News from around the world!
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Remember, we know how to address many of the world's problems, including poverty, homelessness, and climate change.
But those with capital in society choose not to.
Those with capital choose not to
Those with capital profit off of not doing so.
Like the one recent CEO saying the quiet part aloud by saying government should promote higher unemployment, since in the high employment environment employees aren't desperate and have more demands costing him money. That employees arent feeling enough pain and despair in economy.
To be fair, this isn't that far away from the economic theory underlying using interest rates to manage inflation - it's just phrased in a different way.
I recently heard it phrased like this:
Capitalism is built on hierarchy, which means someone fundamentally NEEDS to be at the bottom. There is no way around it, someone needs to suffer.
Every single study on UBI finds that it is a good idea that benefits both the recipients and society as a whole, but because it contradicts the dominant ideology it can't be allowed to happen.
If people aren't forced to work to live then how can I get cheap labor for my shitty business that my dad gave me?
If people have UBI, you can get away with paying less though. That's how walmart does it; just encourage your workers to get welfare so they stay alive enough to work more
Raise their rent
Which we all know would happen IMMEDIATELY in lockstep with any widespread rollout of UBI, and any complaint would be met with half the country screeching "FREE MARKET REEEEEE"
Guess we better institute rent controls first then
Shut up baby I know it
Too bad 80% of the country would call us commies for suggesting it.
That alone would be better than UBI.
How can a society built on capital work towards the betterment of society rather than the accretion of capital?
There was a UBI experiment in canada that was a huge success and of course the tories axed it as soon as they had the chance. Conservatives need to [extremely long bleep] ... [yeah still bleeping] ... ... [still going] ... [leeeeep] -yeah i'm going to have to redact this in post.
I've yet to see a study at a scale large enough to impact the local economy. Will the results hold when everyone gets monthly cash payments, or will rent go through the roof and that's about it?
Similar experiments in Vancouver: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/30/canada-study-homeless-money-spending
Ontario: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/basic-income-mcmaster-report-1.5485729
Turns out, socialism ain't that bad eh?
1K a month is pretty trivial compared to the cost of all the public money used to punish them (e.g cops). Even if you don't care about the humanity aspect at all UBI makes sense just from a pure numbers perspective.
But think of all the money prisons will lose!
I know it's a popular sentiment, because private prisons are so in-your-face evil, but they're not as ubiquitous as the population seems to believe.
Twenty-seven states and the federal government incarcerated 96,370 people in private prisons in 2021, representing 8% of the total state and federal prison population.
Yes, that's too many. Yes, we need to ban these things at the federal level. But let's not forget the grift from state and local prisons, in many cases worse because they can't be as readily audited.
Rent is only high because of artificial scarcity of real estate. The scarcity only exists because building new housing is decided neither by supply and demand nor central government planning, but by the people who accumulate more capital if housing isn't built.
We really need to push for the feds to step in and start constructing government housing against the will of the NIMBYs and local and state governments then.
California has finally started forcing local governments to build more housing to stop the NIMBYs bit it's still going to take so many years for housing to catch up even if they start now.
People without money mostly need money.
Somehow this is surprising and confusing... primarily to people who cannot imagine change.
Wow.
Can’t wait for this to never roll out nationwide at the Federal level.
"Those damn homeless and injuns get EVERYTHING for free"
-my racist and jaded ass coworker
OK, so you're telling me that giving money to people who need it, is better than giving it to rich people?
I am Wage Slaves inner shocked pikachu. Same thing, just more sarcastic and massive eye brows.
I think my biggest problem with these tests (not the idea of UBI) is that they go entirely based on what the recipients say. There's not really any indication that fact checking is done to confirm they actually are living somewhere now, or they did get their cars fixed, etc.
I'm confident that the money helped, because obviously it would, but I wish we could get some actual solid data on how much it helped. The cynic in me believes that desperate people getting 1000$/mo will embellish how much it helps in order to keep getting the money, when in reality they need 1500$ or 2000$ to afford housing in Denver.
I'm not sure what definition of UBI you're using, but not all forms of UBI need to cover the entirety of living expenses. UBI is just having income without strings attached. This very study is showing that even small amounts of money can help people get out of shitty situations.
Also as someone who lives in Dever, it's not that expensive. Sure $1500+ is what you'll pay around LoDo, but there are plenty of cheaper places.
the Pew Charitable Trust wrote in a recent analysis that research had "consistently found that homelessness in an area is driven by housing costs."
Well, yeah, and we can thank investors, landlords and capital funds for that. Housing in Denver is ridiculously expensive currently... and it was bad but not to this extent a few years ago. A house next door to me that was $250k and $1000 a month a few years ago is now $450 and $2100 a month.
“No shit”
Poverty is a lack of money, that's it. Tax the rich, help the poor, grow the middle class.