Happy 2014 all.
This is an interesting article that looks at examples of giving money directly to poor people as a model of social welfare. What strikes me is that it is the political right who, through the incessant scape goating of the poor, create the complex, expensive, oppressive and ultimately ineffective means-test and socially controlling welfare industry. We are lead to believe that the vast numbers of our poor are undeserving and idle, and don't deserve pennies, but that the few rich deserve to have the state geared to their needs.
Originally Posted by :
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?
https://decorrespondent.nl/541/why-w...50894-e44e2c00
PanzerJaeger 08:45 01-05-2014
I would like to know how 13 homeless people cost the state hundreds of thousands of pounds each year. That may be where the real issue lies in regard to the welfare state.
Managing the poor as a social menace requiring coercion and moral oversight is expensive. You, like most others, are keen to retain that as the standard operating model.
HoreTore 14:13 01-05-2014
Nobody loves to expand the bureaucracy like a conservative.
I think it's kinda interesting as an experiment. The amount of money is too low though, there aren't any choices to make with just 3.000 pounds, it will burn up too fast. Make it 10.000 or 20.000, otherwise it's kinda futile probably.
Kadagar_AV 16:02 01-05-2014
I am also thinking the number is somewhat to low.
A place to LIVE and 3000 pounds to get them started however...
PanzerJaeger 01:39 01-06-2014
Originally Posted by Idaho:
Managing the poor as a social menace requiring coercion and moral oversight is expensive. You, like most others, are keen to retain that as the standard operating model.
Incorrect. I am very concerned about the impact of ever increasing automation on the size of the workforce and have been interested in the basic minimum income for a long time from a demand side perspective. However, I'm interested in reading objective information and not rose-tinted puff pieces with questionable claims such as that which you posted. Hence my interest in accounting for the 'hundreds of thousands' of pounds the author claims can be traced to 13 homeless people.
In any event, I do not believe a minimum income would stifle productivity or innovation. Smart, industrious people would still be motivated to make their lives better than the low standard of living that such an income would provide. What the economy needs and will need even more of in the future are consumers with disposable income, and there will be less and less of them as automation takes off.
The problem I have with the basic income that never seems to be explained is how it will not simply be eroded via inflation. It assumes that prices would remain static, which is highly unlikely. A more likely scenario is that any increase in purchasing power would be offset to a large degree by currency devaluation. This is not something that can be accurately measured via the small experiments that have been conducted so far. Sure, giving a town of 3,000 people a basic income in a country where no one else gets it will dramatically impact their lives, but when everyone has the same basic income, the CPI will increase accordingly.
Yes, inflation is indeed a problem with minimum incomes IMO. But that should theoretically be countered by increasing the minimum income with the inflation. If that leads to faster cycles of increases and thus rampant inflation rates you have a problem again however.
I think Panzer nails the essential, unanswered problem.
With increasing automation, and increasing global competition, we're going to see steep, stark divides between the "winners" of the economy and the "not-winners."
The obvious problem is that this creates depressed demand (as PJ notes) and dangerous levels of inequality. And if you don't think crazy inequality is bad for a nation's stability, there's a French and Russian revolution I'd like to introduce you to.
I do not have answers. I do not know how we can structure our economy to avoid the instability I see coming.
But it's a question that really needs to get asked, and a problem that we need to look at carefully.
The Black Douglas 17:18 01-06-2014
The death of manufacturing in this country is the core issue.
It was that infrastructure that glued communities together, and provided a market for small business' and family owned shops etc.
Thousands of unskilled unemployed are fighting for the same dead-end retail jobs, thats all there is.
If you are not skilled or qualified you have no chance these days.
Even as a skilled tradesman I find competition fierce these days.
I'm amazed at the political change in the US. If I'd posted this topic during the Bush years, it would have been dismissed out of hand.
Apologies to Panzerjager for assuming he was still stuck in the New America mindset.
Originally Posted by Idaho:
Apologies to Panzerjager for assuming he was still stuck in the New America mindset.
Panzer is far more 'liberal' in the broad sense of the term these days, which makes him likeable but still not 'liberal' enough in some subjects which make you frown in disappointment and go "Panzer, I know you can do better than that".
The Black Douglas 17:43 01-06-2014
what with empire america being the new master race or whatever, is being liberal not the equivelant of being un-patriotic?
Originally Posted by The Black Douglas:
is being liberal not the equivelant of being un-patriotic?
U.S. politics are a
little more complex than that.
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