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A Bit of Cash Can Keep Someone Off the Streets For 2 Years or More (sciencemag.org)
An anonymous reader writes: If someone is about to become homeless, giving them a single cash infusion, averaging about $1000, may be enough to keep them off the streets for at least 2 years. That's the conclusion of a new study, which finds that programs that proactively assist those in need don't just help the victims -- they may benefit society as a whole. "I think this is a really important study, and it's really well done," says Beth Shinn, a community psychologist at Vanderbilt University in Nashville who specializes in homelessness but was not involved in the work. Homelessness isn't just bad for its sufferers -- it shortens life span and hurts kids in school -- it's a burden on everyone else. Previous studies have concluded that a single period of homelessness can cost taxpayers $20,000 or more, in the form of welfare, policing, health care, maintaining homeless shelters, and other expenses. To combat homelessness, philanthropic organizations have either tried to prevent people from losing their homes in the first place or help them regain housing after they are already destitute. But there aren't many data on whether giving cash to people on the brink of becoming homeless actually prevents them from living on the street.
There was a chapter in SuperFreakonomics about the cost of homelessness to society via emergency services and law enforcement and how free housing is a cost-effective solution. It's good to see another example of their hypothesis that simply providing free services to the homeless is cheaper than the status quo.
People against this idea who say "I'm a small government conservative and I don't believe in giving people free stuff" miss the point entirely; this saves money and reduces the size of government in turn. Anyone who has moral problem with saving money by helping people is likely an Ayn Rand fan or an asshole, but probably both;)
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
But the Republicans will never allow that to happen since they want to make us have to work.
The programs work by giving one-time cash quantities to people on the brink of homelessness who can demonstrate that they will be able to pay rent by themselves in the future, but who have been afflicted by some nonrecurring crisis, such as a medical bill.
I don't know how many of you have experience with being really poor, but if the rent/mortgage/light bill money is in jeopardy, the medical bill is from the County Hospital emergency room... and it goes in the circular file.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
I'm in favor of publicly funded police, fire fighters, an army, navy, marine and air force, a court system, a school system, a working sewer system, and well maintained roads as long as they are funded by a voluntary tax on anyone who supports funding them.
I only want to pay taxes for the things I need right now. I'm not part of a democracy where the majority votes for representatives who vote on bills or (lucky them) votes on referendums.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
So what if there is abuse? If the end result is a cost savings to society and an improvement in the life of most involved why not? I constantly hear this from conservative friends that we can not allow people to abuse the system - look at the people selling food stamps to buy drugs - OMG! when the fact is that a very small percentage do abuse the system while the vast majority are helped by it.
It has always fascinated me how even a single instance of welfare fraud is unacceptable, but multiple executions of innocent individuals is an acceptable cost to getting the bad guys.
1. You're taking money away from people who earned it and giving to to people who didn't
2. What happens to people on basic income who have too many kids? Just keep paying them even more?
3. We already have enough illegals and freeloaders as it is. Paying half the country to do nothing will only make more of them.
Green card holders are permanent residents.
They also pay taxes. So why shouldn't they get the same benefits?
In most countries, permanent residents get basically the same rights as citizens, including the right to vote. Only the US seems ass backwards.
Money for nothing teaches people to slack.
Lack of opportunity teaches people to slack. Money is irrelevant to whether people slack. That you object to helping people doesn't mean you have to lie about it too.
Learn to love Alaska
Drop all other welfare, and run the numbers again. It'd be a spending cut. Not an increase. And if a welfare state is as bad as the Republicans say, we can eliminate the massive military spending, because nobody would want to invade. Net savings, and increased benefits.
Learn to love Alaska
American Culture seems to be strongly influenced by 'every man for himself'; or more subtly, your destiny is made by you and the effort you put into life. If you happen to be lazy, then suffer you.
I think there are three levels of maturity in a people and society:
1- Dependency (Child Stage)
2- Independence (Late Teen Stage). ie I can do it without anyone's help
3- Interdependence (Mature Stage) we all need to work together.
The USA seems to have gotten stuck between 2 & 3, while Europe/Canada/Australia went on to stage 3.
ie, We have strong social support systems such as good basic free medical care, good basic social security services, humane prisons with some attempt to reform.
While I as a tax payer don't like supporting lazy people, I think it is the lesser of two evils. ie having destitute people resort to crime with all the associated costs.
So I think the article is right, but culturally I don't see the USA ever changing within my lifetime.
46137
This year? Around $3800 overall so far. Years past anywhere between $800 and $7000. I kind of like the Universal Basic Income idea - the coming automation/no jobs nightmare needs a solution and I'd rather see things tried now and bugs worked out versus trying to do it while in the middle of the nightmare.
So what? The studies on the "drug test those on welfare" have shown that the tests cost more than the benefits received by those who tested positive. If you want financial responsibility, you should pay out the drug users. But we don't want "responsibility", we want punitive games. Punish people we don't like, even if the cost of the punishment is much greater than the problem caused. Most welfare recipients are white, but people think of the "average" welfare recipient as a Black person. Why? Studies have shown that if you show the plight of poor whites, then ask about welfare, people are more willing to increase welfare, than if you ask without that background, or show Blacks on welfare.
It's more a racial issue than a financial one.
Learn to love Alaska
Bullshit. It's not the unions that decide what the road specs are, who the suppliers of the raw materials are (and their quality or lack thereof), or how much time is spent on preparation. The unions only supply the labour - and they are hired and directed by the contractor, not the union.
Politicians, lowest bidder, etc., have nothing to do with unions.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
#3 is a red herring. It's the demon that's invented to lump all the #1 into, so we don't have to think about the millions of responsible and stable people who end up homeless.
Almost all homeless are #1. And $1000 could make all the difference. But if you hate #3 so much that you'r rather have 1,000,000 #1 than pay 10 #3, then it's not a financial choice, but a personal and punitive one.
Learn to love Alaska
Seriously? People kept saying that union costs were responsible for GM's bankruptcy, whereas the truth is that even if all the union employees worked for free, GM would have still gone bankrupt. They were producing Hummers when gas prices were through the roof.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Because road wear is a function of the fourth power of the weight, the fees should be:
A 540-pound motorcycle pays $0.0013/mile
A 3,470-pound SUV pays $0.347/mile
An 80,000 pound semi trailer pays $4,252/mile
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Bullshit. It's not the unions that decide what the road specs are, who the suppliers of the raw materials are (and their quality or lack thereof), or how much time is spent on preparation. The unions only supply the labour [...]
Sorry, Barbara, but I'm going to guess from you spelling it "labour" instead of "labor" that you are from a Commonwealth country, or you would be using the American English spelling instead.
This is not how unions work in the United States. The U.K. and Canada, Australia, etc., have very different labor laws from those of Commonwealth countries.
In the U.S., the unions and the government are not adversaries, they are most frequently collaborators.
I'm in favor of publicly funded police, fire fighters, an army, navy, marine and air force, a court system, a school system, a working sewer system, and well maintained roads as long as they are funded by a voluntary tax on anyone who supports funding them.
It wound't work, those are all core services that are required by everyone. These are precisely the things our tax money should be used for.
I only want to pay taxes for the things I need right now.
Umm, ok. So right now you need police to prevent anarchy and lawlessness, and fire department to prevent your neighbor's burning house from throwing embers that catch your house on fire, and a military to keep others from invading, and a court system to handle civil and criminal and constitutional disputes (law is the foundation which modern society is built on), and you need roads so that food and supplies can get to you. The only thing on your list that you are not using is the school system.
It's like communism? You don't have a clue as to what you're talking about. Socialism is not communism.
Also, funding for helping people to get training and jobs is no longer a solution. We already are in a downward spiral where people are paying ever more money to get ever more education for ever fewer jobs. As automation destroys more jobs, there's simply not going to be enough jobs to go around. Job training won't fix that.
Training also won't help people get jobs when their handicaps would "impose an undue burden on the employer." Or when the employer can get someone younger. Most "job training programs" are make-work programs that provide jobs to the trainers, and temporarily reduce the official unemployment rate because people in training aren't counted as unemployed.
In the past it didn't really matter, because after each downturn people could find jobs, even if they had nothing to do with their "training." That's no longer the case because (1) economic recoveries are now long, drawn-out affairs that leave many people permanently employed as whole sectors disappear, and (2) jobless recoveries (the term was first used in 1935) are now a fact of life.
Have you taken into account all the negative effects of NOT having a basic income? Including that historically, when enough people get desperate, they take what they need anyway rather than just conveniently crawl into a hole and die?
In other words, whatever the cost, it's probably still cheaper than a revolution.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
1. You're taking money away from people who earned it and giving to to people who didn't
As opposed to what? As fewer jobs become available, the alternatives are give a portion of it or have it all taken by force. Do you really want history to repeat itself?
2. What happens to people on basic income who have too many kids? Just keep paying them even more?
Most of the western world in the northern hemisphere is already below zero population growth. Countries have already experimented with paying people to pop out more kids, it doesn't work because people know that extra children are a financial burden in uncertain economic times. Basic income would not be high enough to offset that.
3. We already have enough illegals and freeloaders as it is. Paying half the country to do nothing will only make more of them.
Be happy that those illegals are doing jobs that you wouldn't do, like agricultural work. Do you really want to pay $5 for a tomato, because that's the alternative.
And what about all those seniors, who are "freeloading" because they aren't working. Japan already has 26% of their population over 65. Throw in those too young to work, and the infirm, and the unemployed, and that's pretty much half the population already. (total population 127 million, employed 64 million).
And the US is already worse. Only 151.5 million people work out of a total population of 319 million.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
"So you openly profess to being too lazy to "go all the way" with the naturalization process, no?"
There's lots of valid reasons to not naturalize that don't involve laziness. One of them might be to not turn into an asshat like you.
"the things I need right now." The operative word here being, of course, "I". Welcome to being a "Conservative/Republican"!!!
Who's fault is it that you have to work 16 hours to provide for your family? Maybe you should start voting for people who favour labour laws that make sure that you're able to survive on 8 hour shifts, instead of people who feel that people are replaceable cogs in a machine that can be burnt out and replaced at will. The person getting 'free money' is the opportunist paying you peanuts for your time (the only real resource you have that can never be replenished).
The mountains of madness have many little plateaus of sanity - Terry Pratchett.
SS and Medic* combined are over $1.9 T - there's just no way to replace them with basic income
You say that 3 times, but don't indicate why or how. SS *IS* a basic income. Why can't you pay the UBI rather than SS?
we'd need to pay seniors if we dropped those two programs.
Which is why most places with anything approaching UBI have single-payer health care. It'd be much better than what the US has now, and significantly cheaper. But we can't have cheaper. The conservatives object to a balanced budget with inexpensive and effective services.
Learn to love Alaska
Yes, but that's the whole point of it. The reason something like the UBI will be needed by every country sooner or later is that in the foreseeable future the demand for low skill human labor will drop very close to zero as most menial jobs and quite many more complex jobs can be automated.
No, not always. As explained above, we're headed toa future were most simple jobs are done by machines. This means these things are still produced, they're just not produced by human workers.
Very simply: because we recognize that having everyone be fully employed in the future is an impossibility, one's freedom to live should not be defined by work. This doesn't mean work is not respectable, and many people will probably be working part time still, and contribute to a number of things via which they can get their sense of achievement.
But again, since there will be massses of people for whom work simply does not exist in the coming decades, UBI is a necessity. It's not like these people can somehow all be compelled to work when the demand of human labor required will be far below the amount of people on the planet. 'Climbing up the ladder' is not something that everyone CAN do, so those people must be provided for and UBI-like systems look like the most sensible way to achieve this.
The people who have the intellectual capabilities to educate themselves for a job they can actually do will still be motivated, because most people want a better/higher standard of living. We have quite extensive unemployment benefits here in Finland, yet people still look for work instead of just living on the benefits, because even though the difference between a low wage job and being on the benefits might not be more than a few hundred euros that few hundred euros more in disposable income is a significant improvement in one's standard of living.
Throwing money at the poor doesn't make them less poor?
Overall, it seems to me that a great deal of people who oppose the idea of UBI do not understand the economic realities especially western post-industrialized economies are facing in the very near future. The whole concept of employment will change drastically as less and less humans are needed for companies and services to operate. This means we have to change our ideas about the role of work in everyday life, because the technological advances that are rushing us towards this age are already happening and they cannot be stopped.
Our economies have adapted to similar major shifts before: the cessation of slave labor, the industrial revolution, etc. and we'll adapt again, and the history will likely look back at the guys who thought UBI was the end of the world as akin to those who said the ending of slavery would cause major economic meltdowns.
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" -Alfred North Whitehead
You're talking about handing money to someone who has already been refused by family and friends
You are so privileged you can't even conceive of a world where friends and family might decline to give money because they have none to give. Do you want to give a moral test to everyone who receives government money? Like the drug tests, they should start with elected officials.
Learn to love Alaska
Libertarians across the USA are scrambling to explain that giving people cash before they go homeless will only turn them into dependent slaves and no matter what the science says it is guaranteed to doom them to poverty even faster while simultaneously requiring the stealing of money from people who worked harder than they did because libertarians can't quite figure out that there is such a thing as luck and sometimes somebody can have great luck and sometimes you can have terrible luck and a huge chunk of the luck you have in life is already present in who your parents are and what color their skins is.
Because libertarians would rather trip over sidewalks full of starved corpses than spend an extra dollar in taxes.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
My tax rate is less than 10% (for federal income tax), under 20% for all taxes (federal, including SS/medicare, state and local). Taxes are very regressive. Once you reach the top 10%, you structure your income and deductions to pay less than those who make less. The 1% make nothing in wages. Everything gets structured as capital gains, income tax capped at 15%. The poor schmucks working for a living pay up to almost 40%. The rich never pay more than 15% (and usually then structure expenses as company expenses, for a 0% tax rate).
Learn to love Alaska
He didn't actually say 'for humans' - there are even better examples if you expand beyond one species.
The plough-pulling ox is pretty much extinct, the cart-pulling horse now exists as a single novelty at a rate of less than one per major city. Even dogs. 200 years ago every dog had a job. There was even a breed who spent their lives running on a treadmill to turn the spit at restaurants and roast the meat evenly.
The only dogs with jobs today are pretty much police dogs and seeing-eye dogs.
But there's the catch - as it happens to humans that OUR jobs become universally replaced by machines, do we want to end up like oxen or like dogs ? Dogs proliferated in the post-job worl. My German shepherd may have never seen a sheep - but he gets to live a life of luxury since I enjoy his company. We can keep each other alive on the proceeds of robotic labour, or we can become as rare as horses and oxen. Somehow, I don't think human-glue factories should be our first choice...
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Finally someone gets it.
FFS, people, learn your history lessons. The most dangerous things, of all times, were people who had nothing to lose. 1789, 1917, in both cases you had starving people who had a good prospect to die anyway, so they could as well die trying to better their position.
And we have already left the point where it was economically feasible to pit people against each other to fight and struggle for jobs to push wages down. The problem isn't that we have 10 people and only work for 9 so play musical chairs at the race to the bottom to see who is left out in the rain. We're closer to having 5 jobs for 10 people in the unqualified/unskilled job bracket. And this is very, very dangerous. All it takes for a full blown riot here is someone to scream "follow me", who promises them wealth or death.
This problem needs a solution. And barring rounding up "unusable" people and mowing them down with gunfire giving them just enough to lose to keep them from uprising will be the only way to retain some semblance of social peace.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I'd really rather do something ethically meaningful rather than my current engineering job which is probably gray at best. Sadly most alternatives are not improvements and I need a decent salary to meet expenses and be able to retire at some point. Would I slack some if money wasn't an issue? Probably for a bit, but after awhile I think I'd get bored. I'd rather be doing something.
The seems to be the point that opponents to basic income can never get through their heads. People that are slackers are going to slack no matter whether they have basic income or not. A basic income actually gives people with ideas a huge advantage. I wonder how many people out there with great ideas have never been able to peruse them because it would mean they would starve while they are developing their ideas.
I feel like there's a huge problem with projection in the anti-UBI crowd. If I had a basic income, I'd go back to school. I'd do things that were more risky. I'd read more, study more, create more.
My partner is doing her PhD right now. She can do it without worrying about money because *I* work. That's the power of getting money for nothing.
But honestly, if you want to live by the ocean and barely scrape by on a UBI, I'm not actually going to argue with that. We've only got this one life to live. If I had the power, I'd bequeath everyone the life of luxury and relaxation that they want.