A much more efficient way to help people is just to give them money directly, and then people can spend it on whatever they think they need.
It’s very likely the quality of service is heavily affected by the same general forces.
In addition to that, any effort which greatly increases access to services to a broader spectrum of people will usually lead to a short term reduction of quality as the supply catches up with the new demand. A logical solution to this would be to phase in the demand, but unfortunately it’s not politically viable at all (politicians of all stripes want to be credited for the changes they make, and phasing it in over a period of time means the costs impact the budget almost immediately, but the benefits take time to filter through, which will likely be a political disaster).
I spent several years working on social services IT. The biggest welfare beneficiaries are companies like IBM, CSC, Accenture, Unisys, Northrup Grumman, etc and their employees.
That’s why some politicians were so terrified of the COVID relief programs. The government efficiently provided direct cash aid to millions of people with minimal fraud while the complex controlled systems like unemployment insurance were just raided by fraudsters. We made people’s lives measurably better, saved the economy from collapse, etc, and then took it all away.
https://www.fastcompany.com/90713747/workers-800-billion-ppp...
You’re going to have to be more specific or offer some evidence, because a cursory search suggests there was massive fraud.
To take the least sensationalized source: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-takes-acti...
They’re estimating more than half a billion dollars and are just getting started.
UI, which I specifically mentioned, was a fraud carnival.
$247 billion in improper payments in fiscal 2022
"At least" $35 billion in pandemic relief money - $29 billion was in the Pandemic Protection Program - $6.9 billion was in the Economic Injury Disaster Loan program
IRS has 975 tax and money laundering cases related to pandemic fraud with a total of $3.2 billion in alleged fraud. 236 already sentenced for avg. 37 months in prison. ~100% conviction rate.
From: https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-23-105523.pdf "the lower bound of this fraud rate (7.6 percent) extrapolated to total spending across all Unemployment Insurance (UI) programs ... suggest over $60 billion in fraudulent UI payments." - Cases of Proven Fraud: "currently $4.3 billion dollars of fraud based on formal determinations"
From: https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-22-104397 and https://www.asas.org/taking-stock/blog-post/taking-stock/202... - Coronavirus Food Assistance Program (CFAP) provided producers $31.0 billion for various commodities ... half of the producers that GAO reviewed did not provide full support for their payments. The payments are therefore potentially improper. - USDA’s Business Center 2021 payment integrity review for CFAP estimated that CFAP had a significant improper payment rate for the fiscal year 2020 ... estimated that that $450M were improper.
MLK having expressed a favorable opinion about it makes UBI less susceptible to "that's evil, naive communism"-style attacks.
Can't think of a single reason.
Cost of living expenses after UBI = x + UBI.
The price of goods will always rise to what the market will bear.
If you inject money into a market with schemes like UBI, all you do is creating a forcing function for inflation.
Fundamentally, money represents a debt that society owes based on creation/consumption of goods and services.
If you create money (debt symbols) without the corresponding good or service, you devalue the debt. So, an apple that was worth $1 now becomes worth $2 because your symbols that represent debt have been artificially modified.
Then, first order thinking drives yet another "UBI+" solution to give more money, and the cycle continues until an apple is "one billion dollars". World history has many examples of this, but you don't really need to look harder than covid related inflation.
The best solution to human poverty and suffering that we've ever created is economic opportunity. When given the chance, humans will thrive and succeed.
The best way to create economic opportunity is to reduce barriers to success (like onerous income taxation, and excessive regulation) and to invest in infrastructure that enhances and supports economic activity.
Command economies have never worked in history, though lots of folks have tried [1].
It's good to learn from past mistakes.
It's also sort of a fun thought experiment. When you grant this power to the government, the sorts of things they can do. There's lot of obvious things like "make eggs cheaper!!", but the more fun thought experiment is with something esoteric like the sex industry.
Let's conceive of the correct pricing for a lap dance.
That's a bit complex, it's certainly not fair to charge the same amount for everyone - an attractive, skilled dancer would be forced to charge the same as someone who is unattractive and disinterested. We're going to need a rate table.
Hygiene, attractiveness, skill, friendliness. What else? Age? The body politic has decided that you're not allowed to factor age into a lap dance or to discriminate on what dancer you chose based on age. So we can exclude that from our rate table.
Going to need to create a bureaucracy to develop fair standards for all of those things.
Also, as a footnote, let's create another agency to advertise exotic dancing to the elderly as an excellent career opportunity.
Of course, we'd need to add more regulation that would require the dancers to register their weight and attractiveness with a government agency, and we'd need inspectors to verify that. We'd also probably need to watchers to watch the watchers because the inspectors may be tempted by some "extra services" to inflate their scoring, allowing a dancer to charge more. Probably also going to need to add some undercover officers to make sure that unenlightened customers aren't expressing an opinion on what age of dancer they receive.
Of course, all lap dances aren't created equal - so rates may vary based on how many people are involved, whether the patron is allowed to touch the dancer, and if so the minimum necessary security involved. We'll probably need some secret shoppers to go out and verify that the rates are being charged properly and in-line with dictates.
This would all be pretty costly though, so we'll have to increase taxes on the dancers to pay for it all. But we can't allow them to raise their rates, that would defeat the purpose.
Now we'll need a way to confront the unpatriotic, unwilling masses who have for completely selfish reasons decided that a non-lucrative career in exotic dancing doesn't seem very fun.
Regulation is the answer! Like the Soviet Union, let's decide what profession folks would go into at a young age. Perfect!
Hmm, quality is suffering. Strangely, forcing folks into a profession to meet the needs of our dictated economic constraints resulted in a sub-par experience. There aren't any customers anymore. Fine, mark the whole thing as a loss and outlaw it, certainly can't have an underground economy operating on market forces undermining what our enlightened leaders have decided for us.
(Psst. there's a reason why command economies fail, and freedom matters. Even China understands this.)
[1] https://helpfulprofessor.com/command-economy-examples/
(edited to try to make it more funny)
The economically desirable things that UBI or any other handout are spent on, should fall into two categories. Things the government pays for itself because it's going to be the only buyer or a major buyer. Things the government has limited debit card systems for (E.G. food stamps) because there's already a market and they won't be a major buyer.
Reducing taxes will not meaningfully increase economic opportunity for people in poverty, because they are not the causes of most people's poverty. Reducing regulation may help, but only because "regulation" is broad and includes things like onerous means-testing that makes it harder for people in need to get resources. Jobs help, and AFAIK there's not much regulation making it harder to get a job.
Those are the same thing.
Increasing taxes = raised prices.
Raised prices = inflationary pressure.
Inflationary pressure = higher UBI.
Rinse, repeat.
Bloat an already obese government by cranking taxes up to 100%, society collapses.
Put the government on the fasting cure, starve the beast, and most folks end up with more in their pocket and happier.
How about I add $100 tax to each apple sale? What happens to apple prices? I'd be forced to finally develop a taste for cherry pie.
How much and who to tax have been arm wrestled over since humans figured out that houses are nicer than caves.
Cities need both taxes and sewers to survive, but too much of either will stink enough to drive off anyone who can.
Take a peek at That Which is Seen and That Which is Not Seen [1]. Bastiat had his head screwed on straight for a Frenchman, and had it figured out in 1850.
Other notable things: America's historic tax rates (pre-Reagan), social democratic leaning countries. Higher happiness, somehow. Top marginal rate doesn't affect the vast majority of people, should go without saying.
But you changed the subject. We were discussing what relative tax changes may or may not do to inflation, not your libertarian dreams.
2. UBI can (and should imo) be funded through redistribution (taxation)
You seem to believe in markets. UBI allows us to have most of the benefits of a dynamic market system whilst avoiding the worst aspects - crushing poverty for those whose market value of labour is extremely low.
That isn't how negative income taxes work at all. Come on educate yourself on the topic before writing a comment like that. In a negative income tax system a break even point is set where you pay exactly as much as you are getting. For the average person this means nothing changes for them. It is only at the high end where people pay significantly more in than they get and at the bottom end where people get out more than they pay in.
The funding problem for UBI has been solved a long time ago. There is no inflation problem. Yes, the UBI will be small but who exactly expects a large UBI? It's not like you get generous welfare payments today.
Surely you're not just waving out the supply chain issues and reduced productive capacity of the whole world due to lockdowns.
Was inflation in the USA higher than inflation in countries that didn't do direct deposits to people? As far as I know, it wasn't. That seems like a more fair starting point on studying effects of direct deposits.
Clearly giving people two $500 checks over the span of two years is the problem
This is the central logical fallacy in your argument: you're equating UBI with inflation. UBI is different because it's funded through taxation, which holds the money supply constant.
The best solution to human poverty and suffering that we've ever created is economic opportunity. When given the chance, humans will thrive and succeed.
This is the central emotional fallacy in your argument: that a person's fate is decided by their actions. You're applying your own belief system, rather than using systems-level thinking to do the work of root cause analysis, meta analysis, epidemiological analysis around the psychological effects of wealth inequality, etc. That's why you feel very strongly about your solution, without having evidence to support it, and why people like me who have a different life experience don't subscribe to it.
If we study history, we see that technology was available after the Green Revolution, post WWII, to feed everyone in the world by the late 1960s. We see that so many measures of poverty like infant mortality are unnecessary symptoms, because modern medicine made birth control pills available and pregnancy safe, again by the late 60s. Same with basic measures of equality like the percentage of the workforce who are women, which was rising substantially by the 60s, but close to parity in the western world by the 1980s.
What's really going on is that a luddite backlash occurs every time that humankind overcomes adversity. For example, Nixon started the War on Drugs as a pretense to put US leftists in prison, by making the plant medicines they use to expand consciousness illegal. The Vietnam War, Oil Embargo, trickle-down economics, loss of unions, Savings and Loan Scandal, first Gulf War, Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act, Dot Com Bubble popping, 9/11, Second Gulf War, Who Killed the Electric Car, outsourcing, Housing Bubble popping, 2016 election, 30% tariff on imported solar panels, and even the COVID-19 pandemic (I could go on forever) are a direct result of that fear-mongering and othering dividing us along ideological lines. Which all stemmed from Nixon's and Goldwater's Southern Strategy to enforce segregation.
Reports like this begin to make sense when one understands the sabotage and corruption that create wealth inequality:
https://www.cbpp.org/research/poverty-and-inequality/a-guide...
And we see that if we cut taxes on the wealthy further, then wealth inequality increases. One person's definition of opportunity becomes another's definition of subjugation. If we continue on the path we're on, then the National Debt will succeed in finally taking away all self-determination and agency from US workers, forcing them to stay underemployed to survive. Taking away the very opportunity and choice which you so advocate.
With the arrival of AI and sustainable solutions to preserve the environment, we're again at one of these crossroads. We can embrace solutions like UBI and free humanity from forced labor, or we can double down on the failed solutions of the past century and move further into dystopia.
I hope that some of these breadcrumbs help you on your journey of discovery. If your first instinct is to outright reject what I'm suggesting, then I hope you take some time to think upon the events in your life which obfuscated the things I've said. I'll do the same, because your truth is valid to me and if we would listen more, I think that we could solve these longstanding problems and transition to a 21st century economy which works for everyone.
"First order thinking" is not a euphemism for "I'm right because I said so".
Society needs that sometimes. It can be paralyzed by Nth order thinking to the point where gross injustice is allowed to survive for much too long.
A response like "just add more regulation and price caps" as a solution to dealing with runaway inflation is definitely first order thinking, as is (in my opinion) "the solution to poverty is to just give people money (UBI)".
That’s nearly an 8.8% increase from the current 45,487 units total (including all houses) https://scag.ca.gov/sites/main/files/file-attachments/santa-...
It remains to be seen whether that will reduce housing costs.
If your goal is a paid off place to live, SM isn’t the best choice unless you are either high income already or are set to receive a windfall somehow.
A two bedroom hovel in my city nets about $1200 section 8 voucher. A two bedroom in a nice development in the burbs is about $1300, and includes parking, pool and gym.
Landlords are like oil people, it’s all about extractive value. You want to pump the most cash possible with the minimum overhead possible. Building housing gets attractive only when the government subsidizes construction through low rates and rapid tax depreciation. A relative was the lead on development of a $18M hotel. He probably has $750k in. Most of the money is made with accelerated depreciation. The hotel itself is an afterthought, you couldn’t build it without the backend tax subsidy.
I can't think of many examples where the government does a better job producing things than the private sector. Even in countries with, for example, socialized medicine, and assuming you think that works well, the services (I think) are still provided by private companies. Maybe the VA Hospitals in the US - though I'm not sure that's an example of the government doing better or not.
Existing property capital owners have a vested interest in not building more housing. Building more housing will negatively impact their profits. Existing property capital owners also have far more power than the petty bourgeoise investors seeking to "build more." This conflict of "NIMBYs vs YIMBYs" exemplifies a core contradiction of capitalism that Karl Marx articulated 150 years ago, except "NIMBYs" are not individual homeowners; they are rather the idols of the petty bourgeoise "YIMBYs." See: contradiction.
Objectively, the working class has no place in this conflict and will not profit from building more housing. Of course we should build more and better housing for working people, but that is not what the petty bourgeoise investors actually want; they want to build more housing for profit. Big difference.
yeah, by extension, it is a problem with any action you take under that property regime. but don't let that prevent you from talking about what the solutions to problems must be.
Hasn't productivity been on the rise the past X years? Shouldn't we have a little slack by this point?
That being said, there are also claimed and real second-order effects of policies whose first-order economic effect is deadweight-loss. The entirety of government fits this description! To use the most trite and least controversial example, confiscating resources to build roads is redistribution from heavier taxpayers to heavier road users (incl downstream beneficiaries), but the second-order effects of a functional transportation are enough that we don't consider it to "make the country as a whole poorer"
I do support UBI because it will probably prevent some number of deaths of despair, but capitalists will never let UBI happen for this reason. The reserve army of labor must be trimmed and maintained to prevent a worker uprising, which is the primary function of the opioid crisis.
Greed, seemingly fundamental human nature, causes corruption and suffering. I don't think we've yet developed a society or tool that is immune from such issues, though competition among providers does seem to help.
I’ve had more than one conversation with my wife about just keeping the house empty instead while we’re gone, but I still think I have a moral obligation to rent to someone if I can.
It's interesting that I said government self inflicted a lot of this in the rent space by over-regulating and you seem to think this is an example of the free market not working rather than the government breaking the market.
Yeah, and feathers fall at the same speed as baseballs if you mitigate friction.
But any which way you look at it, and even if not perfect, giving money is the best way to help of the available options.
Capital tends to accrete capital. If you aren't actively hostile to passive capital accretion, eventually you'll end up with a handful of people making most of the capital allocation decisions.
Unfortunately "making the most" sometimes (usually) means manufacturing fidget spinners for direct landfill deposit, instead of allocating resources for housing, healthcare, food, and education.
See the bloody scooter rental people, printer companies trying to funnel people to ink by subscription, Keurig/Juicero. Practically every fintech ever.
I see people stop working because they'd rather not deal with others when they already have their needs met - I have no problem with this.
I see people who continuously pop more kids to keep the gravy train running - this is an issue.
I have seen people sell the products (a lot of it is food) they get for free and people who sell the vouchers because they already have too much; this to me is an issue too.
I see people who lie all of the time to get benefits they wouldn't qualify for otherwise; literally millionaires lying to get free stuff from the government.
I don't have a big social circle but it seems everyone I come into contact with is on the take and sucking hard on the government teat.
I think the approach needs to be more holistic and consider all of the different programs people qualify for - between WIC/TANF most people will get more food than they can consume. I think they should be nontransferable (maybe it already is, I don't understand how people end up selling them) and I don't think they should be progressive. Means-testing should be ended and everybody should qualify for these programs.
The idea that people are getting by for years and years based on these as sources of income is a myth.
While some folks do get benefits when they could be working many more are denied anything despite obviously being disabled and the money that is paid is a relative pittance that few would choose given any alternative.
> I see people who continuously pop more kids to keep the gravy train running - this is an issue.
This is basically a myth. There are TANF in most states has a lifetime limit of 5 years or less and we are talking about $283 per month for a single parent single child household and it doesn't scale linearly. The next child nets you an additional $44 for instance. Exact figures vary by state.
People effectively sell vouchers or food benefits because they are desperately poor and need other things. As the refrain goes "food stamps don't buy diapers". In the case of WIC the vouchers may be for things that they literally don't need can't eat which will expire and thereby be lost.
This is an example of the inefficiency of buying things for people instead of letting them buy their own things.
It's a miserable living experience for their children. Welfare queens do exist even if they don't look like the media portrays them.
As I stated, I'm not against social programs, but I think there's substantial waste and program goals need to be realigned. It needs to be reimagined, and not from ivory towers like the techno-elite that gathers here on HN.
People might scam the system because they can't afford the kids they have, but nobody is having more kids just to scam the system.
Absolutely utterly false. Witnessed it personally.
I absolutely know both the financial details as well as personal motivations. Others in that sphere I do not have as much intimate knowledge of but they follow the same pattern and social circles.
This topic is something HN (or rather the demographics that tend to post on HN) simply has a giant blind spot on.
It's not so much that each kid is a net benefit. It's that having kids are a requirement to access many government programs in my state. Single folks simply don't get help. I still know people in my past life who have never worked a single day and have had all expenses paid for by the state using such programs. Add some child support in and it's a way to live, even if a pretty crappy one. There is also very little planning for when the benefits end as the kids age out.
I really think every young adult should have to spend a year living in a section 8 complex as an assistant super. It may open many eyes to the state of the US and our social condition.
As stated, I have personally witnessed this exact behavior. The common belief in certain circles seems to be this is unheard of and uncommon but I absolutely do not believe the mainstream statistics on the matter.
It's not just kids. It's a whole way of life. Usually SSDI is involved among other such shenanigans as well. It goes deep - to the point of ensuring your teenage kids show up to school exactly the minimum number of days to not get dinged on benefits.
" not just kids. It's a whole way of life. Usually SSDI is involved among other such shenanigans as well. It goes deep - to the point of ensuring your teenage kids show up to school exactly the minimum number of days to not get dinged on benefits."
Adding details isn't making this more plausible. Nobody is denying YOUR life experience just your third hand misunderstanding of other people's.
Now you have them living on child support, fraudulent disability, and neglecting their kids.
Have you considered that maybe you have skeevy family and this is not normal.
Because you can't imagine it or haven't seen it that doesn't mean it's a myth. I have known women who continuously have more kids from different fathers. I think many people ignore the fact that people can also qualify for getting their rent paid, free healthcare for the kids, etc. I have seen it in several different states, lived in the same apartments as them and now know about them from their family members who are my acquaintances.
But I agree with you on inefficiency. As I said, I think we need a holistic approach that looks at the overall needs and gets rid of some of the programs and just hands out cash as you said maybe.
It's very interesting to me that so many people these days are telling me what I've personally witnessed is not real.
Amazing how my personal bubble growing up apparently are the only ones committing such acts and literally no one else if you go by the stats.
Notable virtually no cash money which is basically required to live and work requirements for other benefits.
Welfare is what poor people rely on in addition to working not what they do instead of working.
This is why virtually everyone on food stamps is either temporarily between jobs, working, retired, disabled.
You can't just keep having kids and actually live indoors because the government will give you more food stamps but not more money.
What part of tanif being a few hundred a month and having a lifetime maximum of 5 years isn't getting through?
More kids = more poverty. The only angle to work is child support not welfare which is obviously the disconnect here.
The people I have seen who really milk the system work for cash, live with their boyfriend/SO and remain unmarried to keep the benefits coming (and just lie saying that the father isn't in the picture). So the burden of healthcare/food/rent is on the state and all of the income is fun money. Trucks/SUVs, jewelry, trips, rental houses, etc. follow. The kids only benefit as far as not starving, but they get free food at school/day care most of the year anyway so most stamps get sold. There's some who do very well and just stop caring about TANF anyway because it's overall pretty low value.
Another I've seen is just lying on the application so they get their benefits (I imagine similar to the others they say their husband/SO isn't in the picture) while they have a steady income stream from renting out their house.
Much better would be to give everybody $1000 (or pick your number) per month directly, when they attend a private school. Regardless of how much that school costs. This preserves everybody’s full agency, as well as healthy competition.
Running those programs is of course non trivial so the capitalist naturally offer to run them for the government at a modest fee.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard a conservative say that life is fair. It’s more common to hear talk about “life isn’t fair” and how people shouldn’t expect every unfair thing to be corrected for them by someone else.
That often leads to the idea that if you’re poorer than me, you’re probably not working as hard as I am. And giving you handouts is unfair and offensive, because you just need to work for it
America is objectively and statistically one of the better places to succeed in this way, despite the shortcomings. If you believe that nobody or very few people think the “American Dream” is real, you’re probably in a bubble. This kind of out of touch cynicism is only really rampant on social media.
Which, in the case of immigrants coming to the United States, is often exactly what happens, proving that it is still mostly true.
Americans don't appreciate how good they have it.
This is the majority of spending on poverty, and it's literally direct transfers.
So I'm really confused by this comment.
The reason we spend money on special programs is because things like job training and drug addiction would never be taken care of by just handing out free money.
Based on the criticism I read about it, I think these clearing up these misconceptions is important if the USA is going to have a working welfare system.
Promoting affluence and the individual pursuit of happiness are two essential core values of the USA.
Well, then we better get rid of our entire banking, payments, and public debt financing system.
It was a bit of a mind bender to learn that Treasury auctions cannot fail. The Primary Dealers have to make a market, the the Fed has to provide them with whatever additional reserves they require to do so.
That also puts the lie to the nonsense about what happens if China stops buying our debt. Directly of course the answer is absolutely nothing. The Primary Dealers will continue to make a market. We would however notice if China embargoed us. And that’s something a lot of people somehow miss by focusing on the financial shenanigans. At some point economic activity has to be about real production.
And that’s the best argument for UBI. Postulate that the productive side of our economy is running considerably below capacity and then increasing demand via monthly helicopter drops isn’t crazy. I have my doubts about the truth of that postulate though in the real economy.
It's totally systemic. America has socialism for the rich and rugged individualism for everyone else.
From my perspective, the issue is that a lot of politicians operate as goal-oriented rather than systems-oriented problem solvers.
Many government programs generally operate as "give a man food" rather than "teach that man to fish".
It's no wonder that many problems are far further from being solved despite decades of cash pumped into them.
PS: If you're feeling butt-hurt about a comment, I welcome constructive feedback. Downvotes are fine, but do nothing to enhance mutual understanding. Tell me why goals are better than systems: I'd love to understand what the issue is.