Slashdot Mirror
Turning Around a School District By Fighting Poverty (npr.org)
New submitter gomezedward40 writes: Through her unconventional focus on addressing poverty, Superintendent Tiffany Anderson has been credited with rapidly improving the school district of Jennings, Mo. NPR reports: "The school district of 3,000 students has taken unprecedented steps, like opening a food pantry to give away food, a shelter for homeless students and a health clinic, among other efforts. 'My purpose is to remove the challenges that poverty creates,' she says. 'You can not expect children to learn at a high level if they come in hungry and tired.' That unconventional approach has had big results. When Anderson took over in 2012, the school district was close to losing accreditation. Jennings had a score of 57 percent on state educational standards. A district loses accreditation if that score goes below 50 percent. Two years later, that score was up to 78 percent, and in the past year rose again to 81 percent, Anderson says. She points to a 92 percent 4-year graduation rate, and a 100 percent college and career placement rate."
Next thing you know, kids will get out of the poverty trap.
This isn't new news here, this is all data that's been proven out over more than a decade of study. What's news is that someone has finally had the wherewithall to actually use the data. Hopefully, this will be a wake up call, and just the first of more to come.
No student can focus on learning when they're distracted with the struggle of just living, hoping they'll have food to eat tonight, and a warm place to sleep, clean close to wear. All the things that so many of us take for granted.
Awk! Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight. Pieces of seven... ERROR: General Protection Fault. [Paroty Error.]
>> She added round-the-clock care for children with crappy parents.
So...federal breakfast+lunch+dinner+afterschool+foodstamps+welfare = fail? Can we just invest in what she's doing then and cut back on all the other social programs that are not addressing poverty?
Anything other than this approach would have been unthinkable.
Engineering at its best, that's why !
(social engineering)
Votez ecolo : Chiez dans l'urne !
Sorry I meant "societal engineering", fucking keyboard ;-)
Votez ecolo : Chiez dans l'urne !
This bothers me, too. This submission absolutely no relevance here. If I wanted to read crap like this submission, I'd go to reddit. But clearly I'm not at reddit, because I don't want to read crap like this!
There are many other news matters that should be discussed here, but aren't, or aren't discussed enough. The destruction of the GNOME desktop environment is one. The continuing failure of Firefox is another. The ongoing harm that systemd is doing to Linux and its community is yet one more. The general movement away from the GPL family of licenses to freedom-respecting licenses like the BSD and MIT licenses is an additional one. The never-ending Perl 6 debacle is another. The decline and imminent collapse of the Ruby and Ruby on Rails communities is one. The disappointment that is Rust is another to add to the list. There are all very relevant things that we should be discussing here on a daily basis, yet it's rare to see articles covering important matters such as those.
I wish there was a viable alternative to Slashdot. It sure as fuck isn't reddit, and it isn't Hacker News. And don't even bother mentioning Soylent News. Soylent News makes Slashdot look good, it's that damn bad. If you think the moderating at Slashdot is bad, it's much worse at Soylent News. At least Slashdot still has some diversity within its community. Soylent News has little of that; it's just a bunch of social rejects, in my opinion. The awful moderating there reflects the stagnant community there, with some rather extremist views being the only ones allowed to be expressed. Other views will typically just get modded down by the small number of moderators there. It's pathetic.
I really, really, really hope that 2016 will be the year that Dice wakes up and starts improving the situation here. We need more articles about important issues, like those I listed earlier. We need no articles about stupid shit like this, which has no relevance at all. And get rid of the moderating here, too. It hinders discussion, rather than enabling it. Dice, make it easy for us to have conversations here, and things will get better!
Los Angeles Unified School District has been feeding poor kids breakfast and lunch, been providing free health clinics, and child care for students with infants along with many other programs for decades.
they just keep throwing money and gadgets at the school building with little or no thought for the other 18 hours of the students' day.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
fucking keyboard ;-)
That's fruitless. Find a woman instead.
The schools and the kids do NOT fail because of poverty! Some of the poorest districts...and even some of the poorest nations can have some of the best performing students.
The REAL truth...the truth that nobody wants to tackle...is the area outside of the classroom! Look at the stats for the kid who grows up in a single parent household - deplorable! Look at the stats for the cases where the parents do not care about their child's performance - deplorable. The kids are fat - not the school's fault - look at what the parent(s) are doing at home - stress, unemployment, drugs, etc.!
Why don't people face the facts? The truth is - the West has come to its end in trying to implement a "non-intrusive, non-religious" set of solutions for things like single parent homes, drug addled homes, etc.!
Am I offering a solution? NO, but, I think it is high time we start talking about the REAL causes of the problems!
But it's the good kind of welfare.
You're a greedy bastard if you don't want to pay your fair share.
You're an asshole if you don't want to help pay to raise someone else's children.
But those Republucans don't think they need to share what they have.
In other words, a Republican.
While I don't mind a government organization tackling poverty, I think it's sad that the affairs are in such a disarray that a school district has to do these things. All of the poverty tackling services should be separated from the school budget.
Who ever heard of homeless children going to high school? Is that even allowed, I would sort of imagine that the government would want to scoop them up and drop them in some orphanage.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Republucans hate us and want us to die.
In my experience, most schools in the US are actually pretty well funded, but they're horribly mismanaged. In the intercity areas, these daycare programs and such are immensely helpful - but for those that live in better off areas but perform average, this wouldn't help nearly as much, as poverty is not as much an issue. I would think that we could improve schools in those areas without introducing all of this, and instead focusing on spending the money they receive more effectively. For example, personal anecdote here: I once worked with a school in California, a well ranked one in the Thousand Oaks area that had received state recognition, and yet the teaching was awful and the scores decidedly average. Every year, they made a huge push for fundraisers and donations, and every year, they held these huge socials and parties and whatnot with some very elaborate decorations. They also offered some insanely good benefits for Hispanics (never mind that most Hispanics in this area weren't immigrants, but rather successful natives who were born in the US and owned successful businesses, and hence never used the free daycare). If they had instead spent that money on paying their teachers more than $50,000k per year, or had spent it to fix up some of the buildings, or used it to buy better schoolbooks, I think the school would have done far better at actually teaching kids, and I think most of the schools in the US sit with that dilemma.
"Set a man a fire, he'll be warm for the rest of the night. Set a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
They're the ones that decided to breed. Why should us progressives be required to give those conservatives money?
Not only are those people lazy, they also decided to have children they can't afford.
They are subhuman and need to be exterminated.
This site has become so liberal that a discussion on education turns into a demand to kill all Republicans. I miss the old /. that was a tech site.
slashdot has had more nontech stories lately. There was the one of people being kicked out an Austin apartment for a new datacenter, in spite of rising land prices in Austin. There are some other stories, which I forgot about.
And how useful is private education? Private industry is good when there is plenty of competition and consumers can switch easily. I dont think parents can easily keep on switching their kids to different schools to "shop around"
You are either a corporate shill for private schools or just plain ignorant.
What a load of fucking bullshit. Its obvious youve never been further than 100 miles from your front door.
America is a fucked up shithole that was built upon slavery and ruthless exploitation and nothing has changed.
Its one of the very few nations with no paid vacation time, and the only developed nation where getting sick ruins you and your family.
In short, its a joke inhabited by millions of retarded lemmings conditioned into loving their chains. Now fuck off and get me a soda. Chop chop !
I used to favor a Linux Desktop Environment. But a good Desktop Environment has good printer drivers, webcam drivers, scanners, something better than X11, and all sorts of extra stuff that programmers will not care about. Let programmers at Microsoft worry about all that extra complexity. It's just postscript printers for me.
I came around to John Carmack's idea. Just use DirectX as the API for applications. A Desktop Environment that just runs DirectX programs in tiled windows is good enough for me.
I'd like Perl 6 to be good and ready, but it's been almost a decade since then.
I figured that Darwin awards, no socialized health care, low wages for certain jobs, and choosy women (backed by media pressure) did a good enough job pruning the human tree.
I guess you could call for sterilizing poor men, that keep having kids they can not afford, with different women.
Working in UK schools, I think I'm safe in saying that a homeless child coming to school would be a priority one issue and get solved pretty damn quickly.
Children coming without proper breakfast - yes, we have breakfast clubs for those parents who can't get up and spend ten minutes making cereal (not an insult to them all, some of them just literally do not have the time and must go to work).
But a child (anyone under 18 now) coming in with even unwashed clothes, or hunger? That's an issue that gets referred to social services pretty damn quick. I'm not saying they can act immediately, but we have a range of neglect laws and getting taken into care can happen pretty damn quick if the parents obviously aren't around, can't cope or don't give a shit.
It's not the school's job to be doing this. And it's quite telling of a complete failure of social care, rather than a success story for a school. "We finally fed the kids, now they are doing better"? Well, fucking yes!
Something like 40-50% of kids in the UK are eligible for free school meals, you have to declare the figure as part of being a school and I've been involved in that many times. But even in schools where that's been near 100%, I've yet to see kids suffering complete neglect or lack of suitable social care to this extent.
You made my day ! Thx !!!
Votez ecolo : Chiez dans l'urne !
Funny, I read this thread and see all the libertarian / gamergate tards who think any help for hungry kids is government bloat and anyone who dares help them is a made-up derogatory acronym. And these posts aren't modded into oblivion like whatever you replied to.
It's not the liberals ruining slashdot. It's angry white nerds.
It works either way.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
It's a bit worse than that. He has no problem paying taxes for law enforcement.
Since it is more expensive to prevent crimes with law enforcement than with welfare it is pretty clear that he has nothing against paying high taxes, the important thing is that he doesn't help anyone else with it.
No, a Republican wants to pay their fair share, they just want the money to be prudently spent within a framework of limited government and fiscal responsibility.
How is it you don't know that? Are you trolling, or possibly a fool?
No they don't, you silly! What Republicans want is for you to get the mental health assistance you so desperately need, and to then go on to be a happy, healthy, and productive member of society that can live independently and contribute.
You can start the ball rolling towards your future recovery by contacting your local mental health organizations and seeking an appointment.
Have you submitted any of those stories? Why not?
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Fuck off you brainless facist turd, what stupid cunt.
I used to favor a Linux Desktop Environment. But a good Desktop Environment has good printer drivers, webcam drivers, scanners, something better than X11, and all sorts of extra stuff that programmers will not care about.
Don't we already have OS X though? Because that's basically what you just described...
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
The alternative is those people taking your money at gunpoint directly. They then go to prison and the government takes even more of your money at gunpoint to provide them with the education, health care and a secure place to live that the initial far lower theft at gunpoint would've provided. The thing you've missed of course is that a lot of the poor are working poor doing one or more jobs and are not lazy, just badly paid.
So much stupid in so few words. I'm impressed.
U.S. official turns on brain and acts like a first world authority -> Gets first world results.
Who would've thunk that?
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
And yet oddly that prudence seems to involve throwing large amounts of free money at banks, big corporations and the military-industrial complex.
Yeah, yeah I know Democrats do that too, but is the Repubs who harp on the most about being wise with money yet are the most profligate when it comes to throwing cash at their chums.
Why are you talking about social security when he was talking welfare, specifically? Seemed like you were intentionally being obtuse.
Calling someone a liar because you can't read/understand is a bit much.
Hardest part Morgan Freeman ever played.
Just kidding, it'll be Sandra Bullock.
We've been doing this since the 60's and it still doesn't work. Want to end poverty? Stop paying poor people to have children.
I'm kind of sympathetic to some of the issues surrounding Gamergate.
But dipshits like you convince me that the next big societal backlash is going to be against nerds, who seem to be getting more and more cretinous & antisocial as the days go by.
#notallnerds #mostnerdsaregreat #youfuckersknowwhoimonabout
It's totally obvious that the failings of most US urban school districts really have little to do with bad teachers or administrators, but instead with the totally broken social environments kids come from.
But instead of really acknowledging this for the problem it is, we instead try to morph the school district into a comprehensive social welfare delivery system. We then destroy the curriculum by adopting every gimmick that can be dredged up in the name of closing the "achievement gap", assuming that the materials and teachers MUST be at fault when poor, mostly black, kids continually score at the bottom of the relentless standardized testing.
The more recent and more disturbing trend is the decision by some districts to stop suspending highly disruptive kids under the guise that because the minority kids -- those same ones from broken social environments -- get suspended more often because of the dubious specter of racism. St. Paul, MN did this and they may face a teacher strike over it after a high school student beat the shit out of a teacher and put him in the hospital.
I don't doubt that some kind of social welfare intervention is needed, the problem with using the school system to do it is that it's not designed or funded to be a social welfare agency. Its funding base is usually limited to local property taxes, which, (surprise!) is often highly constrained in urban areas with a crummy tax base. It also warps the educational mission of the school through curriculum changes, dubious discipline decisions and excessive focus on the social welfare mission, leaving behind the idea that they're supposed to be teaching kids how to read and write.
Why the fuck would I waste my time writing and submitting stories that won't end up on the front page because they're about technology, rather than social justice?
And how useful is private education?
Here's a government report on the topic:
https://nces.ed.gov/nationsrep...
TL;DR: In some subjects, the private schools "significantly" outperformed public schools, but overall they're only slightly better.
The article extols their efforts to help people in poverty but I didn't see anything about step 2, getting people out of poverty. You can only maintain such efforts so long before your donators wain. You have to actually get people back to work in some way, attract businesses, start non-profit organizations, etc. Otherwise eventually you're going to end up right back where you started.
We need to see if the system puts out enough self-sufficient adults to make the money to pay the taxes to pay for the system.
They love these. Then ten years later, all the facts come out, and the "miracle" turns out to be fake.
Yeah, much as I would love to believe this story to be true (so everyone else could then learn from it), really dramatic increases in test scores from year to year are usually the result of some sort of cheating or cooking the numbers. In real life, there are no quick fixes for education. It takes hard work over the long haul. If the test scores jump drastically in a single year or two, that usually just means something fishy is going on.
I would also seriously question her claims of "a 92 percent 4-year graduation rate, and a 100 percent college and career placement rate." Even the best public schools in the country don't have those kinds of numbers. There is no way she has that in some inner-city school in a poor neighborhood unless she is seriously fudging the numbers or playing with the language.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
That's where the money should be going. Nip the problem at its source.
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
You make a great point. There is no reason to believe a kid who is fed well and well rested will do better than if they are starving and tired.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
FTA:
"just 36 percent of the graduates in 2015 scored high enough on the ACT, SAT or similar tests to meet Missouri's definition of 'college and career ready.'"
There is your evidence right there. These passing rates are based on either state, county or district standards. As soon as these kids are held up to the standards of a national test, the numbers drop right back down to where they were before her "miracle cure" was instated. There is no doubt that what she is doing is a good thing and that in the long run, if the area can sustain it economically, there will be a positive net impact on the community. But these numbers are clearly from low or non-existent test standards.
... because of free food?
More exactly, children's scores go down due to lack of proper food. Free food allows the true IQ to be expressed.
I'm not saying the methodology doesn't help. I'm saying that the claims of such a radical improvement in such a short period of time are highly suspicious. And, as for her claims of a 92% graduation rate and 100% college or career placement--well, I'm straight-up throwing the bullshit flag on those claims.
We all want to believe the story of an underdog with a clever idea and some gumption who comes in and quick-fixes a struggling school. But in the real world, change usually takes hard work over a long time. People who claim they've discovered a short-cut to success are almost always full of shit.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
That's totally untrue. Depression is one of the few things that can NOT be addressed by CBT.
"Give kids some food so they're not hungry and can learn" == SJW, should be hated. Gotcha. Your parents raised a lovely human being. They must be so proud!
Poor little repressed middle-class white guy! You poor thing! Won't someone please think of the entitled 45-year-old children!?
That's it.
First the state should require equal funding per child for every student in the state instead of each county having its own funding. Next there should be a ban on most private schools. Exceptions could exist for special purpose schools such as schools that cater to music major types, or people with disabilities, or students who have already shown advanced mathematics or science skills. When the rich figure out that their kids will get exactly the same education as the poor the standards of the school will suddenly rise. I would expect that private donations to the public school system would blossom and yield fruit. A system in which the wealth status of grandparents sets the stage for the usual outcome for their grandchildren is not acceptable. And that pretty much is the problem. If the grandparents were rich the grandchildren will tend to be rich. If the grandparents were poor guess where their grandchildren will tend to do. The legal system is a huge part of the problem. When having an arrest makes a family poor, their children and grandchildren will suffer as well. In turn, that anger and poverty, goes down through generations and causes a lot more crime and social horrors. But if you have been chosen to lead a life of poverty don't you think that you might pick up a gun or sell dope or whatever, trying to get even? Allowing misery creates a lot more misery and people do tend to share their misery with those that are suddenly made very unhappy.
These comments are so depressing. Someone is helping hungry kids eat, have somewhere to sleep and get medical attention and all the top voted comments are THE TEST SCORES ARE FAKE, KIDS CHEAT MONEY WASTED.
Man, America sucks sometimes. Take care of your KIDS for christsakes.
Your comment has no technical merit whatsoever ! If I wanted chauvinist bigotry I'd go to the cesspool that is Faux News and Rush Lamebaugh. This is supposed to be News For Nerds and is being infiltrated by inbreded crackers.
Oh -- so it's back to the "Libertarians are assholes who hate the poor" argument again?
This viewpoint always makes me shake my head and sigh, because it comes from having tunnel vision that socialist policies are the only valid fix for poverty.
Any self respecting libertarian-minded individual I know *does* complain about that $857 million of "defense spending" we're stuck paying for! But yes, we ALSO take issue with that nearly $400 million MORE we have to fork over, involuntarily, for government mandated "charity" operations.
Here's the thing.... If you're going to dictate that we MUST pay out a portion of the income we earn, via taxes, into welfare programs and other charitable programs, you're ultimately taking it from all of us at gunpoint. I mean, yes, I realize you normally just have it removed, quietly, from a payroll check and no gun is ever displayed. But I'm talking about what happens if you refuse to pay the taxes they say you owe. Keep refusing, and before long, you definitely WILL get a visit from authorities carrying weapons and wind up in prison. Given that, it's not very far removed from just declaring it public policy that any poverty-stricken individual who needs something you have is legally allowed to hold you up at gunpoint and take it from you.
I really think a superior way is to get rid of all of these government run welfare programs (which are often very inefficient anyway), and give people back much more of their earned income to do whatever they want with it. This would encourage more PRIVATE charities to help people out who are you own neighbors you actually see and interact with each day, because people would more readily be able to donate to them. (I find that the majority who say this won't ever work because "the majority don't want to help others voluntarily" believe in man being basically evil/bad, instead of basically good. And that's a sad way to go through life.)
Its like complaining about who got elected even if you didn't vote.
If you don't vote, don't whine.
If you don't submit, don't whine.
I don't know about "lazy people that refuse to work" being a vanishing small number.... but I *do* know that current government assistance programs often encourage these types of behaviors because of poor design.
For example, I used to have neighbors who moved into a house next to mine that was being rented out as section 8. Nice enough people, but I quickly noticed they seemed to be home an awful lot, considering how much they needed money. Eventually, I figured out that one thing holding them back were the rules about how much you could earn before you lost your qualification for any assistance. They were being rewarded for only taking a part-time job and keeping their earnings right under a certain thresh-hold, vs. accepting the full-time employment they'd repeatedly been offered and losing the assistance.
Easy to see them sitting around at home during the day and calling that laziness ... but there was an underlying motivator.
BS. All the studies that I've read say that when the private/charter schools are required to take *anyone*, not cherry-pick, they do NO BETTER, and frequently worse, than the public schools.
And it's this kind of send 'em to private school crap that's helping destabilize the US. Without most kids going to public schools, they never meet kids from other backgrounds, other ethnicities, and so they're all "them", soon to be trashed by Faux "News" and Donald Trump.
When I was growing up, we were *proud* to be "the melting pot". Norman Corwin, in "On a Note of Triumph", written for the end of WWII in Europe, couldn't have put it better when he said, "His Aryan supermen beaten by a mongrel race".
But you think you're going to be a billionaire any day now.... sucker.
mark
What was it 3 years ago when she took over? Below 36%? Above? The same? Heck, looking at the article, it implies that the graduation rate has increased substantially. Even if it remained the same, that's a lot more kids graduating, which means that 36% of graduates being considered ready is a higher percentage of the kids entering her school.
Also, if she's really getting 100% of graduates employed or in college within, say, a year of graduation, is the state's metric of readiness really accurate?
Finally, I believe that you can only really consistently raise kids ONE rung of the economic ladder a generation. Yes, you can get 1-10% up a couple, but you have to realize that 90% will be within one rung. If the parents are dropouts, you need to shoot for graduation, and being ready for a job on graduation, not necessarily college.
I don't read AC A human right
I beat up a homeless guy and set him on fire. Now there's one less derelict on the streets.
I attended a private school, not because my family had great wealth but because a friend and I had torched his father's garage and the car inside it. It turned out quite well. You can Google Kents Hill for more information. We didn't just have a ski slope and ice arena, we had an observatory, main frame, and things like the HP 9100. Alas, I was not into computers at the time - I thought they were a waste of time and effort. I hated learning to do the punch cards for the 9100 and kept losing the magnetic strip cards. The plotter was kind of neat.
At any rate, not everyone can get that sort of access and I was very fortunate. Some anonymous person has enabled a scholarship trust for students who have a technological bent. That anonymous person would probably be quite honored if some Slashdotter's kids were able to attend because of that. Hell, I'll take the first step and get this link for you:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Alas, they no longer have a rifle and pistol club. However, the scholarships mentioned include a stipend to ensure the student is able to "fit in" with their peers who are often from quite wealthy backgrounds. That enables a full participation.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Higher up, bluefoxlucid proposed a variation/specific plan for a UBI - Universal Basic Income. Eliminating welfare cliffs like you described is one of the driving benefits for such a system.
Basically, you pay a higher tax rate on earned income right off the bat, but because you're being paid each month, working for an income should always be a net positive on your income and therefore quality of life.
I don't read AC A human right
I am a fairly well known Libertarian. There's another who identified themselves as such in this thread. Those are the only two that I know of - though two others have posted, I'll let them name themselves or not, who identify as having a semi-Libertarian bent. All of us have clearly indicated a support for access to education by means of taxation. Two of us have questioned the validity of turning the education system into an exclusively for-profit endeavor. None of us have suggested removing access. None of us have used a derogatory (pejorative, really) acronym.
I can not speak for the gamergate people - I'm not entirely familiar with them nor do I pay attention to who sides on which side and who believes what or professes to believe what. It is of no concern to me and I'm too busy recollecting past statements from other users that are of more significance. Yes, i actually *do* look at the username of the poster and that sometimes sticks with me - especially if it is of things that interest me.
As the other identifies themselves as such, you can CTRL + F and search for "firethorn" and that's the other who identifies themselves. The others have either disclosed it in private or have opted to not mention it here. Some research will reveal them, if you wish.
Perhaps you should meet a Libertarian instead of believing the caricature is true? Instead of allowing someone else to paint you a picture, perhaps you can look yourself? Granted, we do have our share of lunatics in the party, the same can be said for most any group of people and, I admit, our lunatics are a special sort of stupid. The are not in the majority, they're just noisy and usually get the most attention because of this.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
But I'm talking about what happens if you refuse to pay the taxes they say you owe. Keep refusing, and before long, you definitely WILL get a visit from authorities carrying weapons and wind up in prison. Given that, it's not very far removed from just declaring it public policy that any poverty-stricken individual who needs something you have is legally allowed to hold you up at gunpoint and take it from you.
Watch your footing, it's getting slippery around here.
Well, if her claims are false then she is phenomenally stupid, as they are easily verified or refuted.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
A UBI is basically a subsidy for business by proxy.
A jobs guarantee is a better system. But that means Government has to build stuff and employ people, which spooks the "but teh freedumbz!" types.
Nah, we've got to have some charitable programs run by the government because humans are too greedy to attend to it themselves. Sure, you can point to all sorts of charitable giving and I can point to all sorts of hungry people. We can discuss how much, where, when, and under what rules. We can not, realistically, eliminate such entirely.
I favor the line in the sand being drawn a bit further way then you do (probably). There will be waste and there will be excesses. As someone who has accumulated a couple of dollars but is also a Libertarian and holds a PhD in Applied Mathematics - I can tell you that it's cheaper for me to pay more in taxes than it is for me to hire goons to protect my assets from disenfranchised hordes of hungry people.
(People often mistake me for a Socialist. Indeed, some of the things I believe have some similarities. I prefer to difference myself by making it clear that I used logic and reasoning as well as math as opposed to emotions, entitlement, and greed.)
See, it's cheaper to keep 'em healthy than it is to fix their major health problems later on in life. We can't just let them die in the streets, that's how you get revolutions. Those are disruptive and mean that free people aren't in a position to benefit from their liberties. Liberties taken, those as rights, are restrictions that need to be carefully considered.
I don't know about you but I want a healthy, happy, productive society where people are free to maximize their benefits gained from their liberties and free to make use of their rights. Oh, it's not emotional or altruistic. It keeps them from revolting and it enables me to better accumulate assets. The greater assets one has, the more one can take advantage of their liberties. It's great to be at liberty to say what you want but it's not so effective when you have no means to access a printing press or microphone.
I can, and will, go on. The email address works if you'd rather. I've been subjecting myself, willingly, to this debate since I first got online in the 1980s. I've refined things quite handily and learned a lot, changed some of my opinions, and reached the point where I can articulate it well enough but it's rather verbose.
For definition sake, concerning liberty, freedom, and rights... I have the freedom to kill you. I am not at liberty to do so. If you're putting my freedom at risk, I have a right to kill you.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Social security pays $28k/year. If a basic income does not pay at least this much, how will i pay my bills?
It might be argued, reasonably I might add, that acting like humans does not actually include sharing. Human nature is such that sharing is generally only done, without external stimuli, when there's a perceived benefit to the person controlling the assets to be shared. Humans are not good at seeing long-term benefits because, at the root of it, we're animals.
Outside the bonds of familial relationships, sharing is not so common in the animal kingdom. I'm not sure why you'd expect us to act differently. I'm quite positive that you'll not give an accurate or honest response so I'll go ahead and post this as an AC.
The press was even more stupid for not asking for proof of such extraordinary claims.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
youve never been further than 100 miles from your front door.
I lived in Kenya, another place made wealthy by the slave trade.
A UBI is basically a subsidy for business by proxy.
That's a bit of a stretch, I think. By that standard anytime the government spends money it's a subsidy for business by proxy.
The idea remains - simplify the welfare system by eliminating the means-testing and most of the eligibility checks (keep citizenship/legal residence). While it might cost a little more money because it will still subsidize people who make 'some' money, it should actually save it in the long run by eliminating welfare cliffs which discourage people from working.
If we're still running into a problem of 'not enough jobs', then we can do the job guarantee.
I don't read AC A human right
That's a bit of a stretch, I think. By that standard anytime the government spends money it's a subsidy for business by proxy.
Not it's not, because that money isn't being spent for the sole purpose of facilitating the underpayment of workers.
If we're still running into a problem of 'not enough jobs', then we can do the job guarantee.
No, this is arse-about-face. The primary objective should be to have as many people as possible in real, productive, well-paid, work.
THEN the people who can't/won't work can be taken care of by welfare.
You are deranged. I really think you need to visit some of the fucked up shitholes of the world and then say that.
Clearly you haven't watched what the current administration and Clinton's administration did - just to name two of them.
This is pretty basic stuff, and all goes back to Maslow's hierarchy of needs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs)
If you're stuck down worrying about physiological and safety needs, it's pretty hard to then expect that same individual to do well with stuff that ultimately won't help improve their current situation. I'm going to have a hard time concentrating on calculus when I don't know where my next meal is coming from or whether my dad is going to beat me (because he's out of work and stressed) when I get home.
This is where things like Basic Income could help out greatly, not only by removing the shame of needing 'help' but also by simplifying the system of giving help so that EVERYONE gets it.
We all have benefited from the help of others, whether you like to admit it or not, which was freely given to us without expectations of a return. Surely helping out your fellow human is a good thing.
How about the PRIVATE charities step up first and show they can do the job, then we can reduce the government run programs.
Eventually, I figured out [...]
"Figured out", or asked them ?
Most of the developed world has chronic un- and under-employment problems thanks to the poisonous neoliberal ideology that has infected it, deeming full employment "bad". People want to work [more], but there is nothing for them to do (or employers won't pay enough to be worth it).
The most important thing you can teach a child, that will help with their future success, is orientation toward and respect for authority. It is incredibly destructive to teach them obsequious dependence on authority, and even worse to teach them disrespect for authority. Unfortunately for our poor, the welfare systems in place teach the first and our militarized law enforcement teach the second. This is not by design, but it is the result.
I can respect your line of thought and I'm not immediately labeling that "socialist".
I think you're making a few compromises in the libertarian ideology to be pragmatic. But perhaps the biggest counter to your argument is that if people realized there was an imminent threat because of those "people dying in the streets" who weren't being helped, they'd suddenly have much more motivation to assist them than simply altruism. And with much less paid out in taxes, they'd have more disposable income to do so.
They told me.... and I don't think they were exactly happy about it either. (People generally don't like being in a situation where they appear to be slackers to their friends and neighbors.)
To be a bit more clear, the descriptor (such exists and even has a formal name) of "Socialist Libertarian" is fairly apt but I like to distance myself from Socialists because I used logic and reasoned my way to this philosophy. At one point, it was others who are similar to myself who made up the majority of party members but I think the demographics are slightly changed.
The note of pragmatism is very astute and I'm not sure if you noticed on your own or are familiar with my posting history. I am, indeed, a pragmatic person. I'm also fairly moderate - and tend to dislike extremes. I've studied a great deal of history (not as an academic pursuit) and realized that it is often extremism that results in (oddly enough) the most extreme problems.
The biggest counter to my argument doesn't seem to hold water when reality is considered... To use the "dying in the streets" thing, that still happens - albeit with less frequency than before. We're just not surrounded by them but, even in those areas, there are people there who have the assets to do more than what they do while still remaining comfortable or, more likely, doing very little to help.
Where these lines need to be drawn and by whom should they be drawn is still, of course, a matter of debate. Being the evil, cold-hearted, ass that I am - I'd like to see some real-world experimentation done in a controlled manner. I suppose we shouldn't let 'em starve and stuff and restrict ourselves to volunteers but getting a truly controlled environment will be problematic and the process is going to piss off a lot of people. I confess, I have no way to do so nor even the slightest idea as to where to begin. I'm sure ethics commissions (and world courts!) would frown on this. I guess it's more accurate to say that I'd like to see the data from such more than I'd like to see it done.
I've been quite fortunate in life and have the assets to donate significant sums. I'd like to put society in a position where more people are able to do so and are encouraged to do so. You're correct (I think) in that such would happen in an ideal society. However, I use the pragmatic excuse and submit that such will not happen.
In much the way that Anarchy could be a utopia, in much the way that Communism is a fantastic ideal, in much the way that a true Democracy would be wonderful... All those rely on so many things that they might just as well be fantasy. They might be viable in small familial, tribal, or communal areas where participants are there by choice or know no other ways but greed, avarice, fear, jealousy, laziness, dishonesty, and more are all innate human traits. So long as we remain human, no one political ideology will work in its pure form.
So, we're left with the question of where the lines must be drawn. I'm a Libertarian because I believe those lines must be drawn as close as is reasonably possible to afford people the most amount of liberty. I'm a Libertarian because I want people to be able to use their freedoms to maximize their benefits from their liberties. I'm a Libertarian because I want everyone else to be able to enjoy those same liberties that I enjoy. I got lucky in life and I'd like others to have the same chances at success that I had - or more.
Meh, that was kind of pithy but I'm sure you get the idea. ;-)
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
BS. All the studies that I've read say that when the private/charter schools are required to take *anyone*, not cherry-pick, they do NO BETTER, and frequently worse, than the public schools.
Uh...Ok? This is a government study using some pretty sound statistical methods, and unlike you I actually cited my source. So...your words are rather meaningless.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
If that government study was of private schools in general (I didn't check), whitroth is correct in calling it out, even if he didn't give a cite, and he may well be right. What I keep hearing about private schools is that they can get rid of disruptive students, while the public school system can't do that anywhere near as easily. Therefore, the study you cited is likely to be a comparison of schools for students selected to be teachable and schools for all students. Obviously, in those circumstances, private schools are going to give better results even if they're not really as good as the public schools.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Not it's not, because that money isn't being spent for the sole purpose of facilitating the underpayment of workers.
Ah. Had to re-read this to catch what you meant. No, a BIG is not intended to 'facilitate' underpayment of workers. Think about it this way as well: If the business doesn't offer enough pay, a BIG supported worker isn't going to work there. He or she doesn't NEED to work that badly. That being said, you can end up with people like me - semi-retired that doesn't need to work much or make much to make up the income I want to live like I want. I'm cheap.
No, this is arse-about-face. The primary objective should be to have as many people as possible in real, productive, well-paid, work.
And how is a policy of ensuring that workers aren't trapped in low paying jobs or facing welfare cliffs where earning extra money actually costs them income not a step towards your primary objective?
One example was a single mother with 2 kids - her effective income experienced a local maximum at a full time minimum wage job - any more and it would cost her roughly $11k in income. She had to earn more than $70k/year before she actually made more money.
Actually, I'd argue that we're about as close to 'as many people as possible'. So yeah, time to take care of people 'with welfare', but we need to do so in a way that's cheap and effective, without, like I said, putting cliffs in the benefits that block them from entering the workforce. My policy for that is a BIG.
I don't read AC A human right
You're referring to reducing the deficit, aren't you? That's the thing that comes to mind linking Obama's and Clinton's economic policies.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Medical care is another big one. If you earn enough to get off Medical Assistance, and have a serious medical problem, you're screwed.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
It would be if we had the 2012 socres for ACT, SAT or similar tests. Of course it could be that the article is omitting them to make their point, but it could also be that the 2012 scores were lower. Lack of evidence is not evidence to the contrary
Why would they start now? They haven't asked for proof from anybody recently. Make a claim that Iraq has yellowcake, that Ebola is highly contagious, that vaccines cause autism, they'll just print it.
Then they go to somebody else entirely for the counter story.
If they demanded proof, it would keep people from making inflammatory claims. But their new business model is inflammatory statements, preferably on both sides. A maximum of conflict is to be generated. Far more clicks that just correct information in the first place.
Cognitive behavior therapy wasn't all that useful for me, because I'd already figured most of it out through experience. For someone who doesn't know how to think properly, it can be very useful. Depression usually can't be cured through CBT, but it can help. Antidepressants can also help, and general talk therapy.
Throw a low-skilled person with a cognitive therapy checklist at me, and I'll step aside and let him or her hit the floor. Other talk therapy can be a great help.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
The problem with private charities are that they're actually very inefficient. They tend to overcompensate for a few famous cases, and miss a lot of others. The government at least provides a central point and helps avoid duplication. Indeed, that's why I support a BIG type system - eliminate even more duplication of benefits, reduce administrative overhead.
I don't read AC A human right
The note of pragmatism is very astute and I'm not sure if you noticed on your own or are familiar with my posting history. I am, indeed, a pragmatic person. I'm also fairly moderate - and tend to dislike extremes.
Indeed. I've been described as 'less of a fundamentalist libertarian and more of a pragmatic minarchist'.
I agree with pretty much everything you say. One way to put how I feel about it - in seeking to maximize 'liberty' you have to realize that there are multiple aspects of liberty. One can separate this into "social" and "economic" liberties. One must have taxes in order to fund the government, but the amount you collect can vary. Obviously, the less you collect, the more economic freedom. However, if an individual or family doesn't have a certain amount of economic means, this artificially restricts their social liberty - they're too busy trying to keep a roof over their heads. So you run into the situation where, with a proper tax structure, you can minimally decrease economic liberty in order to drastically increase social liberty.
That, and back on the topic of this thread; investing in our children is a good thing.
I don't read AC A human right
It's the best I can do. 600,000 homeless, 18 million starving children, 48 million starving Americans; I can make all that go away, but I can't put everyone in a luxury apartment. The worst case is livable.
It's still cheaper than the current situation. Homeless people cost something like $40k/year.
$500/month is only $6k/year. Put 4 people into an apartment/house, that's $28k/year, right on the federal poverty line.
I spent a career in the military. I've had everywhere from 100 roommates to my own house. Many of us went to college, and dormed with others. If you're on the bottom economic rung, an apartment/house of your own should not be expected.
I don't read AC A human right
Ah. Had to re-read this to catch what you meant. No, a BIG is not intended to 'facilitate' underpayment of workers.
I will agree a lot of people do not “intend” it for that, but that it what it does.
With full employment and liveable minimum wages, a BIG is unnecessary. All it does in this scenario is allow minimum wages to drop below the liveable level, with the difference going to businesses as profit.
Think about it this way as well: If the business doesn't offer enough pay, a BIG supported worker isn't going to work there. He or she doesn't NEED to work that badly.
Yes ?
And how is a policy of ensuring that workers aren't trapped in low paying jobs or facing welfare cliffs where earning extra money actually costs them income not a step towards your primary objective?
Because it doesn’t put people into jobs. It doesn’t even attempt to put people into jobs.
One example was a single mother with 2 kids - her effective income experienced a local maximum at a full time minimum wage job - any more and it would cost her roughly $11k in income. She had to earn more than $70k/year before she actually made more money.
You are conflating poorly structured welfare and the results of decades of wage suppression with a BIG. The real problem you are describing is that the woman’s wage was far too low, requiring a welfare supplement to be liveable (thus the dramatic impact of its removal).
The only people who should need welfare are the unemployed. Even the worst, lowest-paid minimum wage job should produce a liveable income at least equivalent to any BIG.
Actually, I'd argue that we're about as close to 'as many people as possible'.
No we aren’t. Not even close. Even the worthless official unemployment numbers for the US show 6%+ unemployment. Real un- and under-employment is probably well into the %teens, if not more.
All you have to do to see that we aren’t even close to ‘as many people as possible’ being employed is to look at the decades of wage stagnation (the result of neoliberalism’s despicably evil NAIRU).
So yeah, time to take care of people 'with welfare', but we need to do so in a way that's cheap and effective, without, like I said, putting cliffs in the benefits that block them from entering the workforce. My policy for that is a BIG.
Your policy will continue the upwards transfer of wealth, the reduction of social mobility, the ongoing destruction of the middle classes through wage suppression and not improve unemployment. It will produce a vast underclass reliant on the BIG to survive, a tiny sliver of middle-class professionals and a handful of unfathomably wealthy upper-class who own pretty much everything, including the political process.
Oh, I've been waging a constant battle on a couple other sites. One's mostly a scifi board, the other's a gun board. I have to tailor the material a bit differently between the two. Especially on the scifi board, I have to constantly educate(because we keep getting new posters) on how a *limited* government is different from a *weak* one.
Oh, and if you ask 10 libertarians on where the limits should be, you'll get at least 12 different answers.
One of the ones I've been seeing pop up a lot lately is the idea that, as a libertarian, I must worship Ayn Rand. As you say, she was an idiot. Not even a libertarian.
I don't read AC A human right
Yes ?
It means they can't really under-pay, because then they just won't get workers.
You are conflating poorly structured welfare and the results of decades of wage suppression with a BIG.
Either you need to re-look up what 'conflating' means or you're not understanding what I'm saying. "Conflating" means "combine two or more things into one". I'm NOT doing that. I'm proposing replacing nearly all forms of 'welfare' with a BIG.
The only people who should need welfare are the unemployed. Even the worst, lowest-paid minimum wage job should produce a liveable income at least equivalent to any BIG.
Except that's not the situation, and between differences in productivity and living costs(for example, number of dependents), it's not practical to set minimum employment standards high enough to cover 'all' situations.
No we aren’t. Not even close. Even the worthless official unemployment numbers for the US show 6%+ unemployment. Real un- and under-employment is probably well into the %teens, if not more.
6% is actually very good. Just look at Europe. While yes, theoretically it could be better(remember that the BIG idea is also intended to increase employment, and that's without getting into the other policies I'd put in place), I view it like eliminating fraud, waste, and abuse - it's impossible to get 100% of it.
Your policy will continue the upwards transfer of wealth, the reduction of social mobility, the ongoing destruction of the middle classes through wage suppression and not improve unemployment.
Bullshit. You have completely failed to support this argument.
I don't read AC A human right
It means they can't really under-pay, because then they just won't get workers.
Why not ? Plenty of people when given the choice between being given, say, $50 and working to get $60 will work for that extra $10. There's a massive labour surplus, remember.
Either you need to re-look up what 'conflating' means or you're not understanding what I'm saying. "Conflating" means "combine two or more things into one". I'm NOT doing that. I'm proposing replacing nearly all forms of 'welfare' with a BIG.
Yes, I apologise, that sentence was poorly written.
You are conflating the outcome of poorly structured welfare and decades of wage suppression (amongst many other issues, eg: reduction in worker protections) with the outcome of not having a BIG.
Welfare cliffs exist because people who "shouldn't" be reliant on it - ie: in full-time jobs - are. Welfare is supposed to be for people incapable of supporting themselves - ie: unemployed/disabled/pensioner/etc. That is how most people think of it and that is how it is managed - hence the "cliff" as benefits are removed quickly.
In a scenario where you go from no income (+welfare), to a liveable income, the complete withdrawal of the welfare component should have no meaningful impact (other than having to go to work everyday).
In a scenario where you go from a very low income and are reliant on welfare, to a somewhat higher income where your welfare is removed at a greater rate than your pay is increased, then you have the "cliff".
The solution here is not more welfare, it is better paying jobs so that people who shouldn't be dependent on welfare - full time workers - are not.
(It's worth pointing out this is a problem across the entire western world as neoliberal Governments have done more and more to support wage suppression, subsidy of business by stealth, and upwards shifting of wealth. Here in Australia, child support is available to families earning 150% of the median income. Families on median incomes would suffer real reductions in quality of life if their child support payments were stopped. Madness. But it means wages can be kept lower.)
Except that's not the situation, and between differences in productivity and living costs(for example, number of dependents), it's not practical to set minimum employment standards high enough to cover 'all' situations.
It *should* be the situation, that's the point. You can certainly set "minimum employment standards high enough" to cover a reasonable situation (say, back to the good old days when a single typical full-time job could support a family of four (five at a stretch) and buy a house (consider the most unrealistic part of cartoons like the Simpsons and Family Guy today - the single-income family)).
You cannot sit there and argue "that's not the situation today" while proposing something as radical as a BIG.
6% is actually very good. Just look at Europe.
No it's not, it's terrible. That Europe is worse means nothing other than Europe is worse.
Post-WW2 America had unemployment numbers starting with a 3 or 4 - and that was *real* unemployment, not the comical "if you work an hour a week you're not unemployed" and "if you've given up looking for work you're not unemployed" stats they use today. Of course, that was also back when full unemployment was the goal, rather than today where maintaining a certain level of UN-employment is the goal.
*Real* unemployment today - ie: people without jobs who want them, or with jobs who want to work more - is almost certainly well into the %teens. I'm not intimately familiar with US statistics so I'm not entirely sure where to look for it.
While yes, theoretically it could be better(remember that the BIG idea is also intended to increase employment, and that's without getting into the other policies I'd put in place), I view it like eliminating fraud, waste, and abuse - it's impossible to get 100% of it.
I agree you never get "100%" because a ce
Hey, you do realize that I was mostly agreeing with you, right? $6k/year vs $7k, a bit more pessimistic about expenses, but willing to force a bit lower standard of living on people. IE I think things are a bit more expensive, but I'm meaner.
Interesting write-up, by the way, did you do it for school? Doctorate or economics course?
Federal poverty line is a bullshit number.
I'd argue it's not really bullshit, no more bullshit than your number. I added your chart up and came up with ~$525, which is amazingly close to my $500 estimate.
Let's consider utilities. ~$25, including your 'risk buffer'? Not in a single person household! My electric bill's connection fee is higher.
To not put too fine of a line on it - the poverty line is an eminently livable income in most of the country. It's not past having to economize, but you no longer have to worry about every cent. You can live a decent life there.
I do expect people to learn, readily, if they're not already fiscally-responsible accountants. They're poor, not retarded).
No argument from me.
The Federal poverty line for a single individual is around $12k, and the numbers I give are well below that.
Are your figures for a single person household? I find that unlikely; I couldn't keep my electricity on with what you've allotted to ALL utilities. It starts making sense at around 4 people. $100 for food for the month? I might, and this is a big, might be able to do that. The military basic allowance for subsistence is $368.29. I agree that's generous, but it's a figure, and military types tend to be very active(I had a desk job and still needed more than 2k calories/day due to my fitness regime).
224sqft. Enough for a 6'x9' bedroom (I actually spend much of my time in a room that size, with a futon, a computer desk, a 32 inch TV, video games...) and a 10'x9' common room, plus a bathroom and small kitchen tacked on. Low-income apartments have a median cost per square foot of roughly $1, although I've seen as low as 60 cents; with the risk reserve, I accounted $1.33/sqft.
I assume you mean something like $1/square foot per month as the cost? Median rental price for a studio/1 bedroom is $769/month.
Selecting the median city, Phoenix, AZ, the cheapest advertised studio is Calle Central, $349, for 300 square feet. Looking at 4 bedroom places - Lake Pleasant Village. $650 for 740 square feet.
We go from $1.16/sqft to $0.88/sqft. Bigger apartments are cheaper by area. Another argument for roommates.
This makes sense - the costs for an apartment are nonliner - there are static costs to consider. A larger fridge or range isn't that much more expensive than a small one. Sometimes cheaper, as some of the smallest places will use reduced size appliances that actually cost more because not enough of them are used for economy of scale. A 2 bedroom needs a bathroom same as a studio. Same with climate control and everything else.
So odds are, if they're living alone, they're already eating into your reserve, especially if they have an apartment as small as you propose.
That means $1,100/month (in 2013) plus aid to feed and clothe your kids.
I'll note that I didn't address kids, but a family of two would be $1k/month under what I proposed, so I don't understand what got you hot and bothered. That's only a 10% difference.
This is tied to the total income, and essentially to the per capita income, which always [wordpress.com] grows [wa.gov] (GDP [dol.gov] is the same number).
Eh, my estimate of $500 was just that - an estimate. It can easily be tuned, for various reasons.
By the by, being in the military counts as "Resident". On top of your military pay, you'd have the dividend going home
I don't read AC A human right
Imagine every public school could be ranked in one of three ratings: Better than average Average Below average If your child is 'trapped' in a local school that's rated 'below average' being able to send him/her to a school that is only 'average' would be a dramatic improvement. The issue isn't whether or private schools are all better than public schools, it's having the ability to opt out of a below average school to a merely 'average' private school.
What's astonishing is that an administrator in the government sector Ed Biz (to swipe a term from Tom Lehrer) set out to accomplish something important and good and relevant to their jobs, and succeeded.
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
Let's consider utilities. ~$25, including your 'risk buffer'? Not in a single person household! My electric bill's connection fee is higher.
I pay $160-$320 in my house. In my apartment, I paid $52-$68. My apartment was 3 times the size of the living space I propose, had 4-inch walls, and did not have any insulation; one entire long wall and one short wall (50% of my wall space), as well as the entire ceiling, was uninsulated and facing directly outside.
the poverty line is an eminently livable income in most of the country
The poverty line is a relative poverty measure. It's a delineation at which we say people are poor because they look poor. It's distinct from absolute poverty, which is the delineation at which a person cannot afford the basic needs for living. The term "decent life", as you put it, is distinct from "subsistence".
We go from $1.16/sqft to $0.88/sqft. Bigger apartments are cheaper by area. Another argument for roommates.
That's actually a function of risk control, and not cost. A larger apartment holds a higher-income tenant with less of a flight risk; a smaller apartment holds someone with lower, more-distressed income, statistically more likely to face eviction and cause major landlord costs. The Dividend doesn't run out: your tenant won't lose his unemployment or his job; much of that risk is controlled, and I have proposed secondary systems to further control risk in order to help draw prices down.
I've seen as low as $0.62/sqft for a 900sqft area; I've seen some apartments as low as $330, but don't like the amount of risk in treating that as the norm.
The 244sqft area includes bathroom and kitchen, although I've had interesting ideas about a shower stall with corner sink basin and a separate toilet. Let's face it: you don't live in your bathroom.
This all looks fuzzy largely because it's market creation. I don't believe these people are going to go rent what's out there; we're going to have a multi-year transition period where we've still got people on HUD because the landlords are figuring out what units to build *and* trying to manage finances and logistics in hiring construction to build them. It's going to be a slow process moving from one system to another; fortunately HUD only costs about $50 billion, and most HUD families have some other form of income (low-income families suddenly having $1,100/mo more means maybe they can rent that $1,100 4-bedroom apartment instead of getting a HUD voucher), so some of my projection is just ignoring things that will take care of themselves trivially. Either way, you can't look outside today and say, "Oh, I see those things... yes this will work;" you have to plan and project, which is why there are pretty big error bars.
I'll note that I didn't address kids, but a family of two would be $1k/month under what I proposed, so I don't understand what got you hot and bothered. That's only a 10% difference.
I thought you were commenting on my numbers, not supplying your own. Misread. A lot of people freak out if we don't give everyone $1,000/month and $4,000/year for each child.
I'd structure the amount as a non-refundable credit for legal immigrants(IE they're untaxed until they're at the point that a citizen would be paying taxes).
That is...a surprisingly good solution. I don't know what *economic* merits it carries, but it avoids the no-work-free-money issue that would draw a lot of jobless immigrants to come squat for free housing. Off the top of my head, it would reduce their direct labor costs, which would prevent the system from disadvantaging immigrants at low-income postings.
I need to examine this, run some projections in my head, and maybe do a small write-up. This is good. How did I miss this?
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Why not ? Plenty of people when given the choice between being given, say, $50 and working to get $60 will work for that extra $10. There's a massive labour surplus, remember.
Marginal valuation of time. Costs of working. Right now you have people taking whatever they can get because otherwise they'd starve.
Realistically, I'll fully admit that while eliminating welfare cliffs will help push motivated people into working more, you will have others that will voluntarily leave the workforce.
As the labor market fluxuates, employers will probably find that they have to pay more to get workers in hot markets because they have to lure people in.
This is only on the bottom of the market, of course, where employers currently have the biggest power advantage over their employees. Get into 'actually pays taxes' levels of income, you're looking at professionals who already have power and dedication.
To put it another way - I normally get the OPPOSITE argument you're pushing - that too many workers would STOP working if a BIG is paid.
You say that any job should pay enough to live on. I say that not every worker is worth a 'living' wage. First problem - living wage for what? A single person? A nuclear family? A single mother with 3 kids? Add in unexperienced, low-qualification workers, and it takes some time to build the experience to be worth those kinds of wages.
Yes, the wage stagnation sucks. A lot of it is due to arbitrage and the outsourcing to China causing wage equalization for factory labor. That should be ending soon - Chinese wages have been shooting up like a rocket the last couple decades, and it's gotten to the point that building in China and shipping to the USA is 'sometimes' more expensive. As China's labor costs continue to rise, this becomes more common.
You are conflating the outcome of poorly structured welfare and decades of wage suppression (amongst many other issues, eg: reduction in worker protections) with the outcome of not having a BIG.
Ah. I view it more as I'm dealing with current reality. I support a BIG because I see it as addressing a number of problems. Sure, with enough reforms, we could probably eliminate the welfare cliffs. But there's also the administrative costs. Under a BIG, those should be much reduced. In addtion, as a libertarian, I'm opposed to government meddling - which is just what we're seeing with politicians proposing everything from limiting the amount of seafood people on welfare can buy to the types of goods and where they can withdraw money.
Welfare cliffs exist because people who "shouldn't" be reliant on it - ie: in full-time jobs - are. Welfare is supposed to be for people incapable of supporting themselves - ie:
A lot of them aren't in full time jobs, or their family are underemployed.
In a scenario where you go from no income (+welfare), to a liveable income, the complete withdrawal of the welfare component should have no meaningful impact (other than having to go to work everyday).
Do you have a meaningful method to ensure that 'livable incomes' are available? Or are we going to pay people a living wage even for what amounts to lazy make-work?
To be a bit more clear, I feel that the BIG also helps people move up in the job market-it's security when changing jobs, for example. So we start with a part time stocker, who, as he gains experience, moves up in his employment until his pay IS enough to live on.
The solution here is not more welfare, it is better paying jobs so that people who shouldn't be dependent on welfare - full time workers - are not.
Oddly, I'm not giving out a significant amount of additional welfare, I'm just changing the way it's structured.
Here in Australia, child support is available to families earning 150% of the median income. Families on median incomes would suffer
I don't read AC A human right
In my apartment, I paid $52-$68. My apartment was 3 times the size of the living space I propose, had 4-inch walls, and did not have any insulation; one entire long wall and one short wall (50% of my wall space), as well as the entire ceiling, was uninsulated and facing directly outside.
Were you paying a significant amount to heat/cool it by electricity? How long ago was this? I'm trying to figure out the source of your numbers.
I was a little wrong, my electric bill's service charge is $17.50. To make this clear, even if I flipped the main breaker for a whole billing period and used 0 kwh, I'd be charged $17.50+taxes, which consumes *MOST* of your figuring for the utility bill.
The fallacy I see you using is using a pure linear estimation on a electric bill for an apartment 3X the size of what you propose. MY point is that electricity costs aren't linear with apartment size.
The difference in electricity use between a ~750 sqft apartment and a 250 one is likely to be negligible. In most cases you're still looking at about the same time with the same lighting, the same computer or TV on the same amount of time, the same electricity demands for cooking, etc...
The poverty line is a relative poverty measure. It's a delineation at which we say people are poor because they look poor. It's distinct from absolute poverty, which is the delineation at which a person cannot afford the basic needs for living. The term "decent life", as you put it, is distinct from "subsistence".
It's still not a bullshit metric.
That's actually a function of risk control, and not cost. A larger apartment holds a higher-income tenant with less of a flight risk;
Not necessarily. Remember what I mentioned about static costs? There's a basic minimum cost for a functional bathroom or kitchen. Bathrooms/kitchens effectively cost more per square foot, and this price increases as they shrink. As the apartment itself shrinks, the proportion of the apartment that is bathroom/kitchen increases.
Bedroom/living room space is cheap in comparison.
I've seen as low as $0.62/sqft for a 900sqft area; I've seen some apartments as low as $330, but don't like the amount of risk in treating that as the norm.
Cheap apartments are likely to be old apartments. 900 square feet can be cheaper per sqft than 244. Think about it. For a 900 sqft apartment, you still only need to supply 1 each of: refridgerator, stove, sink, bathroom sink, toilet, bathtub or shower, etc... That 900 feet will be more expensive subdivided into 4 tiny apartments because there's more walls involved, and 4 times the appliances/equipment.
we're going to have a multi-year transition period where we've still got people on HUD because the landlords are figuring out what units to build *and* trying to manage finances and logistics in hiring construction to build them.
Don't forget that you'll have to address zoning and building codes. For example, Manhattan has a requirement that the smallest legal apartment is 400 sqft. Bloomberg wanted to reduce it to 300, you'd need to reduce it even more. Chicago stipulates that in any given development must average at least 500. It also has rules about how many apartments can be on the land, how many can be 'efficiency', how many parking spots must be provided, etc... Even Phoenix, AZ, my earlier example, has various rules that add up to ~400 square feet.
you have to plan and project, which is why there are pretty big error bars.
I don't disagree with the error bars. I simply disagree that they're in the right spots, assuming an
I don't read AC A human right
To put it another way - I normally get the OPPOSITE argument you're pushing - that too many workers would STOP working if a BIG is paid.
Sure. That's because you're probably usually arguing with loony right-wing religious nuts who fundamentally think we're all lazy sinners looking for a free ride, or loony right-wing supply-siders who think the only people who can't find work are the lazy and incompetent.
In reality, most people want to work because they find it personally fulfilling and because being poor sucks. This is as true at the bottom as at the top. There will always be a percentage of people who *are* lazy freeloaders, but they are a small minority.
You say that any job should pay enough to live on. I say that not every worker is worth a 'living' wage.
And I say that is a horrifyingly immoral position.
To deconstruct, you are basically saying that there is some work where you believe the people who do it literally do not deserve to live. That they should be sucked of whatever they can deliver, then left to die.
(I don't mean the above in a personally judgemental way, but I won't apologise for putting it in blunt terms.)
However, I bet if all those people disappeared tomorrow in a puff of smoke and consequently that work wasn't getting done, you'd notice. Probably firstly in the office toilets.
First problem - living wage for what? A single person? A nuclear family? A single mother with 3 kids?
Firstly, I'll point out that exactly this same "problem"/argument applies to a BIG.
Secondly, my personal measure is a liveable wage for a typical family of two adults and 2-3 children. Because anything smaller is below species survival level.
Add in unexperienced, low-qualification workers, and it takes some time to build the experience to be worth those kinds of wages.
Again, I come back to the point above. You're effectively saying people performing minimum wage jobs are worth so little *as people* they don't even deserve to live because they don't contribute enough to society to justify their existence.
Yes, the wage stagnation sucks. A lot of it is due to arbitrage and the outsourcing to China causing wage equalization for factory labor.
No, it's due to the systematic undermining of workers of which outsourcing is but a part. This has been going on for the better part of forty years.
Ah. I view it more as I'm dealing with current reality. I support a BIG because I see it as addressing a number of problems. Sure, with enough reforms, we could probably eliminate the welfare cliffs. But there's also the administrative costs. Under a BIG, those should be much reduced. In addtion, as a libertarian, I'm opposed to government meddling - which is just what we're seeing with politicians proposing everything from limiting the amount of seafood people on welfare can buy to the types of goods and where they can withdraw money.
There's some conflicting ideas in this statement.
Firstly, you say you're dealing with current reality, yet supporting a BIG is a *massive* change from current methods and mentalities around welfare. You can't really dismiss a jobs guarantee in that context (arguably less of a change than a BIG).
Secondly, you say you're a libertarian opposed to "government meddling", yet a BIG is about as "government meddling" as you can get since it's effectively making a huge swathe of the population fundamentally reliant on "government" for surviva.
A lot of them aren't in full time jobs, or their family are underemployed.
I have been pretty explicit in my position that anyone in a full-time job should not find themselves reliant on welfare (outside of relatively unusual circumstances).
Underemployment is the problem a jobs guarantee fixes. A BIG does not. If anything, it will make it worse.
Do you have a meaningful method to ensure that 'livable incomes' are available? Or are we going to pay people a living wage even for what
In my apartment, I paid $52-$68. My apartment was 3 times the size of the living space I propose, had 4-inch walls, and did not have any insulation; one entire long wall and one short wall (50% of my wall space), as well as the entire ceiling, was uninsulated and facing directly outside.
Were you paying a significant amount to heat/cool it by electricity? How long ago was this? I'm trying to figure out the source of your numbers.
I was a little wrong, my electric bill's service charge is $17.50. To make this clear, even if I flipped the main breaker for a whole billing period and used 0 kwh, I'd be charged $17.50+taxes, which consumes *MOST* of your figuring for the utility bill.
The fallacy I see you using is using a pure linear estimation on a electric bill for an apartment 3X the size of what you propose. MY point is that electricity costs aren't linear with apartment size.
The difference in electricity use between a ~750 sqft apartment and a 250 one is likely to be negligible. In most cases you're still looking at about the same time with the same lighting, the same computer or TV on the same amount of time, the same electricity demands for cooking, etc...
The poverty line is a relative poverty measure. It's a delineation at which we say people are poor because they look poor. It's distinct from absolute poverty, which is the delineation at which a person cannot afford the basic needs for living. The term "decent life", as you put it, is distinct from "subsistence".
It's still not a bullshit metric. You have to put the line somewhere, and putting the line at 'absolute abject poverty' isn't a good one, and actually varies too much, I think. The poverty line itself includes enough extras that while being on the line isn't the nicest of lives, there's enough extra built into the metric to help cover variances.
That's actually a function of risk control, and not cost. A larger apartment holds a higher-income tenant with less of a flight risk;
Not necessarily. Remember what I mentioned about static costs? There's a basic minimum cost for a functional bathroom or kitchen. Bathrooms/kitchens effectively cost more per square foot, and this price increases as they shrink. As the apartment itself shrinks, the proportion of the apartment that is bathroom/kitchen increases.
Bedroom/living room space is cheap in comparison.
I've seen as low as $0.62/sqft for a 900sqft area; I've seen some apartments as low as $330, but don't like the amount of risk in treating that as the norm.
Cheap apartments are likely to be old apartments. 900 square feet can be cheaper per sqft than 244. Think about it. For a 900 sqft apartment, you still only need to supply 1 each of: refridgerator, stove, sink, bathroom sink, toilet, bathtub or shower, etc... That 900 feet will be more expensive subdivided into 4 tiny apartments because there's more walls involved, and 4 times the appliances/equipment.
we're going to have a multi-year transition period where we've still got people on HUD because the landlords are figuring out what units to build *and* trying to manage finances and logistics in hiring construction to build them.
Don't forget that you'll have to address zoning and building codes. For example, Manhattan has a requirement that the smallest legal apartment is 400 sqft. Bloomberg wanted to reduce it to 300, you'd need to reduce it even more. Chicago stipulates that in any given development must average at least 500. It also has rules about how many apartments can be on the land, how many can be 'efficiency', how many parking spots must be provided, etc... Even
I don't read AC A human right
Sure. That's because you're probably usually arguing with loony right-wing religious nuts who fundamentally think we're all lazy sinners looking for a free ride, or loony right-wing supply-siders who think the only people who can't find work are the lazy and incompetent.
True. As a libertarian who supports having a BIG(instead of current welfare), my views are 'interesting'. Of course, I'm also a *moderate* libertarian. For example, I often point out that Ayn Rand a: wasn't a libertarian, b: an idiot.
You say that any job should pay enough to live on. I say that not every worker is worth a 'living' wage.
And I say that is a horrifyingly immoral position.
Wierd. I don't view it as a moral position at all. It's a productivity statement.
To deconstruct, you are basically saying that there is some work where you believe the people who do it literally do not deserve to live. That they should be sucked of whatever they can deliver, then left to die.
Only if you ignore the whole BIG proposal. As an example, I have an aunt who is mentally retarded. She has worked in the past. Should she have been paid a 'living' wage? While she enjoyed the work and was paid some for it, by no means was her productivity enough to pay for her to live on, even discounting the additional medical and supervision requirements.
You turn that into a bell curve of productivity, there are indeed people out there who aren't productive enough to support themselves. Thus the BIG. And probably single-payer healthcare because we've managed to create a system that combines the worst aspects of socialism and capitalism, rather than the best.
Probably firstly in the office toilets.
Our janitors? Unlikely.
Firstly, I'll point out that exactly this same "problem"/argument applies to a BIG.
Not really, since a BIG is per person.
Secondly, my personal measure is a liveable wage for a typical family of two adults and 2-3 children. Because anything smaller is below species survival level.
2 working adults? 1? Grandparents? In my family it's 'traditional' to live close enough to them that they provide like half the child care.
No, it's due to the systematic undermining of workers of which outsourcing is but a part. This has been going on for the better part of forty years.
There are other factors, yes, but I'm not trying to pretend that a BIG is a solution to all of them either.
Firstly, you say you're dealing with current reality, yet supporting a BIG is a *massive* change from current methods and mentalities around welfare. You can't really dismiss a jobs guarantee in that context (arguably less of a change than a BIG).
I'm not dismissing it. I even said that a job guarantee could be part of the system. Other than that, I was addressing your assertations about how a BIG would work out that I felt was incorrect.
Secondly, you say you're a libertarian opposed to "government meddling", yet a BIG is about as "government meddling" as you can get since it's effectively making a huge swathe of the population fundamentally reliant on "government" for surviva.
I'm a very wierd libertarian. Still, I'm far from unique:
The Pragmatic Libertarian Case for a Basic Income Guarantee
The Libertarian Case for a Basic Income
Why Did Hayek Support a Basic Income?
I'll point out that libertarians are about freedom. There are many kinds of freedom. Do I increase the freedom of the poor more by taxing the rich?
There's also the matter of the
I don't read AC A human right
Wierd. I don't view it as a moral position at all. It's a productivity statement.
So you believe the main objective of society should be simply to produce as much as possible ?
Only if you ignore the whole BIG proposal. As an example, I have an aunt who is mentally retarded. She has worked in the past. Should she have been paid a 'living' wage? While she enjoyed the work and was paid some for it, by no means was her productivity enough to pay for her to live on, even discounting the additional medical and supervision requirements.
No, it's independent of a BIG. Was your aunt working a full-time, productive job, or was she doing "make-work" to keep her busy and reduce load on the care system ?
Not really, since a BIG is per person.
Per what person ? Old ? Young ? Healthy ? Unhealthy ? Living in the middle of NYC or in a cheap country town ?
Subsistence for all these people carries different costs.
2 working adults? 1? Grandparents? In my family it's 'traditional' to live close enough to them that they provide like half the child care.
One working adult, because the other is caring for the children.
You are playing pointless semantic games to try and present a BIG as more rational, justified and consistent than a liveable minimum wage. It's not. Both are defined at an arbitrary figure based on particular arbitrary criteria.
I'm a very wierd libertarian. Still, I'm far from unique:
Cato, et al, support the idea of a BIG because they see it as formally absolving their ubermensch superheroes from having any responsibilities back to the society that created and supports them. It's just another aspect of their broken, selfish, hyper-individualistic philosophy. "Privatise the profits, socialise the losses".
I'll point out that libertarians are about freedom.
Mmmm. Freedom from responsibility in my experience.
You can't have freedom without laws and enforcement. You can't have laws and enforcement without Government. Government is - in a proper democratic system - the administering of the People's will.
You have failed to make a justification as to WHY this would be true.
A BIG does nothing to fix unemployment because it does nothing to try and fix unemployment. It assumes unemployment will be fixed by benevolent capitalists employing people and paying them well out of the goodness of their hearts.
One problem with your proposal is that of how do people get OFF the guaranteed job? They're busy working rather than looking for new work. You'd probably still need unemployment insurance. Etc...
Huh ? This makes no sense at all. They get off the guaranteed job the same way they get off any other job - by finding a better one.
Ah, this makes me turn your assertion about me saying they deserve to starve back on you. You're saying that if somebody can't work well enough to earn enough to support a family of four on their income, even as a brand spanking new worker, that they should starve to death as quickly as possible.
No. I'm saying that the minimum wage level for full-time work (by which I am thinking of jobs like a janitor, or a waitress) our society should be prepared to accept is sufficient to support a family of four.
Yes, this means for a brief time a "brand spanking new worker" will be "overpaid". But that's a cost of doing business in a society that has decided a minimum wage job should be liveable.
You most often had dual earners for a period, with the wife quitting to take care of the kids only after the husband had gained enough seniority, work experience, and education to have a position that paid much more than entry level. Before that, they were living in apartments and everything else.
I'm not sure what "living in apartments and everything else" is meant to signify. A liveable wage for a family doesn't mean they're in a five bedroom house on a suburban block. It means they can put a roof over
What I keep hearing about private schools is that they can get rid of disruptive students, while the public school system can't do that anywhere near as easily.
In my opinion, that alone would make private school way superior. I got shit grades in junior high and early high school for that exact reason (senior year wasn't quite as bad because most of the shitheads either matured or dropped out.) I thought college was the easiest time of my life, and I think it's because I didn't have to put up with a bunch of shitheads (even publicly subsidized colleges can kick them out.) I'd probably be much better off if I had decent grades
In fact, that's perhaps the biggest reason I favor school vouchers. Bleeding hearts raise a shit because their mollycoddled shithead students, being the shitheads that they are, will get left behind. You know what my response is? So be it.
That's why I think a voucher system would be a good idea. It would empower parents to select which school their kids attend, public or private. It would also keep the shithead students out of the good schools. See my earlier post for why I think that's a good thing:
http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
So you believe the main objective of society should be simply to produce as much as possible ?
I'm getting the idea our thought processes are very different. No, the objective of society shouldn't be to produce as much as possible. It should be to maximize the life and freedoms of it's citizens.
However, in the exchange of work for pay, productivity matters.
No, it's independent of a BIG. Was your aunt working a full-time, productive job, or was she doing "make-work" to keep her busy and reduce load on the care system ?
Don't know about full time. The work was productive, though, as I said, it wasn't enough to cover her load on the care system, it only helped. She was paid something like $1-2/hour.
Per what person ? Old ? Young ? Healthy ? Unhealthy ? Living in the middle of NYC or in a cheap country town ?
Per person. The rest doesn't matter other than maybe 'young'. There is disagreement on how to handle that. The intent of the BIG is to be a universal income guarantee, and to reduce overhead. You can't do that if you go micromanaging again.
Huh ? This makes no sense at all. They get off the guaranteed job the same way they get off any other job - by finding a better one.
I've never had a guaranteed job lined up when I left my last one. Finding another job is, in itself, a full time job today. At least in the USA.
Cato, et al, support the idea of a BIG because they see it as formally absolving their ubermensch superheroes from having any responsibilities back to the society that created and supports them. It's just another aspect of their broken, selfish, hyper-individualistic philosophy. "Privatise the profits, socialise the losses".
And you're misrepresenting them so you have a nice strawman to attack.
A BIG does nothing to fix unemployment because it does nothing to try and fix unemployment. It assumes unemployment will be fixed by benevolent capitalists employing people and paying them well out of the goodness of their hearts.
ROFL. Dude, I always assume that capitalists are heartless bastards motivated only by the prospect of more money in their wallets. You need to actually read what I write. Services will be provided to people surviving on the BIG for the same reason as everything - they have money to spend, however little. Said services will require people to provide them. Thus employment. That being said, I'll repeat that I don't believe that there's any one solution to employment problems we face.
Mmmm. Freedom from responsibility in my experience.
You can't have freedom without laws and enforcement. You can't have laws and enforcement without Government. Government is - in a proper democratic system - the administering of the People's will.
Then either you haven't met any real libertarians or you're constructing more straw men. Libertarians believe that with liberty comes responsibility.
No you don't. You tie them to the BIG for survival.
You free people by making them self-sufficient.
Yep. You just can't seem to realize that a BIG is just one brick in the pile to do just that.
Why do we need more people to do this ? In a generation, two at the most, robots will be performing almost all low-skill jobs. You talk as if we won't have enough people to do the necessary work to support non-workers, but the more realistic scenario is that we will struggle to find things for the workers to do.
Sigh... It's because the population is dropping too quickly, as I said and you apparently didn't understand. We're only automating at a certain rate, and said rate is slowing. Meanwhile, short of robots out of Asimov's works we need more and more healthcare workers, because automation there isn't progressing very rapidly at all.
Als
I don't read AC A human right
I'm getting the idea our thought processes are very different. No, the objective of society shouldn't be to produce as much as possible. It should be to maximize the life and freedoms of it's citizens.
Right. So a key part of that objective is to ensure the increase in real incomes and living standards, and keeping people mentally healthy and engaged in society.
So incomes - wages - and employment are moral issues. Because being unemployed and dependent on a subsistence stipend from the Government, is no way to go through life, son.
Don't know about full time. The work was productive, though, as I said, it wasn't enough to cover her load on the care system, it only helped. She was paid something like $1-2/hour.
Ok, so not really relevant to the situation. She’s invalid, and would be covered by welfare not a minimum wage. “Work” in this context is just a part of her treatment (unless the person she’s working for is selling the product of her labour as if she weren’t disabled, in which case it’s exploitation).
Per person. The rest doesn't matter other than maybe 'young'. There is disagreement on how to handle that. The intent of the BIG is to be a universal income guarantee, and to reduce overhead. You can't do that if you go micromanaging again.
Huh ? Of course it does. A BIG calibrated for somewhere with very low living costs is all but useless in somewhere with very high living costs (which is to say, would need to be supplemented by additional assistance so people can survive).
Making broad regional adjustments isn’t “micromanaging”. Dictating to people they’re allowed to buy vegetables but not candy is “micromanaging”.
I've never had a guaranteed job lined up when I left my last one. Finding another job is, in itself, a full time job today. At least in the USA.
Something a JG addresses but a BIG does not
Regardless, there’s nothing different about leaving a JG job and any other job. That’s the point. To workers, it’s just a job.
ROFL. Dude, I always assume that capitalists are heartless bastards motivated only by the prospect of more money in their wallets. You need to actually read what I write. Services will be provided to people surviving on the BIG for the same reason as everything - they have money to spend, however little. Said services will require people to provide them. Thus employment.
Yes. The point you have not addressed is how that is any different to the situation today, hence how it will improve unemployment, income gaps, etc, over today.
Then either you haven't met any real libertarians or you're constructing more straw men. Libertarians believe that with liberty comes responsibility.
Speaking of fallacies, that sounds like a Scotsman.
I’ve talked to lots of people who call themselves Libertarians. The pillars of their beliefs tend to be unwavering beliefs that they are “self made” and that they owe society nothing, and people who cannot emulate their situation cannot because of variables entirely within their control.
This inevitably leads to the deification of the wealthy who have “made it” and contempt for the disadvantaged who have not.
A belief in social support/welfare/assistance to the disadvantaged tends to be markedly lacking in the typical Libertarian’s list of descriptive bullet points.
Yep. You just can't seem to realize that a BIG is just one brick in the pile to do just that.
A BIG does not make people self sufficient. It does the exact opposite, pretty much by definition.
Sigh... It's because the population is dropping too quickly, as I said and you apparently didn't understand. We're only automating at a certain rate, and said rate is slowing. Meanwhile, short of robots out of Asimov's works we need more and more healthcare workers, because automation there isn't progressing ve
Uh...Ok? This is a government study using some pretty sound statistical methods, and unlike you I actually cited my source. So...your words are rather meaningless.
Didn't even bother reading the link, but having a wife as a public school teacher I know the drill. Private schools pick and choose who they accept, public schools can't. If you are in zone, the school has to take you. So if you have a special needs child, or an IQ of 25, the public school has to take them. Same goes for the poor, the ratbags, children of murders or drug dealers etc.
So results are biased towards private schools, only because they don't have the ratbags (and can kick them out if they aren't meeting expectation), not because of any special teaching skills.
Here, we also have 'selective' public schools, where gifted kids can go to a gifted public school for free (based on merit). These schools top our results every year, beating the most expensive and best privates. So take any results private schools give with a grain of salt.
Some apartments (the ones in my area) used shared metering, so there were 6 units in the building and one customer charge--a $3 charge by your measure. Cut those apartments down to small 400sqft studios and you've got 18, at $1 for the hookup.
It's not unreasonable the utility would cut a landlord a deal to meter individual bills at a reduced service charge; or that the landlord would use a $2,000 commercial TED installed at the main distribution panel to automatically partition the bill based on actual tenant usage. Remember, we're talking about a ginormous opportunity to make a ton of profit; that means innovation and large business deals for anyone who can get rich by playing along.
A good 90% of my bill was heating and AC. A good 90% of my bill is still heating and AC, which is pretty hilarious. 100kWh for the lights, refrigerator, and computer each month; 693kWh total used this month, mostly to power a one-room space heater at night plus, an extra 90 therms ($50) of gas for the water heater and furnace. My lowest this year was 493kWh with a 6000BTU window AC consuming a bit over 400kWh for that month--that was July.
So yes, just my lights, ceiling fan, refrigerator, and computer cost me about $10. I'm working on an assumption of good insulation. R-32 would cost about $45 if added to the apartment during interior wall construction using mold- and fire-resistant stone wool insulation in long-wall configuration; $30 in short-wall configuration; and $90 in worst-case corner apartment configuration. Long-wall configuration gives more windows, which cost way more than insulation. That, ceiling fan, CFL or LED lighting (about 18 watts to make one room REALLY bright), and a small space heater or central forced air (my apartment had individually-metered central forced air heating) would actually get the cost down pretty low. You'd spend under $5 on lighting, refrigerator, and fan; the rest goes to heating and AC.
All of this uses existing off-the-shelf products. A savvy landlord might provide central heating and AC with a capstone turbine to generate electricity and reduce the total monthly meter, but that's probably not cost-effective in practice at that scale; I'd like to stick to realistic, sensible alternatives.
Don't forget that you'll have to address zoning and building codes. For example, Manhattan [datalounge.com] has a requirement that the smallest legal apartment is 400 sqft. Bloomberg wanted to reduce it to 300, you'd need to reduce it even more. Chicago stipulates that in any given development must average at least 500.
People always bring this up when we talk about massive overhauls of the Federal Government's tax code, Social Security, and state welfare. Like we can move mountains, but not a bucket of gravel.
What you have there is not a technical problem; you have politics. Those politics aren't "zoning laws and building codes must be changed"; they're "put those dirty fucking poor people somewhere else, not in our city!" It's the same reason some municipalities in Florida give poor people bus passes or arrest them and escort them to city borders: the objective is to herd them away from your clean, respectable, middle-class incorporated municipality, not develop ghettos for economic refugees.
Good luck with that in any context.
For a 900 sqft apartment, you still only need to supply 1 each of: refridgerator, stove, sink, bathroom sink, toilet, bathtub or shower, etc
These are surprisingly small expenses. A stove costs less than 1 month's rent, but stays in the apartment for over 10 years. Same with sinks, toilets, and showers. This is called cost amortization: divide the cost of X by its lifespan to get its per-time cost.
Construction for an apartment ranges from $85 to $200 per square foot. That means just building one of those more-expensive $750 1br apartments cramped down to 680sqft costs around $58,000. The stove in that apartment costs $400; t
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This is a recipe for ghettos and social stratification.
So incomes - wages - and employment are moral issues. Because being unemployed and dependent on a subsistence stipend from the Government, is no way to go through life, son.
I agree with this in principle, but reality is sadly a touch more complex. Fact is nearly everybody needs help sometime in their life, and a few need it nearly continuously.
unless the person she’s working for is selling the product of her labour as if she weren’t disabled, in which case it’s exploitation.
How does that factor if the employer is simply adding the output of her production into the standard supply stream? She assembled sprinkler components. Purchasers wouldn't know that disabled labor was involved at all unless they really dug deep into the certifications and such.
The best way I could describe it was that it was work where she could come close to the production capability of a non-disabled person, but a non-disabled person wouldn't be willing to do the highly repetitive work without much higher compensation. She liked the consistency, a normal person would be bored. The higher compensation for a 'normal' worker would be above the cost of just automating the process. You're correct that it was essentially part of her treatment - she enjoyed the extra money and feeling of contributing something, they enjoyed that it took up time that she didn't have to be as highly supervised.
Huh ? Of course it does. A BIG calibrated for somewhere with very low living costs is all but useless in somewhere with very high living costs (which is to say, would need to be supplemented by additional assistance so people can survive).
Ah, so you're actually rewriting my proposal to fit in with your concepts. No wonder things seem off in your replies.
This is where it becomes a touch more complex. If a person has become
dependent upon the BIG and they're living in a high cost area, my answer
isn't to pay them a larger BIG, it's for them to move. That being said, if NYC wants to suppliment the BIG for it's residents, that's it's thing.
I may care for increasing the average quality of life for people, but I can be quite mean at the individual level. With great freedom comes great responsibility...
Making broad regional adjustments isn’t “micromanaging”. Dictating to people they’re allowed to buy vegetables but not candy is “micromanaging”.
'Management level' is actually a spectrum, but broadly speaking you're correct there. That being said, I think 'broad regional adjustments' should be the states/cities supplimenting the BIG if they wish to do so, not the feds varying it themselves. As I said earlier, if NYC wants to suppliment it, they can. People in NYC would just get 2 deposits instead of one, or however NYC decides to administer things.
Something a JG addresses but a BIG does not
Sure it does. Like I said earlier, it acts like a form of unemployment insurance, which makes moving between jobs easier by reducing the transition risk.
Yes. The point you have not addressed is how that is any different to the situation today, hence how it will improve unemployment, income gaps, etc, over today.
No, you've just ignored them.
Unemployment - By eliminating welfare cliffs, it eliminates the penalties those on welfare face when seeking employment. Ergo, they're more likely to actually find jobs, because a job actually improves their situation.
Income gaps - I don't actually give much of a shit about this.
Speaking of fallacies, that sounds like a Scotsman.
I'm not saying that we don't have idiots. Hell, in a recent survey something like 30% of those who ID as 'libertarian' couldn't ID that we're supposed to be 'small government'.
A belief in social support/welfare/assist
I don't read AC A human right
Dude, my point is that that those appliances are a static cost - shrinking the apartment doesn't reduce those expenses. Plus, you still have to hook utilities up to them. Running the power line to the stove, for example, costs darn near the value of the stove. You have to run water and drains to the bathrooms. You can mirror units to reduce the amount of pipe, but you're still looking at more pipe.
You're also looking at more walls for tiny apartments, I went to a site and punched in costs for a 1200 square foot house and a 600 square foot one - the 600 square foot was still 58% of the cost of the 1200.
Keep in mind that all I was arguing was taht a ~$500/month BIG isn't enough for single living in most areas. Get 4 people together and it's workable.
I don't read AC A human right
I agree with this in principle, but reality is sadly a touch more complex. Fact is nearly everybody needs help sometime in their life, and a few need it nearly continuously.
Sure. That’s what welfare and publicly funded services are for.
How does that factor if the employer is simply adding the output of her production into the standard supply stream? She assembled sprinkler components. Purchasers wouldn't know that disabled labor was involved at all unless they really dug deep into the certifications and such.
It’s more about the employer doing the right thing.
It’s a good scenario to throw in though, as a sanity check, but I would say that it falls into the area of welfare/public support. The work such people can do is good for them health-wise, but doesn’t really “count”. Worth considering is that these sorts of jobs are going to disappear completely - if they’re not already gone - in the very near future thanks to automation.
Ah, so you're actually rewriting my proposal to fit in with your concepts.
Well, no, I’m applying it to some of the complexities of the real world.
Everyone who is unemployed will be dependent on the BIG, and most people in low-paying jobs will become dependent on it. Broadly speaking, anyone who is currently dependent on welfare payments of some sort, would be dependent on a BIG. Because - as you’ve said - ultimately your BIG is just a more streamlined and efficient version of the system already in place.
People can’t just up and move. Moving is disruptive, expensive and time consuming, and the kind of people who will be dependent on a BIG will be the lower socio-economic groups who have basically no spare income or savings to start with. Cheaper areas also tend to have less employment, so you’re basically forcing people without jobs to relocate to somewhere with lower chances of finding a job. Ghettoisation of a kind.
That’s before considering the impacts of forcibly uprooting people from their social support structures. Think about kids in schools. Think about people in similar situations to your mother (who might become disabled and unable to work through, say, an accident).
'Management level' is actually a spectrum, but broadly speaking you're correct there. That being said, I think 'broad regional adjustments' should be the states/cities supplimenting the BIG if they wish to do so, not the feds varying it themselves. As I said earlier, if NYC wants to suppliment it, they can. People in NYC would just get 2 deposits instead of one, or however NYC decides to administer things.
This is a possible compromise, but it does sort of break the premise of a single payment.
Sure it does. Like I said earlier, it acts like a form of unemployment insurance, which makes moving between jobs easier by reducing the transition risk.
Making it easier for people to move between jobs does not help people who don’t have jobs.
No, you've just ignored them.
Unemployment - By eliminating welfare cliffs, it eliminates the penalties those on welfare face when seeking employment. Ergo, they're more likely to actually find jobs, because a job actually improves their situation.
Income gaps - I don't actually give much of a shit about this.
I haven’t ignored them, I’ve refuted them.
You are almost entirely focussed on people who already have work, and trying to make it easier for them to change jobs (and having lived and worked in America ca. 2008-2011, I have some appreciation of the realities). Your secondary focus is on people who have jobs and want longer hours, and while you are correctly concluding that welfare cliffs discourage them from taking on more work, you haven’t properly considered why welfare cliffs exist - because wages are too low (wages are too low because they’ve basically not grown in real terms 30-odd years while inflation has done its usual thin
No, I"m referring to Corporate Welfare, something this administration and Clinton's did to a great degree.
That's some pretty obvious trolling, bro.
Sure. That’s what welfare and publicly funded services are for.
Which I propose replacing with a BIG because I believe it would be more effective and efficient.
Worth considering is that these sorts of jobs are going to disappear completely - if they’re not already gone - in the very near future thanks to automation.
That's actually what happened, I think they ended up moving production to China about 20 years ago. There are other jobs out there, but they're generally niche.
Well, no, I’m applying it to some of the complexities of the real world.
The problem is that you're re-writing it, then responding to 'real world' issues in your re-write, without giving me the opportunity to chime in with my thoughts on your re-write. Ask for clarification.
Everyone who is unemployed will be dependent on the BIG, and most people in low-paying jobs will become dependent on it. Broadly speaking, anyone who is currently dependent on welfare payments of some sort, would be dependent on a BIG. Because - as you’ve said - ultimately your BIG is just a more streamlined and efficient version of the system already in place.
Correct. I'm willing to accept those on low-paying jobs being, at least partially, dependent upon the payment because of my principles - basically that working should be better than not working, and that generally means you have to wean people off welfare, not cut it off. While there are indeed those that would use it as a hammock, not a net, you tweak the amounts such that they're at an acceptable number.
On the other hand, which is better - completely dependent upon your employer for your income, or half and half?
People can’t just up and move. Moving is disruptive, expensive and time consuming, and the kind of people who will be dependent on a BIG will be the lower socio-economic groups who have basically no spare income or savings to start with. Cheaper areas also tend to have less employment, so you’re basically forcing people without jobs to relocate to somewhere with lower chances of finding a job. Ghettoisation of a kind.
Can't just up and move? Tell my whole bloody family that. Except for grandmother, we're all states away from where we first started. I've lived in 8 states and 5 countries.
Also, as more people move to the cheaper areas, they'll need services and such, which will increase the numbers of jobs available.
That’s before considering the impacts of forcibly uprooting people from their social support structures. Think about kids in schools. Think about people in similar situations to your mother (who might become disabled and unable to work through, say, an accident).
Dude, I lived that life. That being said, if your social support structures are that important, they can probably kick in some help. $500/month should be enough to cover the basics even in expensive areas even if you end up sleeping in the living room of your social support network for a bit.
This is a possible compromise, but it does sort of break the premise of a single payment.
True, but if a city/state wants to do it's own thing, it's allowed to do so.
Making it easier for people to move between jobs does not help people who don’t have jobs.
Then it acting as unemployment so they have time to seek a new job before losing their house or whatever does. Hell, it can also provide support while they go back into education if that's necessary.
I haven’t ignored them, I’ve refuted them.
You might have refuted them in your own mind, but you presented an inadequate case to me.
You are almost entirely focussed on people who already have work, and trying to make it easier for
I don't read AC A human right
The problem is that you're re-writing it, then responding to 'real world' issues in your re-write, without giving me the opportunity to chime in with my thoughts on your re-write. Ask for clarification.
I'm basing it on your previous description, which is the BIG as a universal payment set at subsistence levels.
Is that not what your proposed BIG is ?
Correct. I'm willing to accept those on low-paying jobs being, at least partially, dependent upon the payment because of my principles - basically that working should be better than not working, and that generally means you have to wean people off welfare, not cut it off. While there are indeed those that would use it as a hammock, not a net, you tweak the amounts such that they're at an acceptable number.
Setting the bar for a (full time) low-paying job high enough that people prefer it over (subsistence) welfare satisfies the same principle without providing a crutch for business.
On the other hand, which is better - completely dependent upon your employer for your income, or half and half?
False dichotomy.
Can't just up and move? Tell my whole bloody family that. Except for grandmother, we're all states away from where we first started. I've lived in 8 states and 5 countries.
And you think this is something people should have to experience as a matter of course when they find themselves unemployed ?
Also, as more people move to the cheaper areas, they'll need services and such, which will increase the numbers of jobs available.
As I said earlier, a kind of ghettoisation.
Dude, I lived that life. That being said, if your social support structures are that important, they can probably kick in some help. $500/month should be enough to cover the basics even in expensive areas even if you end up sleeping in the living room of your social support network for a bit.
As I said above that live is something you think should happen to people as a matter of course ?
Social structures are a lot more than money. Your Grandma might have barely enough to pay for her food and live in a tiny one bedroom apartment, but she can watch your baby while you go looking for work (or working). Your sister is a shoulder to cry on after months of trying to find work but not succeeding. Etc.
Your worldview seems to be that people are just irrelevant cogs in a machine that exists solely to make more stuff.
Then it acting as unemployment so they have time to seek a new job before losing their house or whatever does. Hell, it can also provide support while they go back into education if that's necessary.
That's what welfare does. Without the systemic subsidy for business.
Actually, that's my tending to respond to you. If you're bringing up the long-term unemployed, well, that's complicated. You'd need to encourage them to seek more education, but we actually have something of an education glut today. They need the *right* education. It would also help if we could reduce the cost of labor enough to encourage more production inside the USA. Modify regulations so they can go into business for themselves easier.
FFS.
Wages have been systemically undermined, such that most workers have seen no real increase in wages for the better part of forty years. Something like half of society is dependent, to some degree, on welfare. The consequent lack of disposable income means nobody can afford to buy much stuff, which means business can't sell anything.
And you think driving wages lower to make labour cheaper is some sort of solution !?
Businesses aren't going to employ more people out of the goodness of their hearts because wages get lower. They're going to employ more people because demand increases to a point where they HAVE to so as to have sufficient production capacity to meet that demand.
You have the complexity that you want *EVERY* job to pay enough to support a family of 4-5. That means all jobs have