$750 a month, no questions asked, improved the lives of homeless people
latimes.com
If 100 homeless people were given $750 per month for a year, no questions asked, what would they spend it on?
That question was at the core of a controlled study conducted by a San Francisco-based nonprofit and the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work.
The results were so promising that the researchers decided to publish results after only six months. The answer: food, 36.6%; housing, 19.5%; transportation, 12.7%; clothing, 11.5%; and healthcare, 6.2%, leaving only 13.6% uncategorized.
Those who got the stipend were less likely to be unsheltered after six months and able to meet more of their basic needs than a control group that got no money, and half as likely as the control group to have an episode of being unsheltered.
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All these UBI experiments ever seem to demonstrate is the "BI" part.
But the part that needs to be demonstrated, IMHO, is the "U".
Well we can't do that until we do that. And shitting on the experiments means we'll never do the Universal part.
This isn't really true.
We generally don't experiment with economic policy because it's not practical.
The main impediment to UBI is not supporting data, but political will. Voters are so used to punishing poor people that UBI just doesn't resonate with the voting public. Of course that will change with the continuing encroachment of automation.
Additionally UBI is not all or nothing. You could increase it over time. If 20% of average salary is the objective, then start with 1% this year and increase it by 1% each year for the next 19 years. It will take 20 years to dismantle the other welfare systems anyway.
You know that's a good point. It takes a few years to get a UBI up to full throughput anyways. I think part of the problem with that approach is it will be more expensive to start, at least on paper. And God forbid we spend money on anything other than the military. But it's certainly true, we don't need to switch it like a light switch by any means.
It's not the critics of the experiments that are the problem.
The "experiments" are just watering down the idea of UBI into "just rename existing benefits programs".
You'd need to restructure an entire country's tax systems to really do a proper experiment. No country could just afford to give everyone free money. You'd have to structure it so the average person pays back exactly what extra they got, and build affordable housing for the people that actually choose to live on just UBI.
Nobody is choosing to live on just the UBI though. Study after study shows that people do more economic activity with a proper UBI, not less.
And yes, we are at the precipice where we either make the jump or not.
We can't meaningfully advocate or plan for its implementation unless we have some idea how it would work. And that it can work.
The sorts of experiments in the OP get us no closer to that. They prove nothing that wasn't already pretty uncontroversial and obvious, and offer no insights about how these programs might be implemented universally.
Pointing this out does not hold back UBI. Ignoring it, however, does.
We know it can work. We know how it will work. The math works, the psychology works, there's nothing else left to do but do it. This is just the latest in a long line of studies on this going back decades. Doubting it at this point is just putting your head in the ground.
This is the part where the citations you link are extremely important.
You could, just read the thread. You don't need to keep responding to each level.
And the math is either generally available as a thought exercise or specific to the model being discussed. There's not really an in between.
How will it work, then?
Everyone gets x amount. As you go up in tax brackets y amount is subtracted at tax time until you get high enough that the entirety of x is reclaimed. For this there are several programs we can completely shut down and the same funding would provide anywhere from 500-1500 dollars a month. (Depending on whose math you believe).
everything you’re saying here and in the replies makes perfect sense and is very clear. unfortunately, it looks like you’re arguing with someone who isn’t willing to listen to reason
To be honest, that's the point. They might not listen to reason but it's pretty obvious to any one else stopping by.
That sounds like means-tested welfare programs, which we already have. UBI by definition is unconditional.
In other words, you're talking about "BI" but I'm asking about "U".
There is no means testing. The IRS has all the information it needs already. Getting rid of the means testing is where the bulk of the available money comes from.
And as far as the Universal part goes, we can't do that until we actually do it. Asking to test that is a bad faith argument used by the GOP because it's literally impossible to do without actually implementing the program.
We did actually do it though, COVID payments. Remember how corporations immediately went on a money grab and inflation immediately kicked in and now we have permanently higher prices? The fed stated 1/3 of the inflation was directly from the universal stimulus money. Printing money for everyone has good and bad factors.
I think people would treat a recurring payment they can depend on every week/month differently than a one-time thing that only happened in the middle of a pandemic.
The Fed lied. Also, those one time payments were largely created money, not circulated money. Which is just asking for inflation. Finally, corporations got far more than people did and decided to ruin away with the gains anyways. The lesson there isn't UBI bad, it's that trusting corporations to do the right thing is bad and having strict regulatory enforcement is good.
This is literally means testing
You're describing a means tested welfare program.
"Means testing" is to check the recipients income (their "means") against a schedule of benefits. Higher income=lower benefit. This is how most existing and historic welfare systems have operated. In what sense is your suggestion an improvement?
I am no Republican. The comparison is downright insulting.
Means testing is far more than that. It's entire divisions of agencies and reams of paper checking to make sure you qualify as poor enough.
The IRS referencing your tax return is not means testing in any way, shape, or form like it's happening right now. The money simply goes out to everyone and taxes are adjusted. There's no forms, no sworn statements, no civil servant trying to figure out if your second car counts or not. That is all skipped.
I still don't see how literally looking at how much money you earned to determine your UBI benefit isn't means testing, but it's not really central to my point. Yes, the IRS could plausibly do this, but where is the money actually coming from?
These experiments are always small groups within a much larger economic system and the money comes from that larger system. It seems obvious to me that the recipients in such an experiment will thrive more. And even if it wasn't, there have been a number of these experiments around the world and they all proved people thrived more already anyway.
What's not obvious to me is what replaces the larger system if UBI becomes the system. Can UBI be a self-sustained system?
Okay let's come at this from another angle.
If you apply for benefits you have to fill out the form attesting you need help. You need to talk to a civil servant to have that need verified. Then you need to fill out more forms declaring your assets. You will also need to do this semi regularly. And you will need to do this for each benefit program you apply for.
Now multiply that by about 30 million applications/check-ups a year, per program. That's where the money comes from. That entire apparatus is no longer needed and the annual funds from that will actually be enough to run a UBI program. Then on the taxes end you can recoup about a 1/4 of the money sent out so that can be reinvested into the program.
As I said earlier the math has been checked. It works. We wouldn't need to fund any extra money than we already do.
So it's paid for by the savings from not having all that inefficient wasteful overhead of the modern welfare state. That's the grand plan?
OK, where can I find this math you speak of?
The problem is giving X amount per month to homeless people is not a representative study for something called "universal" basic income. It's just a basic income for homeless people.
One of the biggest theoretical problems with giving everyone X amount per month is that it will simply drive up inflation since there are now $X/mo/person more in circulation (meaning everything will simply go up in price to absorb all that extra money). An experiment like this, as beneficial as it may have been for the participants, unfortunately has no value in proving whether or not that IS actually what happens.
This was my initial reaction also, but taking a closer look the article doesn't say anything about UBI. This is not a UBI experiment.
Correct. It's basic income for homeless people.
A fair point. But it looks, swims, and quacks like a UBI experiment.
Not really, you can't criticise it for not being like UBI while saying it's similar to UBI even if it does not purport to be UBI.
We're honestly not at a point where UBI is sustainable. However, this clearly demonstrates that replacing existing welfare with straight up cash, and changing how that cash scales down as people approach a "normal minimum" income, is vastly superior to our current system
These experiments aren't even trying to demonstrate that. And they don't.
Except they do, because they show the value of fungible, no-questions-asked support
It's not "BI" that needs to be demonstrated. It's "U".
Plus, these experiments do in fact ask questions about recipients' income. Just like regular welfare programs.
I think you should reread this thread.
I think you're neither serious nor sincere about making UBI work.
Interesting take- Why?
Obviously because of your "reread the thread" comment.
That's not the response of someone who wants a meaningful discussion. That's the response of someone who wants to end the discussion.
It's the response of a person who thinks you're having a conversation with someone else that you think you're having with me, based on the not-quite-on-topic nature of your posting.
For instance, my first sentence in this entire comment section is