LA County's guaranteed income program to give some foster youth $1k per month

As for the second question, is the implication that former foster kids are "unreliable" and we should instead be investing somewhere else?

Why don't you address the "25% of former foster kids find themselves homeless" stat? Are these kids just getting too much assistance to be driven to... work fast food?

I really don't understand these perspectives.

Harm reduction is effective. I literally got off the street because someone gave me a garage to sleep (and use drugs!) in and $14k. Having a private space meant I stopped getting arrested for using, didn't risk losing all my possessions every time I went to a job interview. Allowed me to think about a future farther than 30 hours away. I could afford (and store) weed and beer instead of vodka and crack. I didn't have to be obliterated to sleep through the cold & noise of the highway under the bridge.

The first small steps were only possible because no one held me to the sort of standard you're advocating for.

With regards to mental health and addiction, I support Medicare for All and robust access to mental health and addiction treatment for those in need. We have the means, we simply choose not to implement efficiently. Set the tax rate at whatever is necessary. There will never be perfection, never the perfect time for policy components. Implement what you can when you can and accept good enough is all that can be done.

Since the goal is to produce functioning members of society that produce a net benefit, I'd invest the money in making the unreliable one more reliable.

1. Perhaps GP is just exceptionally sensitive to bad mental states or addiction. I know the social "sciences" have an entirely well-deserved bad reputation, but it isn't good science to extrapolate from n=1 either. Pilot programs like this one are useful.

2. The obvious answer to your rhetorical question is the second one, but in this case it is irrelevant; the program is targeted at a random set of applicants, their reliability is unknown.

Which costs more?

1) Indiscriminately handing people $1k/mo

2) Developing a means test, applying the means test, setting up a system for verification that people meet the means, distributing the money to the people that match the criteria.

I mean I can't tell you because there are dependent variables on what those means are. But two cheap options are #1 and #2 with a means that is so high that you don't pay anyone out but instead have that structure where we're still paying people (we could adequately call it a jobs program at that point).

But let's think about this from a different point of view that I don't think many here are, despite that this is an engineering perspective: failure modes. #1's failure mode is that people that don't need the money will get the money (we'll include things like drug addicts and irresponsible people here for simplicity's sake), #2's failure mode is that people that need the money won't get the money while minimizing the number of people who take advantage of the system (non-zero number).

Truth is we need to balance these two: cost and failure modes. From the high level perspective that this entire thread is at and really the entire comment (and basically every conversation had on this subject) is nowhere near the resolution where we can remotely say that 1 or 2 is better. All we can say is #1 is easier to implement. #2 is undefined because its parameters are undefined. Having a conversation at this level is just idiotic. There's very little for us to reasonably discuss and impossible for any real definitive answer to be made. The way these discussions are being framed can only lead to fighting because there is no means of determining better and there can't be (until we define and get more detail).

https://socialinnovation.usc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/...

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gqtOfZG2sSanWgUdzn-lx-pwSXZ...

https://www.occatholic.com/targeted-cash-assistance-can-help...

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-social-po...

https://www.chapinhall.org/wp-content/uploads/Cash-Transfers...

> Direct cash transfer programs are supported by a vast international evidence base (Baird et al., 2013). Globally, they are among the most well-evaluated interventions for addressing poverty, boosting well-being, increasing educational attainment, and improving health outcomes and employment (Baird et al., 2013; Pega et al., 2017). In the U.S. and Canada, numerous programs offer examples of how DCTs have have reduced childhood obesity, improved health outcomes, reduced hospitalization rates, increased savings, and supported economic security. These include the maintenance income experiments of the late 1960s in Denver, Seattle, New Jersey, Iowa, and Indiana, the Canadian ‘Mincome’ Experiment, and the ongoing Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend (Forget, 2011; Guettabi, 2019; Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, 1983).

> Counter to common public narratives, numerous studies show that offering DCTs to people experiencing poverty and adversity do not result in money poorly spent, increased substance use, or reduced motivation to work (Evans & Popova, 2017; Morton et al., 2020). Instead, cash is primarily spent on basic needs--food, utilities, other goods--as evidenced in the early report on the Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration (West et al., 2020). The Child Tax Credit further illuminated that regular unconditional cash contributes to reductions in food insecurity and overall poverty (Parolin et al., 2022; Shafer et al., 2022). Furthermore, in Canada, a randomized trial of DCTs to adults experiencing homelessness also found improvements in the speed of exiting homelessness, reductions in the amount of time spent in homelessness, and reductions in spending on alcohol, cigarettes, and drugs among DCT program participants (Foundations for Social Change, 2020).

>Two hundred randomly selected former DCFS foster youth across the county between 21 and 23 years of age will now receive $1,000 a month for the next two years

Both literally and in terms of maturity, 21 is closer to 25 than it is 16.

Also one lump sum payment is much easier to waste than an ongoing monthly payment.

Let’s do this thing and see what happens in a small enough setting that we can intervene if something really goes off the rails and even if it does the impact is minimal.

Even with research, the results are going to be hard to understand and apply without unintended consequences, and whatever intervention is going to have mixed results even if the overall effect is positive.

Why are you so certain foster kids are just going to drink themselves to death? What about not having a parent makes someone immediately at risk for that?

Why do people assume that every homeless person is both an idiot and an addict? Especially in cities in which real estate is as expensive as Los Angeles, the overwhelming majority of homeless people aren't there because of addiction issues. All the numbers I have seen suggest that only a quarter of LA's homeless population has addiction issues and even still the causal relationship isn't clear. When you live on the streets, the momentary escape of drugs is pretty alluring, but probably not as alluring as getting off the streets.

Or, and hear me out here, it could supplement the $2,400/month someone makes working 160 hours at $15/hour.

Again, keep in mind, median rent in LA county is is >$3k/month.

IDK everyone in this thread thinks so poorly of former foster kids. Have they not had it hard enough?

I'm sorry for the double reply, but I really ma horrified.

It's amazing how we live in a country where shelter prices have increased by 50% since 2009 (vs. c.40% for all other items), and yet we still desperately hold onto this idea that homeless people are universally immoral drug addicts.

Beyond that point, we are talking about foster kids here. Everyone immediately jumped to homelessness for whatever reason (they seem to be the social scapegoat du jour).

I think it is completely reasonable for the government to fight inequality by giving people who we know are not receiving any support from their parents a boost in their critical career forming years.

Honestly, $1k/ month could be the difference between going to school part time vs. working full-time. Why does nobody's mind go to this? Why is the assumption that foster kids would never make that choice?

Right, because they all still pay their fair share of taxes, medicare, and social security?

It's Econ 101.