At the same time the largest growing group is supposedly "Asian" Americans according to Pew research. It's funny how they group over four billion people into one ethnicity. Ironically (or not) the two major economic work horses in the American "alliance" are experiencing sharp declines in population growth, while the Chinese and Filipinos make up the largest group.
America is substantially reducing poverty among children
41–50 of 161 posts
Re: America is substantially reducing poverty among children
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nah, it's not. Monthly lottery winners are. If you know that 'free money' is just a temporary thing, you don't quit your job and move somewhere where that amount of money is enough to survive, and just stop working.... if ubi is permanent, and guaranteed to be "enough" to minimalistically survive, many more people would do that.
> if ubi is permanent… The most likely outcome is that very quickly all the UBI money will be going to the few landlords and soon people will need "UBI plus a job" to pay rent and make ends meet. And whilst the masses our back out in the wilds scrounging up their money, the landlord class will be consolidating into an every smaller group. Inflation is what happens when too much money chases a limited supply of goods.…
Rent is only affected by income/capacity to pay to the extent that supply is limited.
You could give everyone currently living in Detroit $10,000/month, and it wouldn't impact rental prices at all, because there is an abundance of supply. Do the same thing in NYC, and indeed rental prices will soar.
Re: America is substantially reducing poverty among children
#43Mostly because the pandemic caused panic stimulus spending, not because of permanent, structural changes to fiscal policy.
Not sure if you're aware but the US recently started sending checks to families every month.
The blurbs I've heard say this has cut US child poverty in half. I should find a source...
Re: America is substantially reducing poverty among children
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nah, it's not. Monthly lottery winners are. If you know that 'free money' is just a temporary thing, you don't quit your job and move somewhere where that amount of money is enough to survive, and just stop working.... if ubi is permanent, and guaranteed to be "enough" to minimalistically survive, many more people would do that.
> if ubi is permanent… The most likely outcome is that very quickly all the UBI money will be going to the few landlords and soon people will need "UBI plus a job" to pay rent and make ends meet. And whilst the masses our back out in the wilds scrounging up their money, the landlord class will be consolidating into an every smaller group. Inflation is what happens when too much money chases a limited supply of goods.…
> The most likely outcome is that very quickly all the UBI money will be going to the few landlords and soon people will need "UBI plus a job" to pay rent and make ends meet.
This doesn't make sense. If it was the case, raising the minimum wage would have the same result, but studies have shown that people are better off when the minimum wage goes up. Landlords do not have infinite power to raise prices, because they are in competition with one another.
To the extent landlords have too much power, it's largely because we have decided to prevent the construction of new housing for many years.
> And desirable housing is always limited.
Does not have to be if you allow people to build more housing, and fix the regulations that make it overly expensive to do so.
Re: America is substantially reducing poverty among children
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nah, it's not. Monthly lottery winners are. If you know that 'free money' is just a temporary thing, you don't quit your job and move somewhere where that amount of money is enough to survive, and just stop working.... if ubi is permanent, and guaranteed to be "enough" to minimalistically survive, many more people would do that.
> if ubi is permanent… The most likely outcome is that very quickly all the UBI money will be going to the few landlords and soon people will need "UBI plus a job" to pay rent and make ends meet. And whilst the masses our back out in the wilds scrounging up their money, the landlord class will be consolidating into an every smaller group. Inflation is what happens when too much money chases a limited supply of goods.…
It depends on how much UBI is. There is plenty of housing in the US, for example -- except there isnt enough near where jobs exist. If UBI was sufficient for survival, people could migrate away from high cost areas to exurbs. There are huge swaths of housing once you go far enough, except that isnt possible if you still need to supplement UBI with a job and are hence tied to a major metro area.
Re: America is substantially reducing poverty among children
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
> if ubi is permanent… The most likely outcome is that very quickly all the UBI money will be going to the few landlords and soon people will need "UBI plus a job" to pay rent and make ends meet. And whilst the masses our back out in the wilds scrounging up their money, the landlord class will be consolidating into an every smaller group. Inflation is what happens when too much money chases a limited supply of goods.…
That's why you need to fight asset inflation, reduce red tapes and increasing housing opportunities.
Sure, but it behoves advocates to UBI to say:
"We have a solution that not only includes handing outs cash to everyone forever, but to fight the associated, unavoidable rent inflation we will introduce sweeping changes to hard-earned building standards, negatively alter the character of many many neighbourhoods, and add a massive beurocracy to introduce and enforce with the power of the state all sorts of price controls."
They don't do this because obviously far fewer people would think its a good idea.
Re: America is substantially reducing poverty among children
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nah, it's not. Monthly lottery winners are. If you know that 'free money' is just a temporary thing, you don't quit your job and move somewhere where that amount of money is enough to survive, and just stop working.... if ubi is permanent, and guaranteed to be "enough" to minimalistically survive, many more people would do that.
If 20 quit their low wage job and one of them finally has time to study and become a researcher or doctor, I think it's worth it.
What if they become a shitty musician? And curent researchers get paid even less, because their money goes to a kid who'd rather play his ukulele inestead of working?
Re: America is substantially reducing poverty among children
#48I think this (COVID relief) is the closest America is going to get to a legitimate domestic experiment on UBI we're going to get for a while so it's rather heartening to see the drop in family poverty.
If cost is not controlled I'd expect expenses of food, clothed and renting to rise after UBI being implemented.
I can see the argument for the price of rent rising, but why would the prices of food and clothing rise? My understanding is that those are highly competitive markets, with low margins on top of the cost of production, at least in their non-luxury segments. Is that wrong?
Re: America is substantially reducing poverty among children
#49I think this (COVID relief) is the closest America is going to get to a legitimate domestic experiment on UBI we're going to get for a while so it's rather heartening to see the drop in family poverty.
If cost is not controlled I'd expect expenses of food, clothed and renting to rise after UBI being implemented.
I think that's one of the biggest weaknesses of using the pandemic as an experiment on UBI - it's one of the best ones we'll get for a while (and I think we have seen increases in luxury spending from most sectors which would indicate greater financial security) but at the same time we're seeing the continued echoes of supply chain shortages. It'll be hard to determine precisely why the price of meat has gone up from two prior, there are quite legitimate additional costs on production by having increased sanitary and working space requirements - and I think both sides of the UBI debate will be able to sanely say that those costs were either mostly due to the pandemic or mostly due to labour shortages driven by the covid benefit... and I don't know if we'll ever get a really clear answer.
Re: America is substantially reducing poverty among children
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
If cost is not controlled I'd expect expenses of food, clothed and renting to rise after UBI being implemented.
Costs cannot be controlled. That’s not how it works. That’s how you get empty shelves. I think some inflation will happen but not dramatically in food and clothing. We do not have many naked and starving people in America. It’s the premium consumer goods that will see higher demand - think dishwashers not Chanel.
I guess rent will be the one to go up in case of UBI.
UBI fundamentally does not solve the problems that:
a) some people do not want to live next to some other people, and are willing to pay extra for that privilege - now they have even more money to use for that purpose,
b) in the most expensive regions, demand exceeds supply a lot.
I even think that a vast majority of UBI would, at the end, accrue to landlords.