Announcement

Collapse

Civics 101 Guidelines

Want to argue about politics? Healthcare reform? Taxes? Governments? You've come to the right place!

Try to keep it civil though. The rules still apply here.
See more
See less

Chicago Isn't Broke Enough? Universal Basic Income...

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Chicago Isn't Broke Enough? Universal Basic Income...

    Why don't they use that money to hire more cops and make the city safe and more attractive to new business?

    Chicago could soon test universal basic income program

    Chicago may soon become the largest municipality in the U.S. to test a universal basic income program. Chicago alderman Ameya Pawar recently proposed legislation that would provide 1,000 families with a $500 monthly stipend -- no questions asked.

    https://www.yahoo.com/news/m/e2b3bf0...soon-test.html
    Atheism is the cult of death, the death of hope. The universe is doomed, you are doomed, the only thing that remains is to await your execution...

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbnueb2OI4o&t=3s

  • #2
    I'm curious - what possible good would $500 / month really do? Not that poor people can't use it, they certainly can - but how, exactly, does throwing infinitesimal amounts of money at the problem reduce poverty?

    Would get borderline cases kicked off M'caid, of course...


    Could we skip the quick fixes and the feels good stuff on social media and find ways to get these people off the streets and back onto their feet?

    Source:
    Summary about cost of living in Chicago:
    • Four-person family monthly costs: 3,548.16$ without rent (using our estimator).
    • A single person monthly costs: 976.11$ without rent.
    • Cost of living index in Chicago is 22.68% lower than in New York.
    • Cost of living rank 59th out of 536 cities in the world.
    • Chicago has a cost of living index of 77.32.


    Apartment (1 bedroom) in City Centre 1,752.48 $
    1,200.00
    -2,100.00
    Apartment (1 bedroom) Outside of Centre 1,132.71 $
    850.00
    -1,490.00
    Apartment (3 bedrooms) in City Centre 3,219.43 $
    2,300.00
    -4,200.00
    Apartment (3 bedrooms) Outside of Centre 1,976.49 $
    1,350.00
    -2,850.00

    A minimum income below CoL doesn't do anything food stamps don't already do - in regards to poverty. Yeah, of course it helps the individual - right up until the government program fails and it's suddenly gone - but it's not really fixing the problem. These folks need a pond and a fishing pole, not a can of sardines, in order to do more than survive the week.
    Last edited by Teallaura; 07-17-2018, 06:53 PM.
    "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose." - Jim Elliot

    "Forgiveness is the way of love." Gary Chapman

    My Personal Blog

    My Novella blog (Current Novella Begins on 7/25/14)

    Quill Sword

    Comment


    • #3
      Originally posted by Teallaura View Post
      I'm curious - what possible good would $500 / month really do?
      Bearing in mind that:
      40 percent of US adults couldn't afford a $400 emergency expense
      57 percent of US adults couldn't afford a $500 one-off expense
      Only 39% of Americans have enough savings to cover a $1,000 emergency

      I think an extra $500 a month would be absolutely life-changing for a lot of Americans.

      Bernie Sanders did what was apparently a pretty stunning CEOs vs Workers townhall this week, which I haven't watched yet, where several run-of-the-mill US workers shared their despair at not even being able to cover unexpected $20 expenses. If someone is really struggling to deal with bills in the $20 range, and you rock up to them and hand them an extra $500 a month no strings attached that is probably going to dramatically improve their quality of life and day-to-day stress levels.

      It's obviously not going to make them rich, and it's obviously not enough in and of itself to live on. But I do think this is probably the way forward for the Western world: Begin to add these universal basic income payments at low levels (independent of any existing welfare benefits) and if they prove to work well, gradually ramp them up over time and collect data on how well they're working each step of the way. I will be fascinated to see how this turns out if Chicago decides to go ahead with it.

      I would absolutely love to see my country introduce a ~0.1% per year tax on property and share assets (which is where ~99.99% of the wealth in the modern world lies) and to dish out that money to everyone in the form of a universal basic income and have a look at how that works, because existing data suggests it ought to work really well.

      It's possible this is intended by Chicago as at least partially an anti-crime measure. Presumably if you go to jail/prison you stop getting the money? Incarcerating people is really expensive, like really really expensive - it's cheaper to send someone to the best university in the country on a full scholarship for a year than put them in prison for a year. So if you can pay at-risk people to not commit crime it really is financially worth it. And pilot programs around the world have found that paying high-risk people to not commit crime really can work. If you think of the traditional idea of a carrot and a stick as the standard means of persuasion, it's a bit strange if you think about it that our societies have always used the stick (punishment / prison) to discourage crime, but never thought to use the carrot. Funnily enough, it turns out the carrot works too.
      "I hate him passionately", he's "a demonic force" - Tucker Carlson, in private, on Donald Trump
      "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism" - George Orwell
      "[Capitalism] as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evils. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy" - Albert Einstein

      Comment


      • #4
        I'm skeptical that it could ever really work, given that humans are basically sucky.

        It is interesting, however, that so many immediately yell "Ew! Socialism!" but never mention that Milton Friedman favored UBI.
        Geislerminian Antinomian Kenotic Charispneumaticostal Gender Mutualist-Egalitarian.

        Beige Federalist.

        Nationalist Christian.

        "Everybody is somebody's heretic."

        Social Justice is usually the opposite of actual justice.

        Proud member of the this space left blank community.

        Would-be Grand Vizier of the Padishah Maxi-Super-Ultra-Hyper-Mega-MAGA King Trumpius Rex.

        Justice for Ashli Babbitt!

        Justice for Matthew Perna!

        Arrest Ray Epps and his Fed bosses!

        Comment


        • #5
          Originally posted by NorrinRadd View Post
          I'm skeptical that it could ever really work, given that humans are basically sucky.
          Outside of this forum, my experiences with humans have been pretty positive.

          I do often wonder, when I see people make declarations about the state of humanity, how much that is simply a statement about how they view themselves, and how much I should take them at their word that they are indeed the horrible/good people they're proclaiming humanity to be.

          I don't however, really understand what such general proclamations about humanity have to do with assessing this specific political policy...

          It is interesting, however, that so many immediately yell "Ew! Socialism!" but never mention that Milton Friedman favored UBI.
          Yeah it gets a lot of support from that sort of libertarian economic tradition.
          "I hate him passionately", he's "a demonic force" - Tucker Carlson, in private, on Donald Trump
          "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism" - George Orwell
          "[Capitalism] as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evils. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy" - Albert Einstein

          Comment


          • #6
            What I don't understand, is how this is supposed to get people out of poverty in the long run. This is extremely short-sighted. If you want to get people out of poverty, do things that create better paying jobs in your city. At a minimum, use that $500/mo and pay their tuition at a trade school so they can provide for their family without having to give up their dignity by accepting a handout.
            Curiosity never hurt anyone. It was stupidity that killed the cat.

            Comment


            • #7
              Originally posted by Starlight View Post
              I think an extra $500 a month would be absolutely life-changing for a lot of Americans.
              I'm a little better off now than I was even a few years ago, but if someone, when I was a starving student, had come up to me and said, "I will either give you $500 per month OR I will pay your tuition at the trade school you attend, it's your choice" I absolutely and unhesitatingly would have said "tuition", even if it meant still living below the poverty line whilst in school. Why? Because it's the smarter choice. The government won't always be able to give me that money, they'll shut it down eventually. But if I could finish my education, then I'm in control of my income. I will have the skills to make a decent living. Depending on the government when there are other options is degrading. You need to wake up and face the impracticality of this "solution" Chicago is proposing. It's unsustainable.
              Curiosity never hurt anyone. It was stupidity that killed the cat.

              Comment


              • #8
                Originally posted by QuantaFille View Post
                What I don't understand, is how this is supposed to get people out of poverty in the long run.
                I'm quite interested in politics and in what economic policies work and don't work, and I spend quite a lot of time digging through the data, and one general conclusion I've come to is that the way poor people get out of poverty is... by having more money. It doesn't matter how the people get that money. It doesn't matter what the cause of them having that money is, whether it's government handouts, winning the lottery, jobs paying them more, getting a second job, etc. Once they have more money they stop being poor. So what's the most direct way to end poverty? Answer, by giving poor people money. And, yes, it absolutely appears to work according to all the data that we have. (Okay, one slight exception, you can't just print endless money and give it out to people, it has to actually be real money)

                This is extremely short-sighted. If you want to get people out of poverty, do things that create better paying jobs in your city.
                But people having money is the #1 thing that creates jobs in the first place. Imagine nobody had money to buy any products. How many jobs would there be in the city? Zero, because if there were no customers, all existing businesses would go bankrupt and close.

                But imagine, you're a local donut shop, and suddenly everyone in your neighborhood has extra cash in their pocket, enough to splash for a donut on the way home from work. Suddenly, your business is booming, you're getting hundreds of extra customers, so you've got to hire more employees to service the increased demand, you're making more income for yourself as the owner, you promote one of the existing employees to be a manager and give the others a pay rise, etc. What creates the good paying jobs is people in the community having money to spend in the first place, because businesses can only take in as income money that the customers have available to spend. So our modern economies are what are known as "demand-driven" (we can generally make as much product to sell as there is demand for - no company ever complained of having too many customers and usually we advertise to get more customers - the limiting factor in almost all companies is the amount of customer demand for products).

                This is, incidentally, why raising the minimum wage typically doesn't affect total jobs numbers - if you raise the wages you're just putting more money into the hands of the poorest people in the community who immediately spend it (within the week they earn it) on goods and services within the community, which means those same store owners who are now having to pay their employees more are themselves getting more paying customers who are buying more from the store.

                without having to give up their dignity by accepting a handout.
                Wow, that's a horribly demeaning and judgmental way of looking at it.

                Originally posted by QuantaFille View Post
                I'm a little better off now than I was even a few years ago, but if someone, when I was a starving student, had come up to me and said, "I will either give you $500 per month OR I will pay your tuition at the trade school you attend, it's your choice" I absolutely and unhesitatingly would have said "tuition", even if it meant still living below the poverty line whilst in school. Why?
                That does seem a weird choice, because lets say they handed you the $500, what exactly is stopping you using that to pay your tuition? How is them directly paying your tuition with that money anything but a slight irrelevant difference in accounting?

                The government won't always be able to give me that money, they'll shut it down eventually.
                Um... do you think the government won't exist eventually, or that somehow government welfare benefits will stop existing? Because I've got news for you... governments have been around centuries and don't seem to be going anyway anytime soon, and taxes and welfare have been around almost a century now and don't seem to be going away soon.

                But if I could finish my education, then I'm in control of my income.
                I absolutely am a supporter of education being free for all. In my country at the moment, the government is bringing in 3 years of free tertiary education in addition to the existing policies of interest-free student loans etc.

                Depending on the government when there are other options is degrading.
                Wow, again with the overzealous judgmentalism. If the government builds the road, is it degrading for you to drive on it? If its military fights to defend your country, is it degrading for you to be defended by them? Why not see the government and its services as part and parcel of the economy and society you live in?

                You need to wake up and face the impracticality of this "solution" Chicago is proposing. It's unsustainable.
                Why?
                Last edited by Starlight; 07-17-2018, 10:56 PM.
                "I hate him passionately", he's "a demonic force" - Tucker Carlson, in private, on Donald Trump
                "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism" - George Orwell
                "[Capitalism] as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evils. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy" - Albert Einstein

                Comment


                • #9
                  If you're gonna just give them something monthly an apartment/rent would be far better. With no address and no way to take care of basic hygiene, homeless people aren't gonna get jobs.

                  But you still need a plan - a way to get somewhere.
                  "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose." - Jim Elliot

                  "Forgiveness is the way of love." Gary Chapman

                  My Personal Blog

                  My Novella blog (Current Novella Begins on 7/25/14)

                  Quill Sword

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Originally posted by Teallaura View Post
                    If you're gonna just give them something monthly an apartment/rent would be far better. With no address and no way to take care of basic hygiene, homeless people aren't gonna get jobs.
                    Obviously everyone who can't afford anywhere to live should be provided rent-free housing. That's just basic. And is standard political policy pretty much everywhere in the developed world as far as I am aware, except, apparently, America.

                    Although if it comes down to asking what policy is better, providing them with $500 worth of money they can spend on housing if they wish versus providing them with $500 worth of rent-free housing, then presumably the former is better because they have more choice in the matter?
                    "I hate him passionately", he's "a demonic force" - Tucker Carlson, in private, on Donald Trump
                    "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism" - George Orwell
                    "[Capitalism] as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evils. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy" - Albert Einstein

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Originally posted by QuantaFille View Post
                      What I don't understand, is how this is supposed to get people out of poverty in the long run.
                      It's not. I suspect its an attempt to shore up votes for the mid-terms, and expect the scheme to be ended early next year when Chicago "suddenly" realizes that they're just digging themselves even deeper in debt.

                      Of course one thing liberals always seem to forget about the premise behind the universal basic income is that it would be offered in the place of other programs like welfare and food stamps. So has Chicago announced that anybody receiving the UBI will be ineligible for any other form of government assistance? Yeah, I didn't think so.
                      Some may call me foolish, and some may call me odd
                      But I'd rather be a fool in the eyes of man
                      Than a fool in the eyes of God


                      From "Fools Gold" by Petra

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Originally posted by Dimbulb View Post
                        ...one general conclusion I've come to is that the way poor people get out of poverty is... by having more money.
                        If you think a universal basic income is the solution to poverty then you're an idiot. Ever heard the saying "Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day; teach a man to fish, and he eats for a lifetime"? If dumping money into the hands of the destitute was the solution then America should have solved the poverty problem decades ago with our generous welfare programs. What's a UBI supposed to do that unemployment, welfare, food stamps, etc. haven't already done?
                        Some may call me foolish, and some may call me odd
                        But I'd rather be a fool in the eyes of man
                        Than a fool in the eyes of God


                        From "Fools Gold" by Petra

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          What Chicago is doing sounds like a cheesy experiment to me. Its a small welfare bonus, or like Mountain Man suggests a bait-and-switch. I don't like it.

                          The concept of a Universal Basic Income is interesting, but aside from experiments with it in various places I've only ever heard it seriously discussed as something that would inevitably occur in a post-scarcity economy.

                          We don't live in a post-scarcity economy. There's significant competition for limited resourced. There's limited areable land, there's limited sources of clean water, there's limited amounts of oil. There's plenty of consumer goods and consumables that require large amounts of effort in terms of man hours to extract and process.

                          I don't see the need for a universal basic income here. It would belong in an age that is inevitably coming where automation has made menial labor a thing of the past. This is inevitable. Like the peak oil, there's nothing we can do about the basic facts of the matter. Automation is getting better. Cars can drive themselves already, and this will soon become mainstream. Farming could become entirely automated requiring only a small number of overseers. At first this will open up new kinds of jobs for technitians, and system administrators. However there's no doubting that the jobs will require more and more technical knowledge to perform.

                          When the robots become capable of repairing robots themselves, cleaning homes, doing the works of miners, of construction workers, ... A large force of people will exist without employment. There won't be jobs to give them. Companies could be incentivised to use humans when possible, but companies being companies will always go for the cheaper. Its inevitable. A large number of people will be left without jobs that could provide an income.

                          You could teach a man to fish, but when he gets to the lake there's already twenty FisherBot2000 robots catching pretty much any fish in the lake to be had.

                          In a society like that with a radically automated industry the price of all goods would drop exponentially. Since the industry requires few people it can scale itself up. Its really hard to know what effects this would have politically, or economically. But there's wide agreement that at that point simply granting all people a universal basic income would be the easiest way to deal with the dissatisfied populace.

                          This wouldn't be a paltry 500$ a week. It'd be a living wage of something like 3000$ per month, at least. In other words if you don't want to work you don't have to. If there's no jobs for you then you'd still be able to live a good life, in a nice apartment, with all the luxuries of life.



                          TLDR; To me its a science-fiction proposal for how to manage the economy in a humane way some 100 to 200 years from now.

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Originally posted by Starlight View Post
                            I'm quite interested in politics and in what economic policies work and don't work, and I spend quite a lot of time digging through the data, and one general conclusion I've come to is that the way poor people get out of poverty is... by having more money. It doesn't matter how the people get that money. It doesn't matter what the cause of them having that money is, whether it's government handouts, winning the lottery, jobs paying them more, getting a second job, etc. Once they have more money they stop being poor. So what's the most direct way to end poverty? Answer, by giving poor people money. And, yes, it absolutely appears to work according to all the data that we have. (Okay, one slight exception, you can't just print endless money and give it out to people, it has to actually be real money)
                            The difference though, is who they depend on for that money. When the government gives people free money, they depend on the government. They are not independent.
                            As far as it being "real money", that means that someone else earned it. Eventually, people will decide to stop earning it if the government is just going to take it to give to people who aren't being helped long term. You think that it's helping to give people cash indefinitely instead of helping them get themselves out of poverty? Yes they'll have more money if they get an allowance from the government, but they aren't being given the means of creating that wealth for themselves. They are dependant on other people being able to create it for them.

                            But people having money is the #1 thing that creates jobs in the first place. Imagine nobody had money to buy any products. How many jobs would there be in the city? Zero, because if there were no customers, all existing businesses would go bankrupt and close.
                            Ok. I'm with you so far...

                            But imagine, you're a local donut shop, and suddenly everyone in your neighborhood has extra cash in their pocket, enough to splash for a donut on the way home from work. Suddenly, your business is booming, you're getting hundreds of extra customers, so you've got to hire more employees to service the increased demand, you're making more income for yourself as the owner, you promote one of the existing employees to be a manager and give the others a pay rise, etc. What creates the good paying jobs is people in the community having money to spend in the first place, because businesses can only take in as income money that the customers have available to spend. So our modern economies are what are known as "demand-driven" (we can generally make as much product to sell as there is demand for - no company ever complained of having too many customers and usually we advertise to get more customers - the limiting factor in almost all companies is the amount of customer demand for products).
                            So you do know how it works. Ok. Let's say that donut shop owners wanted their community to have more money to spend. So, they find a few poor people and start giving them a paycheck, but not a job in their shop. These poor people are still technically unemployed, but at least they have money for donuts, right? Where does that money come from? It's an investment with no hope of return.
                            This is what Chicago is proposing. Take money one person earned and give it to another who could be taught how to earn it themselves, but isn't.

                            But if the shop owner hires these poor people and teaches the employees how to make great donuts and how to run a donut shop most efficiently, and they all go out and start their own shops, they are earning that money themselves and it's absolutely sustainable.

                            This is, incidentally, why raising the minimum wage typically doesn't affect total jobs numbers - if you raise the wages you're just putting more money into the hands of the poorest people in the community who immediately spend it (within the week they earn it) on goods and services within the community, which means those same store owners who are now having to pay their employees more are themselves getting more paying customers who are buying more from the store.
                            So it doesn't enable companies to hire more people and bring down the unemployment rate? Interesting.

                            Wow, that's a horribly demeaning and judgmental way of looking at it.
                            "Hey Bob, I'm going to assume you're not capable of earning your own money, so I'm not even going to bother trying to help you get yourself out of this mess. I'm going to give you $500 every month, indefinitely." How is that NOT demeaning to the poor?!

                            That does seem a weird choice, because lets say they handed you the $500, what exactly is stopping you using that to pay your tuition?
                            It's a weird choice because most people would spend it on donuts instead.

                            How is them directly paying your tuition with that money anything but a slight irrelevant difference in accounting?
                            My point is that the government isn't doing anything to help these people out of the hole, instead they are building a grate to keep them in. I'd rather be given job skills to get myself out instead of being made dependant on the government for my daily needs.

                            Um... do you think the government won't exist eventually, or that somehow government welfare benefits will stop existing? Because I've got news for you... governments have been around centuries and don't seem to be going anyway anytime soon, and taxes and welfare have been around almost a century now and don't seem to be going away soon.
                            I never said the government was going away. I'm not quite sure where you got that idea. I'm saying that it's unsustainable for only those with jobs to support everyone (including those without jobs) rather than everyone making their own money. This is basic economics.

                            I absolutely am a supporter of education being free for all. In my country at the moment, the government is bringing in 3 years of free tertiary education in addition to the existing policies of interest-free student loans etc.
                            I think that probably the best way to make that work, is for the employers to pay for it, not for the government to use taxes (similar to the way trucking companies pay for their drivers' training now, only they'd pay the university directly instead of reimbursing after hiring). This is a whole other topic though so that's as far as I'm going with it.

                            Wow, again with the overzealous judgmentalism.
                            I'm not judging the poor people. I'm simply pointing out that there is no dignity in being dependant on the government when there are other ways. Helping people onto their own two feet, for instance.

                            If the government builds the road, is it degrading for you to drive on it? If its military fights to defend your country, is it degrading for you to be defended by them? Why not see the government and its services as part and parcel of the economy and society you live in?

                            Why?
                            It's not the government's job to build roads, but that's another topic (Americans built plenty of roads before the government took over road-building). My point is, there are things that the government should provide for its citizens, and things it shouldn't. Would you want the government to wipe your butt for you every time you poop? Would that feel degrading to you? But, wiping your butt is a basic necessity! Why shouldn't the government do it for you? That's what you sound like to me. Rather than teaching people how to wipe their own butts, you want a government agent stationed at every toilet.
                            Curiosity never hurt anyone. It was stupidity that killed the cat.

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Saw this response to the OP's article:

                              "You want a guaranteed income? Then get a job."
                              Some may call me foolish, and some may call me odd
                              But I'd rather be a fool in the eyes of man
                              Than a fool in the eyes of God


                              From "Fools Gold" by Petra

                              Comment

                              Related Threads

                              Collapse

                              Topics Statistics Last Post
                              Started by little_monkey, Yesterday, 04:19 PM
                              16 responses
                              126 views
                              0 likes
                              Last Post One Bad Pig  
                              Started by whag, 03-26-2024, 04:38 PM
                              53 responses
                              326 views
                              0 likes
                              Last Post Mountain Man  
                              Started by rogue06, 03-26-2024, 11:45 AM
                              25 responses
                              111 views
                              0 likes
                              Last Post rogue06
                              by rogue06
                               
                              Started by Hypatia_Alexandria, 03-26-2024, 09:21 AM
                              33 responses
                              196 views
                              0 likes
                              Last Post Roy
                              by Roy
                               
                              Started by Hypatia_Alexandria, 03-26-2024, 08:34 AM
                              84 responses
                              360 views
                              0 likes
                              Last Post JimL
                              by JimL
                               
                              Working...
                              X