In my forthcoming book, Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution, I explore how the American republic can survive in the 21st Century given unprecedented economic, technological, and political changes. The book addresses the increasing calls for a universal basic income (UBI). Various Democratic cities are already implementing UBI systems. Now, a new study finds (as did some prior studies) that UBI systems have not achieved significant improvements and may actually have some negative consequences for recipients.
A working paper with the National Bureau of Economic Research shows that UBI recipients did indeed spend more money, including a 13 percent increase on child-related expenses. There was also a slight increase in parental supervision of children.
However, there was no improved school performance and a slight increase in reported developmental and stress-related problems with children.
Stanford’s Basic Income Lab is tracking more than 160 UBI projects in the U.S..
So far, the results are at best mixed. One study in Compton showed that many recipients of the $500 monthly payment quit working part-time jobs.
Likewise, reports indicate that “a $400 monthly payment in Chelsea, Massachusetts, increased food spending and did not measurably reduce work, but it failed to produce results for the research team’s “primary downstream outcomes”—namely self-reported health and child school attendance.”
This follows earlier reports about the OpenResearch Unconditional Income Study (ORUS), an experiment in which lower-income Americans were given $1,000 a month for three years. The result was a reduction in work and an increase in leisure activities. There was also an increase in spending on health care but not an increase in health outcomes.
It is still early in studying these outcomes but these programs are not showing the downstream benefits predicted by some. Indeed, they may be impacting work hours negatively for recipients in some areas.
As various cities like New York move toward socialist candidates and programs, these studies offer a cautionary tale as officials push UBI payments.
States are not prohibited and enjoy the power to provide Universal Basic Income (UBI).
Elected state representatives who advocate for UBI may and should be voted out of office, understanding the relevance of and need for the American thesis of freedom and self-reliance.
Congress may tax for debt, defense, and “general Welfare.”
UBI, being universal, definitively constitutes ALL or the WHOLE WELL PROCEED, as in “general Welfare.”
Good Americans should be embarrassed to and not accept charity and public assistance.
Alaska Permanent Fund
The Alaska Permanent Fund (APF) is a constitutionally established permanent fund managed by a state-owned corporation, the Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation (APFC).[1] It was established in Alaska in 1976[2] by Article 9, Section 15 of the Alaska State Constitution[3] under Governor Jay Hammond and Attorney General Avrum Gross. From February 1976 until April 1980, the Department of Revenue Treasury Division managed the state’s Permanent Fund assets, until, in 1980, the Alaska State Legislature created the APFC.[4]
As of 2019, the fund was worth approximately $64 billion that has been funded by oil and mining revenues and has paid out an average of approximately $1,600 annually per resident (adjusted to 2019 dollars).[5] The main use for the fund’s revenue has been to pay out the Permanent Fund Dividend (PFD), which many authors portray as the only example of a basic income in practice.[6][7]
“Alaska Permanent Fund”
Alaska is not the federal government.
It’s still morally wrong, however.
Did you read?
Concerning the federal government:
Congress may tax for debt, defense, and “general Welfare.”
UBI, being universal, definitively constitutes ALL or the WHOLE WELL PROCEED, as in “general Welfare.”
“. . . as in ‘general Welfare.’”
What about the “general welfare” of those who work for a living — those whose *earned* income is looted to pay for your welfare programs? On your cannibalistic view, those who are productive are merely rightless serfs of the “needy.”
“. . . $64 billion that has been funded by oil and mining . . .”
So you’re using one looter program to rationalize more looter programs.
Charming.
The UBI seems to me to be an outgrowth of the cultural Marxism that inspired Ibram Kendi and gave us identity politics and the nonsensical division of Americans into the oppressed and the oppressors. The syllogism, such that it is, is that well off families do better at school and doing well at school is important for success in life, therefore we should make less well-off people well off by granting them a UBI. All of this ignores basic human nature as observed by Benjamin Franklin, “It is hard for an empty sack to stand upright”. By ignoring human nature we fall into the public policy trap identified by Thomas Sowell, “We seem to be getting closer and closer to a situation where nobody is responsible for what they did but we are all responsible for what somebody else did.” An alternative approach to the UBI is to vastly increase the minimum wage (to make it so called livable) but that unfortunately results in significantly fewer minimum wage jobs particularly negatively affecting the marginally employables. A better approach would be to have a healthy economy with lots of jobs. Then people can take pride in their accomplishments. As C. S. Lewis observed, “You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.”
“You don’t value what you don’t pay for.”
This is proven every day.
DIFFERENT CONCEPTS?
“From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”
– Karl Marx
______________
“Freedom and Self-Reliance”
“Taxation”
“To lay taxes to provide for the general welfare of the United States, that is to say, “to lay taxes for the purpose of providing for the general welfare.” For the laying of taxes is the power, and the general welfare the purpose for which the power is to be exercised. They are not to lay taxes ad libitum for any purpose they please; but only to pay the debts or provide for the welfare of the Union. In like manner, they are not to do anything they please to provide for the general welfare, but only to lay taxes for that purpose. To consider the latter phrase, not as describing the purpose of the first, but as giving a distinct and independent power to do any act they please, which might be for the good of the Union, would render all the preceding and subsequent enumerations of power completely useless.”
“It would reduce the whole instrument to a single phrase, that of instituting a Congress with power to do whatever would be for the good of the United States; and, as they would be the sole judges of the good or evil, it would be also a power to do whatever evil they please.”
– Thomas Jefferson
“To consider the latter phrase, not as describing the purpose of the first, but as giving a distinct and independent power to do any act they please, which might be for the good of the Union, would render all the preceding and subsequent enumerations of power completely useless.”
Which, unfortunately, pretty much accurately describes our current condition. Sorry, Mr. Franklin, we couldn’t keep it…
Pay attention, Son.
______________________
“He who hesitates is lost.”
– Cato
_________
You’re going to have to TAKE it back, just like we did.
– Ben
It’s the oldest story: some people work so that other people can enjoy their leisure time.
The Corpus is economically-dead and now they want to pump blood ($$$) into it intravenously (UBI).
Uh-Huh Riiiiiiiiiiight.
A return to the 1960s welfare system
google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=1960s+welfare+system
The 1960s witnessed a significant expansion of the U.S. welfare system, largely driven by President Lyndon B. Johnson’s “Great Society” programs. These initiatives aimed to reduce poverty and racial injustice, leading to the creation and expansion of various welfare programs, including Food Stamps, Medicaid, and Head Start.
Key Developments:
Great Society Programs:
President Johnson’s “Great Society” programs, launched in the mid-1960s, aimed to address poverty and racial inequality through various social welfare initiatives.
War on Poverty:
The “War on Poverty” was a key component of the Great Society, focusing on job training, education, and community development to help people escape poverty.
Increased Funding and Scope:
The 1960s saw a substantial increase in federal funding for existing welfare programs like Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) and the creation of new programs like Medicaid and Medicare.
Expansion of Food Stamps:
The Food Stamp Act of 1964 made the food stamp program permanent, providing nutritional assistance to low-income families.
Job Training and Community Action:
Initiatives like the Job Corps and Community Action Programs aimed to provide job training and empower communities to address their own poverty issues.
Medicare and Medicaid:
The 1965 Social Security Amendments created Medicare (healthcare for the elderly) and Medicaid (healthcare for the poor), significantly expanding healthcare access.
Impact:
Welfare Rolls Grew:
The expansion of welfare programs led to a significant increase in the number of people receiving assistance.
Family Structure Changes:
Some analysts argue that welfare policies, particularly those related to Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), may have inadvertently contributed to changes in family structures, such as an increase in single-parent households, although this is a complex and debated issue.
Criticism and Reform:
The 1960s welfare expansion also faced criticism, with concerns raised about the potential for dependency and abuse. This criticism eventually led to welfare reform efforts in later decades.
Lasting Programs:
Many of the programs created or expanded during the 1960s, such as Food Stamps, Medicaid, and Head Start, continue to be important parts of the U.S. welfare system today.
-Forever Programs-
“Lyndon B. Johnson’s “Great Society””
Good ole Lyndon Baines, who was most likely complicit in the assassination of JFK (at minimum, he looked the other way to let it happen) so that he could acquire the power to try to ruin us. When someone mentions Byden as the “worst President of all time” it always occurs to me that there are some other serious contenders for that title, with Johnson definitely near the top of that ignoble list.
The singular American failure is the judicial branch, with emphasis on the Supreme Court.
The entire “Great Society” and the communist American welfare state are irrefutably unconstitutional.
Article 1, Section 8: Congress has the power to tax for and fund ONLY debt, defense, and “general Welfare,” which is comprised of basic infrastructure, and Congress has the power to regulate ONLY “the value of money,” “commerce among nations, states, and Indian tribes,” and “land and naval Forces.”
The Supreme Court is sworn to support the Constitution; instead, it has supported, as a crime of high office, Karl Marx’s maxim, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”
Lyndon Baines Johnson was out of time and on his way to prison in early 1964 for his part in the Billie Sol Estes scandal.
Lyndon Baines Johnson was part and parcel of the Deep Deep State JFK assassination, which included Allen Dulles, J. Edgar Hoover, Lyndon Johnson, Carlos Marcelo, Cuban Exiles, and segments of the CIA, the FBI, the USSS, the Mob, the U.S. Military, Texas Oilmen, Texas authorities, Dallas Police et al.
Lee Harvey Oswald was a CIA operative/asset/agent and operational “patsy.”
JFK was shot by a Mob hit team.
Are the State governments and their subdivisions who want UBI trying to be a fractal of the national government? How do you do that when you can’t print your own money? Are working taxpayers reliable chumps to fund UBI instead? The national government is always torn between mandatory social program spending and discretionary national defense. Is the set of UBI government entities the same set as Defund The Police? Are these the same payfor issues that cratered the 1600’s Jamestown and Plymouth colonies attempts at socialism?
So now leftist Pocahontas Warren is endorsing the communist running for mayor of New York City. The new left talking point is that government run grocery stores in the city is a great idea. Stores like Walmart and Krogers ounce found that the stores in the boroughs would meet the one to three percent of gross sales margin that would allow their stores to stay open and serve the public. There’s a term in the retail industry known as shrink. Shrink is mainly caused by theft. It stands to reason that if there is no penalty for taken what does not belong to you that shrink will grow and make it impossible for a grocery store to make a one to three percent profit so they close the stores. Do they think the shrink will stop just because the government runs the stores?
First they shoot themselves in the foot and then they expect the tax payers to pay their medical bills. You get the government you deserve New York.
“So now leftist Pocahontas Warren is endorsing the communist running for mayor of New York City. The new left talking point is that government run grocery stores in the city is a great idea.”
Hey, that’s a great concept. Then residents of NYC (and maybe the rest of use, if that useless st’unt had her way) could get to experience the wonderful food shortages and rationing that were an ongoing feature of the Soviet Union over its 70 year history:
Why the Soviet Union Faced Endless Food Shortages in the 1980s
http://www.historytools.org/stories/why-the-soviet-union-faced-endless-food-shortages-in-the-1980s
“The result was endemic shortages and long lines for basic goods in the late 1980s. According to one report, over 15% of Soviet families had to wait in lines for milk, while nearly 30% could not easily obtain meat.[^5] Sugar, butter, coffee, and soap had to be rationed in many cities.
The average Soviet citizen consumed 46kg of meat per year compared to 82kg in the United States.[^6] Fresh produce was a rare luxury. Frustrated shoppers often had to visit multiple stores or wait for hours just to obtain their weekly necessities.
Some people relied on the black market or their private garden plots to supplement their diets. Allowing families to sell excess crops from these small plots did help boost overall output and selection. By 1990, private plots accounted for nearly 30% of Soviet agricultural production.[^7] However, it wasn‘t nearly enough to compensate for the failings of state-run agriculture.”
Elizabeth Warren’s nickname isn’t Pocahontas. It’s Fauxcahontas. Because she’s a fake American Indian. Pocahontas was an actual American Indian. Get it straight, man. 🙃
UBI is a terrible idea. It is also perhaps the least worst solution to the inevitable. Automation combined with AI can and will replace millions of jobs, never to come back and no we are not going to fill our ranks with armies of robot service people. Those will also be automated. We are rapidly approaching the point in which we are going to have a population where is no work, nor will their ever be any work for millions. Even all of those cheap illegal aliens who flooded across the border will not be needed. Everything from construction workers, to cleaners, to landscapers, to fruit and vegetable pickers will be replaced. Millions of people with no work, no money, and no future is a recipe for massive social unrest, crime, and violence. When everything from your waiter at the restaurant, to the customer support line you call, to the urgent care treating your minor illness or injury has been replaced by an AI controlled robot you’ll start to see there are too many people for the ever diminishing amount of work that is available.
You’re left with a few options:
UBI
Incentives for self sterilization
An increasing tax rate based on the amount of children you have.
I don’t like it, but I don’t see what other choices we have.
*. Then it becomes make-jobs. The doorman idea expanded. Innovation disruption is an interesting idea.
Slaver’s paradox.
Spoiled child syndrome.
Redistributive change scheme.
Out of sight, out of mind? Abort, sequester.
So they get a thousand bucks a month and rather than continuing to work hard at their jobs they decide that more leisure time to kick their feet up to watch the view in the morning is just what their entitled to. It is well documented that people have a fixed mindset that tells them that there’s just no way to get ahead so do as little as possible. An extra thousand bucks a month doesn’t change a mental attitude. It will however, get their votes and this is really what matters to the leftist wealthy gentry.
OT So-called “Sanctuary States” are illegal unconstitutional REBEL states.
There are 3 root causes of this country’s decline:
1. Civics Ignorance
2. Civics Apathy
3. Lack of Self-Reliance.
I bolded 3. because that has been the Democratic party’s go-to cheese 🧀 to bait the trap. Maybe their motives were compassionate. Maybe it was about getting a base hooked. Neither motive really matters though. Because either way the short-sighted agenda still leaves more people dependent on government.
I’ll file this one under “DUH”
I don’t trust any research conducted on this kind of project in the United States. The culture is just too biased against it. It’s designed to fail.
Not sure what you mean by “biased against it”. There are many pockets on the east and west coasts that are 100% in favor of this. Stanford is not exactly a bastion of conservatism and I’m a bit surprised they didn’t massage the numbers to at least make it look break even if not slightly beneficial.
“The culture is just too biased against it. It’s designed to fail.”
Couldn’t be that UBI itself is just a failed idea, no way.
Anyway that you want to swing this cat, it still is a communist cat. And the track record for communism is just what it is – an abject failure unless gross coercion is applied again and again. In the end it is an economic dead end but why must we live through the experiment again just to prove the failure, again?
“…A reduction in work and increase in leisure…”
Well, who could have possibly seen that in advance?? My memory tells me that both Denver and Seattle tried UBI programs way back in the 1970s which resulted in the same. In fact I recall that, on average, there was so much “reduction in work and increase in leisure” that it took UBI payments of $3,000 to get the family gross income to rise by $1,000.
With all due regard to the late Sen. Moynihan, poor people don’t just lack money. They often lack a whole spectrum of behaviors and skills. We see this now playing out in our growing societal dysfunction.
Maybe we need a so-called study on what is meant by “you reap what you sow” and the consequences thereof.
Lin, you’re not wrong, and recognize the root problem isn’t some grand plan, but that most people take the easy way out. That’s the default. They don’t think long-term, they don’t ask hard questions, and they don’t want the work. That’s all it takes. The rest, bad ideas, power grabs, and even chaos follow. An empty belly is an immense incentive.
Cognitive behavioral scientists have been doing studies for decades that connect behavior to consequences. Sad that it has to be researched. Parents and schools used to teach this.
‘Studies’ were necessary to reach this conclusion? Sigh. Are people of a certain cohort capable of learning anything whatsoever from the mistakes of their forebears?
No, UBI will never work. Pun slightly intended. Good luck, New York, you’re going to need it.
If someone is starving, give them food. If they need shelter, provide a means to have it. If someone needs work, lend them a hand. UBI is a handout that will fail for obvious reasons.