Chicago just approved one of the US's largest basic-income pilots: $500 monthly payments for 5,000 p

Discussion in 'Economics' started by ipatent, Oct 27, 2021.

  1. ipatent

    ipatent

    Letting them keep the family money is a tax subsidy? You'll lose most people with that.

    Agreed, but there is a real crime problem that cries out for innovative approaches. Any large infusion of resources needs to tackle the crime problem as well.

    Efficiency. It doesn't cost much to verify eligibility for those programs in comparison to what gets given out.

    Strings are already attached for many programs. I don't support UBI for several different reasons, not least of which is that the only entities that propose this are liberal enclaves like Chicago that can't afford it, and the rest of the state and the country isn't going to want to subsidize it.

    No it doesn't.
     
    #91     Jan 11, 2022
  2. ipatent

    ipatent

    There's a big moral difference between the two, and too many people assume the former, which isn't fair if the truth is the latter.
     
    #92     Jan 12, 2022
  3. Sig

    Sig

    Do you actually understand how step-up basis, generation skipping trusts, and "peanut buttering" the QSBS work, just to pick 3 examples? Trust fund babies get capital gains from their parents at 0% capital gains tax. You and I pay 20% + the 3.8% medicare surtax. That means if, for example, they get this treatment on $10M in capital gains we the taxpayer subsidized them to the tune of $2.38M dollars. That results in over a $50B give away to trust fund babies every year for step-up basis alone. If this concept "loses most people" then "most people" don't understand basic finance, but it certainly doesn't make it any less true does it? Do you dispute the factual basis of this in any way, or is your only assertion that others don't grasp it therefore we should ignore it?

    That's a nice opinion, but nothing says that poverty programs need to be tied to crime reduction. Are you saying that if we had a could buy a magic bullet for $500M that would guarantee take 1,000,000 people out of poverty but have no impact on crime that we should ignore it? Not that UBI is a magic bullet, just to highlight the absurdity of insisting that the two be tied together.

    That's interesting to hear you believe our social programs are well run and efficient.

    Actually UBI is a deeply conservative idea, no less than Milton Friedman pushed for it and as I've pointed out again and again, reducing bureaucracy and the government telling people what to do with their lives at least used to be bedrock conservative principals. Has that changed, or is it now that "keep the government out of my life, but who cares about poor people" when it comes to government intrusiveness?

    You can just keep saying "no it doesn't" but that doesn't change the inevitable conclusion from your argument. Again, I ask you specifically, if you don’t support removing the strings attached to any kind of assistance for anyone, and you think strings should be attached because recipients have "mental capacity" issues or require "guidance and structure", then what other conclusion can be drawn? Why insist that no aid program of any kind going to those who don't have "mental capacity" issues or require "guidance and structure" be turned into UBI for those participants? Why, exactly, do you insist that SNAP funds not be turned into UBI for those who don't have "mental capacity" issues or require "guidance and structure", for example?

    Hopefully you're not purposely missing the point here.. that is that there's a third, fourth, fifth... lots of disparate reason that people are poor and moral differences have nothing to do with it. I'm not sure you grasp that being born into a poor life situation, bad luck, and maybe a poor decision or two that you, me, and the trust fund babies could walk away from consequence free could be the cause of poverty for a good chunk of people? If you did, this attitude that all poor people need to be supervised by the state in exchange for any aid would naturally be abhorrent to you, just as it would be abhorrent to you if I told you that you were going to be subjected to the same intrusive government oversight that you advocate for the poor.
     
    #93     Jan 12, 2022
  4. ipatent

    ipatent

    You and I are subject to the mental health system. Just one psychotic break from a few stressful years and you're in a locked facility relying on a team of doctors, or perhaps just one doctor, to decide whether you ever get out and when. That's intrusive.

    The conservative ideal of free markets and rational actors begins to break down at levels of IQ below 70, which used to be considered the upper limit of mental retardation. They don't make good decisions. I'm not saying all of the urban poor are below this threshold (the chart below will give you a good idea of the percentage that is), but a significant portion are. Sending no-strings attached checks is not a good idea.

    [​IMG]

    I don't gain any satisfaction from pointing this out. Whites with a sub-70 IQ tend to receive better support in their communities, because or the greater resources of the community and the fact that they are few and far between. We should strive to make sure that minorities get the same levels of support. The goal is to maximize social returns per dollar invested in the problem. We leave them to sink or swim. Another few hundred dollars per month won't change the dynamic.

    I didn't have a trust fund. You seem to be stuck on that as an analogy.

    We disagree on that.
     
    Last edited: Jan 12, 2022
    #94     Jan 12, 2022
  5. Sig

    Sig

    Perhaps I am being too subtle. My entire point is the rank hypocrisy inherent in someone who had no problem giving billions of tax dollars with no strings attached to one group of people who haven't done a single thing to earn it, millions to each one, while insisting that under no circumstances should we ever give a single tax dollar to another group of people without significant government intrusiveness. I would hope that a rich trust fund baby would be treated the same by the mental health system as you or I and would be equally upset if that weren't the case. My point which you seem to be missing is that this clearly isn't the case when it comes to giving tax money to people who have done nothing to earn it. Why are you OK with the one and not other? That's a question you've dodged, jinxed, and danced around but either consciously or subconsciously you can't address it head on.

    I don't think you're a trust fund baby, which makes it all the more mysterious why you have no problem giving them billions of our tax dollars no strings attached while clearly being very adamant that poor people, even those who are exactly the same mentally and physically as those trust fund babies, be subject to a completely different level of government intrusiveness in order to get far less of your tax dollars. Even more perplexing when you consider that, given you pay federal taxes, it actually is your money going to the trust fund babies who did nothing to deserve it and with no strings attached, while unless you live in Chicago their UBI program doesn't spend a dime of yours.

    You have to ask yourself, or alternately decide the question's too hard to ask yourself and try to ignore it as you've been doing here, why is that? Sadly, as you've amply demonstrated, you seem to genuinely feel that poor people are all poor because they're mentally ill, low IQ, or even more disturbingly low IQ because they're black. Those are appalling conclusions, all the more appalling by someone who makes them comfortably behind their computer having clearly never spent a minute genuinely talking to these people they're judging. If you're not appalled by this, then you're simply not someone worth continuing this conversation with. If you are, then as I brought up earlier perhaps, just perhaps, it might be worth spending just a little time examining the beliefs you inherited to see if they actually have merit? Or better yet, spend a couple days volunteering among these people you hold as so far below you in mental capacity?
     
    #95     Jan 13, 2022
  6. ipatent

    ipatent

    Just to identify who needs help the most. If I was in charge, we'd be spending much more in those neighborhoods to make sure sub 70 IQ people get the same support or more that they get in the suburbs. Also, it's not because they're black, as evidenced by the right side of the distribution curve. There are at least some blacks at every intelligence level. It's about individual genes, their distribution around the world to date and environment, in that order.

    People in the sub-70 group need guidance for spending and other life decisions, or they'll tend to fall deeper into problems. I have personal experience from having worked in a motel where welfare cases were being housed. One of them nearly burned the building down by trying to cook in the plastic ice buckets. People like this would be better off in a dormitory-like environment where meals are cooked for them. Good nutrition helps as well. Instead, they are shuffled from place to place and kept out of sight. Free market economics is not going to work for this group. Neither is tough love or any of the other theories that have been propounded over the decades. Letting them have guns is a very bad idea. We need a paternalistic approach for this group.

    I agree with you that a big chunk of the people to the right of the IQ 70 line may not need the same type of support. UBI may be a better argument for that group. I'll have to think that over. We already have unemployment for those down on their luck after losing a job, and there are many other types of aid such as Medicaid depending on the state of residence.
     
    #96     Jan 13, 2022
    piezoe likes this.
  7. ipatent

    ipatent

  8. ipatent

    ipatent

    Thousands apply for free monthly guaranteed income for single mothers in Birmingham AL

    More than 8,000 single mothers completed applications for Birmingham’s test pilot program that will offer free monthly income for a year.

    “Response to the opportunity to participate in the Embrace Mothers program was overwhelming,” Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin wrote in an update on the program.

    More than 19,000 women at least started an application during the one-week application period that ended Feb. 7, a figure equivalent to nearly 100 percent of the city’s total population of single female heads of household.

    The Embrace Mothers pilot program will provide 110 single female heads of families a guaranteed income of $375 per month for a 12-month period.
     
    #98     Mar 14, 2022
  9. Pekelo

    Pekelo

    You can't call it income unless you can live on it. Let's call it aid instead. Monthly aid.
     
    #99     Mar 15, 2022
  10. piezoe

    piezoe

    At 35K gross, it's ~20% more based on ~AGI. That's significant.
     
    #100     Mar 15, 2022