It seems to me that Firethorn's proposal is to give people enough money so that they are "comfortable" in poverty, if they choose.
As KD5NRH mentioned, $500-600/month isn't "comfortable" for any but the most ascetic people. And those types tend to not be lazy for their own reasons.
It's more to provide enough goods to avoid other costs. Consider your link-dump of a state cutting people off of food stamps. Food stamps for a single person maxes out at under $200/month. In the affected counties, they managed to trim ~3% of their total rolls with their push - and of some of the cheaper people, at that. It wasn't 62% of those on food stamps, it was 62% of the
single people. So, maximum benefit of less than $2400/year. So a maximum of about $17M saved a year for kicking 7k people off the program. I still have question of how many were added during that time, how many they could have expected to leave the program anyways over that time, etc... But consider, they only removed benefits from those
without dependents.
Seems an ideal time to have an anchor baby to me. Welfare security for 18-20 years right there. How much does a kid cost the system per year? A lot more than $2.4k. How about a hospital visit due to malnutrition? One of those avoided is probably worth a dozen people. What it somebody becomes homeless as a result? Every homeless person costs ~$40k/year. What if somebody switches to stealing and ends up in prison? That's expensive as well.
My point has, and always, been that I want to make people UNcomfortable so that they go and seek employment to get our of poverty. A diet consisting of Beans, Rice, and Gruel sounds like just the right thing to get people to say "Fark this. I want better." and motivated them to get off their asses and go earn a living.
And you don't think $500/month, for 'everything', isn't going to make the beans look like a luxury?
If they're not motivated to work at that point, nothing short of a cattle prod is going to do it.
Pretty much. The only ones who'd have a relatively luxurious life on $500/month would be the NEATs living in their parent's basements. And they'll be NEATs $500 or not.
Thing is if you make them too uncomfortable, they will seek your head on a platter instead of employment.
As I've mentioned before, the French revolution is probably a better model to look at than Vikings. The Vikings were an external force which could go elsewhere. We can't displace a significant number of our poor overseas, after all.
My mother tells stories of Great Depression, where hobos would "dismount" from the trains that behind their farm and come up to the house looking for work.
Now what happens when we have approximately 3 times as many people, and an order of magnitude less farmers with work to be done? When the trains move faster and stop less, so there's no free rides? When the government insists on all sorts of labor rules? The modern incarnation is the day laborer in front of Home Depot and such, but that's technically illegal.
Now I'm not advocating the we go back to roving groups of unemployed (which we pretty much have now with the chronic homeless), but if we eliminate minimum wage, then I predict there will be a plethora of entry level jobs available to start climbing the economic ladder.
Yeah, but they need to be able to survive long enough to climb. Thus the idea with the UBI. With the UBI in place, we could get rid of minimum wage. Still, we have to be careful about causing a downward spiral in wages.
For Utah - consider this bit: "But Housing First runs into fierce emotional resistance in many quarters, because it smacks too much of rewarding people for self-destructive behaviors. "
Housing first has been a resounding success for Utah. I see a lot of opposition to the UBI idea for the same reasons Housing First does. But here's the idea: By implementing programs that work at reducing the scope of the problem, you free up resources to address even more. I'm currently going through some professional training at work - going over "The Goal" and such. I'm seeing how government can do some of the same things as the manufacturers do in the book to improve profitability. Government tends to work better when it's not run on an idealistic model, but on one that identifies the goals of government and realistically pushes to achieve them. Lower crime is better than prison, for example. Schools don't have to be expensive to be good, etc...
I disagree. Local govts don't get to print money the same way the Feds do. Even at the state level, the wasted spending and debt is a fraction of regular federal waste.
That's only if you look at "the fed" vs "a state", while ignoring the waste in the subdivisions of the state, or that there's 49 other states.
If the voters in your area decide to spend millions on some welfare scheme, I at least don't have to pay for it. You and your fellow voters just might pay more attention if you know your local taxes are going to double instead of knowing that people in the other 49 states will help cover it.
Odds are, your area is already spending millions on various welfare schemes. You're already paying for it, congratulations. Also, as I pointed out before, your taxes wouldn't double.