We like to look in the mirror and see something vaguely attractive. We like to fuck. And we want to fuck people we find attractive. Wall-E got it totally wrong.

> Humans enjoy their bodies. We play sports because it's fun and feels good. We enjoy the burn of a good run. We like to look in the mirror and see something vaguely attractive. We like to fuck. And we want to fuck people we find attractive. Please excuse the low effort comment, but I've seen far more people who treat their body terribly, and who become overweight/obese compared to the number of people who do anythin…

> Please excuse the low effort comment, but I've seen far more people who treat their body terribly, and who become overweight/obese compared to the number of people who do anything close to keeping in shape with sports, running, and so on.

Research has shown that a lack of "psychological bandwidth" degrades impulse control.

Being excessively poor, having to take care of children or elderly parents, having a crappy job, etc. all take their toll on your ability to execute on things like exercise, cleaning, saving, etc.

Removing the problem of "daily living expenses" from someone's plate is a HUGE step toward helping them improve their situation both physically and mentally.

Re: YC set to launch one-year minimum income pilot project to figure out logistics

#185
post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very negative opinion of human nature, and a big reason I thought Wall-E was bullshit. Humans enjoy their bodies. We play sports because it's fun and feels good. We enjoy the burn of a good run. We like to look in the mirror and see something vaguely attractive. We like to fuck. And we want to fuck people we find attractive. Wall-E got it totally wrong.

Have you been to a Walmart recently? I don't think the Wall-E scenario is entirely off base.

Walmart represents many people too poor to shop elsewhere.

Wall-E represents a utopia of plenty for everyone.

Those are not comparable.

Re: YC set to launch one-year minimum income pilot project to figure out logistics

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very negative opinion of human nature, and a big reason I thought Wall-E was bullshit. Humans enjoy their bodies. We play sports because it's fun and feels good. We enjoy the burn of a good run. We like to look in the mirror and see something vaguely attractive. We like to fuck. And we want to fuck people we find attractive. Wall-E got it totally wrong.

> Humans enjoy their bodies. We play sports because it's fun and feels good. We enjoy the burn of a good run. We like to look in the mirror and see something vaguely attractive. We like to fuck. And we want to fuck people we find attractive. Please excuse the low effort comment, but I've seen far more people who treat their body terribly, and who become overweight/obese compared to the number of people who do anythin…

A lot of that is because, in the current world, staying fit is difficult. I, for example, would be in great shape if I could exercise. I like exercise. Exercise is, in fact, how I discovered that I have joint problems. I unfortunately don't have time to go to a pool every week, which is basically the only exercise I can handle, and so I have trouble with fitness. On larger scales, there are entire towns that don't have access to fresh fruit or vegetables; google "food desert". There are people that don't have enough money to buy anything other than pure calories per dollar without paying any attention to health. There are people whose household water is barely potable and drink soda all the time because it's cheaper than bottled water. There are people that grew up in households that drank soda and have sufficiently shitty jobs that they can't summon up the willpower to change that habit. Then you've got people that simply rolled badly on the genetic lottery or inherited bad intestinal flora and can't be fit no matter what they do.

Removing stresses on time, money, social interaction, culture, and mortality will make the population more healthy, not less healthy.

Re: YC set to launch one-year minimum income pilot project to figure out logistics

#187
post #151

[deleted]

That is essentially already the status quo with government funded housing vouchers. More commonly known as section 8. It's a huge boon for landlords. Not that the alternative of government run hosing projects is any better but what are you going to do.

Re: YC set to launch one-year minimum income pilot project to figure out logistics

#188
post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Humans enjoy their bodies. We play sports because it's fun and feels good. We enjoy the burn of a good run. We like to look in the mirror and see something vaguely attractive. We like to fuck. And we want to fuck people we find attractive. Please excuse the low effort comment, but I've seen far more people who treat their body terribly, and who become overweight/obese compared to the number of people who do anythin…

A lot of that is because, in the current world, staying fit is difficult . I, for example, would be in great shape if I could exercise. I like exercise. Exercise is, in fact, how I discovered that I have joint problems. I unfortunately don't have time to go to a pool every week, which is basically the only exercise I can handle, and so I have trouble with fitness. On larger scales, there are entire towns that don't h…

I agree mostly with your comment.

Re: YC set to launch one-year minimum income pilot project to figure out logistics

#189
post #79
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happens when we create fishing robots that do the work for all of men?

You make it sound as if we are going to run out of work? We can always increase the level of education then have more research scientists and engineers, for example. Imagine if we did 10x the amount of R&D.

10x R&D sounds great, but as you throw more money towards a subject, you dont get more good research, you get more crap you have to wade thru. I remember when there was virtually unlimited money towards aid research, they quickly ran out of anything resembling a remotely qualify researcher very quickly.

Re: YC set to launch one-year minimum income pilot project to figure out logistics

#190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drug consumption is definitely wrong. Poor people can't afford drugs. People on welfare in states that require drug testing of welfare recipients have much lower rates of drug use than the population at large. http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2015/02/26/3624447/tanf-dru...

Did we read the same article? Consider their headline number - Missouri. Testing cost $336k and found 48 drug users. Assuming welfare costs $10k/person, it saved $480k making it a net positive. All the other states they discuss had significantly higher returns (5-10x). This all assumes not a single drug user was deterred from applying and also that not a single welfare recipient was deterred from using drugs. Further…

The reason these rely on surveys instead of urine tests is because courts have deemed mandatory testing to be an unreasonable search, while random testing based on reasonable suspicion hasn't been shut down by courts (yet). Florida tried to have mandatory testing for all welfare recipients but the courts threw it out.

Nevertheless, these results are really astonishing and I think you're looking at them all wrong. Some bureaucrat in Utah thought that 460 welfare recipients were suspicious and ordered them tested, but only 18 of them tested positive. The bureaucrat was wrong 96% of the time, and the 4% usage rate is both under the drug use rate for the general population of that state (6% self-reported) and over-represented (because these were the 10% specifically selected people that the agency thought were using drugs).

Anyway, your profit and loss analysis seems fishy to me. It is highly unlikely that by denying 14 applicants their welfare checks the state of Utah saved anything near 100% of the face value of said check. In fact I would say it is quite likely that the state paid some fraction (with no upper bound) of that on subsequent support for and/or enforcement upon the unsupported people and their families, not to mention the general economic loss of not putting that money in motion.

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