www.yahoo.com/tech/google-co-funding-guaranteed-basic-122625604.html
Google is co-funding a guaranteed basic income trial that gives families $12,000 a year to help keep them housed
Not TechWonder if the $50 families know they are the control and there are others getting $1000.
Well, I’m sure some of them can read.
Just to be clear anyone is welcome to give me $50 as often as they like, even if they’re giving someone else $1000.
Exactly, I'd be like well shit I wanna be a $1000 family but I'll still take the $50
The county google is in (Santa Clara) is doing a $1000 month basic income test for homeless high school students right now as well. not sure if their control group is getting anything though.
Same. I know you’re listening Google. And I know you know who I am. Send the check please.🙏
If they could read they'd be very upset /s
They get 50$ to be a part of the project i.e. fill in surveys etc so the situation of living of the 1000 versus 50$ groups can be compared.
Yeah. Good point. They must prevent them to know about the entire experiment.
Probably not. It would sadden me to know my family and I weren’t selected but I get it. Can’t help everyone.
Wouldnt be much of a control group if they knew
Why not?
They get 50$ to be a part of the project i.e. fill in surveys etc so the situation of living of the 1000 versus 50$ groups can be compared.
Knowledge about the situation is not relevant. This is not some psychological experiment but rather a socialeconomics one.
I work in advisory for an accounting firm and work with housing departments in the Bay Area that receive grant funding from the feds. They give out millions every year in housing subsidy vouchers to very low income households.
Part of my job is to review eligibility requirements of the households, and to determine if they met the requirements for these housing subsidy vouchers.
Yes, the money helps. But there is a more systemic problem in high cost of living areas that goes beyond not making enough money to pay rent.
As someone for a brief moment in time was working the 211 number for LA during the rent "Lottery" during COVID, I was mortified what people were paying for rent in some of those area's. I honestly don't know how 12k a year can help besides cheap sub 1k studio apartments (if they exist in CA). Hearing numbers like 2-4k a month in rent.
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26d
Plus higher wages.
Whilst I do believe in UBI (and am sorry to hear about your homelessness), I'm a little concerned about a private company's involvement
Test UBI to make sure it works, lobby for it while buying up as much property as possible, profit off newly created government UBI program, and probably make all those properties low-income housing to not only profit off UBI but also benefit from low income housing tax credits.
It's not a playbook, it's "economic expansion" says Google.
Yeah, I'm far from an expert on something like this, but when the company that funds the social care program you need to survive is also the company that owns and operates most of the infrastructure in your area, it seems like you become beholden to them in ways that aren't healthy for individuals or society at large
Private companies doing what should be government functions is a scary problem indeed. When your life is completely beholden to an undemocratic and unaccountable business, you basically have feudalism
Yeah, this seems nefarious. I am just wondering if google is experimenting with it, because they see the future outcome of many is joblessness due to companies like Google eventually having 80% of it's workforce become AI and automations. Maybe they want to work with our government with data driven analytics to prove it works.
I fear in the next 10-15 years we are really going to need UBI to deal with greedy CEO's cutting out most of it's work force in favor of AI. Heck the 10 years is hope they wait that long, but we are still in the early stages of AI and making huge leaps yearly in it. CEO's don't want to pay people proper wages to even live in the state they are expecting people to work from, they are already cutting back employee's, pushing self service kiosks, relying on independent contractors and getting rid of the employee's that used to do that job (IE Pizza Hut). All because they were told to pay those people $20 an hour.
These companies that replace workers with AI should pay into a fund for a universal income like they do with unemployment insurance but at much higher rates.
But of course Congress will drag their feet until there is a full blown unemployment crisis with social unrest.
These companies that replace workers with AI should pay into a fund for a universal income like they do with unemployment insurance but at much higher rates.
The problem is, that like everything, one bad voting cycle and they will work on gutting those programs.
How many election cycles do we go through where they want to gut social security, despite that we are all paying into it and were expecting to be able to use it when we eventually retire? But no, pretty much every single year, we hear them fear mongering that social security will run dry before we even get a chance to use it. I fear the same thing with UBI.
I agree. The GOP finally getting Roe overturned has already had impact to them politically in state races, and may have dire consequences this year despite what the polls say.
If they start cutting these retirement programs the consequences politically may be catastrophic for them. Maybe they’re waiting for the boomers like myself (I’m 70) to all die off to screw younger people who put money into it already.
A solution has to be found soon, but both parties are scared to act on any solution.
By the way, when Trump was in office he said that attempting to cut social security and Medicare in Congress would be “fun”. 😡
If they start cutting these retirement programs the consequences politically may be catastrophic for them. Maybe they’re waiting for the boomers like myself (I’m 70) to all die off to screw younger people who put money into it already.
I am still a firm believer that when the initial reports of COVID was affecting the 65+ year old crowd and the conservatives reaction was to ban masks, push back on other initiatives, they were actually banking on more people to die, in order to lesson the load on SS retirement.
The fact that the younger workforce can see what conservatives want to do and cheering it on by voting for them is just insane. They are all for wiping out something that they will most likely regret once they hit 65 or whatever and realize they needed that, because uncle bob told them that 401k's, were a scam and they never invested in those either.
I’m concerned with the youth vote going to Kennedy or Trump.
In the 60’s my generation was pissed at the Democrats for prolonging the Vietnam war and Nixon slipped in, and also won by a landslide in 72 despite lowering the voting age (I I voted for the first time at 19).
The Gaza situation may result in the same thing with the youth vote going against Biden and Trump winning again along with big demonstrations in Chicago with the Democratic convention this summer in a rerun of 1968.
If Trump wins I expect for history to repeat itself where he does so many despicable things his own party will finally have enough and force him out of office with a third impeachment. If not that the 25th amendment may be invoked because of his health or mental state (same could be Biden’s fate if he wins)
Yeah there are definitely people trying to push people away from Biden over this. But also ignoring the fact that Trump's own son in law remarked about the opportunity to create beach side properties in Gaza for Israel and that somehow not getting nearly enough attention that was needed and conservatives trying to frame Trump as the hero that will save Gaza and not just literally send our troops to flatten it alongside Israel.
Does free money help people on the verge of homelessness? Hmmm
Obviously yes. The real question is does no-strings-attached cash work better in most/all cases than the sum of govt services designed to help keep these people housed and working, and who doesn't it work for?
Most guaranteed incomes programs show they work better or as well as existing programs with significantly less over head.
It turns out the majority people will spend money on what they need like food/shelter and having complex hard to navigate benefits across a variety of agencies to ensure the money goes to food/shelter wastes more than it saves.
And people who are going to use the money on addictions (drugs, gambling, smoking, etc) will find a way to do it regardless of restrictions put in place to stop it. Or since money is fungible use the aid for food and whatever side income they can get for the addiction.
I worry that UBI as a replacement will work in the short-term, but fail to provide long-term and end up making problems like homelessness worse.
If we don’t curb rent collusion and actually build enough housing to provide accommodations to the people who are currently homeless, then the market will simply adjust to whatever UBI allows people to barely afford. Basically, our unwillingness to guarantee some kind of floor for infinitely elastic goods/services is going to pretty much undo any welfare reform.
That’s why food stamps are literally for food. It isn’t the best food, but it attacks the problem directly instead of just throwing money at it and assuming it fixes itself.
But the exact same argument could be used for food stamps and every kind of government aid.
If food producers collude then food prices go up and food stamps are useless.
If rent setters collude then rent prices go up and rent subsidies are useless.
If formula producers collude then formula prices go up and WIC is useless.
Like we need laws to ensure adequate amounts of housing (and food) exist and that companies don’t collude on prices and we need those laws to be enforced. But that is separate from whether UBI is a good idea, because those things affect current aid programs as much as they affect UBI.
Food stamps or SNAP doesn’t work like that. They literally calculate the cost increases associated with food in a given area and adjust the benefit accordingly.
section 8 doesn’t work like that either and that’s part of why it’s nigh impossible to get in one, the waitlist is insanely long. Not that it’s a 5 star resort, but it’s at least stability.
I agree that both things need to be accounted for, but my concern is that one of these items will fall by the wayside (like rent already has) and it will eat the cost of the entire UBI and we won’t even have food stamps in the meantime.
Just because they account for it cost increases year over year, doesn’t mean it can’t also increase the cost of goods without regulations in place to prevent that. It would just be a feedback loop.
Obviously this is simplified (and doesn’t happen because of government regulations/subsidies on both food producers and sellers), but Government give $300 for snap, grocery prices increase by $300, government now gives $600 for groceries, grocery prices increase, etc etc.
It would be the exact same situation as guaranteed income but for food instead of rent. If grocery stores could collude.
A guaranteed income could also be adjusted by inflation (which is affected heavily by rent prices). And that would create the same inflationary feedback loop for rent without regulation.
It’s not a reason for food stamps to be better than guaranteed income, it’s just a reason to make sure we have proper regulations and competition on rent like we do groceries.
Agreed with that, though it would have to be an indicator like CPI , but one that actually measures rent. The downside would be using a measure that tracks economic activity well, but not specific price actions. I’m more concerned about a significant lag in action (as has been the case the last 40 years), between when a price for an infinitely elastic good goes nuts vs when assistance actually ramps up to help those who need it.
Let’s just say that I have more faith in a system that tracks metrics than one that relies on the US government cracking down on corporate abuse.
Exactly. It’s a research project. What’s the most effective, and cost effective, means of helping the impoverished escape poverty?
Uh, it has been researched before, and if you literally removed all of the bureaucracy, the money is WAY more effective just being blanket given, rater than having to qualify/quantify, etc.
That being said, you can't just blanket it for everyone, the reason being, is that prices would just increase as the supply of money increases and therefore the demand overall increases.
I would say simple and as straightforward as possible, is way better. If you make less than $x amount per year, you get $ dollars. Base it off of tax returns. Scale it down opposite of progressive taxes. There has been months of my life, where $50 a month would have made it so I could eat better than peanut butter and jelly or butter sandwhiches (I bought 8 loafs of bread, a jar of BP, a jar of Jelly, and a stick of butter; that is what I ate for a month, bummed food from friends on stuff they were going to throw away/burnt/didn't like how it came out, etc.) At the time I was working 60+ hours per week, multiple jobs, but rent+utilities+student loans+gas ate all but around $20 of my income that month.
I would say simple and as straightforward as possible, is way better.
Not only simplified qualifications, but also simply the number of times you have to keep coming back and proving things. A lot of people fall through the cracks when they have to repeatedly apply. Turns out that when you're financially struggling, you're pretty overwhelmed and deadlines are hard! This is especially true when you need to do things like go to the library to use the scanning/e-mail services in order to submit your documentation, because you don't work an office job where you can just casually stroll down the hall and use the office machine when the boss isn't looking. When one missed deadline cuts your aid and puts you back at the start, that's incredibly frustrating.
Also, the website has to fucking work. Stop it with the dead links. Stop it with the pages that redirect to the start. Have error messages that actually explain what people did wrong in the form instead of leaving us to guess. Sincerely, a public library employee who has to help people fill out these forms. Endlessly.
if you literally removed all of the bureaucracy, the money is WAY more effective just being blanket given, rater than having to qualify/quantify, etc.
It's impossible to literally remove all bureaucracy. No matter what, you have to ensure that your benefit goes only to a single living human who is who they say they are.
Government bureaucracy being wasted on social services is an overblown conservative talking point anyways. Only 5% of SNAP goes towards administrative costs. While government inefficiency is a real problem, the government is perfectly capable of processing some forms. It's with more complicated issues like healthcare and military contracts where bureaucracy creates the most waste.
I don't disagree, that being said, that is still 5% of people doing admin work vs productive work elsewhere in the economy and 5% that is not being distributed to other people that may need it (or higher benefits for all of the participants). It is why UBI is such an interesting concept and the challenge with its adoption. (we need ai/robots in place for it to truly functional effectively) or instead of UBI a explicitly clear basket of goods/services that everyone gets and if they pass on the opportunity (eg. housing) they get a small stipend as a benefit of them not taking the space they would leave empty for another person.
The question Google is asking here ((one of) the hypotheses) is whether $50 has the same effect. If group A ($1000) spends the money on high end TVs and other stuff they don't need, then the effect would be the same. If group A spends the money on things they need but group B doesn't get as much money and thus cannot spend the money on things they need the effects would be different.
better in most/all cases than the sum of govt services
Why is it either/or? Someone can need a home and also psychological help. And you have a chance of the psychological help working if they are gifted a home.
Rutger Bregman has some nice writing on the topic. Here's a short talk from him from a few years back: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydKcaIE6O1k
but this is only to "test whether the cash helps them secure long-term housing".
Replacing govt services with a UBI isn't on offer. The only plausible case for a UBI is if/when robust automation of intelligence materializes and 60% of the population becomes permanently unemployable.
One of the arguments against basic income is that people will spend it on things like drugs. Or having fun.
Studies so far have shown people actually use it on food, housing, clothes, education, transportation, etc.
food, housing, clothes, education, transportation, etc.
I expect a lot of people buy the drugs because they can't buy the above stuff as well, as a means to deal with their situation. Some sort of UBI system is coming in the future - either that or we return to the Dark Ages/Victorian era with the starving masses rioting on the streets etc. I know the rich will prefer the later but I don't think its going to be the future. Someone has to buy all the expensive shit companies are producing.
The problem is preventing those who will seek to take advantage of any UBI system - i.e. Landlords first and foremost.
It's almost like human beings prioritize basic necessities that help ensure their survival...
except when things are so bad that humans try to escape in a fantasy world where those issues don't exist
The money we spend means testing costs more than if people just spend the money on whatever. It's just moral gatekeeping.
I don’t think they are testing to see if free money helps. I think the success would probably be measured in terms of what percentage of the families can manage to not go homeless after 5 years of free money. I don’t know the answer but I don’t expect it to be straightforward for many. $1000 a month isn’t enough to free up resources for many to get their lives on track. It’s probably just goes straight to rent and they still need to work their minimum pay jobs to cover the rest of rent and cost of living. If the money stops coming after 5 years many might be on the verge of homelessness again unless their cost goes down (e.g. kids grow up).
Some of them, absolutely it will. It's like homelessness, there's many factors that weight into it and one of those factors is someone was simply unlucky.
Some of these families could waste the free money but for others (And most likely most of them.) it'll make a massive difference, food money can now go to rent or other bills that need to be paid.
$12,000 is roughly federal minimum wage full time for a year (lol it sounds stupid writing that...no one in the USA can live on that surely?). Its also the max state pension you can get in my country which is also stupid as its not possible to live on that here either.
Everyone getting state pension from the start of their lives sounds expensive...is already 40% of my governments budget. 12.6 million people get it out of 70 million so would need to raise a lot more tax lol!
Look at SSI Disability. It pays less than that a year ($968 a month). I would assume if you are on UBI, you may also be having some state assistance with things, like Social security, food stamps, etc. I'm pretty sure the most major hurdle people that are homeless have when it comes to getting government/state help is having an address to begin with (To verify you actually live in the state that you are seeking assistance for). The UBI could be the stepping stone in getting the help people need. Get UBI, get an address, then work with your local state assistance reps to get the ball rolling on state/federal assistance to be able to buy groceries and keeping the bills paid.
Any UBI program you have to structure so that at some point increased taxes wipe out the benefit. So yes everyone is getting $1k a month from the government but anyone making over say $36k a year is being taxed enough that their take home is roughly the same whether the UBI was there or not. The balancing point is hard to pin down and with the very different cost of living situations across the US it may not be a one size fits all or we might have to have state and county level UBI contributions. It's a hard problem but not an impossible one.
With 2 kids, 2 years. Fuck that’s hectic.
It was awful. Before the divorce we lived in base housing at Camp Pendleton. My ex is a Marine. When he served me with divorce papers, he also had the kids put out of base housing. Only the Marine has the privileges of base housing.
Kids homeless after divorce? The fuck?
Most homeless are homeless because of untreated mental illness and substance abuse disorders. Without nationalized public healthcare, including mental healthcare institutions, nothing will change.
In the face of the impossible cost of for-profit healthcare, $1,000/month is barely a drop in the bucket.
I was homeless due to lack of resources.
Do you have a source that supports your claim that most homeless are homeless bc of mental illness?
Fair challenge.
It appears that close to a third of homeless have a "serious mental illness" and around a quarter have "chronic substance abuse" issues.
According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, people living in shelters are more than twice as likely to have a disability compared to the general population. On a given night in 2023, 31 percent of the homeless population reported having a serious mental illness, 24 percent conditions related to chronic substance abuse, and nearly 11,000 people had HIV/AIDS.
And with medical debt being the #1 cause of personal bankruptcy in America, illness is increasingly a cause of poverty and homelessness.
And the skyrocketing divide between rich and poor, with just three people controlling more wealth than the bottom 50% of Americans, the issue of homelessness due to a lack of economic resources is only growing worse.
I'm sorry for your experience with homelessness. I've been there myself. I hope that "was" means that things have gotten better.
We have done many studies on UBI. It works. And it simplifies the bureaucracy massively so saves money to offset its cost too.
Interestingly one of the reasons the first Canadian pilot was called a “failure” was because it “eroded the family”. Many women suddenly had a way to survive on their own so they divorced and left their abusive husbands.
Not necessarily abusive husbands, but the need to stay in an unhappy relationship for financial reasons eroded.
I think if it was done on a broad scale we'd probably see that overall it promoted families. Having a basic income makes it easier to afford children.
But it removes that financial control aspect abusers love to abuse
Are we now operating from the baseline that a majority of people in relationships are in abusive relationships?
But if more kids are born while being supported by those financial sources, odds are those kids will then support those financial sources right back when they grow up, so my guess is the only way Google and other companies would support this is that they would be playing the Long Game to make even more money
I mean, kids who grow up in healthy and supportive homes are more likely to be effective tax paying citizens.
The economy is always a long game. UBI helps societies win that game. Not implementing UBI is a shortsighted move based off things like greed and misunderstanding.
Only thing keeping me from having kids is being able to afford child daycare. The cost of the child is doable with my budget but just day care from ages 0-5 makes it unfeasible.
That's the reason I only ended up with one child. And we could only do it because my wife and I worked out a schedule to cover most of the week (she worked weekends and afternoons/evenings and I had some flexible afternoons) plus my MIL could watch a few afternoons. Then we lucked out with COVID and I worked from home for 18 months right until she was kindergarten age.
Even now we're paying $400 a month for aftercare, which I can afford better than the $1400 daycare would have been.
This. Especially now in states where people lost the right to have abortions and now are expected to take care of the kids they did not plan for. Helps ease the burden, especially if scaled like some state/federal programs are done too. The more kids you have, the more UBI you get.
Nah. Affordability have nothing to do with people having children. Although it's a convenient excuse. The real reason people don't have kids is that it cramp their lifestyle so we'd need nanny bots to raise people kids for them.
Yes but without education, you ge trhe problem we have in the US. Where you have some families that are 3rd generation Welfare and thier grandmother never worked or gained skills. So by the 3rd generation, they only know, have baby collect money. Is that thier fault ? Not at all the system doesn't help them. It trapa them as when you try and get off of it, you are punished . UBI can be good if implemented along with education reform and other programs
Where you have some families that are 3rd generation Welfare and thier grandmother never worked or gained skills.
The problem is actually escaping that trap. They set unrealistic stopping points for these people. They provide you with hundreds/thousands of dollars, expect you to work (Because most of these programs actually do have working as a requirement), but then say if you earn more than X you are kicked off welfare, which for some could be as simple as picking up an extra 8 hour shift one week that could kick them off those programs. Which then leaves them in a tougher mess.
Say you are working part time at McD's. You are getting Medicaid, Section 8, utility assistance, food stamps, and a few hundred bucks by the state. One week you pull in 40 hours and got kicked off everything. That 8-16 hours of pay does not cover all what those things even saved the person in money. They now have to get insurance directly, because some part time jobs don't offer insurance. There goes a few hundred a month, they lose the savings from section 8 and now have to either move (if the place was only section 8) or pay full price of rent, they have to pay their bills in full now and are still listed as part time and back to fighting to even get 32 hours on a check.
Like I said, its not thier fault they get trapped and punished for trying to get out of it. They also hav no skills to use to better them selves, also to your work requirement. Almost all can be easily gotten out of for many reasons. I did social work near Philly, it's pretty bad to the point that there are entire Facebook groups that help you get around the system.
There is that, where you have others educating people to game the system (or simply making the system actually work), but for some people they really don't have the knowledge or ability to gain those skills to better themselves. Many jobs now hiding behind silly requirements for entry level jobs, so people cannot get skills still. People wanting applicant's to have AS/BS degree's while only offering $10-15 an hour.
UBI would take up to 10 years to show its full effect. After the changes stabilized and new, healthy families began benefitting from it.
UBI works. We don’t need anymore fucking tests. Just do something to fix this country. UBI, a universal welfare system, I don’t give a fuck. Just SOMETHING better than what we have.
Not married, but an extra 1k a month would mean I could afford a small apartment instead of having a roommate.
It won't necessarily work like this in practice. If everyone has an extra $1K then the competition for the apartments you could afford will be much higher.
The thesis for UBI is that you as an individual could better spend the same money to improve your situation than the government could through social programs. It won't improve everyone's lifestyle through brute force, but more efficient allocation.
every landlord would instantly crank rents up 1k/mth
I won't pretend to be even remotely fiscally literate but this is the part of these schemes which i don't really understand.
Surely if everyone gets for example, an extra 1k a month, no-one gets anything?
No because the basic prices for some goods are relativistically static. That's what people misunderstand about economics, not all parts move equally. Just because everyone gets $1k/month doesn't mean the price of Silver or Gold will sky rocket, this applies to most things. The "cost" of harvest apples may not change, while avocados might, it all depends on an incredible amount of factors.
That’s because they leave out the part of UBI where taxes come in.
Let’s say you put in a UBI of $12,000/year.
Then, come tax season, if you make over X amount, you have to pay back every penny of it, and then some more to cover the others who don’t.
It’s just a reformatted version of welfare programs.
Ah ok, yeah everything i've read in the past has suggested UBI would not be income assessed, if its repaid through marginal taxes though i suppose that makes sense.. although i still feel like it would be hard to prevent billions of dollars being inflated away.
We’ve done small-scale studies on UBI supplied to a subset of a population. We haven’t done studies on UBI given to an entire population, which would likely have notable inflationary effects not seen in small studies
Yea it works great on a small scale and in concept but the realities of implementing it on a large scale are a lot more difficult.
Giving every American $1k a month would be $4T a year which is roughly equal to the entire US budget. That's not something that can be funded just by the redundancy of social safety nets
People forget what the U in UBI stands for. We've tested Highly Selective Basic Income. How would a study like that ever fail because the tiny fraction of the people who receive the benefit are always going to be better off and there's near zero impact to the economy because the scales are so small?
"It works" in that having more money is better than having less money. That much is obvious to everyone. That has little to do with whether UBI is a productive use of money for an entire country.
The closest analogue we have to UBI is gulf oil nations who basically give all citizens a "job" where you don't even have to show up, with Saudi Arabia transitioning to an actual UBI program. The result is that most citizens do nothing and prioritize getting the most out of their free money. This is why they have so many low-paid foreign laborers dying building their megaprojects.
Link?
I read it in a book call utopia for realists. Try google something like “ubi study canada divorce”
Many women suddenly had a way to survive on their own so they divorced and left their abusive husbands.
This is the case in urban and semi-urban India where many women now have means of survival on their own and the oldies are blaming divorces on the women's independence, smh!
A control group will be receiving $50 a month over the next five years. I guess that’s free pizza for 225 families?
The purpose of the control group is to make the comparison to the test group that's receiving $1,000 a month. Ideally, the control group would receive nothing, but in order to get participants they need to pay them something, so they went with as close to 0 as possible.
I know. it’s just funny to me
Good point, research studies often pay participants for their time and effort. The control group is going to be providing information for the study so they need something. $50 seems like a reasonable amount to keep the participants engaged.
Do the researchers make any effort to find out what the control group spends the $50 on, maybe to compare it with the things that the test group spends their $1000 on?
$50 is a tank of gas. A pack of diapers, baby wipes, and other items that you can’t buy with food stamps.
You gettin Domino's or Papa John's?
"We found that the group we gave more money to seemed happier" science at work folks.
Soon to be featured on KilledByGoogle.
If they had any kind of a PR team they'd start KeptAliveByGoogle.com, fill it with heartstring-tugging profiles of the beneficiaries of these programs, and use bots to spam it in response to that URL. Cowards!
Landlords like: Looks like $1000 a month rent increase is on the horizon
Was thinking the same thing. Just like they’ve routinely done after any type of income gains made by the middle class.
Mad that we’re getting to this rather than just having employers pay people enough to live.
That wouldn’t solve the issue of jobs being disrupted though right?
With automation increasing in scope and quality at the pace it is, we very desperately need to divorce the concepts of "working a job" and "having enough to live comfortably".
Something like this causes less market distortions.
Paying people enough to live is much messier.
I’d be happy with both. But yes as others have said the future will only be more and more automated, this is a necessary transition in our economic system if we don’t want devastation. (There might be better ways to do it though)
Giving money for a small group of people when most of society doesn’t receive the same stipend isn’t UBI. It is a bonus to a select few that doesn’t impact the overall supply-demand curve on goods and services.
If everyone gets UBI it will impact the overall price people are willing to pay for rent, gas, food, luxuries.
Can I ask someone to give a solid rebuttal to why UBI isn’t going to simply be funneled back into the pockets of landlords and business owners, while also stripping benefits from current programs to pay for it.
How much regulation will need to be attached to UBI to mitigate against uncontrolled price increases?
My thoughts exactly. And once you have ubi, how do we stop politicians from saying "vote for me and I'll give you more money!" Which would almost certainly be popular but not fiscally responsible or sustainable
But we are doing this is exact thing for corporations right now, are you saying it’s ok to help millionaires and billionaires but not your fellow humans who just want to survive
How are those the same at all? I don't follow.
I think they mean tax cuts for the rich, over and over again. We subsidize billionaires in the hope that it will "trickle down", but that's been proven to be horse shit.
So let's stop giving money to the rich so they can horde it like dragons and try that experiment with the poor. Chances are that money doesn't get held in offshore bank accounts and instead gets reinvested into the economy, spurring growth.
They probably mean lobbying, bribes and general large subsidies for business interests. What we do now is politicians going "donate to me and I'll vote for business interests." Which is popular with wealthy businessmen and shareholders but not fiscally responsible or sustainable.
We give away lots of money in subsidies, stuff like CHIPS act, but talk about helping struggling and poor people and then suddenly everything is unfeasible and would instantly generate infinite inflation and the planet will explode.
Take a look at how Norway did it and see if it translates to the US. I feel like this wheel has already been invented in much more intelligently run countries.
Can you give some details to how it’s been done there and if their implementation translates to US?
They don’t have UBI there.
They have a welfare program where, if you’re a NEET under 30, you get free food, housing and can enroll in college for free.
That’s it.
Literally this. You've explained it here. I've explained it elsewhere.
UBI doesn't add up at scale (as in the government literally doesn't make enough to fund it, even if ALL revenue went towards it). So, it can't be applied to anyone but those who need it. And, voila... These people have reinvented welfare.
You aren't wrong. If every US resident received $1000 a month it would be about 4 trillion which is less than the 4.4 trillion raised in tax revenue in 2023...
The benefit of UBI vs "welfare" is you remove all of the overhead of deciding who does and doesn't qualify.
The thing everyone misses when you talk UBI though is you can't just pump new money into the system it has to come from taxes and the savings from getting rid of means based welfare. So absolutely taxes will go up. You need to pick a point where the UBI is effectively taxed away and everyone above that point pays more in taxes then before UBI was a thing and everyone below that point has a little more. It's about flattening wealth distribution.
With AI and automation some of this could come from corporate taxes going up as well.
So yes the outlays go up by 4 trillion but so does tax revenue resulting in a net zero change.
Not only that but giving money to just the select people who are below a certain income level is an encouragement not to earn more money. That seems completely counter to the whole concept to me. It needs to be universal but it also needs to be part of a careful package of regulations that prevent abuse by those who can take advantage of it as well (i.e. Landlords first and foremost). Otherwise it will only serve to accelerate the gap between the have-not and the ultra-wealthy.
My only thought that might be positive is that perhaps a UBI system would revitalize small towns by providing a means for some people to afford to live in a town that is struggling. Lower rent because lower opportunities but as the population grows that would change and more jobs might appear.
I have not seen anything worthwhile supporting UBI. Its a lot of people saying how great it would be to not have to worry about money.
Yeah. That would be great, but that's not how an economy works. If everyone gets $1200 a month you're just inflating your own economy. Nothing will change in the long term if everyone get the money.
UBI would help severely struggling people. But we already have a few programs for that in most places and they often do not work either. They very often incentivise people to stay poor because if they make more money they'll lose their benefits and actually make less money overall.
User deleted comment
26d
So you think in the future we'll all just suddenly share resources because we're now a team? This isn't star trek.
This is what is going to happen if AI replaces people. The company will pocket the profits. There's no question that is what is going to happen.
If you don't think that giving everyone an increased wage won't cause inflation you know very little about inflation, money, and history. These things have happened before, and are currently happening right now.
Giving every working American an extra $1200 a month would influx over 2 trillion into the economy yearly. Currently we produce 25 Trillion. Currently the Federal government collect 4.5 Trillion in revenue, and last year spent 6T+. So you think that by increasing our spending everything is just going to work out for us? We're already spending too much money in an unsustainable fashion. If you want UBI to work, you've have to take it from the current 6T, otherwise inflation will ramp up very quickly.
If you think prices are going to stay the same because people are used to paying a certain amount for a hamburger you're crazy. It literally violates just about every single thing we as a society know about large scale economies. In fact many of the fast food chains are raising prices to find out how much we're willing to pay as an experiment.
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26d
I understand your point perfectly, you explained it just fine. I just think you're wrong as your opinion on our future currently violates modern economic theory in support of 'if we don't do this, we'll all starve to death or rich people's robots will kill us'. You could be right, but I'd worry more about meteors killing me before that scenario.
Every single new technology had piles of people screaming about the end of times. People even thought seatbelts were going to kill us all at one point. Will AI change life? Probably. Chances are good it will be for the worse, and we'll be a little closer to a dystopia. 4 years ago people wanted UBI so they had time to 'create art', now AI is doing that to free us up to shovel coal.
My point was that you'll never get everyone together in a future where we all work for some greater good. Its not going to happen. The people who will use AI to replace jobs will be the same ones who use the money they made to stop UBI from ever happening-because they don't want to pay for it.
I still have not seen a single rational model that explains how UBI is going to help anyone other that 'like, money, dude!'. If its the future there should be a more rational debate in its favor than a brand new technology is going to force it on us.
Any UBI program that could actually be successful can't introduce new money to the system. It mostly has to come from higher taxes on people who make more money and reallocating funds from programs that would be obsolete with a UBI.
The only reason in a UBI system that you pay everyone is because it takes all of the decision making out of the system which removes a lot of overhead. You then pick a point where taxes should be high enough to remove the benefit of the UBI from people and anyone below that point is better off and anyone above that point is paying more in taxes.
If you argued the inflection point should be at the current median someone making $28,500+$12,000 would pay the same taxes someone making the median of $40,500. You then increase taxes so that by the time someone is making twice(randomly picked it for this example) the median they receive no benefit from UBI. People making more than twice the median now pay more in taxes to support the whole system. You absolutely need to play with these numbers and make it make sense but you can't just throw new money at the system.
That sounds like a nightmare scenario for a government to figure out. Especially a corrupt one with little incentive to make it work.
So a negative tax bracket for low income earners where the government gives you say $10,000 for the first $20,000 you earn?
That seems like a interesting idea if combined with increased tax levels on high earners, capital gains and corporations. I bet you could even increase taxes enough to pay for the whole thing and not change existing benefits in the US.
Yeah regardless of UBI we need more regulation on how and when rent prices can be increased.
But yeah there are major flaws with UBI. Either way it would have to increase yearly to match inflation.
I love the idea of UBI to help people but I just don’t see a way preventing businesses and landlords to just jack up the price on things. It might be unavoidable.
I'm as liberal as it gets and I absolutely do not support UBI. If we just regulate housing, insurance, Healthcare, etc. then people could afford to live. UBI should be a last resort after we've tried controlling the prices. You're absolutely right that, in the absence of price gouging regulations, UBI would basically be stealing directly from the middle class and giving it to landlords. Our middle class is already small enough.
We should also figure out the rampant hoarding and payments CEOs are getting, especially if they're conducting mass layoffs and failing metrics. The $56 billion Elon is trying to get would set up nearly 1.2 million families with $50,000 for a year. That's nearly 37,500 families making $50K for 30 years if you want to be more realistic about making it an income. Make it $30K a year and you jump to almost 2 million, or 62,000 families for 30 years. And that's just one payment to one CEO. One of the more egregious ones, sure, but most are getting ridiculous sums.
We watched what happened when 'everybody' got Covid money. Inflation went through the roof, and the wealth was further concentrated.
UBI works in limited studies BECAUSE it doesn't impact the larger economic picture. If everybody gets the same money, the prices go up to match that new floor. We literally just saw that.
So a re-think is needed there too.
Same for college tuition when loans were made available.
You're getting downvoted unfairly I think. It should go without saying that any kind of UBI would require additional systemic changes such as rent controls etc, otherwise prices will of course increase.
I think more money equals people being able to get better houses, and house prices increasing - with increased mortgages just gobbling up the extra cash. There would have to be a significant increase in housing supply to do something about that. It feels more likely we're headed towards significantly longer mortgages - in Japan 50+ year mortgages are a thing, and at one point (possibly not anymore, I don't know and can't find a definitive answer with a quick Google) offered 100 year loans for housing.
It feels quite possible that multigenerational loans will be the solution to ever-increasing housing prices, unfortunately, and much like we envy our parents for being able to buy a house for 40k, our kids will envy us for being able to buy one for 400k.
I hope I'm wrong!
Ignore the downvotes. You are correct. UBI is both a bad idea and literally unfeasible.
Why do we keep blaming helping the poor as the sole cause of inflation?
There were supply chain problems, a pandemic and a war in Europe that also contributes. Oh and plain ole corporate greed.
So there are multiple causes but let’s focus on the “helping the poor with $1,400 checks” as the only reason and it’s getting old. Plus inflation is a world wide problem. Did those $1,400 checks we got in the US cause inflation in Europe? SMH.
People just love blaming the poor for everything.
This is not a 'basic income trial'. Not even close.
Every single trial or study of basic income you see around here is dishonest. They are actually trials of helicopter money, not basic income. And helicopter money is AMAZING!
In a real basic income, you take money from a community/country and redistribute it to that community/country. You take money from the rich - and give it to everyone else. In a real basic income, all the money comes from the community or country itself. The people have to pay for it all. The money was there to begin with, and you are just moving it around.
But, every single UBI trial you see doesn't take the money from the community at all. It just helicopters-in massive amounts of cash, as if by magic! And NO SHIT it looks AMAZING!!! Free money from the heavens is always amazing. It's only when people have to pay for it all that the problems arise.
Helicopter money is always amazing. Always. It's free money - that doesn't cost anyone anything.
This trial isn't testing basic income, it's actually testing helicopter money. It's completely dishonest. And, like always, it's going to show that helicopter money is WONDERFUL!!! But, it won't mention helicopter money at all.
Is UBI free money that doesn't cost anyone anything? No it is not. Not even close. Every penny is paid for by members of the community/country. It's redistributed money, not magical money.
In very rural areas like Oklahoma has, that's the difference of working and living paycheck to paycheck, and living comfortably. I'd have my house fixed up, save up more for emergencies, and saving for my little one's education, without stressing each pay period. I wouldn't say I'd move, the location in town is good. If I had to move, it'd be towns, and I'd stay rural anyways.
No you wouldn't. The businesses around you would slowly increase their prices knowing you have more income to give to them. UBI will never work long term in a capitalist society. Markets will move faster than government.
UBI will never work long term in a wildly unrestrained capitalist society.
Man. I wish I could get in on this. This would help me immensely
Didn't Google just fire thousands of people in the last few months?
And they're about to fire a bunch more.
That'll get them 3 months of rent.
Why not make living expenses cheaper?? Lower the cost of daily needs and people wouldn't need the help?!?!
Universal basic income of $12,000 a year comes into full effect for everyone. Rejoice!
In other news, housing/rental prices rise $12,000 over the same period shows new report.
;)
Congrats on discovering housing price control.
Google Company Town, they'll be paid in Google Cash next. (nah, that's a lie, they'll just kill it as soon as it benefits people)
I think Americans will struggle with this, but governments are supposed to do this. (Functional, non-corrupt governments are obviously preferred). This is exactly what taxes should do. Help people.
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26d
It's a five year study, not quite 10 but better than one.
I think the point of the study is to see if the short term “helping hand” is enough to make a difference in the long term. That’s why there’s a control group. It’s not like they’ll stop surveying everyone after their year is up. Actually, knowing Google, they may…
It's not a trial, it's PR for a handful of grants.
These trials are just them reinventing welfare.
This cannot be scaled nationwide to everyone at once, so what's the point?
UBI is an idea that quite literally makes no sense and solves nothing at all.
These things sound great and do great in trials but won't ever work when everyone receives them
There isn't any shortage of money just hoarding it in the wrong places.
If everyone gets 12k a year you can bet cost of living will creep up by that much in no time
Meanwhile the tax charges on middle and high earners will stifle any economy further (assuming it's paid for by individual taxation)
How do you keep inflation down giving money to the population? What happens when the average rent goes up 12000 a year? I’m all for UBI but when we did something similar with Covid, inflation was rampant
Easy. Let the market compete and people will move to where rent is cheaper. This is doubly true since they won't be as tied down to a location for work.
easy you use a small sample size so that the inflation you would get from wide rollout isn't a problem for your experiment lol
This just in rent and housing has gone up by 1000 dollars a month
This is how life debt starts. If we are going to have universal basic income it needs to come directly from the government and not some greedy corporation.
It can’t be just UBI, the program itself must raise money and make money on interest.
I think we'll always be "too little too late" for a lot of people in high risk situations in the US. We just have this built in bias towards kicking those that are down, and that sucks.
Is that from all the profits of funding and aiding genocide in the global south?
Maybe a housing voucher system like food stamps would be less vulnerable to exploitation.
Housed where? That’s nothing
They just want to know what people will spend the money on so they can sell more shit. It will help folk out don't get me wrong. But when you give people money, they get accustomed to that money. Like giving people free coffee everyday for a month then you take it away. The repercussions it has towards families whom already are struggling... if they don't learn to make that 1000 bucks a month they will go right back to the same conditions they were in before hand.
Our corporate overlords have deemed us worthy of experimentation
I'm sure it would help, but $12k/yr wouldn't even cover 1/3 of my rent...
What's the catch?
I do not believe for even 1 second that Google is doing for no benefit beyond good PR. I do not trust Google in the slightest.
aka free checks for landlords
Trickle it out to them and only allow them to use it for housing. Keep them poor AND dependent.
A corporation trying to solve a problem they created.
UBI sounds like a great idea, but it won't defeat supply and demand. If more people have more money for housing, that money will just compete against itself for the limited availability of housing, and prices will rise even more.
Maybe people on the low end end up slightly better, but I'm putting this one in the "unintended consequences" bucket. It could work if only a small # of people have UBI, but then that wouldn't be a true UBI.
How about Google builds housing for people instead.
National basic income is going to be a fact eventually, I'm glad it's being tested.
Oh, look.
FEEL-GOOD GUERILLA MARKETING
If it's from Google there's a catch somewhere. The "don't be evil" days are long gone.
As long as it’s not race based, but economic classed based, this is cool.
Or. You know. Pay them what they need to live.
UBI is useless without additional housing.
Just families? Why not everyone? Plus $12k a year won’t help much honestly.
So it’s Google - when will Google cancel this.
User deleted comment
26d
Stop. Pay your fucking fareshare in taxes.
“Alphabet-owned Google is co-funding a pilot program that will give $2.8 million to 450 California families on the verge of homelessness to test whether the cash helps them secure long-term housing.
Google.org, the search giant's philanthropic arm, will help provide 225 families with $1,000 a month in guaranteed basic income for 12 months, on a rolling basis over five years. Another 225 families will serve as a control group and receive $50 a month over the same period.”
I’m sure the program will be successful. I know $1,000 guaranteed income would have helped me after my divorce. After my divorce, my two kids and I were homeless for two years.