UBI Cash Payments Reduced Homelessness, Increased Employment in Denver
Denver experimented with giving people $1,000 a month. It reduced homelessness and increased full-time employment, a study found.
Every single study on UBI finds that it is a good idea that benefits both the recipients and society as a whole, but because it contradicts the dominant ideology it can't be allowed to happen.
If people aren't forced to work to live then how can I get cheap labor for my shitty business that my dad gave me?
How can a society built on capital work towards the betterment of society rather than the accretion of capital?
Exactly. If organisations (private, public and other) had to maximise for social betterment, they would release annual reports measuring it. There might even be entire industries dedicated to auditing measurements of social betterment.
But no, we're stuck using a system of 'value' based on the prestige of owning shiny rocks and control of the areas where those shiny rocks are found. And finding new uses for things and people that aren't the desired shiny rocks so that you may demand and acquire more shiny rocks as others in the same time duration.
If a majority of countries can successfully ditch the gold standard and allow fiat currency - as they did a century ago, that means the world is also able to redefine what fiat currencies measure. There's nothing actually stopping us from requiring social and environmental impact to be included in the calculation of financial valuations, except the people who have a vested interest in keeping the current equations.
Stop measuring people's networth. Start measuring their societal value.
There was a UBI experiment in canada that was a huge success and of course the tories axed it as soon as they had the chance. Conservatives need to [extremely long bleep] ... [yeah still bleeping] ... ... [still going] ... [leeeeep] -yeah i'm going to have to redact this in post.
I've yet to see a study at a scale large enough to impact the local economy. Will the results hold when everyone gets monthly cash payments, or will rent go through the roof and that's about it?
Kind of a weird argument, isn't it? If we did the opposite instead, it's not as if you'd expect rents to fall -- on the contrary, rent would go up in response to the added financial burden on landlords. Setting that hypothetical aside, wouldn't a generalized inflation of rents be an acceptable tradeoff for reducing homelessness and untethering the 50+% of young adults who still live with their parents to move and work in more economically efficient environments?
So what if there were 100 or more small scale experiments in 50 different countries, in similar conditions. I won't be playing with the money of the entire nation|state|county|city to possibly lose it and not get elected again!
I want vaccines to be tested on 30% of the population to see if it works.
We should be putting this prototype hardware in the hands of 40% of the population to see if there are any side effects before deciding whether to legalise it.
We will do a double blind test on 50% of the population with these new safety regulations to see if there's an impact on incidences. The study would be invalid otherwise.
Models and small scale experiments are for wimps. I, the ruler of the democratic country, declare an experiment shall be run at national scale! The economy of region X with will not be comparable to that of the rest of 90% of country!
That's about it. Why would anyone work for $20k/yr when they could get $12k for free? They wouldn't. So those jobs would bump to $30k+, and a domino affect would occur. Nothing would be achieved other than the devaluing of the American dollar, which would lead to a loss of jobs, increased poverty, and guess what else - increased homelessness.
Tbf, it's difficult to break programming. If your whole life you're raised in a society that measures your worth by your "hard work", then accepting that you don't need work to be happy is difficult for most. Most will continue voting against their own interests until there's a watershed moment. My bet is on unemployment hitting 30% due to AI.
If 30% of the population has to be on social security and can't be hired anymore, it would surprise me if nothing changed. Unless of course they blamed immigrants and minorities. They always serve as good scape goats.
The problem is the definition of "work". There's lots of things a person can do that both require a lot of effort and produce real benefit to society that are difficult or impossible to make money from, and therefore they aren't "work". Raising children being the most obvious example.
You mentioned unemployment due to AI. There's a short story from a while ago that outlined this step by step. It's a good read if you have the time.
They tried it on Manitoba Canada. Not just a study. It rather fell flat with the most positive statement being, productivity fell less than expected.
https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200624-canadas-forgotten-universal-basic-income-experiment
This is the only experiment that comes up from Googling Manitoba UBI, and it doesn't seem to match what you say. A study of about 2k people, definitely not the whole population, and this article lists quite a number of positive statements about it.
Similar experiments in Vancouver: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/30/canada-study-homeless-money-spending
Ontario: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/basic-income-mcmaster-report-1.5485729
Turns out, socialism ain't that bad eh?
You read the first study? The money was not given to those that has substance abuse, mental health symptoms or alcohol abuse because they felt they represented a small portion of the homeless. Was given to people that were sleeping in friends house and some in cars and didn't abuse alcohol or drugs. That is a joke of an experiment and in no ready ubi. Not does it indicate on any meaningful way how it is paid for as it doesn't include everyone.
The second study found only 3/4 of the people continued to work and ultimately the 150 million dollar program was cancelled because it did not appear to increase contribution to society in any economic way.
Rent is only high because of artificial scarcity of real estate. The scarcity only exists because building new housing is decided neither by supply and demand nor central government planning, but by the people who accumulate more capital if housing isn't built.
We really need to push for the feds to step in and start constructing government housing against the will of the NIMBYs and local and state governments then.
California has finally started forcing local governments to build more housing to stop the NIMBYs bit it's still going to take so many years for housing to catch up even if they start now.
1K a month is pretty trivial compared to the cost of all the public money used to punish them (e.g cops). Even if you don't care about the humanity aspect at all UBI makes sense just from a pure numbers perspective.
But think of all the money prisons will lose!
I know it's a popular sentiment, because private prisons are so in-your-face evil, but they're not as ubiquitous as the population seems to believe.
Twenty-seven states and the federal government incarcerated 96,370 people in private prisons in 2021, representing 8% of the total state and federal prison population.
Yes, that's too many. Yes, we need to ban these things at the federal level. But let's not forget the grift from state and local prisons, in many cases worse because they can't be as readily audited.
Don't forget healthcare and existing social security!
$1,000/mo. is not UBI, not like it's usually discussed. I'd go for widening this program, let's keep the experiment rolling until it pans out or collapses.
OK, so you're telling me that giving money to people who need it, is better than giving it to rich people?
I am Wage Slaves inner shocked pikachu. Same thing, just more sarcastic and massive eye brows.
To be clear here, while they advocate for UBI this isn't really a study on the topic as much as it is on direct cash payments to the homeless. Which has been supported by tons of different research in Canada, London, so many places I can't even remember them all.
People without money mostly need money.
Somehow this is surprising and confusing... primarily to people who cannot imagine change.
Wow.
Can’t wait for this to never roll out nationwide at the Federal level.
"Those damn homeless and injuns get EVERYTHING for free"
-my racist and jaded ass coworker
I think my biggest problem with these tests (not the idea of UBI) is that they go entirely based on what the recipients say. There's not really any indication that fact checking is done to confirm they actually are living somewhere now, or they did get their cars fixed, etc.
I'm confident that the money helped, because obviously it would, but I wish we could get some actual solid data on how much it helped. The cynic in me believes that desperate people getting 1000$/mo will embellish how much it helps in order to keep getting the money, when in reality they need 1500$ or 2000$ to afford housing in Denver.
I'm not sure what definition of UBI you're using, but not all forms of UBI need to cover the entirety of living expenses. UBI is just having income without strings attached. This very study is showing that even small amounts of money can help people get out of shitty situations.
Also as someone who lives in Dever, it's not that expensive. Sure $1500+ is what you'll pay around LoDo, but there are plenty of cheaper places.
Isn't that like... Objectively wrong?
Dear Faust, even in Soviet Union idea of studio apartments were too cringe, so normal apartments were used for mass housing.
I'd love to show this to people who say "but lazy people will be getting paid for nothing" or "competition is human nature" that capitalists made the fuck up, but it'll probably go over their heads, or they'll conveniently say that the test was not done properly
the Pew Charitable Trust wrote in a recent analysis that research had "consistently found that homelessness in an area is driven by housing costs."
Well, yeah, and we can thank investors, landlords and capital funds for that. Housing in Denver is ridiculously expensive currently... and it was bad but not to this extent a few years ago. A house next door to me that was $250k and $1000 a month a few years ago is now $450 and $2100 a month.
Houses in the Netherlands have increased on average like 33% since 2018. Not made up numbers. They've gotta go down this is so unaffordable for starters.
“No shit”
Poverty is a lack of money, that's it. Tax the rich, help the poor, grow the middle class.
I wonder if rent would go up if ubi became a thing
That depends on the housing market. If you have a surplus in housing, rent will remain stable because tenants will move if their landlord increases rent.
If you have a deficit in housing and more people look for a place to stay than there are available places, then tenants cannot move. Landlords and other businesses in deficit markets like healthcare will take all additional income.
The Maoist uprising against the landlords was the most comprehensive proletarian revolution in history, leading to almost totally equal redistribution of the land amongst the peasantry.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The results, so far: Participants who were sleeping on the streets at the start of the experiment — now with more money in their pockets — said they were feeling safer, experiencing better mental health, and enjoying access to more stable and welcoming living arrangements.
An entrepreneur, he made his money off Wooden Ships — a clothing company that specializes in sweaters for women — and an investment in Tesla that skyrocketed during the coronavirus pandemic.
Commentary on homelessness often focuses on mental health and addiction, perceived as the chief drivers of a spike in people sleeping on the streets in cities from Sacramento, California, to Jacksonville, Florida.
But the Pew Charitable Trust wrote in a recent analysis that research had "consistently found that homelessness in an area is driven by housing costs."
While cautioning that this was only an interim six-month follow-up for what is a yearlong program, the researchers nonetheless found stark and encouraging changes in participants' material conditions.
That material gains were seen among all groups suggests at least some of the improvements may be attributable to something other than cash, such as increased access to other services during the study period (the researchers don't speculate).
The original article contains 835 words, the summary contains 197 words. Saved 76%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Who would pledge 10% of their income to distribute as basic income? There is no need to wait until politicians implement it. We can start immediately.
We tried ubi during lock downs Here and it not only failed catastrophically but our government had to give up on billions of dollars people aren’t eligible for it caused catastrophic nearly unrecoverable inflation and people are now walking away from their mortgages that they can no longer afford
You dropped these (,,,....)
But in all seriousness, I have no idea what you're trying to say.
The government giving out money to people so that they could stay housed/fed did not cause record inflation. The capitalists massively hiked prices, then said that inflation made them do it. They then declared record profits afterwards. Capitalists scooped up all that money with ease. They then did their little song and dance of, "We're all in this together. We're just widdle beans trying to survive like you."
If the government doing stuff for people over a 2 year period causes massive amounts of inflation, wouldn't decades of handouts to capitalists cause record hyper-inflation? Inflation doesn't happen because the government does stuff. Inflation happens because capitalists will pounce on any opportunity to eek more money out of you, then blame you for having too much money.
Recent inflation was actually caused by lending rates dropping to zero, investments being made on that basis and now that lending rates are normalized costs are increasing, and now prices are increasing to maintain profits.
Remember, we know how to address many of the world's problems, including poverty, homelessness, and climate change.
But those with capital in society choose not to.
Those with capital profit off of not doing so.
Like the one recent CEO saying the quiet part aloud by saying government should promote higher unemployment, since in the high employment environment employees aren't desperate and have more demands costing him money. That employees arent feeling enough pain and despair in economy.
I recently heard it phrased like this:
Capitalism is built on hierarchy, which means someone fundamentally NEEDS to be at the bottom. There is no way around it, someone needs to suffer.
In most cases, yes; but in this case in particular, with UBI increasing the buying power of the poor, those with capital would actually profit off of implementing such a service. No, this one boils down to good old fashioned classism.
And make sure their propaganda gets pushed as truth and that any opposition to it will lead to genocide and prison camps
Remember that politics can be changed with votes. Tax them to finance change.
It's difficult, but blaming billionaires takes away our agency.
If we could change politics by voting, we wouldn't be allowed to vote.
We're not stretched thin to finance these changes. Taxes aren't holding us back. This is what those with true power in society and their cronies say to not do anything. This is the whole point.
No one is only blaming "billionaires." This is you patronizing them, portraying yourself as a genius and the person you're responding to as too naive and stupid to understand how life really works.
And no, we don't have agency. We have a deluded sense of agency where we think we can vote and change the system from within.
The tail has been wagging the dog for quite some time now
I agree the wealthy need to pay a lot more in tax than they currently do.
They also have disproportionate control over the electoral process in many countries, and most political parties are not even considering taxing them to the extent that they need to be taxed. Nor are most political parties challenging our capitalist society in any significant sense.
Voting is important, but don't expect voting alone to solve our problems.
No it does not. Sod off with that. Correctly identifying a major contributor to an issue does not take away agency.
Because most of us have our own problems and don't feel responsible for the lives of others.
Now imagine if you lived in a society where someone gave a shit about your problems. And maybe they even have the skills and resources to fix them more efficiently than you would. Or not, does it matter, theyre willing to help.
You, like the vast majority of people, are (almost certainly) not included in "those with capital"
Who is "us"? Unless you're politically well connected or have nine figures in the bank, you aren't wielding significant power to make systemic changes.
That is false. Most of us aren't sociopaths like you.
That's a good 80% of the population
Ah yes. 80. Wealth to scale
Are you saying that 80 percent of society owns the means of production?
Except that's just false. I actually cannot fathom where you pulled that estimate from.