Arlington's first guaranteed income pilot boosted QoL for poorest residents | Hacker News Reader

Arlington's first guaranteed income pilot boosted QoL for poorest residents

arlnow.com

19 points_Microft14 comments

Of course it did. If you give poor people more money they will on balance have better lives. Left unaddressed are questions like: How does giving free money compare to spending the money on directed social programs? What is the optimal amount to give?

Also, am I reading this right? "Individuals who received the stipend reported increasing their monthly income by 36%, from $1,200 to $1,640, compared to the control group, whose income only rose 9%." They gave them $500 and their income went up $440. Is that before or after the $500?

> ACF says the extra cash gave participants breathing room to make investments that could improve their job prospects.

Earlier on it also mentions that they were able to get car repairs and find better jobs. I would assume that means that the $440 is in addition to the $500 they were given.

I think this is good, given the insane cost of living here. Hopefully this does not contribute to rising costs too much.

Arlington as in Arlington County, Virgina, to be clear... quite a few Arlingtons in the US.

Also: Arlington is to DC as Oakland is to SF or Jersey City is to Manhattan. Only, you know, a lot nicer.

hmm.. having lived in all of those cities, I'd say closer to South Bay then East bay re SF.

Maybe better described as Brooklyn than Jersey City too....

I'm an anarchist communist. (Wait, hear me out, I'm not an anarchist in "The Purge" sense.)

It's interesting to see the hypothesis of authors like Kropotkin validated to some degree. Anarchist authors have long posited that if you emphasize "wellbeing for all" ahead of profit or productivity, the social nature of humans will result in a largely positive experience. People will, hypothetically, do good things if their basic needs are taken care of. The book The Conquest of Bread is a utopian look at this general idea.

It seems like study after study on UBI shows that when you take care of the immediate needs, people seem to seek self improvement and higher quality work.

You see this in open source communities as well, which are some of the most anarchist communities imaginable - take freely if you need this, give what you can back is a deeply anarchist ethos.

I hope that the rational in our communities continue to push for more experiments here, more programs that simply provide universal income to people. Continue to replicate these results and turn the best things into policy.

From the embedded graphic, only 22% seemed to spend any(?) of the money on a long-term benefit (e.g. job training, car repair, etc).

And even that included medical bills.

Throwing extra money at people to be spent on short-term consumables (groceries, etc) might be good for the economy, but doesn't seem to move the individuals ahead economically.

Which leaves them back in the same place when the support is withdrawn.

It'd be nice to see support tied to (something that will leave them better off). Rent/grocery support... if studying for a marketable certificate.

But with strong safeguards around for-profits sucking the money without adding value to the individuals (e.g. predatory worthless degree mills sucking up GI Bill benefits).

If they spent it on groceries, they were probably not getting enough money to adequately cover their food needs, and were spending time or health to cover that gap. You can eat more cheaply on dried beans, but they take time to make. You can eat more cheaply on industrial fast food, but your health will suffer. Both of those impair your ability to pursue self improvement.

Policing how people spend their ubi costs time and money, reducing the amount of ubi you can grant to people, and it fails when some novel need arises. There are stories of food stamps only covering half gallon or gallon sized containers of milk. So when shrinkflation shrank half gallon bottles down to 60oz, or whatever, the same product was no longer eligible.

A fundamental principle of anarchy is people know locally what they need best. People know what food, clothing, and shelter they need. Trying to proscribe that only these purchases are permissible isn't something that's easy or fair, and will likely miss the needs of at least some minority communities. If lives are improving and people are getting more productive, it doesn't really matter how they spent the ubi, does it? The outcome is great, and it was efficient and bureaucracy free? Bonus.

This just in: free money helps poor people. More at 11.

It doesn't just help, that would be "they are fed and housed". But it genuinely improves the quality of work they perform. They get better jobs as a result of this, which isn't exactly intuitive to most people.

Except it should be the single most intuitive thing that people with enough resources can work better than those without.

"They get better jobs as a result of this"

I would argue it disincentivizes them from seeking more gainful employment.

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