Ground-Breaking #UBI / #UniversalBasicIncome / #BasicIncome study. They had a $1000 a month group, a group that got a lump up front then $500 a month, then a $50 a month group that was supposed to be the control.
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Ground-Breaking #UBI / #UniversalBasicIncome / #BasicIncome study. They had a $1000 a month group, a group that got a lump up front then $500 a month, then a $50 a month group that was supposed to be the control.
Result was (as always) massive savings for #Denver Colorado as a bunch of people were able to get themselves off costly programs (Denver spends over $40k per person per year) and into stable housing, and huge improvements in these people's lives, especially their children and their ability to find work.
What stood out was that members of the $50 a month control group also did better than expected: simply having money was enough for some of them to build a stable housing situation.
This is raising new questions about just how little needs to be spent on UBI, already well established to be the most effective program by far for all issues in #economics, for it to actually be effective.
The Denver basic income experiment : The Indicator from Planet Money
Homelessness is a pervasive issue that cities across the country struggle to address. This led an entrepreneur to team up with researchers and local foundations for an experiment called the Denver Basic Income Project. The goal was to see how different variations of a basic income program would impact the local homeless population. What the researchers found could become a guide for how localities in the United States could address the problem of homelessness.For sponsor-free episodes of The Indicator from Planet Money, subscribe to Planet Money+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org.Music by Drop Electric. Find us: TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Newsletter.
NPR (www.npr.org)
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Raccoon at TechHub :mastodon:replied to Raccoon at TechHub :mastodon: last edited by
14 boosts in a brief time. This was a popular post.
Thanks NPR.
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Mike. π©Όπ¨π¦replied to Raccoon at TechHub :mastodon: last edited by
@Raccoon save money, but give the lower class a voice...tuff choice for the rich
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Kit Musereplied to Raccoon at TechHub :mastodon: last edited by
@Raccoon I like this. I mean $60/month would cover one therapy session for me which would be a BFD, but considering that most people on disability income live at poverty level or below, I think "how little can we spend on UBI" is a dangerous question to ask depending on who you're talking to.
Now UBI plus a single-payer universal healthcare program? That would be game changing and if we didn't have to budget for out of pocket med expenses, a different calculation.
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Josh Riversreplied to Raccoon at TechHub :mastodon: last edited by
@Raccoon Curious if you have thoughts about Oregon Measure 118
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Raccoon at TechHub :mastodon:replied to Kit Muse last edited by
@KitMuse
> "I think "how little can we spend on UBI" is a dangerous question to ask depending on who you're talking to."I think that what makes it useful is the fact that we can talk about smaller numbers when people balk at that price tag. Like, what if we just offer everyone on government programs another $200 a month? Surely we can afford $200 a month on top of what we're already spending... And just like that, you've got your foot in the door, because if that turns out to be enough to cut a chunk out of the budget by the end of the year, now we can start talking about how this program paid for itself and we can raise the amount of money being put into it with the money we can now show we're saving.
It also makes it easier to dismiss the argument that welfare programs need such heavy oversight of the people in them, because clearly, the problem is just that people need more money.
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Raccoon at TechHub :mastodon:replied to Mike. π©Όπ¨π¦ last edited by
@MikeImBack
Yeah I really think that is the main opposition to UBI at this point, structurally speaking. Sure you have the moralists decrying that even a highly effective program that is just giving out money is somehow wrong, or the people insisting against the evidence that such programs won't work because all poor people are poor because they can't budget avocado toast or whatever, but I think their main backing is that rich people recognize that if we replace the expensive and complicated systems of trying to figure out whether people "deserve" welfare and being strict about how it's spent, the workforce would not be as desperate for jobs, and working conditions across the board would have to be improved.