@eyemamom - Per your $10K question, I’ve seen cases where struggling families would really benefit from a decent running car. That would ensure they have reliable transportation for work.
You do know the teenage birthrate in the US is plummeting, don’t you? Turns out you don’t have to bribe young women not to have babies. You just have to give them good contraception. Long-acting contraceptives like implants and IUDs are particularly valuable in this effort.
“I asked Mr R what he would do if he had this guaranteed income. He said that it would make him feel much better about being a stay-at-home dad when the time comes and that he’d probably quit his job to volunteer full time with special needs kids.”
I sure hope you would have influence on Mr. R to think that one through a little better, if the time ever happened. I don’t think the point of giving monthly government benefits is to enable people to quit their jobs. Having the working people paying taxes for others to stay home instead of working, just isn’t the goal. It’s to help them get ahead in life, and you don’t get ahead by quitting your paying job, and volunteering to do what you enjoy full time, even if it is a benevolent gesture.
When you get additional money you don’t need, you save it. For retirement, kid’s college, children’s expenses, potential medical costs, a new car when the old one breaks down, the inevitable home disaster, the unexpected layoff. Or you pay off debt, if you have any. The point is to build up a safety net, so when the bad thing happens (and it always does), that you can take care of yourself and your children.
“You do know the teenage birthrate in the US is plummeting, don’t you? Turns out you don’t have to bribe young women not to have babies. You just have to give them good contraception. Long-acting contraceptives like implants and IUDs are particularly valuable in this effort.”
And that is wonderful. However, impoverished single women are not just teens, and not just first time mothers. I am strongly in favor of free, long-acting contraceptives to anyone who wants them.
busdriver, it was more a matter of volunteering with special needs kids who couldn’t afford help. And yes, for us that is completely worth it.
His income already goes solely towards savings. All of our bills are paid out of my income.
But, it’s hypothetical. Who knows what would really happen. That would be his dream though. We’re not on any kind of assistance and we’re doing just fine.
We’re giving up his income either way when we have kids (at least that is the plan). That’s why we live on one salary- in preparation for that. The extra is gravy.
I understand a dream. However, once you start having a family, the costs go waaaaayyy up, the risk and stress go way up, and the opportunity to live your dream most often gets delayed. The kids that come first are your kids, not anybody elses. But unless you’re going to win the lottery, probably nobody is going to drop that kind of money in your lap, anyways.
We were living the dream, and in a very short period of time, had a child, got sent to war, got our dream jobs, lost our dream jobs, and ran out of unemployment. Very little money saved because hey, why do we need to save money? We have our dream jobs. Life can turn on you in a minute, and before you know it, that nice little stash you thought was enough, is absolutely nothing.
The idea in theory is to get government out of the business of judging worthiness, with the hope that the overall program will be beneficial, even if some people behaved irresponsibly. That is, to focus on the overall group benefits to society rather than individual cases.
We already have that in some government services – we just aren’t used to thinking about it that way. Example: public education. Everyone, rich or poor, is entitled to send their kids to public school, absolutely free. Doesn’t matter who the parents are or whether the pupils are good students or not. Government invests in education because of the net benefit of having an educated populace.
Keep in mind that under our present system of welfare, a tremendous amount of government resources and dollars are spent on the task of determining, and re-determining again and again, which beneficiaries are eligible. Is the applicant really sick enough to qualify for disability? Does the applicant have too much money in the bank… this month … to qualify for food stamps, etc.
In Utah – a very conservative state – they simply solved the homeless problem by providing everyone who needed it with housing, “no strings attached.” See http://www.businessinsider.com/this-state-may-be-the-first-to-end-homelessness-for-good-2015-2
Certainly there must be people included in that cohort who are undeserving and simply end up being unproductive while sleeping indoors rather than unproductive while sleeping on the streets, but Utah officials apparently figured out that the dollar cost of providing the housing was less than the cost of paying for the infrastructure to deal with all the homeless people. Obviously there are all sorts of collateral benefits – reduced health costs, reduced crimes-- that comes with getting needy people off the streets as well as the direct humanitarian benefit.
I’m not trying to frame an argument in favor of the basic, no-strings-attached payment - just explaining the rationale. I personally feel that if everyone in society was given a guaranteed basic dollar-figure income, then the net impact could simply be inflation. If everyone had more money, landlords could charge more for rent and stores could charge more for consumer goods, etc. So not sure what the answer is. But I do think that when people are living in poverty, there is a tremendous societal cost that far outweighs the cost of some undeserving individuals getting welfare checks. The problem is one of striking the right balance. I don’t see how an experiment with 26 randomly selected “winners” in any way helps with the large task of figuring out what actually works.
^ That’s exactly why I’m interested in seeing how this plays out on a large scale.
I know that it’s been tried in small cities and, to the best of my knowledge, most (if not all) have yielded positive results.
It looks like Finland is considering a basic income as a replacement for all other benefits. It would seem to me that this would be the best course of action. Honestly, the amount of money wasted through trying to track welfare recipients is ridiculous. Get rid of that nonsense and just guarantee everyone a basic income and I think it would be a great boost for the entire nation.
But that’s just my opinion.
If I got $1,100 a month, I’d become a pilot in a year’s time. Maybe an instrument rating also, depending on how fast I learn. Wouldn’t be enough for a living, but hobbies would be much more feasible.
Finland tax rate: http://www.tradingeconomics.com/finland/personal-income-tax-rate
Finland poverty rate: http://europa.eu/epic/countries/finland/index_en.htm
http://www.borgenmagazine.com/lack-of-poverty-in-finland/
Finland =/= US
I didn’t say it was… but it is one of the only places which is currently doing this. Switzerland will decide whether or not to do it next fall.
Sometimes you have to take whatever data you can get.
^^I’m not sure how they figure that the personal income tax rate is 51.5% in Finland. If you look at this chart, it looks far different, depending upon your income.
Finland Individual income tax rates (national tax) 2014:
Tax (%)
Tax Base (EUR)
0 1-16,100
6.5% 16,101-23,900
17.5% 23,901-39,100
21.5% 39,101-70,300
29.75% 70,301 – 100,00
31.75% over 100,000
OMG. A plan like this can only work in a small experiment, or, on a larger basis, in a county where rents and the price if real estate are significantly controlled.
Without that, you will immediately see an increase in rent, home prices, and the cost of new home construction.
There may also be increases in consumer goods and food, but I would predict real estate would pip first, and maybe suck up the whole increase.
You can’t do stuff like this in a vacuum. The few drops of socialism you find in the USA exist amidst huge contention. Now you want to give away $1100/mo ? You’ll need a lot more socialist programs behind it if it has the smallest chance of working.
I’m personally OK with that. But its gonna have to be part of a very large program that a lot of people will fight.
Is the $1,100 a month supposed to be a replacement of all subsidies?
$1,100 a month instead of section 8 housing, medi-cal, food stamps, pell grants, etc?
@dstark that is how Finland and others have proposed doing it. (Well, a modified version of that since universal education and health care is already a thing in those places.) Since we don’t have systems in place like other countries- ie universal education and health care- it would have to be much different if implemented here.
My personal opinion is that it should replace things like food stamps and housing subsidies but not educational benefits (Pell) or insurance (Medicaid, etc). Even an additional $1k+ a month would still put education and insurance out of reach of the poorest citizens.
My opinion is…this proposal is not going to happen here in my lifetime.
In California, this is not going to work for housing. With section 8 housing, Tenants pay 30 percent of their adjusted income in rent and the government gives the landlord the rest.
On the zero percent chance this happens, everybody is not going to receive $1,100. In one hand a person will receive $1,100 and the other hand is going to pay. How much the other hand will pay will be decided by those in power.
Taxes will go up somewhere. Inflation may rise. But there will be a cost.
Fwiw, dstark, the original link was in Germany anyway- not the US.
I agree though… this isn’t going to happen in the US in my lifetime either. So, it’s just a thought experiment 
@MaineLonghorn …and everyone else. Just a friendly reminder to get experienced legal help when setting up your will for your sons. It is amazing how receiving any assets can undermine their collection of SSI benefits linked to yours when you die.
Silly study. It would be foolish to leave your job because you were going to receive $13,000 for one year and one year only.
@sax, thanks for the advice! I had no idea.
@MaineLonghorn . Just double check. It is probably fine. I don’t want to give you bad info. Just heads up. You should ask up in the thread about kids with disabilities. Dstark would also probably know. It is probably fine.
No desire to reroute this thread. Sorry, everyone.