[Pants-of-dog]

Many people claim that welfare increase crime in the USA in the following manner:

Poor families need welfare. Single mothers get more welfare. In order to get more money, the father has to absent himself. Kids raised without dads end up as criminals.

Obviously, the actual argument is more nuanced than that, but you get the gist.

If UBI came with no strings attached, and the family would get two UBIs if both parents were there, it would be economically advantageous to keep,the family together. This would then reduce crime rates.

And if it is true that UBI does not increase workforce participation, that is also good for the kids, since they would spend more time as a family. And better kids mean better adults, which means less crime.

I bet school attendance would increase, and marks would improve, because of the more stable home situation and better nutrition.

And while a lot of crime has nothing to do with poverty, some does. The petty crimes of the homeless, such as loitering, begging, urinating and defecating in public, etc., would all cease with UBI. These people would instead become normal members of our community.

[Rancid]

Many people claim that welfare increase crime in the USA in the following manner:

Poor families need welfare. Single mothers get more welfare. In order to get more money, the father has to absent himself. Kids raised without dads end up as criminals.

Obviously, the actual argument is more nuanced than that, but you get the gist.

If UBI came with no strings attached, and the family would get two UBIs if both parents were there, it would be economically advantageous to keep,the family together. This would then reduce crime rates.

And if it is true that UBI does not increase workforce participation, that is also good for the kids, since they would spend more time as a family. And better kids mean better adults, which means less crime.

I bet school attendance would increase, and marks would improve, because of the more stable home situation and better nutrition.

And while a lot of crime has nothing to do with poverty, some does. The petty crimes of the homeless, such as loitering, begging, urinating and defecating in public, etc., would all cease with UBI. These people would instead become normal members of our community.

I hadn't thought enough about this subject, but I think your points just re-enforced my interesting in seeing more study on this.

[Pants-of-dog]

And we pay for it using corporate taxes on automated factories.

[Rancid]

I doubt it, most of the crime in the ghetto is not caused because minorities can't get food so they steal bread to survive.

This demographic suffers from chronic obesity which is bankrolled by unsupervised food-stamp allotments. Likewise, most the crimes in inner cities are drug or gang related.

How more welfare would solve any of this needs to be analyzed prior to rolling out a massive social experiment that directly affects the lives of people.

Now, do I think UBI would be a better alternative as a replacement to our current welfare system? In some ways, but generally I think it would decimate the working class; they would almost cease to exist and a massive progressive tax would have to be rolled out that would cause the wealthiest at the top to jump ship. I can't see this ending well.

Fact is, if you give a livable income to people for simply existing; many will be perfectly content to simply exist and those who are working for that same amount or near it; would invariably stop working altogether and they would be making the most rational choice given their circumstances.

All we would have to do, is start one less war, or bomb one less country to get this experiment off the ground. Seriously.

I don't deny you may be right on this, but my curiousity to go forward with such an experiment stems from three places.

- I just straight have an academic/intellectual curiously. I want to see these points proven/disproven with actual experimental data. Of course the experiment needs to be well planned and controlled, etc. etc.
- I do believe the global economy is simply going to hit a point where there are just not enough jobs, or not enough jobs that earn a living wage. I think it would be a good idea to explore some options. When even the lawyer profession is in trouble (believe it or not, a lot of lawyers don't make a lot of money due to automation). Something big is happening. I can actually say that I earn more money than many lawyers! That's nuts!
- Ultimately we need to figure out some way to help poor people. There are a lot of smart kids that grow up in shit situations and thus are never even given the chance to do something great for themselves, their family, their community, and society. Oh god, I sound like a liberal.

[Pants-of-dog]

@Rancid

You may enjoy this:
https://basicincome.org/news/2016/12/wi ... wer-crime/

[Rancid]

@Rancid

You may enjoy this:
https://basicincome.org/news/2016/12/wi ... wer-crime/

I only read the summary. I'll try to listen to the actual cast sometime later. Nonetheless, just from the summary it totally sounds worth giving it a good college try (a real try at it). I think society would need to have some patients around it though. I would image many lesson would be learned, and adjustments would need to be made along the way. A longer term outlook would be need here.

[Kaiserschmarrn]

UBI means that the vast majority of money paid out will go to people who are neither poor nor without job. We also won't be able to eliminate bureaucracy, as there will be people who need more than UBI can provide. At least that's the case unless we want to pay everybody as much as, say, a disabled person who has special requirements and lives in the most expensive part of the country.

It's also predictable that once UBI is introduced and if we use "wellbeing" as a relevant variable, people will always argue for UBI to increase from that point on. After all, people could be even happier if we doubled or tripled the amount paid.

[AFAIK]

It's estimated that as much as 40% of the population work in 'bullshit jobs' that they find unsatisfying and pointless so I'd expect a full term UBI to lead to a large increase in unemployment as many people would rather write a book or take take care of their kids full time than be a corporate lawyer.

Also poor people commit very little crime. A poor black man may sell a few dozen untaxed cigarettes on a street corner until the police wrestle him to the ground but wall street bankers launder billions of dollars of drug money and evade billions in illegal tax schemes without fear of arrest.

[Hong Wu]

I think large-scale UBI could just as easily be replaced by things like free/discount housing and so-on. Like, what do people imagine that people will spend their UBI on? If it goes to everyone, inflation might make things weird. If it only goes to the poor, they'll likely be spending it on housing and so-on (without getting into all of the black market, welfare fraud, prostitution and other things that are rampant in many poor communities).

The Libertarian argument for UBI seems to be that it would reveal a lot of this illegality, which is an interesting proposition but I don't feel as if a lot of this stuff is particularly hidden as it is.

[Wellsy]

Have some concerns about the practical effect of welfare in terms of what charity does to a people as opposed to solidarity.
https://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/pdfs/welfare-dependency.pdf

However, so long as wage-labour is ubiquitous, there is little reason to work other than to earn a living, so universal benefits have a tendency to become very expensive. The other problem with universalist provision is that although it avoids exposing groups to exploitation and stigmatisation, it does not prevent free-riding — not so much the iconic dole-bludger, but the men who free-ride on the care-giving of women, and the capitalist who can free-ride on the backs of underpaid workers. The only answer to this is to change the behaviour of those who free-ride. It cannot be fixed by any system of payments.

Thus, even universalist provision of welfare as of right, does not prevent exploitation and stigmatisation so long as a real hierarchy of subordination exists in society; universal welfare can actually underwrite exploitation. Also however, provision of welfare as of right relies on citizenship as the form of subjectivity by means of which a person relates to the benefits they receive from the state. State-provided benefits are only as secure and meaningful as is citizen control over the state. People who cannot exercise political pressure on the state, and cannot see the state as really an expression of their own subjectivity, are not only going to feel excluded, they are going to be excluded.

[Rancid]

Yes, something needs to happen, could UBI help with this?

Turns out we are back to 1920s level of wealth distribution.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2019/02/08/wealth-concentration-returning-levels-last-seen-during-roaring-twenties-according-new-research/?utm_term=.6b4b8358263a

[Victoribus Spolia]

@Rancid @Pants-of-dog;

This is 2020 Democrat Candidate Andrew Yang's podcast interview with Joe Rogan which was almost exclusively on UBI.

Probably the most reasonable and intelligent defense of the position that I have ever heard. He almost had be me convinced.

If this interview were the only thing I had to go on for this guy, he would be the only Democrat to have EVER warmed me up to their way of thinking. Seems like a decent and straight-forward dude and not nearly as bat-shit crazy as everyone else in the DNC (which is why he won't likely go anywhere).


For people like me (an Ancap) or any other individual who is anti-UBI; this guy represents the benchmark opponent who needs to be addressed in my opinion.

[Rancid]

If this interview were the only thing I had to go on for this guy, he would be the only Democrat to have EVER warmed me up to their way of thinking. Seems like a decent and straight-forward dude and not nearly as bat-shit crazy as everyone else in the DNC (which is why he won't likely go anywhere).

In short, he's way too smart to actually get elected for anything.

This is precisely why he will not win anything for anything. I'm sure he will not even be invited to debates.

For people like me (an Ancap) or any other individual who is anti-UBI; this guy represents the benchmark opponent who needs to be addressed in my opinion.

I haven't listened to it all but yea, this guys seems to layout the arguments well and he doesn't put forth appeals to emotion which annoy me like hell (because they work so well..).

[Victoribus Spolia]

I haven't listened to it all

DO IT.

Very good interview and you do need to hear the whole thing in my opinion.

In short, he's way too smart to actually get elected for anything.This is precisely why he will not win anything for anything. I'm sure he will not even be invited to debates.

You're probably right; however, of all the Dems, this guy seems the least likely to make my life miserable of them all.....especially as a freedom loving individual who just wants to be left alone; he may be willing to give money away, but so long as its not at the expense of my liberty or my personal taxes, his election won't likely cause me to build a bunker and do the equivalent of a bank run on my local gun shop.

[Rancid]

DO IT.

Very good interview and you do need to hear the whole thing in my opinion.

I'll have to hear the rest of it, I got through 45 mins of it.

It is very good and thought provoking thus far. It reaffirms that this guy has no chance at getting elected.

[Victoribus Spolia]

It is very good and thought provoking thus far. It reaffirms that this guy has no chance at getting elected

You're probably right and that is a bad reflection of the American people.

[Pants-of-dog]

I would be interested in seeing the results of a study that looked at the results of giving artists this type of income.

[SolarCross]

I would be interested in seeing the results of a study that looked at the results of giving artists this type of income.

How do you decide which "artists" should get it and which should not?

My brother fancied himself an artist, or "autist" as he joked, at one time, all he did was smear black paint on a broken washing machine lid one time with his fingers. Honestly the mess which resulted wouldn't have looked out of place in any modern art gallery. He was pretty good at babbling pretentious nonsense too after he'd had chased the dragon a bit.