Weird how every one of these tests shows most people use the money to better themselves instead of wasting it all like right wing media would say.
Super weird.
It’s projection. “I’d blow it all on coke and hookers, so obviously everyone else will too!”
The people with the most money do the least amount of work and call everyone else “lazy.”
If you have time to lean, you have time to blame the masses for your own shortcomings.
They have the time to call everyone else lazy. We’re all too busy watching each other be busy.
It’s worse than that.
Conservative ideology is based on the fundamental belief that society is a thin veneer over our base instincts towards self-destruction, and the only way to maintain the façade is with a strictly enforced hierarchy in which power is maintained by a ‘deserving’ ruling class. Conservatism was born during the bloody death of feudalism, in which Ye Olde Ruling Class learnt they must repackage their ideals tied in a bow of capitalism if they’d have any hope of maintaining their wealth and control.
It’s no coincidence that many of the same familial names holding power carried forward through that transitional period. It’s also no coincidence that the basis of much of that power is rooted in systems of religion.
The core belief it puts forth is that without a strict hierarchy in which every person knows their place, society will collapse into chaos. That if you’re ‘deserving’, the system will grant you comfort, and if you’re struggling and destitute, that is your lot.
It’s the ‘just world’ hypothesis, and deviating from it isn’t just bad, it can unravel the very foundations of society. It’s why someone like Obama being elected to the highest office was such an affront. It wasn’t just racism (though that was a big part of it), but perceived as a very dangerous subversion of the system.
The people who subscribe to this would disagree, and they can’t consciously articulate any of this. It’s in the subtext of their existence – they absorb it via osmosis, through their religious upbringing in the form of fables, and via cultural maxims surrounding family values and patriotism.
If it were just projection or logical fallacy, it could be reasoned with. But it isn’t and it can’t be.
It’s almost like an individual is the person who knows what is best for themselves, instead of an agency that has never met them and only knows them through means-testing.
Common sense dictates that’s exactly what would happen. The super rich and right wingnuts lack that particular attribute tho.
Yeah but that’s because they’re way more likely to read Ayn Rand than Thomas Paine.
Remember, if these trials can cause change then EVERYONE gets a little extra. And it’s cheaper than our current welfare system. AND it actually helps people instead of putting them in a place where getting help ends their desperately needed support. It’s a win for everyone except the “I struggled and so should you” crowd which means its an absolute victory for everyone that matters!
What makes it worse, those people almost never actually struggled. Otherwise they may have learned to suffer some empathy.
I’ve watched someone start to empathize and then talk themselves out of it so many times I’ve lost faith in someone’s ability to learn it.
Here in the US, our society is in practice neutral towards human life. We (usually) don’t actively kill each other, but we’re completely comfortable letting our fellow citizens die under a freeway of exposure for the crime of not producing capital value for our owner class.
Instituting something like UBI would be a significant step towards finding congruence with our currently false, empty rhetoric of valuing human life.
Untl then, we as a people can and will continue to pretend that we do, but again in practice, it means the same as saying we value the candy bar wrapper we just threw in the trash.
I remember when the first wave of stimulus checks went out and a bunch of car dealerships suddenly raised the price on their cars by $1000. UBI would be great, but if we don’t reign in the corporate-apologist economy first, every product will suddenly be more expensive so they can bleed people of that extra money.
There have been UBI trials before and they found that it didn’t lead to price increases to any great degree.
Yes but not widespread UBI, I think it would be slightly different like the reference to the stimulus checks where nearly everyone obtained it and it was widely circulated information.
Exactly. If a small group of people are given UBI, then they just have more money, and stores want to profit from everyone, including the people who aren’t getting more money. But if everyone gets UBI, then the stores are sure that their customers can afford higher prices, and our current government has shown that it doesn’t care if prices are arbitrarily inflated. I’d love UBI, but it can’t function alone without accompanying laws to prevent price hiking.
Exactly. If a small group of people are given UBI, then they just have more money, and stores want to profit from everyone, including the people who aren’t getting more money. But if everyone gets UBI, then the stores are sure that their customers can afford higher prices
But if everyone was getting it, wouldn’t people at different income levels spend it on different things?
Even at the grocery store…middle class people might start buying nicer stuff and nice to haves that they didn’t buy before. Lower class people might start buying more well-rounded batches, but still the “cheaper” brands and stuff.
If I was buying Ritz crackers for $4 before, maybe now they’re $5. I’m making more money, and it’s just $1, so I might not even be paying enough attention to notice, but if everything goes up by a similar amount, then I’m spending significantly more on the same items than I was before, and might end up dropping $100 of my new UBI money on groceries without even making a change in my shopping habits.
Now, a lower income person might be buying store brand crackers that only cost $2, but now they’re $3, so the same situation occurs.
These are hypothetical numbers of course, but I wouldn’t be surprised if a situation like that occurred, given that every company would know exactly how much more money is now in everyone’s pockets. Every product goes up just a bit, just to take a bit of that UBI pie.
My point is that people with more money would have more “fun” money, and people with less money would have more room for essentials.
You’d think the bigger market would be to pull at the people with “fun” money, rather than the people who can now afford a well-rounded diet.
Yeah, things will go up in price. It’s like when minimum wage goes up. But in all the studies I’ve seen on minimum wage going up, the minimum wage earners generally win out over rising prices (being better off after the increase).
I’m sure some store has done the math that it’s better to sell 2 boxes of cookies to the poor guy than to raise the price to get the maximum profit off of an individual box. And then there are places with competition…and some staples are already generally competitive (such as bread) to the point of being loss leaders in grocery stores.
I certainly hope you’re right. All I picture is the dollar stores suddenly becoming $2 stores as everything just shifts to be more expensive with very few people improving their financial situation at all.
The entire concept of a scientific study to determine whether people spend this money wisely is bunk, because it’s nobody else’s business how a person’s money gets spent and whether it’s categorized as “wise”.
If we assume that there is an objective, ie scientifically valid, definition of “wise spending”, then we should just go centrally planned communism because the whole point of free markets is allowing people to enact their own value structure in their spending.
The whole idea of basic income, as opposed to all these other services, is based on the same idea: that people’s money is their own.
This study seems nice, but it frames this whole question the wrong way. The whole concept of money is that people have a right to make their own economic choices, regardless of what some centralized authority thinks is “wise”.
Yeah no, there definitely is wise spending.
Spending all your money at the casino, spending all your money on alcohol, etc. That’s majority different from spending money on food, shelter, an education, etc.
There’s also a difference between spending money that was given to you vs spending money that you did something to earn. That’s part of why welfare is such a contentious program in the country. “I want them to have food not half a dozen kids, 17 pets, brand new phones, and cigarettes.”
The fact of the matter is, most recipients don’t spend the money on that and they do spend it wisely just like the folks did here.
But yeah, if you’re asking for me or anyone else to give up a portion of our salaries to create universal basic income, etc, it needs to be proven to be a net benefit, and how “wisely” that money is being spent is important.
We wouldn’t rejoice at a politician taking more money from the public fund for a personal trip to the Bahamas. If it’s shown this money just becomes vacation money, it’s clearly not needed and frankly shouldn’t be given.
Understanding how the money is spent is important.
The fact of the matter is, most recipients don’t spend the money on that and they do spend it wisely just like the folks did here.
And the fact of the matter is a lot of money is wasted on administration making sure those people who wouldn’t waste their money aren’t wasting their money.
Think about it this way: for X amount of tax dollars you could help 10 families in need and cover the administration costs to make sure they are spending it wisely.
For the same X amount of dollars you could help 20 families in need with no administrative oversight, and 1 of those families doesn’t need or misuses the money.In the second scenario you’re still helping 9 more families that need it at no additional cost.
Because it works out so well when we just let people run away with money?
You’re making the same argument that a lot of Republicans make. “Corporations will be honest with the public money we give them, we don’t need all this administrative overhead.”
There’s definitely something to be said for minimizing administrative overhead. However, that’s a very different argument than “there’s no such thing as wise spending and we just shouldn’t care where the money is going.”
And here we have a study demonstrating that people will be smart with the money. I’m not saying “just trust me on this,” we have actual evidence.
So, in summary…
- Original comment: “We don’t need studies”
- Me: “Yes, we do need studies. This is important data to keep track of to make sure the money is being put where it’s most desperately needed.”
- You: “We don’t need to keep track of where money is going, people are honest. We have studies!”
In other words…
- Original comment: “Studies are useless!”
- Me: “Studies are not useless”
- You: “Studies are useless, because we have proof that studies are useless, via a study”
Original comment: we don’t need oversight.
You: we should have oversight because people might waste money.
Me: even if people waste money that will be less money wasted than is spent on the oversight, allowing more people to be helped.Actual original comment’s very first sentence:
The entire concept of a scientific study to determine whether people spend this money wisely is bunk
You: putting words in my mouth, doubling down, and missing the point.
Me: Over this.
Unsure I agree with this. I agree it’s not black and white but for example if someone spent it on drinking binges or gambling is that really just their business? The money could have gone to something else.
The cost of the adminstration to make sure no one spends it driving and gambling is more expensive than the money that would be lost drinking and gambling.
If you do away with the adminstration you can spend that money helping more people who need it. If someone wants to waste that money not helping themselves that is their choice, more people still get helped with the same amount of cost.
Hmm good point.
That’s not true. There is a wise spending. Or to be more correct there is a foolish spending. Gambling your money away for example is f* stupid.
The point is that the government really shouldn’t have any say in which is which. I agree with you that gambling all your money away is a poor financial choice, but that doesn’t mean that I think we should ban gambling, because many people enjoy it responsibly. Teaching people financial literacy, and treating addictions is the solution, not policing how people use their UBI.
If it’s government given money, that’s somebody’s tax dollars and the government absolutely should have a say, because the people giving that money should have a say.
Why attack the people for their spending on vices when you could just outlaw the vices. If you care so much about people’s morals, then the government should just outlaw alcohol, gambling and anything else deemed an ill use of this money. It’s the exact same thing, except you only want the government to police people who you think don’t deserve freedom because you consider them lesser.
When you take someone else’s money, you should have a good reason for doing so. Money is an exchange of labor, straight up. You’re not entitled to anyone else’s labor without qualification.
Social benefit programs are just that, programs for the social benefit.
People are allowed to have vices, but irresponsibly spending other people’s money is not okay, just like breaking/trashing other people’s stuff (and thus spending their time and money) is not okay.
This is a basic part of the social contract.
If it’s government given money, that’s somebody’s tax dollars and the government absolutely should have a say,
The issue is it costs money for the Government to have a say and 99% of the time it’s not needed.
If you just get rid of the Government overhead to make sure people are “spending it wisely,” the money lost by the 1% who spend it foolishly will be far less than the money saved by getting rid of all the administration.
Nope. The nature of money is that when you transfer it to someone else’s, it is now their money. It’s no longer your money. It’s their money.
No that’s not how it works. It is extremely common for government issued money to come with stipulations on how it can be spent.
I agree with you, except that we should ban gambling.
Personally I have never considered that there would be a risk of the UBI recipients to spend the money unwisely.
People needing UBI have a very long standing experience of not getting what they need to minimise their losses on a daily basis, so of course they will invest in that first. They all probably have a ranked, itemised list of all that would help. And I’m willing to bet that said list, on average, would be at least 80% correct (the 20% being influenced by personal sensitivities and beliefs, like a vegan person spending more on plastic based clothing, that wears out faster).
People not needing UBI already have more money than they can find intelligent uses for, and so they already are spending money unwisely.
Nah, the part that concerns me is that as soon as we all get UBI, and I do mean the very next day, rents are gonna rise by 33% of the amount of the UBI, the cost of food will rise by 33% of the amount of the UBI, and the cost of all the rest combined will rise by 34% of the amount of the UBI. It will be back to square one, and all we will have achieved will be funnelling our taxes straight into the pockets of for profit, private megacorporations.
We need to “fix” that megacorporation problem first.
You mean rents will go up by 100% of the UBI, food will go up by 100% of the UBI, and healthcare will go up by 10,000% because it’s a day ending in the letter Y.
Start a competing business that doesn’t make any profit.
How can you be so thick? If the problem was with profits, we’d have solved it essentially on day one of capitalism.
No, profits are good, it means you can live from your work.
The problem here is greed. And you know what? Unlike with finding out that you’re too stupid to get this, finding out where profits stop and greed start is a hard problem. Not individually, because that is about when a business owner starts paying their workforce less and starts buying stupid useless crap to show their status or grow their comfort much beyond the average… No, systematically. Because differences in management style mean that sometimes it makes sense to shrink everyone’s income (including the CEO’s) to be able to address challenges. But you can’t easily tell that apart from greed and dodging taxes.
You’re being greedy by demanding lower prices. How can you be so hypocritical? If you don’t like the businesses that are out their get off your armchair and start competing with a better model. Slackers all of you.
I had to read word by word to make sense of your drivel. At first, it seemed to be sarcasm, but reading “out their” convinced me otherwise. Lrn2English bruh.
For other readers that will find this comment: I’d have written a logical rebuttal explaining why the concentration of wealth, IP laws, predatory financial institutions, etc. make this flat out impossible; and how fair, true capitalism died under Nixon, but it would here be like casting pearls before swine.
So you can’t compete because you have no actual abilities. Got it.
The crazy thing is that this kind of thing is way closer to actual socialism than any historical society has gotten, but the tankies hate it because it doesn’t have enough violent fan service.
It’s because they’re akin to the pigs in Animal Farm. They don’t give a shit about the proletariat. They just wanna be in charge and kill anyone who points that out.
Oh look UBI experiment number 1578 says the same thing.
And people will still ignore it and pretend UBI is unproven.
Except of course none of these are UBI experiments. The U has been completely forgotten.
They’re trying to water down the idea of UBI to renaming “benefits”. There’s only one class of people who would find this advantageous, and it ain’t us.
The reality is that we won’t know for sure how it works across an entire population until a small country changes its tax structure to make this possible across everyone. Would people quit shit jobs more often? Would minimum wage be abolished? How much work is considered saturation when all the crap is stripped away?
Real actual UBI would be an enormous societal change (I believe for the better), and I’m not sure that giving a handful of poor people some money and watching them spend it on things they need to survive is particularly worthwhile. We know that. It’s everyone else that might throw a spanner in the works.
This has been my primary question about UBI: if landlords know that everybody has an extra $1000 per month, what stops them from raising rent by exactly that amount?
My biggest concern with UBI is that it would be great for a couple of years, and then the greedy fingers of capitalism would find a way to start clawing it back. I don’t see how UBI works without including a bunch of protections to keep the newly financially stable populace from being exploited again.
Because not everyone has an extra $1000 a month. The median working person’s tax will increase to the point that the UBI is wiped out (and high earners will find their tax burden more than it is now). This is how it works. It’s not free money on top of your existing money. It’s a barrier at the low end preventing money from going below a certain level.
I see, so it sort of scales where they take some or all of the UBI back in taxes based on your income? Would the tax evasion that is common with the ultra-rich thwart this design?
And if only the poorest demographic has the extra $1000, then wouldn’t that concentrate potential price increases in low income neighborhoods?
Thank you for answering my questions and feel free to tap out whenever, I just haven’t had the chance to ask anyone about this who seems to have done any real research on it.
Well the ultra rich don’t really pay a level of income tax that reflects their wealth anyway, but even if they were actively trying to fiddle things any amount of UBI would be but a rounding error in their finances. For the actual rich, nothing short of a wealth tax will do.
As for the second question, possibly. Although UBI does replace benefits, and I’d wager most low income neighbourhood are already using those benefits to top up landlord retirement funds anyway. UBI is as much about letting people have the money without making them balance it on their nose first while praising the glorious taxpayers that fund it.
