Some people are being given thousands of dollars with no strings attached in universal basic income trials. They spend the cash.
FTFY
this post was submitted on 04 Apr 2024
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The entire concept of a scientific study to determine whether people spend this money wisely is bunk, because it’s nobody else’s business how a person’s money gets spent and whether it’s categorized as “wise”.
If we assume that there is an objective, ie scientifically valid, definition of “wise spending”, then we should just go centrally planned communism because the whole point of free markets is allowing people to enact their own value structure in their spending.
The whole idea of basic income, as opposed to all these other services, is based on the same idea: that people’s money is their own.
This study seems nice, but it frames this whole question the wrong way. The whole concept of money is that people have a right to make their own economic choices, regardless of what some centralized authority thinks is “wise”.
Yeah no, there definitely is wise spending.
Spending all your money at the casino, spending all your money on alcohol, etc. That's majority different from spending money on food, shelter, an education, etc.
There's also a difference between spending money that was given to you vs spending money that you did something to earn. That's part of why welfare is such a contentious program in the country. "I want them to have food not half a dozen kids, 17 pets, brand new phones, and cigarettes."
The fact of the matter is, most recipients don't spend the money on that and they do spend it wisely just like the folks did here.
But yeah, if you're asking for me or anyone else to give up a portion of our salaries to create universal basic income, etc, it needs to be proven to be a net benefit, and how "wisely" that money is being spent is important.
We wouldn't rejoice at a politician taking more money from the public fund for a personal trip to the Bahamas. If it's shown this money just becomes vacation money, it's clearly not needed and frankly shouldn't be given.
Understanding how the money is spent is important.
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Word.
Also it's a huge difference if you get universal income for life or just for a limited time and have to provide for yourself again after that
That's not true. There is a wise spending. Or to be more correct there is a foolish spending. Gambling your money away for example is f* stupid.
The point is that the government really shouldn't have any say in which is which. I agree with you that gambling all your money away is a poor financial choice, but that doesn't mean that I think we should ban gambling, because many people enjoy it responsibly. Teaching people financial literacy, and treating addictions is the solution, not policing how people use their UBI.
If it's government given money, that's somebody's tax dollars and the government absolutely should have a say, because the people giving that money should have a say.
Why attack the people for their spending on vices when you could just outlaw the vices. If you care so much about people's morals, then the government should just outlaw alcohol, gambling and anything else deemed an ill use of this money. It's the exact same thing, except you only want the government to police people who you think don't deserve freedom because you consider them lesser.
When you take someone else's money, you should have a good reason for doing so. Money is an exchange of labor, straight up. You're not entitled to anyone else's labor without qualification.
Social benefit programs are just that, programs for the social benefit.
People are allowed to have vices, but irresponsibly spending other people's money is not okay, just like breaking/trashing other people's stuff (and thus spending their time and money) is not okay.
This is a basic part of the social contract.
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the amount given should be based on some cost of living index just like the minimum wage should be
Oh look UBI experiment number 1578 says the same thing.
And people will still ignore it and pretend UBI is unproven.
Except of course none of these are UBI experiments. The U has been completely forgotten.
They're trying to water down the idea of UBI to renaming "benefits". There's only one class of people who would find this advantageous, and it ain't us.
The reality is that we won't know for sure how it works across an entire population until a small country changes its tax structure to make this possible across everyone. Would people quit shit jobs more often? Would minimum wage be abolished? How much work is considered saturation when all the crap is stripped away?
Real actual UBI would be an enormous societal change (I believe for the better), and I'm not sure that giving a handful of poor people some money and watching them spend it on things they need to survive is particularly worthwhile. We know that. It's everyone else that might throw a spanner in the works.
Ahhh the, "the experiment is impossible" argument. Except no one ever argues that the math is wrong once the self sustaining tax system is explained. Because it's really quite simple. So we don't need an experiment for that do we?
We look at people's employment status and their financial literacy. And this is study number 1542 proving that it would not cause massive drop out from employment and people are capable of budgeting the extra money responsibly.
And this is study number 1542 proving that it would not cause massive drop out from employment
And where, pray tell, has it proved that?
The only way that it would not cause a drop in employment is if UBI is not enough to live off, which defeats the whole purpose.
UBI as an entire living stipend is an end state scenario; when automation is extremely advanced. Nobody serious is suggesting that for right now.
I think any definition of UBI that does not contain enough to live off is not really UBI.
And yes, to live off it, you'll be shopping in Aldi, eating very basic food, and living in an area that isn't very nice. I'm not suggesting you should be able to live on it in a nice area of SF or somewhere else with ludicrous property prices on UBI. It would probably involve some basic housing being thrown up by the government.
We already live in a society with enough money to ensure everyone can live. It would just be nice to get rid of the cruelty in the lower rungs.
We already live in a society with enough money to ensure everyone can live. It would just be nice to get rid of the cruelty in the lower rungs.
Very well said. Unfortunately, for some, the cruelty is the point.
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This has been my primary question about UBI: if landlords know that everybody has an extra $1000 per month, what stops them from raising rent by exactly that amount?
My biggest concern with UBI is that it would be great for a couple of years, and then the greedy fingers of capitalism would find a way to start clawing it back. I don’t see how UBI works without including a bunch of protections to keep the newly financially stable populace from being exploited again.
Because not everyone has an extra $1000 a month. The median working person's tax will increase to the point that the UBI is wiped out (and high earners will find their tax burden more than it is now). This is how it works. It's not free money on top of your existing money. It's a barrier at the low end preventing money from going below a certain level.
I see, so it sort of scales where they take some or all of the UBI back in taxes based on your income? Would the tax evasion that is common with the ultra-rich thwart this design?
And if only the poorest demographic has the extra $1000, then wouldn’t that concentrate potential price increases in low income neighborhoods?
Thank you for answering my questions and feel free to tap out whenever, I just haven’t had the chance to ask anyone about this who seems to have done any real research on it.
Well the ultra rich don't really pay a level of income tax that reflects their wealth anyway, but even if they were actively trying to fiddle things any amount of UBI would be but a rounding error in their finances. For the actual rich, nothing short of a wealth tax will do.
As for the second question, possibly. Although UBI does replace benefits, and I'd wager most low income neighbourhood are already using those benefits to top up landlord retirement funds anyway. UBI is as much about letting people have the money without making them balance it on their nose first while praising the glorious taxpayers that fund it.
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Because we've already capped annual rent increases and stood up a special part of the DOJ to prosecute any price cartels.
UBI doesn't answer every problem. That doesn't mean it's a bad idea.
For the record, I don’t think it is a bad idea—I want it to be a good idea and I would benefit from it.
I just don’t trust corpo America to let us normies experience an increase in our quality of life without it putting a target on our backs.
I’m glad to hear about the rent cap. Does that apply to new developments as well? Could somebody tear down an old apartment and build new ones at double the cost?
I’m not trying to slam UBI or interrogate you, I’m genuinely curious. I just have a natural resistance to getting my hopes up after watching nearly every other proposed social program in my lifetime turn out to be varying shades of bullshit.
Oh no. We're going to have to fight. The idea that we won capitalism in the 80's and 90's seriously set us back. We're going to have to fight and keep fighting our entire lives.
But people won't want to slave away for my megacorp for starvation wages if we pay them not to work!
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Personally I have never considered that there would be a risk of the UBI recipients to spend the money unwisely.
People needing UBI have a very long standing experience of not getting what they need to minimise their losses on a daily basis, so of course they will invest in that first. They all probably have a ranked, itemised list of all that would help. And I'm willing to bet that said list, on average, would be at least 80% correct (the 20% being influenced by personal sensitivities and beliefs, like a vegan person spending more on plastic based clothing, that wears out faster).
People not needing UBI already have more money than they can find intelligent uses for, and so they already are spending money unwisely.
Nah, the part that concerns me is that as soon as we all get UBI, and I do mean the very next day, rents are gonna rise by 33% of the amount of the UBI, the cost of food will rise by 33% of the amount of the UBI, and the cost of all the rest combined will rise by 34% of the amount of the UBI. It will be back to square one, and all we will have achieved will be funnelling our taxes straight into the pockets of for profit, private megacorporations.
We need to "fix" that megacorporation problem first.
You mean rents will go up by 100% of the UBI, food will go up by 100% of the UBI, and healthcare will go up by 10,000% because it's a day ending in the letter Y.