New Universal Basic Income Experiment Finds 40% of Money Spent On Food (ktla.com) 268
"The first data from an experiment in a California city where needy people get $500 a month from the government shows they spend most of it on things such as food, clothing and utility bills," reports the Associated Press:
The 18-month, privately funded program started in February and involves 125 people in Stockton.... But critics say the experiment likely won't provide useful information from a social science perspective given its limited size and duration. Matt Zwolinski, director of the Center for Ethics, Economics and Public Policy at the University of San Diego, said people aren't likely to change their behavior if they know the money they are getting will stop after a year and a half. That's one reason why he says the experiment is "really more about story telling than it is about social science." Plus, he said previous studies have shown people don't spend the money on frivolous things. "What you get out of a program like this is some fairly compelling anecdotes from people," he said. "That makes for good public relations if you are trying to drum up interest in a basic income program, but it doesn't really tell you much about what a basic income program would do if implemented on a long-term and large-scale basis."
The researchers overseeing the program, Stacia Martin-West at the University of Tennessee and Amy Castro Baker at the University of Pennsylvania, said their goal is not to see if people change their behavior, but to measure how the money impacts their physical and mental health. That data will be released later....
Since February, when the program began, people receiving the money have on average spent nearly 40% of it on food. About 24% went to sales and merchandise, which include places like Walmart and discount dollar stores that also sell groceries. Just over 11% went to utility bills, while more than 9% went to auto repairs and fuel. The rest of the money went to services, medical expenses, insurance, self-care and recreation, transportation, education and donations.... "People are using the money in ways that give them dignity or that gives their kids dignity," Castro-Baker said, noting participants have reported spending the money to send their children to prom, pay for dental work and buy birthday cakes.
The researchers overseeing the program, Stacia Martin-West at the University of Tennessee and Amy Castro Baker at the University of Pennsylvania, said their goal is not to see if people change their behavior, but to measure how the money impacts their physical and mental health. That data will be released later....
Since February, when the program began, people receiving the money have on average spent nearly 40% of it on food. About 24% went to sales and merchandise, which include places like Walmart and discount dollar stores that also sell groceries. Just over 11% went to utility bills, while more than 9% went to auto repairs and fuel. The rest of the money went to services, medical expenses, insurance, self-care and recreation, transportation, education and donations.... "People are using the money in ways that give them dignity or that gives their kids dignity," Castro-Baker said, noting participants have reported spending the money to send their children to prom, pay for dental work and buy birthday cakes.
Your UBI experiment checklist (Score:5, Insightful)
You have created an experiment to prove the concept of UBI. Please check from the following reasons why your experiment is not at all valid or related to UBI:
[x] Not Universal - You applied a criteria for selection of who receives assistance.
[ ] Not Basic - You provided insufficient capital compared to the economic theory underpinning UBI.
[ ] Not Income - You provided redemption services instead of cash payments for people to use as they please.
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Now you just need a set of boxes to check off whether you’re going to burn down the researchers house.
Re:Your UBI experiment checklist (Score:5, Insightful)
Another problem with this experiment is that the results appear to be contrived. Are we really supposed to believe that prior to receiving the stipend, these people, who supposedly are representative of the general public, didn't eat food or use utilities?
If the results are because they really spent more on food and utilities, then what does that mean? More KFC and fewer home cooked meals? They turned on more lights and left the AC running 24/7?
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It can tell you a lot about where they currently are on the income spectrum. We can say that at their current level of income each dollar extra is spent about 40% on food. This seems to imply they're fairly food-insecure. If they had enough disposable income to say "fuckit we're going out for KFC" then generally that happens well above the point where *almost half* your income is for food.
Re:Your UBI experiment checklist (Score:4, Insightful)
It's also quite likely that $500 is not sufficient to cover basic needs.
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Adding even adding part time minimum wage work or simply finding a roommate to share housing costs with, or better yet doing both would probably afford me a lifestyle that I would be comfortable enoug
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If living off $500/mo in the conditions under which I think I would have to live is an adequate life for you, then I guess I have no real concerns. I cannot see living on $6k a year, that won't even cover rent in any city I've lived in. I think most people are going to want those things that you're giving up (netflix, nice meals, nice living quarters, etc. etc) and will try harder.
I think UBI will fail for the reasons the original poster outlined, if it were implemented. Once you make a service like this u
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So until it's a floor wax and a dessert topping that removes stubborn stains, stops dandruff, calms "itch nerves", promotes faster healing, eliminates water spots, and provides better reception for your favorite shows, it's a no go?
You're going to be waiting a very long time for Panaceum in spite of what the marketing department tells you..
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Doesn't this experiment already show that people will mostly spend it on necessities like food and utilities so they don't go hungry or freeze in the winter? You don't need to be a rocket scientist to figure that out. Of course UBI can't and shouldn't replace everything else but it's a good alternative to many means-tested programs.
Re:Your UBI experiment checklist (Score:4, Insightful)
But then you'd have to do something crazy like tax the wealthy people who can afford the taxes and the GOP will literally burn the country to the ground to stop you from doing that.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Your UBI experiment checklist (Score:4, Interesting)
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How about telling your elected officials to SPEND LESS.
Most people want to spend less. The problem is that they want to spend less on different things.
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"Most people want to spend less. The problem is that they want to spend less on different things."
If only we didn't lose the idea of "compromise". Maybe we could spend a bit less on a lot of things rather than gut stuff that chafes folks nads. Maybe piss everyone off a little than pissing half the folks off A LOT (which can create a whole hell of a lot of worse problems than the ones that were trying to be solved).
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Two corrections. That was -2.3% under Clinton (the deficit shrunk under him). The deficit continues to go up as compared to GDP despite the fact that spending has shrunk. Obviously taxes are the problem not spending.
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Well, 1 out of 3 of those isn't too bad. Here's the graph [usgovernmentspending.com] for that one correct statement, which is that it's easily graphed.
The other two statements are nonsense. Federal government spending is totally out of control and it doesn't grow at a set rate (unless you count "really fast" as set). It's even flattened or declined a couple of times, both of which were with a Republican House of Representatives (who set the budget) fighting
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Actually they do, the poor and middle class generate the vast majority of the demand in the market.
Large scale capital flight is a risk worth taking. The people who threaten it are mostly all bark and no bite, and in the rare cases when they do follow through with it, it's only a short-term loss that can lead to long-term gains when less selfish people fill the void they leave behind. Let them all run to Galt's Gulch and see how long they last without anyone to do any of the actual work.
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the poor and middle class generate the vast majority of the demand in the market.
The US has a trade deficit of $620 billion. That is the gap between what we produce and what we consume. Clearly there is no lack of demand. We need more domestic production, not more demand for goods and services to consume.
Large scale capital flight is a risk worth taking. The people who threaten it are mostly all bark and no bite, and in the rare cases when they do follow through with it ...
If you really believe that American manufacturing jobs moving offshore is "rare", then you have been sleeping through the last three decades.
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That's at least not the sort of large-scale capital flight we're talking about
The US has a trade deficit of $620 billion. That is the gap between what we produce and what we consume. Clearly there is no lack of demand. We need more domestic production, not more demand for goods and services to consume.
A trade deficit isn't a bad or good thing, just an unimportant economic footnote stat that gets too much attention, but dependence on foreign demand is definitely a bad thing - it can vary wildly with jurisdiction shopping and fashion trends. Without enough demand for goods and services to consume the entire economy collapses. Rich people don't just give people jobs out of the goodness of their hearts at which they make things for
Re:Your UBI experiment checklist (Score:5, Insightful)
A trade deficit isn't a bad or good thing
Long term, it's an unsustainable thing. The only reason that the US has been able to sustain it for so long is thanks to the position of the US Dollar as the world currency. As soon as the dollar loses that position, the trade deficit will come to an end.
It's not really (Score:3)
And no, China with it's two Soviet Era aircraft carriers and it's splintered population looking for the first chance to break up into warring states again is _not_ a military threat. They know their place.
Re:It's not really (Score:4, Informative)
China is not a military threat to the US...
but they certainly are to Korea, or Vietnam, or India, all of which they've invaded in the modern era. They also threaten Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Japan, hell, anyone near the South China Sea.
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You provide a selection criteria because it's an experiment, and you necessarily need to work with very limited funds. If the data of interest is to find out what wealthy people would do with an extra $500/mo then you would select only wealthy people for that study for exactly the same reasons.
Although what wealthy people would do with an extra $500/mo is, in my opinion, not nearly as important or interesting. The usual criticism again UBI is that poorer people would waste the money on drugs or gambling or
Re:Your UBI experiment checklist (Score:5, Insightful)
The question isn't of why, it's what's the point. The point of UBI is that it changes the way a population reacts. The problem is to date none of the experiments have at all lined up with the theory behind UBI and as a result have been worthless in proving or disproving UBI as a viable economic model as a result.
Unfortunately this doesn't study that (Score:5, Interesting)
> studying what poorer people would *actually* do with some extra cash in their pocket is far more important to understanding
That's important. I learned some things about that when I was homeless, living in a homeless camp in a vacant lot with other homeless people. See my other post in this thread for details.
Unfortunately, this study does not answer "what poorer people would *actually* do with some extra cash". It answers "what do broke people tell you when you say 'I gave you $500 last month, what did you do with it?'". Yeah it's what they *reported* spending the money on. Rather than using the debit card so that researchers could at least tell that the money was spent at Walmart, 40% of the funds were withdrawn as cash. Most of the money we don't know how it was spent.
> Although what wealthy people would do with an extra $500/mo is, in my opinion, not nearly as important or interesting
What I find VERY interesting is how people who used to be poor spent their time and money which then ended up with them being somewhat wealthy. I want to get BETTER, not stay poor like the people in the study did, or spend daddy's money like Paris Hilton. I want to improve my life and that of of my daughter.
As it happens, my dad grew up too poor to have a *floor*. The "floor" in his house was the dirt. So literally dirt poor. He worked as a janitor to pay for school (yeah back in those days people worked while in school, even poor people did). He ended up being the VP of an oil company. Once he took me on a trip in a private jet.
Of course that totally changed the trajectory of my life. Since my dad had done well financially, I was set for life and didn't have to do anything. Well, that's what the Dems told me. Turns out that's not true; I ended up homeless. Dirt floor again, this time living under a tarp. Fortunately I figured out that my dad hadn't gone from dirt to private jet by blaming George Bush, so I didn't try that. He went from eating squirrels to steak by working his ass off to get educated in marketable field, so I tried that. Now I own a 3,500 house and I've recently looked at at rates for private jet, in case I decide I want one. I can't afford the private jet just yet.
3,500 square foot (Score:4, Interesting)
That should be :
3,500 square foot house
A couple examples if you're like me and want to learn how to improve your life:
Billionaire Kenny Troutt paid his way through Southern Illinois University by selling insurance on the side while he attended classes. His dad was a bartender.
In 1960s Mississippi, a pregnant 13 year old black girl ran away from home. Her family had been poor, and certainly a 13 pregnant "negro" doesn't easily make a ton of money in Mississippi in the 1960s. Fortunately, Oprah figured out how to succeed even when it wasn't easy.
Over 90% of millionaires became millionaires by having a little money from each paycheck automatically deposited into their 401k. Also, they overwhelmingly saved up a down payment for a house.
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The "floor" in his house was the dirt. So literally dirt poor.
Most sawmills will give away sawdust for free. Spread it on the floor, and once it is compacted by people walking on it, sawdust is a huge improvement over dirt.
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Although what wealthy people would do with an extra $500/mo is, in my opinion, not nearly as important or interesting.
Uhhh ... the wealthy would have LESS money.
UBI isn't magic. They money has to come from somewhere, and it isn't going to come from taxes on the homeless.
And what the wealthy would do if they have less money is very important. If they mostly consume less, then UBI is just a shift of consumption from the top toward the bottom. Most people would see that as a good thing. But if the wealthy invest less, or even worse, invest elsewhere, the UBI could be a net loss as the economy contracts, jobs disappear, an
Also [x] not basic. (Score:3)
$500 is only 1/3 of a normal income. And in no way frees anyone to decide what's best for him, and not how to survive by sucking up to forced labor "providers" (read: leeches).
My other comment [slashdot.org] lists the general problems with all these experiments I have personally heard about.
Re: Also [x] not basic. (Score:2)
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$500 is only 1/3 of a normal income.
Maybe it's a California thing, but 2 people would get $1000 / month which would very much cover basic needs in many places including rent. Don't forget that key word "basic".
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but 2 people would get $1000 / month which would very much cover basic needs in many places including rent.
That's one reason why UBI will fail. People living in different circumstances need different amount of money.
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but 2 people would get $1000 / month which would very much cover basic needs in many places including rent.
That's one reason why UBI will fail. People living in different circumstances need different amount of money.
No. They need to adjust their circumstances to match their income. UBI isn't about giving everyone everywhere the same standard of living. It is about raising the floor just a little bit.
If you are unwilling / unable to contribute anything to your own support, you should go somewhere cheaper.
If you are working at a minimum wage job, the +$500 a month would make a significant impact on your standard of living.
If you are middle class, the +$500 a month will likely be balanced out by an additional $500 a mo
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Those who need more money can work and get it.
In that case, we don't need UBI at all.
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We do, because
1) not all people can work
2) people who can work, can get better jobs if they get some time to choose
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We do, because
1) not all people can work
Right, so what if you a have a single person, incapable of working, compared to a family of 4, all incapable of working. Would it be fair and reasonable to give the family 4 times as much money as the single person, even though they have much lower costs because they can share rent and other things ?
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Why couldn't that single person living in a house share with some other singles to get the same benefit?
Why don't they do that right now ? You don't need UBI to share a house and lower the cost.
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[ ] Not Income - You provided redemption services instead of cash payments for people to use as they please.
Well, sort of. TFA states that debit cards were issued. But 40% of the funds were withdrawn as cash, making their use harder to track. It's going to be difficult to design an experiment that allows "using the money in ways that give them dignity" if it's a card that says UBI* or someone is chasing you around with a clipboard.
*EBT cards have this problem. They are recognizable by the clerks handling
EBT card stigma (Score:2)
I have been on Food Stamps twice. The first time was after I injured my knee and became disabled for a while (fortunately not that long.) The second time was after I got out of prison.
Interestingly, both times I was really in need of that help. I felt really self conscious the first time I used that card but the food was more important to me than that discomfort, so I pulled it out and looked the cashier in the eyes. Uncomfortable, but no problem.
Also, because money was so tight, I had to make every dol
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*EBT cards have this problem. They are recognizable by the clerks handling them and have a certain stigma attached to their use.
These cards are very common in poor neighborhoods. I don't think anyone is judging. The cashier likely has one herself.
If you are self-conscious about it, just use the self-checkout lane.
A UBI card should have no stigma since the whole point is that everybody will have one.
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You have created an experiment to prove the concept of UBI. Please check from the following reasons why your experiment is not at all valid or related to UBI:
The follow-up question is: (1) can you dismiss without evidence the hypothesis that UBI would be good for society, or do you need to gather evidence? (2) what experimental evidence would prove that it doesn't work?
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(1) can you dismiss without evidence the hypothesis that UBI would be good for society, or do you need to gather evidence?
Potentially, yes. If we define the amount of money per month needed per person, let's say $1500 (good luck living on that in most areas if it truly includes everything, such as food, rent, healthcare, and retirement), and it eclipses the entire yearly federal budget (meaning there is literally no money leftover for anything, such as medicare or social security), then it would be unquestionably bad. No roads, no education, no national defense, no research grants, no environmental enforcement... and it would
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You should have read the article before jumping to conclusions and posting your dismissal of it.
The study is not meant to prove or disprove the concept of UBI. The goal is to measure impact of extra funds on the mental and physical health of the participants who need them.
The obvious answer is yes, extra money helps people who need money. Unfortunately, we have a very loud contingent of wealthy assholes and their paid-for politicians who keep insisting that being poor is a moral failure and any form of a
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BREAKING NEW: This just in... (Score:5, Insightful)
People with less money overall spend a higher percentage of it on every day essentials.
Re:BREAKING NEW: This just in... (Score:4, Insightful)
It's even sillier: it's self-reported. People have the good sense to not admit they money they got from charity was spent on lobster and Nikes.
Riight... If you can't sleep due to poverty... (Score:2, Insightful)
... you're gonna waste it on crap for a day and starve again ...
Your assholery is *precisely* what enables fatcats to leech off of us forced laboreres and keep is poor.
And also, yeah, if I had been eating nothing but gruel and wonderbread for a year, wearing shit shoes that make me look like a bum, I would *definitely* spend money on delicious luxury food and nice shoes at first! Just to get back to normal and feel well enough to go back to poor people food and shit clothes that *you cruel sadistic bastard
And that's why your aren't broke and homeless (Score:5, Insightful)
> yeah, if I had been eating nothing but gruel and wonderbread for a year, wearing shit shoes that make me look like a bum, I would *definitely* spend money on ...
I'm going to guess that you haven't been eating gruel for a year. I'm going to further guess that in general you make MUCH better decisions than any of the homeless people I've worked with in the last 20+ years, including the ones I met when I was homeless.
> *you cruel sadistic bastard*
The fundamental problem in a free society isn't cruel sadastic bastards, that tends to be more the problem in totalitarian regimes such as North Korea. The fundamental problem in free societies is that when people are free to do whatever they want (which is good), many people do many stupid things that are bad for them (which is bad). For example, I did some pretty dumb shit and ended up living under a tarp in a vacant lot. Fortunately, I stopped doing 80% dumb shit; only about 20% of what I do now is dumb, so life has gotten a lot better for the last twenty years. I can't force you or anyone else to stop doing dumb shit - if I did that, I'd be violating your rights. It's quite the problem.
If you were homeless, you wouldn't spend most of your money on alcohol. By far the number one priority for the homeless people in my camp was alcohol. That's why you aren't homeless and they are. Cigarettes were #2, food and motels roughly tied at #3 and #4 (free food is easy to get). A *better* motel for the night is consistently chosen over saving for an apartment - which ends up with them still being homeless next month. You and I would make different choices - which is why we aren't homeless.
It sucks to say it, but when you're trying to figure out how to help people who consistently get bad results in life, you're dealing with people who have habits, lifestyles, that don't work very well.
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And more generally short vs long term (1 week) (Score:2)
That's perhaps true. Often, their (including mine in 1996) money management suffers from the same problem that has caused most of my bad decisions in life:
Thinking short term and doing what I feel like doing right now, rather than what I will wish I had done. That's caused 90% of my troubles.
For most people I work with who have been struggling, it's very difficult for them to think about *next month* when making decisions. So, next month they are screwed. I still have the exact same problem. Only
That's kinda what I do, yeah (Score:3)
That's kinda what I do when I have someone living with me or I'm paying their bills for a while. I want to help people have a better life, not simply delay annoyance for a few days.
If you want me to pay your room and board, and you aren't my kid, two things are going to happen:
We're going to have conversations about how you are going to stop living off me long term.
You're going to DO something toward that end, like going to work.
I *might* pay for Dave Ramsey class for them (Financial Peace). If the
Money is fungible (Score:2)
It's even sillier: it's self-reported. People have the good sense to not admit they money they got from charity was spent on lobster and Nikes.
Even if it were not self-reported, say they were given debit cards where spending was tracked, money is still fungible. What they would have previously spent on food is now freed up for other things.
A study need to track all of the person's spending to evaluate whether or not a social good has occurred.
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... especially if it was not spent on lobster and Nikes. Talk about pointless lying.
What a concept. (Score:2)
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and charge it to future generations.
That's actually a non-issue as the resources are available today, and money is just a virtual thing that can be created as much we wish by changing some numbers in a computer.
Tomorrow's citizens won't provide the food we eat today. The rest is just a manner of power distribution, as that's what money is about. The people of today with power decide who will be in power tomorrow, and they do not want to give that decision away.
Re:What a concept. (Score:4, Insightful)
money is just a virtual thing that can be created as much we wish by changing some numbers in a computer.
The food and clothes that these people bought were very much real, costing someone else resources and labor. Money paid for the food holds a promise that it can be returned for an equally valuable amount of labor or resources. If you're just printing money, and spending it, and never fulfill your promise of accepting it back, then it will become worthless.
Re: What a concept. (Score:2)
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Exactly what Greenspan said.. you can print as much money as you want, but it's useless without the real resources that underpin it.
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The flaw in that logic is when you look at actual spending under Obama. It was basically flat: the spending under Obama in 2016 was actually lower than the last budget Bush presided over: 2009. The deficit largely came because of a crash in taxation revenue, not an increase in spending. So what you said is also wrong because the underlying assumption is wrong. There wasn't actually any great expansion of the money supply under Obama. They *did* massively lower interest rates, but that's because hardly anyon
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Also ... there's another problem with the theory that deficit spending causes inflation by expanding the money supply. The US government doesn't *print money* when they go into debt, they sell treasury bonds. You have to pay US dollars to get the bonds, so those dollars are no longer held by the original owners, thus the liquid money supply didn't actually change. This is why debt-based deficit spending isn't inflationary in the same sense or degree as money-printing based deficit spending, and is the reaso
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and charge it to future generations.
That's actually a non-issue as the resources are available today, and money is just a virtual thing that can be created as much we wish by changing some numbers in a computer.
Excuse me, did you just say that the national debt "is actually a non-issue" because we can just print more money?
If it's truly a non-issue, why not just give everyone a million dollars a year? We can all live like princes!
Seriously... I'm trying to be diplomatic here but I don't think I can manage it... because this is one of the silliest goddamn comments I've ever seen on Slashdot. I'm not going to explain to you why you're wrong. Just... read a book, or read a couple of articles on basic economics.
Re: What a concept. (Score:3)
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The point is that when enough people start saying, "debt doesn't matter" you can be certain that a debt crisis is right around the corner.
costs an average of more than $31,000 per inmate, (Score:2)
costs an average of more than $31,000 per inmate, per year, nationwide. In some states, it’s as much as $60,000.
Another source of income (Score:3, Insightful)
In related news, Americans spend more of their household income on taxes than food, clothing, and healthcare combined [cnsnews.com].
Unemployment is at a 50 year low and wages continue to rise. Get your income by working. It also helps the people around you.
The Unemployment numbers are bunk (Score:4, Interesting)
Wages for Millennials are 20% less than what the boomers made. Inflation adjusted wages are way, way down from peaks in the 70s before we opened up China and began the huge outsourcing push that moved all the Union jobs overseas to defacto slave labor camps.
CNS != CNN. They're a far right wing opinion site. But I'm sure it's just a a coincidence that the two acronyms look similar in links.
To directly address the article:
1. Why would Americans still be paying too much in Taxes after the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act?
2. Is the problem really that we're paying too much in taxes? Or is it that we're not getting good value for those payments (8 offensive wars and working on #9 with Iran).
3. Why do other countries pay the same or less in taxes but also get Universal Healthcare and tuition free colleges?
4. Do you know how heavily subsidized food is?
6. Have you ever stopped to think about why clothing is so cheap? About the conditions your cloths are made in?
5. Are Americans spending less on healthcare not because they don't need services, but because the cost of those services has made it completely inaccessible to most Americans?
I could go on and on and on. The article is a clever propaganda piece, I'll give CNS that. They're good at what they do.
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What unemployment numbers? I never mentioned any unemployment numbers.
It's amazing how data that doesn't support your worldview is always bad and can be disregarded. Your faith in your preferred truth is unshakable. Truths like that are above reality and beyond earthly measurement. Why does the government even bother collecting data when it only serves to tempt the faithful to doubts?
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You did mention unemployment numbers (Score:3)
You said unemployment was at a 50 year low. That sentence is about the unemployment numbers.
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Wages are "way, way down"? No. 20% less than what 'the boomers' made? That's flat out wrong.
In 1960, the average wages were a little below $20/hour in 2018 dollars.
In 2018, the average wages were $22.65/hr.
This is down, slightly, from the $23.38/hr peak in 1973, just before the recession. But aside from about 3 months in 1973, wages today are higher (in 2018 dollars) than they've ever been. The value of non-wage benefits have more than doubled (in 2018 dollars) since 1960 as well.
You can claim that wag
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CNS != CNN. They're a far right wing opinion site. ... The article is a clever propaganda piece, I'll give CNS that. They're good at what they do.
So their facts are correct and well sourced, but they should be ignored because they support the wrong team.
Why would Americans still be paying too much in Taxes after the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act?
If taxes were reduced they can't be too high anymore?
Is the problem really that we're paying too much in taxes? Or is it that we're not getting good value for those payments (8 offensive wars and working on #9 with Iran).
Can't it be both?
Why do other countries pay the same or less in taxes but also get Universal Healthcare and tuition free colleges?
For the same reason that half of US healthcare is already government run and embarrassingly bad. Only about two dozen have universal free tuition, and US governmental intervention in education is one of the main reasons that it's so expensive there.
Do you know how heavily subsidized food is?
Yes.
Have you ever stopped to think about why clothing is so cheap? About the conditions your cloths are made in?
Yes.
Are Americans spending less on healthcare not because they don't need services, but because the cost of those services has made it completely inaccessible to most Americans?
Most Americans have perfectly good healthcare.
Re:The Unemployment numbers are bunk (Score:4, Informative)
The wealthy pay the full amount of SSI - and then they also pay an additional 0.9% on all income [irs.gov] above $200K (without any increase in benefits received). They pay the full tax, and then some.
Futhermore, the wealthy tend to be self employed [bakadesuyo.com], meaning they are paying 15.2% (both halves) directly, on their first $132,000 - which would be equivalent to paying what a "normal" worker would pay on up to $264,000 in income. And that means that for a chunk of income they are paying the "normal" rate of 7.62% - and the bonus rate of 0.9%.
Additionally, they pay long-term capital gains taxes [nerdwallet.com] (which kick in once you earn over $40K), and the aforementioned much higher income tax rates as well. And many times the capital gains taxes are higher than the average income tax rates paid.
As far as sales and property taxes, they are are taxes. They are not income related, but are still a tax paid nevertheless. This thread started with the claim that "Americans spend more of their household income on taxes than food, clothing, and healthcare combined" [slashdot.org]. It was not just income taxes - but all taxes. And that would include sales and property taxes. The claim does seem to hold up, as the typical person is paying somewhere around 40% or more of their income in taxes - probably more than they spend on food, clothing and healthcare combined (assuming housing is around 30%, that leaves 30% for everything else, including the aforementioned food/clothing/healthcare, as well as transportation, entertainment, retirement, etc).
As far as not touching SSI - that's the problem. We start an entitlement, and we will never correct or cut it. You cannot tax your way out of this issue, it has to be done via cuts. Unfortunately we have developed a professional politician class that do not care much about long-term viability of the nation, but more about staying in their job and growing power and influence for their own personal gains.
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That's a fairly misleading way to differentiate those two expenditures. If you look at 10 cross sections of the population starting at the bottom 10%, 2nd 10% up to the top 10% then the break point for where a percentile spends more in taxes than clothing, foot and healthcare is somewhere in the 9th 10 percent. For every one else clothing, food and health care exceeded taxes. This is because the top 10% has a mean income of $271K and has taxes heavily skewed at the high end.
https://www.bls.gov/cex/2018/c [bls.gov]
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I suppose you could read it that way. Another way to read it is that government costs more than all the money Americans spend on food and clothing and all the money Americans spend on health care outside of government spending on health care.
And that only counts the portion of government paid by household taxes. The additional parts of government paid by non-household taxes and by borrowing are also very large.
Huge spending should have equally huge benefits or the spending is wasted. If people are unsati
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Get your income by working.
Was this an intentional, or accidental, argument against wall street and capitalism?
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No. It's a suggestion on where people can readily get an income honestly, without first having the money taken from their neighbors.
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Please explain.
How do you think you can get anyone to support UBI or anything else if all data collection on anything anyone does is "complete bullshit"?
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What does the word "that" refer to in this context?
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In your world, UBI works without any evidence, and unemployment is not measurable no matter how much evidence you got. Gotcha.
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If people heed your words, they can spend their lives mired in bitterness and envy, just like you.
Half-assed UBI experiments are bad. (Score:3)
It's like those people, you know them, who you wish would stop arguing for your side because they make your side look bad and stupid.
UBI cannot work or even be tested,
- if you give it only to some people in an economy,
- if it does not include the disruptive effects on the de-facto forced labor situation we currently live in,
- if you only give them half the UBI required to achieve what is the whole point of an UBI,
- if you ignore the disruptive effects of ubiquitous automation,
- if you twist the rules by listening to sociopath-psychopath economists and their theoretical models that don't fit actual reality and are more wishful thinking. (E.g. assuming a "free market" ideal state.)
And likely more things. As I always see bits being half-assed, that I didn't even think of. Like some very creative asshole, coming up with stupid misinterpretations that ruin the whole thing.
I should have expected it though... given what abominations democracy, communism, money, markets and trading, and even just being social, have been turned into. And given the delusional idealistic assumptions that were used in there too. :/
Can't we have a nice thing for a change?
Every wise programmer and autmation engineer knows, we could have SO much free wealth from automated value-adding, if only there weren't certain leeches wanting to own those machines with money they leeched off of us working for them, but if we, as a society, owned those machines instead.
Ownership of the automation (Score:5, Insightful)
Disclosure: I am socially leftist (like really, really far left). Fiscally, I'm more moderate (6 years at Uni, BBA, MBA will do that).
I like the idea of UBI, but I worry about paying for it. All of these studies will add to our store of knowledge, even the little ones, so that's good, and eventually we'll have to make some kind of decision about it.
However, you mention that the society should own the machines that generate all of that wealth. That's great, if society buys those machines. When a factory owner buys them, though, they're his (or hers), not society's. And like it or not, right now it's owners buying them. If society wants to take them, then owners will have no incentive to buy them, so they will never get made.
Don't kill the goose.
Both capitalism and communism fail to generate good outcomes when taken to extremes because they fail to account for the effect of incentive correctly.
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UBI cannot work or even be tested,
...if it's something you'll have temporarily due to a project or study or trial. Like if you gave me UBI for say 3 years I'd have to seriously consider what my employability would be like if I spent three years goofing off, which could affect my career for decades. But I'd probably take at least some time off simply because a sabbatical now would be a lot cheaper than when I'm back working, unless they also redo the whole tax system as a flat tax without deductibles. While if you said okay we promise to pay
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if only there weren't certain leeches wanting to own those machines with money they leeched off of us working for them,
There is a solution - stop working for someone else. Run your own, single individual company. Do all the necessary licensing, formations, tax reportings, and more to legally operate your business. Build or buy your own machines. Then you don't have to worry about "leeches" at all.
40% compared to what (Score:2)
What about housing/rent, debt? (Score:2)
The article is blocked (probably gdpr/eu), so I can't read it, but I'm a bit curious as to why none or very little (as there's not much left from what's specified) is used for housing/rent, as well as repayment of debt, was the target group basically starving?
How are they meauring how it's spent? (Score:5, Insightful)
They're tracking transactions on the debit cards. So 40% of the money on the debit card is spent on food. But not 40% of the recipient's total income. So, no attempt whatsoever has been made to determine if that 40% is in addition to money they already spent on food, or if it is spent in lieu of money they would otherwise have spent on food, but which is now spent on something else.
Of course money on a debit card is spent in places where it is convenient to use a debit card, like WalMart and the grocery store. Drug dealers don't normally take plastic.
In short, there is no data whatsoever in this "study."
I'm surprised nobody is doing a long-term A/B test (Score:4, Interesting)
I find it surprising that nobody on the order of a Gates Foundation is doing a long-term test, where they select, say, 200 people, and randomly give half $2500/month for the rest of their lives and the other half nothing, then track them all. Sure, that's $3M/year plus overhead costs, but it would also generate ACTUAL DATA.
All of these things where "We gave $200 debit cards to residents for 6 months, and here's what we imagine our results were" studies are silly. There's too little data, so it all ends up cherry-picking pleasing anecdotes, much like micro-finance. But the real question isn't whether a little extra money is spent on something that people spend money on (duh?), the real questions are things like "20 years later, how many of their kids finished college?", or "20 years later, how many of their kids are in stable marriages?", or "20 years later, how many of them run their own business?", or even "How does this impact the life expectancy of recipients?"
Logic and reason (Score:2)
You should be modded up. Seriously.
Money is fungible (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem with these 'results' is that $500 isn't sufficient to even pay rent, so how do they make a distinction on what the money was spent on. Money is fungible after all. The question is what changed between the two income situations. Suddenly people are eating $200/month "more"? How do they do that, more expensive food? Or simply going out to eat more? Especially in the case of utilities, their utilities go up if they get more income?
It's seems if they're looking at expenses before and expenses after that people are affording themselves more luxuries with that $500, they're not spending it responsibly like saving, investing, paying back mortgages and loans, education etc which is the exact thing these experiments attempt to prove will happen if we just give people 6-figure salaries every year. The other statement is likewise asinine, if people know time is limited, the optimal situation would be to maximize the 'windfall' you're getting to your advantage, only if people know the extra income is permanent, then they would be able to afford themselves luxuries, yet this 'researcher' is stating the exact opposite.
The other interesting point is that they're saying, it's not about the science but about the story. If you're just trying to make a political statement, then you shouldn't spend my tax dollars, I believe that it's illegal to promote or sponsor a specific religious or political statement with grant money.
Bullshit. Because we already have global UBI! (Score:3)
Actually, even worse: We only call it "profit" or "property". But it is UBI. Money you get for not working. As opposed to earned money for value you actually added. Not for catching your victim in a bad position where he is forced to let you rip him off.
UBI is the money that represents the wealth that is created without anyone working! E.g. by automation!
That already IS or should be most of it, if forced labor slaves wouldn't scream for "jerbs".
The only problem is, that it does not go to those who actually
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Because you are talking with, effectively, the functionally illiterate, in terms of the factors that drive economics and human behavior, who, because they can program computers, sort of, think they are geniuses.
They, and the previous few generations of their families, have lived at levels of wealth and safety that would have been incomprehensible for the majority of human existence, where haing food to eat and almost perfect safety, where p
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...I don't see why we keep talking about it.
To divide people. You tell people a story about how much better their lives would be if only [people who are not like you] would allow it. Implicit in the story is that you can make war on [people who are not like you] or otherwise bully them and you can cash in. Of course you need a leader to lead the war/bullying effort. Support your local warlord so you can get back at [people who are not like you] and get paid.
It's standard political messaging. Us vs. them, cash in by taking from them.
Re:209 million * 12,000 = 2.5 trillion (Score:4, Informative)
No it's not fundamentally unworkable, you're simply mistaken about how it's implemented.
UBI is not taking the exact situation we have right now then dumping an extra $1,000 per month on everyone. That's clearly stupid and can't work.
No, you give people the money and simultaneously adjust the tax rules so that the average person's net income is exactly the same as it is now. Here's something I worked out. If (in thevery UK) you replace the existing scheme with £10,000 p/a UBI with a 40% flat tax, then plot a graph of salary (x axis) against total tax rate (y axis), then the graph is actually surprisingly close to the existing system we have except that the existing system doesn't go negative.
IOW if you replaced the current system with flat tax plus UBI, most people wouldn't see much change, but the poorest would. Now the thing is those people already get a weirdass mishmash of benefits and universal credit and whatnot, so it's not like you're simply giving a bunch of money away to people who are getting nothing.
To repeat you can implement UBI by increasing tax to pay for it. If you do it right, most people won't see much difference.
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You realise since Sales tax is defined, we know how much of it the Government will get back. Assuming a 10% sales tax, and the money being spent 80% on taxable goods, we'll get back 8% of that 2.5 Trillion.
Where does the other 92% of it come from exactly ?
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UBI will get rid of all those redundant agencies and have that same 2.2 trillion
So let me get this straight, you want us to scrap the VA, Medicaid, Medicare, Food stamps, Education, Government housing, etc.., so we can give people... 12000$ per year.
And you think this is somehow better. So the poor and old folks will be losing a massive amount of free services that cost thousands of dollars, to get 12000$.
And you got the 2.2 Trillion dollar figure out of your ass anyway, since that's not even remotely what is being spent on "Welfare" for the most generous definitions of welfare.
Citati
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I read the same thing and wondered what they thinking. I would think a study would be more worthwhile if they set it up such that they could track almost all of the recipients spending. Yes it's intrusive, but they are getting $500/mo for it. And frankly they should have started with folks where they could track the spending before the payments and then again after the payments. The total expenditure was only $750k, feel like that per a previous Slashdot, perhaps Marc Benioff should drop $75 million on