Comment by jpatokal | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jpatokal | Hacker News Reader

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This recent story in the Atlantic does a good job of capturing the quiet desperation of motel-homeless life.

They thought it would be a brief stay, but they ended up staying in various hotels like the Red Roof Inn and the GuestHouse Inn for the next two and a half years. All six of them would pile into one room, with two of the boys sleeping on the floor and everyone vying for bathroom time. They could rarely stay at a hotel longer than 28 days—many establishments have time limits—and so would have to pack up their bags every few weeks and find a new place to live. “I think the worst part of it was not having your privacy, your own room, we all had to share one big room,” Karina told me. “And not having a place to call home during Christmas.” ...

Moving into a place where they had a kitchen and some privacy was an almost indescribable relief. Karina posted pictures of scrambled eggs she made on Facebook, puzzling friends who didn’t know that the family had been homeless for two and a half years, because being able to cook in her own kitchen again filled her with joy.

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/12/the-nev...

I slept in a usually 7x7 tent for 5.7 years with my two adult special needs sons.

I am not asserting that their quiet desperation is invalid. But please don't dismiss my experience as invalid.

I do a lot of writing on things like homelessness and housing issues. I wish tech giants would abandon their advocacy of UBI and replace it with trying to solve affordable housing for this country. But I cannot begin to tell you what a kick in the stomach it feels like for you to try to "educate" me on the issue of homelessness here, like I have no clue whereof I speak.

I think they were just trying to contribute to the discussion. Why assume a hostile position towards the comment?

If it is mere contribution to the discussion, it is quite badly handled. If they did not intend to rebut me, they could have posted it as a top level comment instead of as a reply. If they wished to engage me without coming across as dismissive, the framing of it needs a lot of work.

Your comment also comes across as subtly dismissive and accusatory due to what you choose to comment on here. If you only wish to engage in discussion, why feel the need to criticize my reply? Why not say something constructive in response to my top level comment above?

Women, people of color, the poor and other disenfranchised groups face this sort of thing a great deal. It is rather maddening as it puts people in a no win situation. Such groups get no respect. When they complain of it, it is yet another thing to criticise them for.

It would be nice if the world stopped such insidious patterns.

No offense, but I think you're misinterpreting a normal pattern of discussion on this site. jpatokal's comment was pretty clearly not trying to dismiss your experience as invalid but simply contributed a similar story.

Just because it's normal here doesn't mean it's not what it is.

I see UBI as a means to make life more affordable. Assuming price stasis across introduction of UBI, can't a family just use the extra money to help pay rent/mortgage costs?

Ultimately, cost of living is one of the big differences between first-world society and the rest of the world. UBI is a way to share the fruits of productivity of the first world among its common classes, effectively reducing their net monthly expenses.

There are a number of problems with UBI. The largest issue is that tech giants say they want to create a UBI because many jobs are going away permanently. These jobs pay like $20k to $50k annually. Proposed UBI is usually $10k. The most generous figure I have seen (from Sam Altman) is $18k.

Then the rest of the article talks in glowing terms about how lovely it will be for underpaid workers to have this extra money. These articles never actually explore what life would be like if your $50k job disappears, you are doomed to only get $10k UBI and have no hope of getting another job.

Another issue is that we have a serious, long standing shortage of affordable housing. We tore down about 80% of SROs in a couple of decades and never replaced them. Average size of new housing has more than doubled since the 1950s. If you do nothing to address the issue of affordable housing, then UBI solves nothing.

My fear is that tech giants focusing on UBI means that restructuring work to better distribute it, addressing the need to fix health care and affordable housing will all get ignored because UBI is supposed to be some panacea. But it's not. It is basically rich people imagining they can solve this by cutting a check. They can't. That doesn't work. If there simply isn't affordable, basic housing, UBI won't get you off the street.

If you're on UBI you don't need affordable housing because the huge array of very cheap housing in currently non-desirable areas.

The kind that is described in the article. Some of those will probably pay you for moving in.

And then you have whole day to yourself to figure out additional income on top of UBI.

Is UBI anything but a pipe dream in the US? (I'm sure it's possible in some European countries in a few years)

But maybe the US should just try fix mental health, regressive taxes, low minimum wages, high housing costs, cruel prisons, and health care.

Then move on to decent unemployment benefits, day care, maternity leave and maybe in some far fetched future you can talk about UBI.

Today UBI in the US seems like wishful thinking. You have lots of low hanging fruit you could fix first. The idea of helping people who needs help isn't controversial, maybe try that first?

> Then move on to decent unemployment benefits, day care, maternity leave and maybe in some far fetched future you can talk about UBI.

One point in favour of UBI is that it could replace all of these individual benefits.

UBI would need to be dramatically higher than 10k a year to cover healthcare.

"Medicare for All" is a prerequisite for UBI.

I'm actually not sure about that. Many people could spend their share more wisely than if it is thrown into the mouth of healthcare machine.

If healthcare is allowed to eat into UBI it will quickly find a way to consume it completely.

Single payer is _ludicrously_ more efficient at buying everyone healthcare because it can buy in bulk and it can be hard-headed about cost-benefit decisions.

When it's your baby, the idea of paying $50 000 for a 1% chance of not needing to amputate her arm is a snap - of course you'll pay. But the single payer says hold on, that means we're paying an average of $5M per arm saved, arms aren't worth $5M, our tax payers say they're not willing to give us more than $2M per arm, offer the treatment for $20 000 or no deal.

Making people invest in their healthcare _can_ help with some personal care decisions, like whether to take exercise, eat better, maybe give up smoking, people who feel like it costs them money when they're sick are a little more careful in some ways. But a LOT of healthcare spending is unpredictable, so isn't affected by this at all, including very expensive urgent and emergency care. Overall single payer wins out in terms of both how much you spend and outcomes.

A UBI does leave open the question of what you do with the small handful of people studies suggest will not spend their UBI wisely. If you give everybody $300 per week, 999 out of 1000 of them will spend it mostly on food, and shelter, and other useful things. Their priorities might not be my priorities maybe they eat a Big Mac instead of making a healthy salad, but they are behaving wisely by their own standards. But one person out of a thousand will spend it all on lottery tickets, booze or heroin, and then what do we do about that? Leave them to die? Really?

> But one person out of a thousand will spend it all on lottery tickets, booze or heroin, and then what do we do about that? Leave them to die? Really?

What do we with people that sell their food stamps and/or use their existing means tested cash benefits that way?

Is this a problem? Sure, but it's not a new problem with UBI compared to the status quo.

I'm actually not sure. As a matter of fact, I often pay for medicine out of pocket, dentistry especially. It's kind of nice, I can choose the place, be sure that they're interested in me as a client.

I have a coverage from employer, but chose not to use it because I don't trust the institutions enrolled in the program, and they're further from my home. It's all about having more choices. I have also bought coverage for my child, and I'm pretty sure it's much better than anything that comes already paid.

If you have cancer, of course you would want to be taken care of. But if you live a routine life, I don't see how you are benefitting from throwing money at healthcare.

WRT "one of thousands". Water from drink fountains is free. Dumpster diving is free. You won't starve in a week, and by the time next BI payment arrives, they will probably learn something.

Single payer does not mean single provider. In fact, with capitation, incentivizing wellness, providers earn more while improving outcomes while reducing costs (per capita).

It’s all about the incentives. A small detail that gets ignored by the Freedom Market™ zealots.

Still, single payer plans are usually all-you-can-eat buffets. Quality of the produce is not terribly high. And not chosen for your specific needs. And selection is worse than a la carte.

Usually? By which you mean "never"? Single payer is just a more equitable form of rationing. Don't over think this.

The rest I'm going to just ignore.

Platinum thoughts of leftist kids.

Yup. Worked in the healthcare space. Kinda know what I'm talking about. Reality has a well known liberal bias.

>what do we do about that? Leave them to die? Really?

What do we do now? Why does that have to change?

The trouble is that in the US, it is controversial.

It is entirely possible UBI could leapfrog a lot of the profit-taking industries that have built up around the US social safety net the way cell towers leapfrogged telephone lines in the developing world.

Whoah there, you're completely misreading my comment. The single sentence I wrote, "This recent story in the Atlantic does a good job of capturing the quiet desperation of motel-homeless life" isn't even directed at you personally, but at HN readers who want to understand more about the topic.

So: of course staying in motels is far preferable to life on the streets, and it sounds like you had it far worse than the family profiled in the Atlantic. My sole point was that precarious living in a string of motels is still homelessness and -- as the article explains -- far more challenging than the average HNer (like me) might think.

It would have made an excellent top level comment, with much less room for misinterpretation.

Thank you for clarifying.

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