Some people are being given thousands of dollars with no strings attached in universal basic income trials. They mostly spend the cash wisely.
Some people are being given thousands of dollars with no strings attached in universal basic income trials. They mostly spend the cash wisely.
A common question about universal basic income, or UBI, is how people spend the money, but early trials are showing promising results.
Remember, if these trials can cause change then EVERYONE gets a little extra. And it's cheaper than our current welfare system. AND it actually helps people instead of putting them in a place where getting help ends their desperately needed support. It's a win for everyone except the "I struggled and so should you" crowd which means its an absolute victory for everyone that matters!
I remember when the first wave of stimulus checks went out and a bunch of car dealerships suddenly raised the price on their cars by $1000. UBI would be great, but if we don't reign in the corporate-apologist economy first, every product will suddenly be more expensive so they can bleed people of that extra money.
The entire concept of a scientific study to determine whether people spend this money wisely is bunk, because it’s nobody else’s business how a person’s money gets spent and whether it’s categorized as “wise”.
If we assume that there is an objective, ie scientifically valid, definition of “wise spending”, then we should just go centrally planned communism because the whole point of free markets is allowing people to enact their own value structure in their spending.
The whole idea of basic income, as opposed to all these other services, is based on the same idea: that people’s money is their own.
This study seems nice, but it frames this whole question the wrong way. The whole concept of money is that people have a right to make their own economic choices, regardless of what some centralized authority thinks is “wise”.
The conclusion is basically of course a UBI works - you give most people extra money, they'll spend it on things they need and things that are worthwhile rather than blowing it all on vices.
It's something we see time and time again, and anyone who genuinely believes otherwise is either rich or blind.
"People spend money on basic needs"
Personally I have never considered that there would be a risk of the UBI recipients to spend the money unwisely.
People needing UBI have a very long standing experience of not getting what they need to minimise their losses on a daily basis, so of course they will invest in that first. They all probably have a ranked, itemised list of all that would help. And I'm willing to bet that said list, on average, would be at least 80% correct (the 20% being influenced by personal sensitivities and beliefs, like a vegan person spending more on plastic based clothing, that wears out faster).
People not needing UBI already have more money than they can find intelligent uses for, and so they already are spending money unwisely.
Nah, the part that concerns me is that as soon as we all get UBI, and I do mean the very next day, rents are gonna rise by 33% of the amount of the UBI, the cost of food will rise by 33% of the amount of the UBI, and the cost of all the rest combined will rise by 34% of the amount of the UBI. It will be back to square one, and all we will have achieved will be funnelling our taxes straight into the pockets of for profit, private megacorporations.
We need to "fix" that megacorporation problem first.
Here in the US, our society is in practice neutral towards human life. We (usually) don't actively kill each other, but we're completely comfortable letting our fellow citizens die under a freeway of exposure for the crime of not producing capital value for our owner class.
Instituting something like UBI would be a significant step towards finding congruence with our currently false, empty rhetoric of valuing human life.
Untl then, we as a people can and will continue to pretend that we do, but again in practice, it means the same as saying we value the candy bar wrapper we just threw in the trash.
Some people are being given thousands of dollars with no strings attached in universal basic income trials. They spend the cash.
FTFY
the amount given should be based on some cost of living index just like the minimum wage should be
there is no try. do. ubi is not ubi and its benefits only really show when its everyone. One of the main points is for it to go to those who need it when they need it without a whole lot of beuracracy (those needing it being those who are in a position to not be making much money and therefor their tax burden will be less than they recieve)
Don't give away money to the poor! They'll just waste it spending $36 billion on a poorly thought out and woefully executed meta-universe! Only corporations can be trusted to make efficient decisions!