Seattle gave low-income residents $500 a month no strings attached. Employment rates nearly doubled.
Rimu@piefed.social to 
finance.yahoo.com
- A Seattle basic income pilot gave low-income residents $500 a month, nearly doubling employment rates.
- Some participants reported getting new housing, while others saw their employment incomes rise.
- Basic income pilots nationwide have seen noteworthy success, despite conservative opposition.
The 10,000th study to show the same result. Probably need to do a hundred thousand more.
bUt jUsT giViNg pEopLe mOnEy WiLL mAkE ThEm LazY!!!
It would be good to know how this works on a larger scale. Like, everyone in a city or county having UBI and watching to see what society and the local economy as a whole does in response.
Look at the stimulus checks and how they measurable gains up and down the economy and living conditions.
And measure that was temporary from the very beginning, yet still resulted in contributing to increases in the cost of living everywhere.
Check out Kenya, they have the largest and longest running experiment.
I've learned that conservatives especially, certainly not exclusively, prefer if it people constantly had to worry about their livelihoods. Thus ensuring a steady supply of cheap labor to be exploited.
And the side benefit for those who sell God as a dog-eat-dog free market Capitalist is more people going to their houses of worship where they get reminded to endure because the afterlife will be great. Total win-win for money and the moneyed class who all the while eat really well.
It's amazing how they've convinced people to vote conservative, to vote against themselves.
Yeah, I'm not surprised. I'm currently not working (living with parents), and personally, if I had a guaranteed $500 a month in my bank account I'd be much more willing to go out and get a job, regardless of how good or bad it is.
That $500 a month is a form of financial security; so I know that even if I get fired, I'll still have something to fall back on. It would ease the anxiety of having to deal with shitty managers, being potentially overworked, underpaid, etc, because it'd mean that if one job sucks, I can go find a different one without worrying that the rug was being completely pulled out from under my feet.
It also means that, if I am getting underpaid, I still potentially have some spending money that'll allow me some luxuries despite the low wage/salary being given to me by company I'm working for. That increases my flexibility for bullshit and allows me to be more tolerant of shitty managers.
The fact that you have to roll the dice and hope the company you're going to work for won't have shitty managers, low wages, overwork, etc is a real disincentive when you have family you can live with. That $500 a month makes the dice roll more tolerable.
My biggest concern is that if Universal Basic Income becomes, well, universal, then the cost of everything will likely spike in proportion to whatever UBI is. It's greedy, but logical that if all your tenants are getting $500 a month from the government, then that means you can raise their rent. Companies would also look at it and one department would say, "we can lower wages because of UBI" while another department says, "we can raise prices because people have more money via UBI". As such, the government would need to implement protections against such actions.
How do you do that though?
Do you peg the cost of rent to a formula based on land value, income, etc?
Do you peg the price of a product to the product's cost + X%?
Do you try and mandate wages based on performance, seniority, and job type?
At what point do you look at the tangle of laws and formulas and say, "this is insane; maybe instead of giving cash, we should give housing, food, water, electricity and other modern necessities."
Ultimately, I'm not sure any of the protections required for UBI to be successfull will be implemented. I'm not against the idea of UBI, but I don't trust the government (well, the US government anyway) to have the foresight to successfully pull it off.
Edit: At the end of the day, I don't want to live with my parents. I don't want to be unemployed, I don't want to feel like a drain on society, and I don't want to feel like I have nothing to offer to the world. I like to believe everyone has the potential to change the world for the better, either in a small way, or a big way. Right now I feel like I'm not doing anything, and I don't like it. However, I've had some very bad experiences with """unskilled""" jobs and the industry I've spent time training for (video games) is a fucking mess and is getting worse.
You deal with the inflation issue with strict antitrust enforcement. Actual competition in the market should keep prices under control but we've let a handful of companies corner the market on way too many things and well, just look around.
If capitalism must persist, then this is the most reasonable suggestion. And it will persist so long as everyone is distracted or run down enough to lack the hope for change.
IDK, the housing market seems to follow different rules than TVs, for example. Rent prices highly depend on the income of individuals in the area. Rent, land, and houses are very cheap where there are no jobs, and very expensive where there are many highly paid jobs. I suppose it's because you can't manufacture more land at a lower cost in places where people want to live, ridiculous zoning practices, and real estate being used as an investment vehicle (not only by large corporations, but also by many fairly well-off people who buy a new home and rent out their previous one, for example).
UBI and remote work have the potential to even things out dramatically. Towns that lack employment opportunities could attract people other than retirees and services that would have otherwise been unavailable could be sustained.
I suppose it could cause pricing problems in some areas, but that could probably be mitigated by high property taxes coupled with tax breaks for primary residences to curb real estate hoarding and rent seeking.
Well you can identify shortages in required goods like food, housing, and internet; and have the government enter the market with a basic level of service "at cost". Put an anchor right in that market.
Everyone needs food, housing, water, electricity, healthcare, education, and Internet access. Those things would need to be capped pretty tightly.
I can almost hear the conservatives howling now. I mean, they howl about it now, and we've not even done anything about it!
I think ultimately UBI would have to be one of many aspects of moving towards post-scarcity. We will also need to be incrementally introducing free basic needs, free education, internet access, public transit, etc alongside it, while also passing rent control laws and, if antitrust laws aren't up to the task, perhaps seizing oversized corps, and turning them into employee owned, maybe balkanized versions of themselves wherever that makes sense from an antitrust perspective.
You don't get radical changes without radical solutions. None of this will happen without a fight of course.
It’s real simple, but functionally impossible under our system. A small landlord raises rent to extract the extra value, put them in prison. A corporate landlord does it? Sentence them to death.
Brace for all of the explanations why we can't just do this...
because money for poor people is a waste, when we could funnel it all to the handful of giga-billionaires who need to add all money in circulation to their draconic horde, obviously.
The first trillionaire ain't gonna make themself.
Even dragons don't hoard that much. 500,000 oz of gold is only around 1.04-1.1 billion dollars, and only the richest of ancient red wyrms roll that high. Most of those 10,000 year old dragons have less, cause that figure is rolling perfectly on the treasure table
Pretty sure guys like Lofwyr could put that to shame.
I'm just going off the stats in the MM
That's seriously way more than any dragon gets in the 1979 MM. Talk about inflation!
3,500,000 gp - 5,000,000 is 3.5 edition
Why just for low income people?
What do you consider low income and what do you think the cut off should be? Most people aren't exactly in favor of giving rich people money so the line needs to be drawn somewhere.
I don't mind if they get $500 a month but in exchange they need to actually pay their taxes.
Lol right? Sure IDGAF if Jeff Bezos gets $500 with everyone else as long as he pays his millions upon millions of taxes. $500 is a drop in the bucket of what he should be paying. Also Amazon the company should undoubtedly be paying way more taxes than it does (if it even does).
Most UBI models use exactly that model to save a lot of money on the program. They just tax it back from the rich people.
I don't know the answer.
The universal part of Universal Basic Income has always had this sticking point with me. Will Gates, Bezos and Musk also receive UBI?
Yes, but only because it would cost more to exclude them. For no added cost we can just add it to their taxes so it comes out neutral.
Thanks. That makes sense. So you can so do the same tax trick with other levels of earning.
Yup. At the theoretical middle we'd just tax 50% of the UBI, and so on.
Absolutely they would. Everyone would.
Of course taxes would rise to cover it, so the average person would be absolutely no better off than they are now.
In return the really poor get some breathing room, and we can kill all the "money grabbing dolescum" discourse around claiming benefits. People with low outgoings who just want a break from the treadmill can take it.
That's actually incredibly optimistic, imo.
$500 a month is $6000 a year.
If we gave that amount of UBI to all working age Americans (rounded down for easy math, numbers 200 million), that's a price tag of $1.2 trillion, every year.
That's slightly more than the amount the US spends on welfare programs annually. The entire federal budget is about $6.2 trillion, so this would mean an increase of almost 20%. Where could we possibly get that much more tax revenue?
You're getting half that back every year. You forgot that part. So it only cost 600 million a year. In fact that means we could kick it to a thousand a month and still be close to our current welfare budget. Find the number that matches exactly, (something like 928) and we can match our current spending while giving poor Americans ~$11,000 a year.
And the government smaller thing actually works here too. You'd think the conservatives would love this! Unless, it's actually about hurting people isn't it? Was smaller government just code for hurting people?
Depends on implementation but just paying it out to everyone is the easiest option. You can even make a progressive tax system that's nothing but UBI + flat tax, ridiculously easy to administer. If the UBI was, say, 1k and the tax rate 50% (just to have easy numbers) if you earn 100 bucks a month you end up with 1050, if you earn 2000 you end up with 2k, and if you earn 1m you end up with 501000: Under 2k income the effective tax rate is negative, at 2k it's exactly zero, at just over 2k it's very low, over that it approaches 50% in the limit. Much cheaper and easier to just give it to everyone than means-test a gazillion low-income people just to spite Gates.
I love the idea of UBI, but I worry about capitalists slurping up all the money if this is indeed done with the "U" (Universal) in mind.
I think it needs to be paired with a pretty steep tax on the top end, so yes - maybe Mr. Monopoly suddenly raises rent rates as much as the UBI on his tenants, but he's being taxed heavily on that, and the money is being funneled back down to the bottom which will raise UBI. It needs to be a losing proposition for Mr. Monopoly.
We just went through an inflation cycle where most every business decided en masse to raise prices to increase profits and no other particular reason. We need to be taxing corporations as well, so that actual eating & breathing "people" can live.
We already do this. The US spends over $1 trillion (with a T) each year on welfare programs. Very rough math I know, but if you divide that equally among the estimated 39 million in poverty in the US, it's over $25,000 per person.
So why not just give them that money?
It’s not evenly spent. Medicaid makes up the vast majority. https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/federal-spending/
So you're telling me we could institute Universal Healthcare and then pay the people the savings. I'm on board.
Me too but then again I already live in a country with free healthcare.
Well, conservatives have bad ideas on just about everything so that's not surprising. If all the conservatives just went away we could have a much nicer world like overnight.
"Why can't we have nice things?"
The answer is pretty simple.
Look we designed the entire system so that peoples lives could rapidly spiral out of control if they lost their job and this undermines so much of the hard work of billions in corporate lobbying.
The right only pretend to care about economics, whilst refusing to listen to its actual statements and outcomes. This is why Modern Monetary Theory is generally ignored.
Conservatism is about conserving the current social order. Individuals can move between classes occasionally, but for the most part the rich stay powerful (even when they are broke) and everyone else stays weak (even if they gain enough money to become comfortable).
So if there's an economic theory that would change that if adopted, it will be ignored until it gains popularity, at which point it will be demonized (like communism, socialism, regulation).
Its* actual statements.
Terrible article, but I'd like to see a paper or summary of the results. In my area, homeless folks just want a safe place to clean up to get jobs, and it's not available.
Just at first look I found this:
https://www.wtb.wa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/2021_Aug_UBI_project_plan.pdf
But that’s 2021 lemme see if there’s anything more recent.
This seems to be the primary source for all these recent articles:
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/53c04ba6e4b0012ad48d079e/t/6606f290c30b02607784ac21/1711731348017/GBI-Evaluation-Final_WDC-SKC-2024.pdf
The psychology of being supported by the society you work for is completely missed as a reason for why this is the case. It's this simple, people are more willing to work in a society they feel like cares for them. Why the fuck should I work if I feel like a higher quality of life is being arbitrarily gatekept by the previous generation? Fuck Republicans, they want to sell America to Putin. Being an American should be valuable.
Don't you just love how a post-scarcety society is held up as the ultimate unreachable utopia but when it gets down to it, the vast majority of scarcity is either completely artificial or exacerbated to maximize profits? Profits that in turn only mean that much due to artificial scarcity.
Robber baron capitalism truly is as stupid as it's cruel.
UBI doesn't lend itself to "pilot" programs:
So in a city with over 75,000 unemployed people, you saw at most 51 people get new jobs (didn't see how many were unemployed) and not a lot of data about a control group and how they randomly fared over the same interval. Also, to the extent the 102 participants enjoyed advantaged situation, did that come at the opportunity cost for some others outside the group?
To really try UBI, you need it pervasive and long term, like the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend, but that's a relatively low amount.
I mean, this is probably because having extra money to take care of yourself makes it easier to have the confidence to find work. But 500 a month is like giving someone a dollar in 2024 and saying "pay your rent, bills, utilities, also buy food, and gas for your car, and also pay your car insurance" and thinking you did something
Spotted the liberal. So, we need to give them MORE right? Lol...
Did you drop the "/s"?
UBI saves capitalism from itself. Do we really want to save this shit system that empowers the worst of us?
Do you honestly believe capitalists will allow a liveable UBI to remain untouched? Look at the minimum wage if you'd like to see the future of UBI. $7.25 an hour fucking shameful.
You're right we should do nothing instead and let people continue to starve.
I'll start. I'm not going to eat now.
I started yesterday. Take that capitalist. Can't make money of my continued existence if I'm not spending anything...
Bud, extreme change causes extreme strife. Having a system that allows us to transition from an old system that worked, to a new system that works better is the preffered method if you dont want to cause massive amounts of damage to peoples lives. The fact that UBI allows us to change towards a better way of functioning WITHOUT completely breaking the old system is a SELLING point. First we get people away from having to work merely to live, and THEN we can take further steps towards whichever utopic ideal we believe in
I mean it's not even really a first, if, then, kind of deal, because they're both mutually inclusive goals to be working towards, rather than being mutually exclusive.
If thats your utopic ideal, than our current system with a UBI baseline will reach it. This feels like a technicality you are arguing with me on
I mean no not really, I was just kinda advocating for dual power because people always like to make a big fuss about how it's their way ideologically or the highway, without stopping for five seconds about how a lot of people's ideal goals are actually mutually inclusive or mutually beneficial.
Thats exactly why I phrased my statement the way I did though, just focussing on how UBI is a good transitioning block away from our current capitalist society, without specifically getting into whatever flavour of utopic society each user might have. I guess if your ideal society has shitloads of unhoused people being crushed by late stage capitalism, UBI would work against that outcome
This program isn't UBI, and should not be compared to it, or used to argue for/against UBI. Universal Basic Income goes to everyone, not just certain people. That's what makes it UBI, and not a welfare program, which is what this is.
To reinforce your point:
Note that per a quick search Seattle has about 750k people, 102 specifically low income persons given money for some finite trial period is very very far from a test of universal basic income.
UBI will never go to everyone. Never.
This is like saying "a triangle will never have 3 sides".
UBI, UNIVERSAL Basic Income, goes to everyone by definition. If it doesn't go to everyone, it's not UBI, and shouldn't be called such.
Then we'll never be given UBI. You know... in the same way that we will never be given democracy despite everybody calling it "democracy."
Do you want the masses to have the material means to do anything other than bow to systemic pressure?
While I agree with your sentiment, I do feel like it is a step in the right direction and will help a great many people in poverty.
Going straight from one economic system to another is likely to be an extremely violent process. I'm hoping that this would act as a stepping stone towards socialism rather than a life preserver for capitalism.
“The proposed change isn’t perfect, so why bother at all?”
How many times have you been forced to sleep out in the street?
UBI is the future ⛷️
Is there a way to explain why the employment doubled for this group?
Often huge barriers to employment are owning a phone with a consistent number, and appearance/hygiene. For someone with nothing these two things can massively help.
Selective statistics.
Love all the "liberal" comments. It didn't work cause of this, it didn't work cause of that..." blah, blah...the fact is, government dependency never results in successful outcomes. Giving people money (like welfare) and telling them "good luck!" only makes them more dependent and less enthusiastic to work. There's generations of people in California who have depended on welfare and food stamps for their entire lives...because it's so easy to get, and if you can keep getting it, why work?
Would you stop working if the government gave you $500 a month? I sure as hell wouldn't. At no point in my life have I ever had so much money that I thought "yeah this is enough" and stopped trying to earn more.
Have you read the article or do you just windmill and hope no one sees how transparent you are?
So many people get held down by the system that they feel they can never do any better and settle with a shitty, meager living. Those people on welfare are not living 'easy' lives, far from it. If these people had a $500 payment every month it would lessen their financial burden and overall stress level where some of these people might have more mental capacity to think about doing something else with their life. When you live in constant fear of your finances and potentially losing the place you live, your mind tends to shift in another direction of "how can I survive" becuade of how absolutely exhausting that kind of life is. If I were in this situation, knowing I had an extra guaranteed $500 that I can rely on every month might actually ease some of my stress and chill me out enough where I feel like I can devote more time and energy to digging myself out of the hole rather than feeling nothing but despair and falling deeper in.