A review of basic income experiments around the US. “Supporters say it works because people can spend the money on whatever they need most.” (I got a little heated in a recent argument w/ someone who was arguing “you just can’t give people money”. Yes, you just can!)
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Discussion 5 comments
Of all the needlessly politically-charged conversations UBI is probably the most fun to have with people that are against it. Even a cursory reading of the available data and historical context generally gets people on board. I got my anti-everything brother from "They'll just spend it on drugs" to "We should be doing that" over the course of one dinner.
Can you give a concise summary of the arguments here? And answer my age-old question: where does the money come from?
Second question first: it would come from taxes. There are about 45M households making less than $50k per year. If each got $6k per year, that would cost $270B. In comparison, the federal government spends $1.4T on social security, $1.5T on healthcare, and $800M on defense. An useful benchmark is that we spend about $12k per person per year on medicare for 66M senior citizens. Now, $6k per year isn't much, but the article above talked about a $6k per year program that seemed to be helping people pretty well. Which implies that something moderately affordable to society (depending on our priorities) can provide significant help.
As for the summary of arguments, I don't know. I haven't read all the articles or argued with anybody about them.
One argument I can see is that many parents provide financial assistance to adult children. They often pay for college and often provide other forms of financial assistance. The parents "know" that a successful launch into society is more likely with financial assistance and a financial backstop. If folks know this to be probably true about their own children, is it also probably true about other people?
Makes me think of that WashPo article last month. Some people flipped out on the interwebs about one person who spent $6,000 of the money on a 1-week family vacation to Miami: https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2024/02/01/dc-cash-payments-mothers-pilot-program/
I would really strongly support basic income programs if they were found to work (rigorously, in the aggregate). With any program, there will be some people who benefit, and there will be some people who blow it all and maybe even end up worse off. But for the significant expense of a broad program like basic income, it seems reasonable to ask whether there’s a measurable benefit overall for the people who receive it. And the evidence on that for basic income— anecdotes aside— isn’t as strong as I’ve hoped (for example: https://www.nber.org/papers/w31746). Just to be clear: this isn’t to say that we should not devote the same amount of resources to reducing inequality and poverty— we should. I’m just a little worried that this relatively expensive approach (as compared to more targeted programs like providing three free meals a day to children at school, removing lead plumbing, etc.) will end up crowding out other, more effective interventions.
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