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1. Embed this notice
   Dave Rahardja (drahardja@sfba.social)'s status on Sunday, 03-Sep-2023 18:24:28 JST Dave Rahardja

   A study on #UniversalBasicIncome #UBI from 2020 is now peer-reviewed and published. The study gave $7500 cash to homeless people in Vancouver and compared their outcome versus a control group. The result was clear:

   “The recipients of the cash transfers did not increase spending on drugs, tobacco, and alcohol, but did increase spending on food, clothes, and rent, according to self-reports. What’s more, they moved into stable housing faster and saved enough money to maintain financial security over the year of follow-up.”

   Further, each person who moved into stable housing one year faster saves the city over $8000 per year, which makes this program cheaper than existing housing programs.

   Universal Basic Income works. It sounds so obvious when you say it out loud, but: giving people cash lifts them out of poverty. We need to do that more.

   “A Canadian study gave $7,500 to homeless people. Here’s how they spent it.”

   https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/21528569/homeless-poverty-cash-transfer-canada-new-leaf-project

   • Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: and clacke like this.
   • AnthonyJK-Admin and novatorine 🏴🏳️‍⚧️ repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Sexy Moon (moon@shitposter.club)'s status on Sunday, 03-Sep-2023 23:29:33 JST Sexy Moon

     in reply to
     @drahardja if you gave it to everyone then prices of everything would just inflate
   • Embed this notice
     Maggie Maybe (maggiemaybe@hear-me.social)'s status on Sunday, 03-Sep-2023 23:49:56 JST Maggie Maybe

     in reply to

     @drahardja even the tiny stimulus checks we received in the US over the past couple years changed my life. I was able to pay off all my credit cards with the first one, bumping up my credit score enough that I could replace my old car before it died, I got a fantastic interest rate so I was able to pay that off in two years.

     It was amazing how it worked out, my old car had 190,000 miles, I knew it wouldn’t last much longer, it died a week after I sold it. We don’t have public transportation here, I would die without a vehicle. Literally die.

     $600 (or was the 1st one $1200?) literally saved my life.

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     ᒪᐸᒋᓐ(:raccoon_x3:)PUNK (itzpaquet@novo-atlantis.null.media)'s status on Monday, 04-Sep-2023 01:35:56 JST ᒪᐸᒋᓐ(:raccoon_x3:)PUNK

     in reply to

     • Sexy Moon
     @Moon @drahardja honestly yeah, the problem is capitalists. without them, people would likely be making living wages right now. a mass UBI problem would be taken as an opportunity to get richer if they aren't harshly curtailed.
     Sexy Moon likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     Rui Malheiro (chromatic@kolektiva.social)'s status on Monday, 04-Sep-2023 20:51:37 JST Rui Malheiro

     in reply to

     • Sarah W

     @Sarahw this is not great.

     This idea of a society where people are provided with a fair and just basic income is a very bad one for #capitalism. It would just deplete the "work market" from people forced to work for survival.

     Once everyone has their basic needs of food, housing, healthcare and education fullfileed, the only way we can get people to work will be by raising their wages to levels where we won't be able to support #shareholders and #billionaires. That would be the end of western #colonialist civlization as we know it.

     @drahardja

   • Embed this notice
     Sarah W (sarahw@mastodon.green)'s status on Monday, 04-Sep-2023 20:51:38 JST Sarah W

     in reply to

     @drahardja
     This is great. It's clear this works for the benefit of all society. Less crime, drugs, violence, this enables people to rebuild their lives, a positive outcome for all.
     But there will always be those that say, they didn't earn this money, why should they have it not me, ignoring the overall benefits.

     novatorine 🏴🏳️‍⚧️ repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     ChookMother 🇦🇺🦘 (anne_twain@theblower.au)'s status on Monday, 04-Sep-2023 20:53:00 JST ChookMother 🇦🇺🦘

     in reply to

     @drahardja I take a similar position re Australia's Indigenous population.

     Just give them the money!

     Whatever we spend on services and infrastructure for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, divide the amount by the number of individuals and send them each a cheque.

     Most of them will pool it and set up services and build infrastructure that they need and want, and works for them.

   • Embed this notice
     clacke (clacke@libranet.de)'s status on Wednesday, 06-Sep-2023 01:48:26 JST clacke

     in reply to

     • Luis_Fierro :lambda2:

     @Luis_Fierro Why is means testing better than income taxation as a way to recover the cost from people who don't need it?

     The drawback I see with any means testing is that it tends to have a sharp cutoff, which risks trapping people in unemployment.

     A tapered cutoff at X% of the person's income works out to the same thing as a marginal tax rate increase of X%. Letting people keep the UBI while working is what incentivizes work.

     @drahardja

   • Embed this notice
     Luis_Fierro :lambda2: (luis_fierro@econtwitter.net)'s status on Wednesday, 06-Sep-2023 01:48:28 JST Luis_Fierro :lambda2:

     in reply to

     @drahardja

     I am all in favor of cash transfers. But they must be directed towards low-income people (in this case, homeless people). Hence, they are NOT universal.

     I wrote about it:

     https://luisfierro.substack.com/p/on-universal-basic-income-i-prefer

   • Embed this notice
     clacke (clacke@libranet.de)'s status on Friday, 08-Sep-2023 00:25:40 JST clacke

     in reply to

     • Luis_Fierro :lambda2:

     @Luis_Fierro @drahardja Seems simpler to me to just tweak the dial on a tax that is already there than to introduce a means-testing bureaucracy. That's why giving money and then taxing it back makes sense to me. Predictable, less risk of introducing uncertainties and unforeseen corner cases, less discussion about where to draw the line.

     Most importantly, it doesn't categorize people into people relying on support and people who aren't.

   • Embed this notice
     Luis_Fierro :lambda2: (luis_fierro@econtwitter.net)'s status on Friday, 08-Sep-2023 00:25:42 JST Luis_Fierro :lambda2:

     in reply to

     • clacke

     @clacke @drahardja

     It doesn't make much sense to give, say, $700 to millionaires who don't need it (and then tax back part of it). Even the "Economic Impact Payments" given for COVID had an income level cutoff (too high in my view), and nonetheless it cost $814 billion. A Brookings Institution study found "payments would be better targeted if aimed at households who have lost income or who are in danger of losing income". A minimum income approach is preferable to a Universal BI.

   • Embed this notice
     Dave Rahardja (drahardja@sfba.social)'s status on Friday, 08-Sep-2023 00:25:43 JST Dave Rahardja

     in reply to

     • M. Grégoire

     @mpjgregoire The National Post is a right-wing magazine, and the op-ed piece is predictably a character assassination piece. The piece’s author appears unsatisfied that the experiment didn’t set out to prove what they wanted (i.e. uplift hard drug users, chronically homeless people, tent-dwellers), but then goes on to imply that the limits of the study amounts to dishonesty on the part of the study authors.

     The study’s authors literally stated “cash transfers are not a panacea” in the intro/abstract of the paper, but this op-ed writer demands that it prove that it is. No wonder they’re disappointed.

     clacke likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     M. Grégoire (mpjgregoire@cosocial.ca)'s status on Friday, 08-Sep-2023 00:25:44 JST M. Grégoire

     in reply to

     @drahardja Whether giving money to the homeless is a good way of helping them is interesting and important, but this study has serious weaknesses. There's a discussion here: https://nationalpost.com/opinion/colby-cosh-ubc-covers-for-bad-science-in-homeless-cash-transfer-study

   • Embed this notice
     Dave Rahardja (drahardja@sfba.social)'s status on Friday, 08-Sep-2023 00:25:50 JST Dave Rahardja

     in reply to

     • M. Grégoire

     @mpjgregoire Yes, we should question whether its conclusions are generalizable. That would be a sensible question.

     “Are the authors duplicitous liars covering up bad science?” is not a sensible question.

     clacke likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     M. Grégoire (mpjgregoire@cosocial.ca)'s status on Friday, 08-Sep-2023 00:25:51 JST M. Grégoire

     in reply to

     @drahardja
     The upshot is that the study examines only the 15% of homeless people using shelters most likely to benefit from the money. Shouldn't we question whether its conclusions are generalisable?

     2/2

   • Embed this notice
     M. Grégoire (mpjgregoire@cosocial.ca)'s status on Friday, 08-Sep-2023 00:25:52 JST M. Grégoire

     in reply to

     @drahardja
     (A minor correction: The #NationalPost is a right-wing newspaper in Canada, not a magazine. But let's put aside that article.)

     #Vox mentions a major issue: "The study only enrolled participants who’d been homeless for under two years, [...]. And people with severe mental health or substance use issues were screened out of the initiative. [... O]ut of a desire to avoid creating a risk of harm and to ensure the highest likelihood of success."

     1/2

   • Embed this notice
     Luis_Fierro :lambda2: (luis_fierro@econtwitter.net)'s status on Friday, 08-Sep-2023 01:50:30 JST Luis_Fierro :lambda2:

     in reply to

     • clacke

     @clacke @drahardja

     Agree to disagree.

     clacke likes this.