A study on #UniversalBasicIncome#UBI from 2020 is now peer-reviewed and published. The study gave $7500 cash to homeless people in Vancouver and compared their outcome versus a control group. The result was clear:
“The recipients of the cash transfers did not increase spending on drugs, tobacco, and alcohol, but did increase spending on food, clothes, and rent, according to self-reports. What’s more, they moved into stable housing faster and saved enough money to maintain financial security over the year of follow-up.”
Further, each person who moved into stable housing one year faster saves the city over $8000 per year, which makes this program cheaper than existing housing programs.
Universal Basic Income works. It sounds so obvious when you say it out loud, but: giving people cash lifts them out of poverty. We need to do that more.
“A Canadian study gave $7,500 to homeless people. Here’s how they spent it.”
Welfare and universal basic income are quite different. Welfare has the condition of keeping your income low and punishing you for raising it by kicking you off welfare. #UBI goes to everyone regardless of income. No one with UBI is punished for increasing their income by removing their UBI.
UBI is a permanent floor below which no one can fall and everyone can build upon to rise as high as they can.
Welfare, by being targeted, however well intentioned that is, can function as a ceiling.
Unconditional basic income isn't just dollar bills. It's freedom, trust, security, and power. It's a world where your value isn't measured by societal expectations. The old regime shivers at this shift – they'd sooner dub us idle than confront their fear of an unleashed and empowered society.
Unconditional #BasicIncome isn't a silver bullet, but we're also not trying to kill a werewolf. It's a significant step towards improving mental health, reducing crime, and building a resilient society against existential threats by fostering economic security and social capital. #UBI
i was told i was gonna hit a wall of fatigue sometime after the 2nd or 3rd week after finishing treatment. am glad to be alive and on my way to recovery but this sucks ass.
we need #UBI as part of health care. nobody should have to be precariously unemployed during a situation like this.
anybody having to go to a job during or after #cancer treatment is lying to do that they can handle it.
this is not bullshit. to be forced to work thru a #health crisis is eugenics.
There's still another six months to go, but we can already see unconditional basic income (UBI) works to reduce homelessness, because, OF COURSE IT DOES.
In the monthly $1,000 group, the percentage of people reporting sleeping outside dropped to ZERO PERCENT.
Universal Basic Income Has Been Tried Over and Over Again. It Works Every Time.
'Tech billionaires like Sam Altman say they’re big fans of UBI and claim that it could solve the problem of mass job displacement when robots and software take over much of our economy'
A natural basic income experiment began in the mid-1990s and how the kids (now in their 30s and 40s) are doing is incredible. As adults, they have fewer drug problems and their average IQ is higher. By age 26, the benefits of the UBI exceeded its cost by 3-to-1 thanks to better educational outcomes and reduced spending on crime and medical care.
Or, and hear me out here, we could remove all the stupid, demeaning, punitive burning hoops of conditionality we force poor people to jump through in order to get scraps from the table. We could give people what they need in order to survive, with an unconditional, universal basic income. #UBI
We often talk about the economy in terms like GDP, inflation, and employment rates. However, behind these cold stats are real people struggling to live their best lives. Universal Basic Income isn't just economics - it's an uplifting of humanity.
This article showing that giving homeless people cash reduces homelessness is crossing my timeline a lot recently. A lot of well intentioned comments about how our current ways of addressing homelessness -- shelters, social workers, sweeps, cops, arrests -- cost more than just giving people the money directly would and aren't as effective at housing people as direct cash transfers would be.
But the popular conclusion -- that the government should see this as a reason to switch to this more effective strategy -- relies on the unsupported assumption that the government is actually trying to house people. To me the study suggests that housing people isn't their goal rather than just that they want to house people but just don't know how.
To me the more interesting question raised by this research is to ask what the government's policies are actually aiming at if it's not housing people. Here in Los Angeles the current policies end up funnelling tons of public money to cops, contractors, lawyers, nonprofits, and commercial property owners. The homeless themselves serve as an excuse that the electorate will accept as an explanation of the spending. They're the raw material processed by the homeless industrial complex. Giving money directly to the homeless would not only end the current grift but housing them would cut off the grift for all time. Why would they do that?
When you are poor, in many ways you can't afford to work, which is why so many basic income pilots focused on low income households show increased work.
When you have some non-zero amount of money, UBI assists work.
There is then some amount of money high enough to reduce work.
We need to require governments begin implementing UBI and taxing the rich or there will be a massive dying off of malnourished and starving people literally in our own backyards.⬇️
"Food prices will climb everywhere as temperatures rise due to climate change – new research " ..up to over 3% per year!
(Pensions do not increase this much.)
Drained from a few days of much social interaction, so looking at #UBI data. So far I only found two studies that didn't have obvious great outcomes, but that includes one that was cancelled early.
Also:
"When the project was finished in August 2023, Mein Grundeinkommen calculated that a tax-financed universal basic income of €1,200 per month could be financed for every adult in Germany that would make 80% of adults better off."
Apart from being egregiously out of touch, it's also a huge power move, one that I don't think people grasp.
The polarisation of society into those deriving an income from return on capital - capitalists - and those deriving an income from labour - workers - has been driven in large part by venture capital and their hunger for new asset classes.
Housing is an asset class, it's no longer social infrastructure.
Stocks are an asset class - they're no longer a way to ensure survival of the best organisations - because many companies with little revenue have high valuations.
Compute is now an asset class. It allows organisations to gain advantage, and create a moat from their competitors. Compute is an asset.
By substituting compute for money (another asset class), Altman is trying to substitute compute for currency more broadly.
And who creates currency?
Typically, the state. Who now creates currency, sorry I mean compute? The MAANGs that have taken the place of the state.
Compute is currency.
Replacing currency with compute is a form of wrestling control from the state.
It's so much easier to hate when you're constantly stressed out and barely scraping by. Seeing others get help while you don't only then makes it all worse.
This is why UNIVERSAL basic income is so important. It makes sure no one feels unseen and on their own.
The latest study on Universal Basic Income and other cash transfer schemes funds #UBI is effective and does reduce poverty and did not lead to increased laziness and drinking (more evidence against that nonsense).
Findings also suggest that larger lump-sum payments can be more beneficial than more regular payments as it can surmount investments with high upfront costs (like the cheaper in the long run metal roof).
I’ve started reading The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber & David Wengrow. Fascinating, about how the Enlightenment was informed by Indigenous American cultures.
Spanish minister proposes €20,000 ‘universal inheritance’ from age of 18 (www.theguardian.com)
Yolanda Díaz says money for study, training or starting a business would ensure ‘equality of opportunity’