Basic Income (aka Guaranteed Annual Income)

[Itse]

Originally Posted by Locke

When has handing out free money ever worked?

Lots of times. Maybe you should read more.

[Rathji]

Originally Posted by Locke

When has handing out free money ever worked?

What will people do for this guaranteed income? Queue up for bread and vodka? Gather wheat for the motherland?

Beer and Popcorn, baby. Beer and Popcorn.

[Locke]

Originally Posted by Itse

Lots of times. Maybe you should read more.

Really? Maybe I should. When has this worked?

[MarchHare]

Originally Posted by Locke

Really? Maybe I should. When has this worked?

https://decorrespondent.nl/541/why-w...39860-ec3a6c3e

London, May 2009. A small experiment involving thirteen homeless men takes off. They are street veterans. Some of them have been sleeping on the cold tiles of The Square Mile, the financial center of the world, for more than forty years. Their presence is far from cheap. Police, legal services, healthcare: the thirteen cost taxpayers hundreds of thousands of pounds. Every year.

That spring, a local charity takes a radical decision. The street veterans are to become the beneficiaries of an innovative social experiment. No more food stamps, food kitchen dinners or sporadic shelter stays for them. The men will get a drastic bailout, financed by taxpayers. They'll each receive 3,000 pounds, cash, with no strings attached. The men are free to decide what to spend it on; counseling services are completely optional. No requirements, no hard questions. The only question they have to answer is:

What do you think is good for you?

‘I didn’t have enormous expectations,’ an aid worker recalls.

Yet the desires of the homeless men turned out to be quite modest. A phone, a passport, a dictionary - each participant had his own ideas about what would be best for him. None of the men wasted their money on alcohol, drugs or gambling. On the contrary, most of them were extremely frugal with the money they had received. On average, only 800 pounds had been spent at the end of the first year.

Simon’s life was turned upside down by the money. Having been addicted to heroin for twenty years, he finally got clean and began with gardening classes. ‘For the first time in my life everything just clicked, it feels like now I can do something’, he says. ‘I’m thinking of going back home. I’ve got two kids.’

A year after the experiment had started, eleven out of thirteen had a roof above their heads. They accepted accommodation, enrolled in education, learnt how to cook, got treatment for drug use, visited their families and made plans for the future. ‘I loved the cold weather,’ one of them remembers. ‘Now I hate it.’ After decades of authorities’ fruitless pushing, pulling, fines and persecution, eleven notorious vagrants finally moved off the streets.

Costs? 50,000 pounds a year, including the wages of the aid workers. In addition to giving eleven individuals another shot at life, the project had saved money by a factor of at least 7. Even The Economist concluded:

‘The most efficient way to spend money on the homeless might be to give it to them.’

Emphasis added.

[Locke]

Originally Posted by MarchHare

https://decorrespondent.nl/541/why-w...39860-ec3a6c3e

Emphasis added.

I hate to sound unreasonable but that doesnt mean squat. Hand-picking 13 likely candidates and seeing some success doesnt show any meaningful support that the same results would be demonstrated in a national program.

Giving a dozen experienced transients £50K is a far-cry from dropping $18K on 30 million people.

[MarchHare]

Originally Posted by Locke

I hate to sound unreasonable but that doesnt mean squat. Hand-picking 13 likely candidates and seeing some success doesnt show any meaningful support that the same results would be demonstrated in a national program.

Giving a dozen experienced transients £50K is a far-cry from dropping $18K on 30 million people.

Did you read the rest of the linked article?

[mustache ride]

I see your vague article that contains no proof and raise you communism and the Canadian reserve system.

[Locke]

Originally Posted by MarchHare

Did you read the rest of the linked article?

I cant at the moment, it'll have to wait until later.

[MarchHare]

Originally Posted by mustache ride

I see your vague article that contains no proof and raise you communism and the Canadian reserve system.

Did you read the rest of the linked article?

[mustache ride]

Originally Posted by MarchHare

Did you read the rest of the linked article?

I did. If you want to point me to the smoking gun i will gladly take another look but all i see is an editorial with anecdotal evidence.

[Flash Walken]

Originally Posted by mustache ride

I did. If you want to point me to the smoking gun i will gladly take another look but all i see is an editorial with anecdotal evidence.

Did you read it with a critical eye? More than cursory glance? Start to finish?

‘Politicians feared that people would stop working, and that they would have lots of children to increase their income,’ professor Forget says. You can find one of her lectures here. Yet the opposite happened: the average marital age went up while the birth rate went down. The Mincome cohort had better school completion records. The total amount of work hours decreased by only 13%. Breadwinners hardly cut down on their hours, women used the basic income for a couple of months of maternity leave and young people used it to do some extra studying.

Forget’s most remarkable discovery is that hospital visits went down by 8,5%. This amounted to huge savings (in the United States it would be more than $200 billion a year now). After a couple of years, domestic violence rates and mental health also saw improvement. Mincome made the entire town healthier. The basic income continued to influence following generations, both in terms of income and health.

Dauphin, the town with no poverty, was one of five North-American basic income experiments. Four U.S. projects preceded it. Today, few people know how close the US was in the sixties to implementing a solid social welfare system that could stand the comparison with that of most Western-European countries nowadays. In 1964, president Lyndon B. Johnson declared a ‘war on poverty.’ Democrats and Republicans were united in their ambition to fundamentally reform social security. But first more testing was needed.

Several tens of millions were made available to test the effects of a basic income among 10,000 families in Pennsylvania, Indiana, North Carolina, Seattle and Denver. The pilots were the first large-scale social experiments differentiating between various test and control groups. The researchers were trying to find the answers to three questions. 1: Does a basic income make people work significantly less? 2: If so, will it make the program unaffordable? 3: And would it consequently become politically unattainable?

The answers: no, no and yes.

The decrease in working hours turned out to be limited. ‘The ‘laziness’ contention is just not supported by our findings’, the chief data analyst of the Denver experiment said. ‘There is not anywhere near the mass defection the prophets of doom predicted.’ On average, the decline in work hours amounted to 9 percent per household. Like in Dauphin, the majority of this drop was caused by young mothers and students in their twenties.

‘These declines in hours of paid work were undoubtedly compensated in part by other useful activities, such as search for better jobs or work in the home,’ an evaluative report of a Seattle project concluded. A mother who had never finished high school got a degree in psychology and went on to a career in research. Another woman took acting classes, while her husband started composing. ‘We’re now self-sufficient, income-earning artists’, they told the researchers. School results improved in all experiments: grades went up and dropout rates went down. Nutrition and health data were also positively affected – for example, the birth weight of newborn babies increased.

For a while, it seemed like the basic income would fare well in Washington.

WELFARE REFORM IS VOTED IN HOUSE, a NYT headline on April 17, 1970 read. An overwhelming majority had endorsed President Nixon’s proposal for a modest basic income. But once the proposal got to the Senate, doubts returned. ‘This bill represents the most extensive, expensive and expansive welfare legislation ever handled by the Committee on Finance,’ one of the senators said.

Then came that fatal discovery: the number of divorces in Seattle had gone up by more than 50%. This percentage made the other, positive results seem utterly uninteresting. It gave rise to the fear that a basic income would make women much too independent. For months, the law proposal was sent back and forth between the Senate and the White House, eventually ending in the dustbin of history.

Later analysis would show that the researchers had made a mistake – in reality the number of divorces had not changed.

[MarchHare]

Originally Posted by mustache ride

I did. If you want to point me to the smoking gun i will gladly take another look but all i see is an editorial with anecdotal evidence.

In 1964, president Lyndon B. Johnson declared a ‘war on poverty.’ Democrats and Republicans were united in their ambition to fundamentally reform social security. But first more testing was needed.

Several tens of millions were made available to test the effects of a basic income among 10,000 families in Pennsylvania, Indiana, North Carolina, Seattle and Denver. The pilots were the first large-scale social experiments differentiating between various test and control groups. The researchers were trying to find the answers to three questions. 1: Does a basic income make people work significantly less? 2: If so, will it make the program unaffordable? 3: And would it consequently become politically unattainable?

The answers: no, no and yes.

The decrease in working hours turned out to be limited. ‘The ‘laziness’ contention is just not supported by our findings’, the chief data analyst of the Denver experiment said. ‘There is not anywhere near the mass defection the prophets of doom predicted.’ On average, the decline in work hours amounted to 9 percent per household. Like in Dauphin, the majority of this drop was caused by young mothers and students in their twenties.

‘These declines in hours of paid work were undoubtedly compensated in part by other useful activities, such as search for better jobs or work in the home,’ an evaluative report of a Seattle project concluded. A mother who had never finished high school got a degree in psychology and went on to a career in research. Another woman took acting classes, while her husband started composing. ‘We’re now self-sufficient, income-earning artists’, they told the researchers. School results improved in all experiments: grades went up and dropout rates went down. Nutrition and health data were also positively affected – for example, the birth weight of newborn babies increased.

And this:

In the 2010 work Just Give Money to the Poor, researchers from the Brooks World Poverty Institute, an independent institute based at the University of Manchester, give numerous examples of money being scattered successfully. In Namibia, malnourishment, crime and truancy fell 25 percent, 42 percent and nearly 40 percent respectively. In Malawi, school enrollment of girls and women rose 40 percent in conditional and unconditional settings. From Brazil to India and from Mexico to South Africa, free-money programs have flourished in the past decade. While the Millenium Development Goals did not even mention the programs, by now more than 110 million families in at least 45 countries benefit from them.

Researchers sum up the programs’ advantages: (1) households make good use of the money, (2) poverty decreases, (3) long-term benefits in income, health, and tax income are remarkable, (4) there is no negative effect on labor supply – recipients do not work less, and (5) the programs save money. Why would we send well-paid foreigners in SUVs when we could just give cash? This would also diminish risk of corrupt officials taking their share. Free money stimulates the entire economy: consumption goes up, resulting in more jobs and higher incomes.

‘Poverty is fundamentally about a lack of cash. It's not about stupidity,’ author Joseph Hanlon remarks. ‘You can't pull yourself up by your bootstraps if you have no boots.’

[Rathji]

Originally Posted by Locke

I hate to sound unreasonable but that doesnt mean squat. Hand-picking 13 likely candidates and seeing some success doesnt show any meaningful support that the same results would be demonstrated in a national program.

Giving a dozen experienced transients £50K is a far-cry from dropping $18K on 30 million people.

Here is a report, about the Social Return on Investment for the school at Louise Dean school for pregnant and parenting teens in Calgary over about 7 years. These students are given flexible education, free or subsidized childcare, subsidized housing and were given a living allowance if they attended school.

The additional cost a year, over traditional education, looks to be about $4 million in bursaries, student financing and child care subsidies.

More importantly, the value of the difference between making the investment versus NO investment, ranges from an initial return of $0.80 in year one to $13.95 in year seven, and remains positive throughout.

That means that at the end of 7 years, they were having $13.95 in value returned for every dollar invested. My rough math puts that value at about $50 million returned on top of the initial investment.

You can say that giving people money doesn't help them, and it makes sense to you. The reality is that money invested into these people's well being will almost always save the taxpayers money to some degree. Obviously that depends on the program and you can't just shovel money out of the back of a truck.

[Azure]

The reason I'm so completely on board is because it eliminates the problem with so many government programs. Red tape. Find a thousand people that live in poverty that you think have at least a small chance of getting out, and give them a cheque every month. That eliminates any need for the government to be involved outside of collecting data which is relatively simple enough.

Nobody is going to go do this with millions of people. You start small. We blow enough money as as country on other useless crap. This seems worth trying at the very least.

Didn't Harper run some kind of program like this? I seem to remember something about housing being provided at low cost or for free to certain people under a federally run program.

[Azure]

OTTAWA, Oct. 29, 2013 /CNW/ - Through the renewed Homelessness Partnering Strategy, Canada's new Housing First approach will help stabilize the lives of chronically homeless individuals by directly moving them into permanent housing, the Honourable Candice Bergen, Minister of State (Social Development), told the first National Conference on Ending Homelessness.

"Our government is committed to helping vulnerable Canadians through Housing First, a proven evidence-based model that will deliver better results for those in need," said Minister of State Bergen. "Real solutions to homelessness are best achieved when we partner with community organizations and Housing First has the flexibility to help us meet our shared goals. Together, we can empower those in need to lift themselves out of poverty and lead successful lives."

.....

Since the launch of the HPS in April 2007, thousands of homeless individuals have secured stable housing, found jobs, returned to school and become participating members of Canadian society. Moving forward, the federal government will continue to support communities in developing local solutions to homelessness and help them to capitalize on the effectiveness of Housing First.

http://www.newswire.ca/en/story/1250...e-homelessness

I seem to remember this program being on the verge of running out. Good to see they kept on with it. Funny that they've been doing it for years and it has been working but people are not even aware of it.

[Jets4Life]

Originally Posted by mustache ride

Finally, it wasn't breaking your arm that left you without any money. It was the hundreds of poor financil decisions before your injury that put you in a position where you couldn't look after yourself. That likely wouldn't have changed even with extra money coming in every month from the government.

How nice of you to judge me like this. Do you paint everyone that is not as well off as yourself with the same brush? I've been following your posts, and it's obvious you have no compassion for anyone that may have experienced hardships in life, and expect them to "suck it up" despite many who cannot work due to physical and mental health issues.

Canada is the greatest country in the world, because unlike many countries, we take care of our poor, sick, and disadvantaged. Our reputation follows us around the globe. I'm just glad you are in the minority, as most people in this country are quite generous, and more than willing to help out the disadvantaged.

[Jets4Life]

Originally Posted by mustache ride

If you dont have enough money to last a couple of months when things go sour then you need to re-evaluate how you approach spending and saving. When you make better life decisions, you protect yourself from being vulnerable to negative circumstances.

Does that apply to everyone?

What about people who cannot work?

What if an individual has a physical handicap that makes securing full time employment nearly impossible?

What if the individual is suffering from some mental health issue, like major depression, schizophrenia, or crippling anxiety, that has not been properly treated?

What about single parents, who cannot find anyone to look after their young children?

I can go on and on, but just be thankful that you have so easy, compared to certain segments of the population..

[Thor]

It would be fascinating to try this, worst case we go back to our old ways, but obviously things are not working as they are.

[Devils'Advocate]

Originally Posted by Locke

When has handing out free money ever worked?

What will people do for this guaranteed income? Queue up for bread and vodka? Gather wheat for the motherland?

Well that really dumbed down the level of this discussion.

There are a few joke sites like this that suggest that this is Communist, but that's just what that is.. a joke:
http://theviewfromfallingdowns.blogs...t-senator.html

Maybe there was supposed to be some green text in there that I'm not getting.

But to answer your question, 1974 to 1978, in Dauphin, Manitoba:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manito...ccess-1.868562

[Thor]

Utah has been providing free housing for homeless since 2005, and it has been saving them a great deal of money ever since.