- A Seattle basic income pilot gave low-income residents $500 a month, nearly doubling employment rates.
- Some participants reported getting new housing, while others saw their employment incomes rise.
- Basic income pilots nationwide have seen noteworthy success, despite conservative opposition.
I mean, this is probably because having extra money to take care of yourself makes it easier to have the confidence to find work. But 500 a month is like giving someone a dollar in 2024 and saying “pay your rent, bills, utilities, also buy food, and gas for your car, and also pay your car insurance” and thinking you did something
Spotted the liberal. So, we need to give them MORE right? Lol…
The 10,000th study to show the same result. Probably need to do a hundred thousand more.
It would be good to know how this works on a larger scale. Like, everyone in a city or county having UBI and watching to see what society and the local economy as a whole does in response.
UBI saves capitalism from itself. Do we really want to save this shit system that empowers the worst of us?
Do you honestly believe capitalists will allow a liveable UBI to remain untouched? Look at the minimum wage if you’d like to see the future of UBI. $7.25 an hour fucking shameful.
You’re right we should do nothing instead and let people continue to starve.
Yeah, I’m not surprised. I’m currently not working (living with parents), and personally, if I had a guaranteed $500 a month in my bank account I’d be much more willing to go out and get a job, regardless of how good or bad it is.
That $500 a month is a form of financial security; so I know that even if I get fired, I’ll still have something to fall back on. It would ease the anxiety of having to deal with shitty managers, being potentially overworked, underpaid, etc, because it’d mean that if one job sucks, I can go find a different one without worrying that the rug was being completely pulled out from under my feet.
It also means that, if I am getting underpaid, I still potentially have some spending money that’ll allow me some luxuries despite the low wage/salary being given to me by company I’m working for. That increases my flexibility for bullshit and allows me to be more tolerant of shitty managers.
The fact that you have to roll the dice and hope the company you’re going to work for won’t have shitty managers, low wages, overwork, etc is a real disincentive when you have family you can live with. That $500 a month makes the dice roll more tolerable.
My biggest concern is that if Universal Basic Income becomes, well, universal, then the cost of everything will likely spike in proportion to whatever UBI is. It’s greedy, but logical that if all your tenants are getting $500 a month from the government, then that means you can raise their rent. Companies would also look at it and one department would say, “we can lower wages because of UBI” while another department says, “we can raise prices because people have more money via UBI”. As such, the government would need to implement protections against such actions.
How do you do that though?
Do you peg the cost of rent to a formula based on land value, income, etc?
Do you peg the price of a product to the product’s cost + X%?
Do you try and mandate wages based on performance, seniority, and job type?
At what point do you look at the tangle of laws and formulas and say, “this is insane; maybe instead of giving cash, we should give housing, food, water, electricity and other modern necessities.”
Ultimately, I’m not sure any of the protections required for UBI to be successfull will be implemented. I’m not against the idea of UBI, but I don’t trust the government (well, the US government anyway) to have the foresight to successfully pull it off.
Edit: At the end of the day, I don’t want to live with my parents. I don’t want to be unemployed, I don’t want to feel like a drain on society, and I don’t want to feel like I have nothing to offer to the world. I like to believe everyone has the potential to change the world for the better, either in a small way, or a big way. Right now I feel like I’m not doing anything, and I don’t like it. However, I’ve had some very bad experiences with “”“unskilled”“” jobs and the industry I’ve spent time training for (video games) is a fucking mess and is getting worse.
You deal with the inflation issue with strict antitrust enforcement. Actual competition in the market should keep prices under control but we’ve let a handful of companies corner the market on way too many things and well, just look around.
Love all the “liberal” comments. It didn’t work cause of this, it didn’t work cause of that…" blah, blah…the fact is, government dependency never results in successful outcomes. Giving people money (like welfare) and telling them “good luck!” only makes them more dependent and less enthusiastic to work. There’s generations of people in California who have depended on welfare and food stamps for their entire lives…because it’s so easy to get, and if you can keep getting it, why work?
