I still haven't seen a good explanation for how UBI on a truly universal scale isn't going to just raise housing prices to capture the surplus. I mean, if my landlord knew I (and anybody else who could theoretically live in my apartment) had a spare $2000/month, forever, I'm pretty sure he'd want it.
Honestly asking - would it be a good thing or a bad thing if the major high cost of living areas like cities in the CA such San Francisco, Orange County, etc., were actually significantly funding UBI to people with a permanent address in a lower cost of living Central California city long term?
I think removing red tape and allowing people to pay for things they need right now is an excellent way to speed people's recovery from poverty, but it needs nudges, and those nudges need to be informed by data and empirical evidence. We need to know what people are spending the money on so we know how to target the biggest problems as well as the corner cases.<p>If you know what the actual problems are and where the money <i>needs</i> to be spent, you don't need to give everyone $10,000. You may only need to give this person $2,000 for this thing, and this person $7,000 for that thing. Giving them all a lump sum is just inefficient, and does not address the myriad edge cases. Collecting data on spending could help provide efficiency.
I feel like UBI is just a band-aid fix for all the real issues (in the US at least) that already have proven solutions in other parts of the world. Rather than giving people money, I'd prefer a higher tax rate for a single payer healthcare system. Reign in healthcare, pharma, and insurance companies. Put a cap on tuition increases, and fund education again. Slash the military budget. Cut down the red tape permitting insane zoning laws, and allow higher density housing where it is needed. Placing the onus of how to spend all this money on individuals might seem like a good idea, but if we instead invested that money in real, lasting, scalable solutions we'll be a lot better in the long run.
Another interesting theory was to create a resource based economy. One iteration of this idea was The Venus Project created by Jacque Fresco [0] whereby society would remove the need for a monetary system, as everything can be engineered in abundance.<p>Have any countries attempted such a big fundamental change?<p>[0] - <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacque_Fresco" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacque_Fresco</a>
> “The trolls I’ve been dealing with on social media and in real life have very racialized views of how this is going to work,” Mr. Tubbs said. “As the first black mayor of this city, it would be very dangerous if the only people to get this were black.”<p>> He wants to select participants who are most likely to spend their money wisely, generating stories of working poor people lifted by extra cash.<p>Well, that's pretty worthless.
As a data point, Finland is ending their basic income program: <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-43866700" rel="nofollow">http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-43866700</a><p>I wish they'd release as much data as possible regarding the experiment so other cities and countries could have actual data to look at instead of hypotheses.
NPR did a good piece about the non-profit mentioned in the article: <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2017/08/07/541609649/how-to-fix-poverty-why-not-just-give-people-money" rel="nofollow">https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2017/08/07/5416096...</a>
I thought it is talking "California City" but Stockton.
<a href="https://goo.gl/maps/o8fp1f18Hf32" rel="nofollow">https://goo.gl/maps/o8fp1f18Hf32</a>
My inclination is that money without work is a bad idea, but I'm happy to admit I might be wrong.<p>I hope the results are described fairly and often, it'll be interesting to see how it turns out.
As related material that folks here might appreciate: Andrew Yang’s (founder of Venture for America) recent book “The War on Normal People: The Truth About America's Disappearing Jobs and Why Universal Basic Income Is Our Future” lays out a compelling argument for UBI, given the rise of automation and AI, as well as current economic and cultural shifts.<p>Yang is also running for president 2020 on a UBI platform, dubbed the freedom dividend.
This is first-order thinking. The problem with the poor is not that they have no money, it's that they have no <i>ability</i> to make money. So giving out money isn't going to fix things, you need to fix the lack of ability. In fact, giving out money is harmful, because it enslaves both the recipients and the givers. If everyone gets $100, prices will simply rise (as mentioned in other threads). But now you can't stop giving them the money, because they need it worse than before.<p>The people doing this justify it that they will get "valid scientific data," but they won't get any valid scientific data on how UBI performs, because they aren't doing UBI. There's a big difference between giving 100 poor people money and giving all the poor people (or even everyone) money.<p>A bit unrelated, but the article mentions that these ideas have been around a long time, citing Thomas More's "Utopia." However, they fail to follow up with the modern connation of the word, that utopia is unachievable. We've tried these ideas again and again, in American utopian societies of the 1800s, in communes, in Communism, and it doesn't work. Maybe it's time we stopped trying to do the same thing over and over again expecting different results the next time.