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Silicon Valley Continues To Explore Universal Basic Incomes (siliconvalley.com)
A Silicon Valley Congressman "is pushing for a plan that has been described as a first step toward universal basic income...a long-shot $1 trillion expansion to the earned income tax credit that is already available to low-income families." An anonymous reader quotes the Mecury News:
Stanford University also has created a Basic Income Lab to study the idea, and the San Francisco city treasurer's office has said it's designing pilot tests -- though the department told this news organization it has no updates on the status of that project... The problem is that giving all Americans a $10,000 annual income would cost upwards of $3 trillion a year -- more than three-fourths of the federal budget, said Bob Greenstein, president of Washington, D.C.-based Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. Some proponents advocate funding the move by cutting programs like food stamps and Medicaid. But that approach would take money set aside for low-income families and redistribute it upward, exacerbating poverty and inequality, Greenstein said... Jennifer Lin, deputy director of the East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy, is skeptical that basic income can do much lasting good in Oakland. What the city needs is more high-paying jobs and affordable housing, she said... The idea, [Sam Altman, president of Y Combinator] said at the Commonwealth Club, tackles the question not enough people are asking: "What do we as the tech industry do to solve the problem that we're helping to create?"
This summer Y Combinator is expected to announce a larger Universal Basic Income program, though the article also describes "small pilot studies" in the 1960s and 1970s in Canada and in several U.S. states including New Jersey, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Iowa and Indiana, where "Some studies showed improvements in participants' physical and mental health, and found children performed better in school or stayed in school longer. But some also showed that people receiving a basic income were inclined to spend fewer hours working."
This summer Y Combinator is expected to announce a larger Universal Basic Income program, though the article also describes "small pilot studies" in the 1960s and 1970s in Canada and in several U.S. states including New Jersey, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Iowa and Indiana, where "Some studies showed improvements in participants' physical and mental health, and found children performed better in school or stayed in school longer. But some also showed that people receiving a basic income were inclined to spend fewer hours working."
This isn't true. By just about every measure the standard of living has increased for even the poorest of people. It's more accurate to say, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting richer, only slower. I think it's dis-genuine leftism to focus on the money rather than measure and improve standard of living.
Aren't the rich the guys who pay most of the tax? They are in fact talking about using rich people's money.
The problem is one of scale. Even if the government took 100% of the wealth of the top 5% it still would be a drop in the bucket. By ny calculations to supply ~320M people $10K/year would cost $3,200,000,000,000 or $3.2 *trillion* dollars...every....single...year!
And, that number will only increase.
The *only* way this is even remotely feasible is if *all* other "social safety net" entitlement programs are halted. No more Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, food assistance, housing assistance, etc etc etc.
Basically it would be removing *all* government assistance in exchange for $10K/year per person. This would actually be a huge savings compared to existing entitlement programs, but at what human cost?
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
The only things that really cost an inordinate amount of money today are housing and healthcare. Basic subsistence otherwise is cheap. I retired recently reducing my pay by 50 percent. I own my house and car outright so even though my pay is half I actually have much more money. I eat out maybe 10 percent as much as I used to because I'm home and have time to fix better quality food that's cheaper than what I paid for eating out. I no longer pay to get my grass cut, I have time to do it myself and benefit from the exercise of pushing a mower around my half acre. My main monthly expense is my health insurance, over the last 8 years the cost of it nearly tripled and my copays doubled and catastrophic limit more than doubled. Still, I'm pretty well set, as long as the country doesn't fail. There are of course no guarantees in life.
You need food stamps because the people that receive them prove themselves to be incompetent to manage any money. You give them money and they still won't have food, hell most people that receive food stamps STILL manage to have their kids go hungry.
In my city we actually have a child hunger crisis, free breakfast and lunches in school and even during vacations. Why, BECAUSE corner and liquor stores accept EBT for cigarettes and alcohol all the while our food bank has curbside trucks (walk to the corner of the street and pick up free groceries) and tons of food rotting and spoiling in storage but the parents don't even bring their kids to the programs nor get the free food even though they're "unemployed", the programs are open 12h/day and the state pays their rent.
My significant other, when pregnant, actually managed to get $1200/month worth of groceries between food "checks" (which can be traded for specific items like eggs/milk, twice the trade value at farmers market and quadruple the value at food banks) and state and federal EBT. We actually got so much peanut butter, bread and cereal, they lasted about 6 months after benefits ended (she moved in with me and I make too much money).
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If left unchecked, the dolists would vote themselves extra benefits. "When the people find that they can vote themselves money that will herald the end of the republic." -- Ben Franklin (quote disputed). But if giving those handouts is the only way those who actually work can keep the political power, they need to keep the basic income high enough (or they'd be voted out again).
I'm pretty sure lobbyists, Congresscritters and special-interest groups for rich people, corporations and banks already live by that creed. They routinely "vote themselves money" and get "handouts" - though they would never call them that. It's the less-rich who cannot afford to buy their representation that get screwed.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .