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Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

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Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#91

Post by [deleted] »

bko wrote: post #46
ilaksh wrote: post #22

$1000 is not enough to quit their jobs or get a nice apartment. They could move slightly closer to work if they have to commute. It's not enough for a real tuition or to support them to study instead of work. I don't think we've ever had a universal basic income test. We have always missed the universal and basic part. It's below basic and not at all universal. I suspect that you need to get international cooperation…

Why is the goal to get people to quit their jobs and get a nice apartment? Isn't it supposed to be a minimum base level of support? Why do we keep moving the goal posts? And if everyone quits their job and lives in a nice apartment, where is this money going to come from? The problem with welfare today is that its a disincentive to work. Start working, you lose your transfer payments. A lot of people are stuck in thi…

[deleted]

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#92

Post by ixwt »

jimt1234 wrote: post #79
bko wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is the goal to get people to quit their jobs and get a nice apartment? Isn't it supposed to be a minimum base level of support? Why do we keep moving the goal posts? And if everyone quits their job and lives in a nice apartment, where is this money going to come from? The problem with welfare today is that its a disincentive to work. Start working, you lose your transfer payments. A lot of people are stuck in thi…

Back in my college speech class, a woman gave a presentation basically supporting the "welfare today is a disincentive to work" myth, with emphasis on "today" (or current), while totally destroying the notion that welfare recipients don't "want" to work. She was a stay-at-home mom with 2 kids, her husband commit suicide after serving in Iraq and then being pushed out of the military (this was the 90s when the US mili…

There was a podcast or video about this exact same issue in... Sweden? Some anecdata from people receiving welfare, but couldn't start a job or a business because if they received any money, they get nothing from welfare and wouldn't be able to support themselves.

This resulted in people that were trying to start a business not get paid for their work (I believe one of the anecdata was a photographer) because doing so would mean they couldn't support themselves.

Personally, I'm a big fan of the "for every $2 you make, you get $1 less from UBI/Welfare" concept. This seems a very easy way to wean people off of welfare. That money is already tracked by the IRS (unless you're getting paid under the table).

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#93

Post by whamlastxmas »

geor9e wrote: post #56

I am not sure how small studies can account for the inflation wide rollout could cause. Consider this hypothetical: If you give 1 of 1000 renters $100, 1 landlord will leave the rent alone because they don't know. If you give 1000 of 1000 renters $100, word will get to 1000 landlords, who will all increase rent $100, because the market will bear it. I'm not saying this will happen, just that a small study enjoys the…

This is a pretty common and unsupported argument that people also use for things like saying minimum wage doesn’t make sense for the same reason.

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#94

Post by heylook »

Suppafly wrote: post #65
theLiminator wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm concerned about a situation similar to college tuition in the US where easy, risk free money leads to price gouging. Once everyone has an extra $XXXXX how quickly does the market realize that the cost of goods can be raised by that amount. Yeah, I'm convinced state backed student loans has led to the crazy rise in college tuition. student loans should be private (but should 100% be dischargeable via bankruptcy)…

> student loans should be private (but should 100% be dischargeable via bankruptcy) While I mostly agree, how do you prevent basically every student from going bankrupt immediately after graduation? None of the downsides to bankruptcy really apply to students so it's logically the best course of action if students loans could be discharged.

I'm not convinced you would need to. "Students" cease to be students immediately after graduation, so they wouldn't really be "students" anymore, right? So "none of the downsides to bankruptcy really apply to students" doesn't really seem accurate, does it?

Even reading it more charitably, students and recent graduates still probably would like access to credit cards, or the housing rental market, or whatever. Bankruptcies stick with you for 7(?) years, so you'd also have to think about whether you'd be locked out of the mortgage market, auto loan market, what-have-you, while your peers are able to make those moves.

Bankruptcies are also like a whole legal thing with a judge and everything, so I doubt we'd see every single student getting their whole debt discharged instead of a judge just being like "Didn't you, like, just spend all this money on getting the training required to get a high-paying job? Seems like if you plan on working anytime soon you should make some payments."

Also lenders can just like, be more selective or restrictive in other ways? Higher interest rates, requiring more established co-signers, etc etc etc. Honestly the strangest part of this is that we've normalized saddling 18 year-olds with tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt.

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#95

Post by legitster »

altruios wrote: post #20
legitster wrote: post #5

This is a pretty generous reading of the study. One result they are missing out is that the income actually reduced overall employment compared to the control group, and ended up decreasing household earnings: https://www.nber.org/papers/w32719 Even with a generous reading, it was an extremely expensive study. And similar proposals like the Negative Income Tax would cost far less money and have none of the presented…

YES!!!! Not every job is moral, essential or needed, the idea that 'everyone needs to participate with American capitalism as a worker drone' needs to die.

"From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" - Karl Marx.

It's not an inherent function of capitalism. If anything, Marx himself actually pitched communism as boosting overall productivity of society by putting bourgeois to work.

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#96

Post by binary132 »

Other merits or demerits aside, doesn’t it seem obvious that if the state started distributing $3,600,000,000,000 of cash a year, it could possibly, just maybe, move the needle on inflation just a tiny wee bit? Has anyone ever addressed that challenge, or is it baked into the pie on purpose? If so, is this just a way to redistribute the allocation of assets? If so, why not just be honest and start the conversation there?

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#97

Post by eamsen »

falcolas wrote: post #78
eamsen wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Value production is needed, because the value we produce is fleeting and healthy societies grow. How much value is needed is determined by the society through a free market.

How much value can a disabled veteran provide to the free market? If that value is zero, should they just lay down and die? What if they're not a veteran, but just an unfortunate soul with a disability that provides "zero" value?

A healthy society produces surplus to provide for those who depend on others. To ensure enough surplus, everyone who is able, should add value.

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#98

Post by jimt1234 »

There's been a narrative in the US over the last 40-or-so years that a "job" is the answer to all social problems. At best, that's half-true. Money is the real solution to social problems. And maybe it was the case 40 or 50 years ago, but having a job doesn't provide the same money that it used to, relative to required expenses.

My boomer dad got a job right out of high school, with only a diploma, and was able to purchase a house and support my then-stay-at-home mother within 3 months of starting work. That is simply unheard of now. And it's not because people don't have jobs.

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#99

Post by david38 »

jimt1234 wrote: post #79
bko wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is the goal to get people to quit their jobs and get a nice apartment? Isn't it supposed to be a minimum base level of support? Why do we keep moving the goal posts? And if everyone quits their job and lives in a nice apartment, where is this money going to come from? The problem with welfare today is that its a disincentive to work. Start working, you lose your transfer payments. A lot of people are stuck in thi…

Back in my college speech class, a woman gave a presentation basically supporting the "welfare today is a disincentive to work" myth, with emphasis on "today" (or current), while totally destroying the notion that welfare recipients don't "want" to work. She was a stay-at-home mom with 2 kids, her husband commit suicide after serving in Iraq and then being pushed out of the military (this was the 90s when the US mili…

To me, this is the single biggest problem with welfare.

The woman wants to work, yet cannot because she can’t guarantee how fast she will move past the “no welfare and very little money” transition until she gets promoted to full time work.

Her only recourse is to stay on welfare. Now the real issue comes to her children. If she managed to really instill in them the need to never be on welfare themselves, great, they’ll join the workforce. But what if she didn’t? Maybe only tried a bit, but the years of being on welfare made her lose touch with the working world. Children now only see welfare and thus generational poverty starts.

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#100

Post by bko »

jimt1234 wrote: post #79
bko wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is the goal to get people to quit their jobs and get a nice apartment? Isn't it supposed to be a minimum base level of support? Why do we keep moving the goal posts? And if everyone quits their job and lives in a nice apartment, where is this money going to come from? The problem with welfare today is that its a disincentive to work. Start working, you lose your transfer payments. A lot of people are stuck in thi…

Back in my college speech class, a woman gave a presentation basically supporting the "welfare today is a disincentive to work" myth, with emphasis on "today" (or current), while totally destroying the notion that welfare recipients don't "want" to work. She was a stay-at-home mom with 2 kids, her husband commit suicide after serving in Iraq and then being pushed out of the military (this was the 90s when the US mili…

Yes, exactly. If you pay someone not to work, I can't blame them for not working. Sure it could be short-sighted, but that's not a moral flaw. The system is designed to keep people in poverty and dependent on the system. It's really tragic
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