765
$750 a month, no questions asked, improved the lives of homeless people
(www.latimes.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 21 Dec 2023
765 points (97.8% liked)
News
23424 readers
1546 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Of course, but it's not a very good experiment for a mass rollout. On a mass scale I hypothsize it will diminish motivation to find a job, thereby reducing the number of taxpayers, and that leads to the big question: who are you taking this money away from? 9 times out of 10 it's middle class folks. 1%ers and corporations can afford to spend the money to get every single tax break, so middle class without those resources will end up paying most of the bill.
I'm glad you came up with a hypothesis, fortunately scientists have already tested your hypothesis (or something very analogous) and failed to prove it, in fact they have indicated the opposite effect.
I hope that in the name of scientific knowledge and progress you take this research into account and change your view based on the available information.
Can you link some of the research you mention? Interested in giving it a read.
I'm on the toilet right now but there's a few links already in the replies to the op, you can check out those.
Luckily every study at every scale on UBIs has not found any loss in motivation. What it actually has shown is people use the financial breathing room to train up and get better jobs, thereby societally paying back more than they put in, in the long term. The kind of society that can implement UBI can also tax the rich intelligently and fairly.
It's been calculated multiple times that UBI would have a similar cost to existing welfare programs due to the significantly reduced overhead. Thus whoever pays for UBI are the same ones currently paying for existing welfare.
It might sound backwards but for a lot of people, myself included, not having a job will actually diminish motivation.
The frustration of applying for jobs and going for interviews with no response for months on end only adds to the stress of not having any money which adds up to a “what’s the fucking point?” train of thought, which hasn’t resulted in homelessness for me, but I could see how it would for other people.
Yeah, the problem here is the implementation: you and I and most people here would benefit a little from a higher tax on billionaires, enough to motivate us to send a letter to our Congressional representatives and send a few bucks to whichever campaigning politicians promise to do it.
Billionaires, in the meantime, stand to lose millions, or even tens of millions of dollars. Enough that it makes sense for them to start PACs, schmooze, and even bribe the Congressional representatives who'd be in charge of raising taxes. So even though there are hundreds of them and millions of us, they have greater means and motivation.
Fun fact, the economic disparity between the upper and lower classes in America is worse than when the French started cutting people's heads off. I can't legally say we should follow their lead, but it makes you think, you know?
But why? Why punish people just because they are more successful than other people? The government doesn't need to steal from successful people to give to those that aren't.
It's called taxes, not stealing, and yes they do. It's quite literally one of the functions of a government.
That's literally not the function of government. Their only job is to protect me from you and you from me. That's all. You may want the government more involved in your life. Not everyone feels that way.
How do you expect a government to function if it doesn't collect taxes? Are they gonna run a weekly bake sale?
Believe it or not when you cut out all the superfluous duties and other bullshit, the government needs a lot less money.
You didn't answer the question.
I'm sure there isn't a single millionaire that made it on their own. They had other people making that money for them.
You got proof? Or you just 'feel' that way.
I have problems taxing anybody.
There is massive, long term UBI study happening ongoing in Kenya, and the results are extremely positive.
Early findings from the world’s largest UBI study, Dec 6, 2023 by GiveDirectly
The actual paper, Universal Basic Income: Short-Term Results from a Long-Term Experiment in Kenya, Abhijit Banerjee, Michael Faye, Alan Krueger, Paul Niehaus, Tavneet Suri, 15 September 2023
Your hypothesis is an intuitive and common fear, and so has been studied before and found insubstantial, with Canada's "Mincome" experiment being one of the most notable: in the 70s Canada targeted members of a town with a minimum income for five years, and saw results like people opening businesses with loans they could get now that they could cite the income. Where they saw people leaving jobs, it was often for education - their high school enrollment hit 100% for the senior year for the first time ever, due to the kids not needing to help bring in money. It was ended during a fiscal crisis when the government was looking for places to tighten belts. This BBC article is a good read on it, focused on the positive health impact.
It would push people to find better jobs; advocate for better working conditions, and actually have money to spend.
Sure, you can go work at a grocery store part-time while making your $750 for some extra cash. Most of that $750 is gonna go into grocery costs anyway, might as well make some extra money.
This experiment is not on basic universal income specifically, but UBI is about giving unconditional income to anyone to keep you afloat with day to day expenses. It's not about giving you income so you could spend it on a holiday cruise. You are still expected to work if you want to have your dream holiday.
From who whose money will fund UBI? From taxing robots. Edit: I will add that this is once robots are sufficiently more capable than humans for work to displace our labour.
I pay enough taxes to support 125 $750 users like this and would gladly pay it, too. 125 people that are better off would have a significant positive impact to a community, and I'm all for it.
Also money that they spend, somewhere at some point would likely be taxed.
Your logic is flawed.
Rogan, is that you?