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Comments

• PizzaMan@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Not only that, buy it’s almost always cheaper to just give the homeless housing.

  A chronically homeless person costs the tax payer an average of $35,578 per year. Costs on average are reduced by 49.5% when they are placed in supportive housing. Supportive housing costs on average $12,800, making the net savings roughly $4,800 per year.

  endhomelessness.org/…/Cost-Savings-from-PSH.pdf

  Studies have shown that – in practice, and not just in theory – providing people experiencing chronic homelessness with permanent supportive housing saves taxpayers money.

  npscoalition.org/…/fact-sheet-cost-of-homelessnes…

  Without connections to the right types of care, they cycle in and out of hospital emergency departments and inpatient beds, detox programs, jails, prisons, and psychiatric institutions—all at high public expense. Some studies have found that leaving a person to remain chronically homeless costs taxpayers as much as $30,000 to $50,000 per year.

  usich.gov/…/Ending_Chronic_Homelessness_in_2017.p…

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  This obviously varies from state to state. But generally it is cheaper to fix the root of a problem (housing) than a symptom (emergency services), and that applies to homelessness.

  But even if it wasn’t a better option from a purely cost/benefit analysis, the moral thing to do is to house the homeless. So no matter what, it is something we should be doing.

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  • conditional_soup@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Noooo, but then how could we be like San Francisco and pay a “non-profit” $40,000 per tent per year to lay out a grid and tell the homeless to bring their own tent and keep then under armed watch in a fenced off camp? You don’t understand, we can’t just go around implementing solutions instead of managing a problem indefinitely!

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• conditional_soup@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Okay, cards on the table here. I am a left libertarian, which for the purposes of the US means that I mostly vote Democrat, though I always listen to what the candidates have to say and give them a chance to make their case. The point is, I’m not coming on here to pretend that I’m conservative and try to build a bandwagon; I believe that it’s hard to make the world a better place while being dishonest. That said, I’ve worked alongside flag-waving fox-watching conservatives most of my life, and I think I’ve got a fairly good handle on that point of view.

  So, here’s the point: I think there’s a conservative case for certain things that a lot of things that conservatives have just sort of taken at face value as bad.

  UBI: Okay, so the state, non-profits, and charities spend an enormous amount of money on homelessness, poverty, and so on. Isn’t it a conservative tenant that nobody knows better how to use your money than you? Why shouldn’t that apply to the poor and homeless? Research has consistently shown good outcomes from UBI wherever it’s been tried, and in some studies at actually decreased unemployment. My intuition is that if you just give the money to folks instead of winnowing it away through layers and layers of bureaucrats, means testing, and so on, they’ll make the right decisions for themselves most of the time. “But wait”, you might be thinking to yourself, “what about the people who won’t make the right decisions for themselves?” Let me ask you this, has forty or fifty years of paying for ever more bureaucracy and means testing to catch and micromanage these people managed to fix it? There’s no reason to think that will change. If someone’s going to be that way, there’s nothing on this earth that’s going to change that but themselves.

  15-Minute Cities and Urbanism: I’m a part of this movement. Nobody wants to make you live in a city if you don’t want to. Nobody wants to make you live in a high rise apartment. The point is to get bad regulations out of the way and facilitate cities that are more efficient, more affordable, and more closely resemble the cities that arise under normal free market conditions like you see in Europe and Japan (cities basically everywhere else in the world tend to go up rather than out). Did you know that for every dollar a car driver spends on driving, the government spends $10 supporting that same driver? That is, we lose 10 dollars for every dollar spent on driving. Public transport actually generates one cent per dollar spent on it, and bicycling and pedestrian traffic generates three cents per dollar spent on it. Not just that, but car centric infrastructure isn’t free market, it’s the government locking you in to needing a (very expensive) product to participate in society. The choice in terms of fiscal responsibility is clear. Don’t like cities? That’s okay, you don’t have to, but it’s important to remember that cities are, like it or not, our economic engines. Having healthier, better cities is better for everyone, including rural markets that sell to and buy from their regional metropolitan. Besides that, we aim to stop the phenomenon of [your local metro] growing out to be knocking on [your small town’s] door. There’s a lot more for conservatives to appreciate here, it’s a lot more than just climate concerns.

  Public transport: It’s hard for people to live within their means when when the way we’ve designed our world makes it hard for people to live within their means. Cars aren’t cheap, and practically forcing people into car ownership is against a number of things conservatives stand for, including freedom of markets, strong communities (car centric infrastructure tends to erode community identities and bonds because people don’t do business or anything else in their community besides sleep and occasionally wave at the neighbor), and affordable living. Cars also provide a convenient avenue for government overreach because of how dangerous they are to operate. There’s so many laws on the books around cars that it’s relatively easy for an officer to pull someone over first and think of a reason later, to say nothing of all the layers of bureaucracy that go into regulating cars and drivers. It gives the government a lot of opportunities to intrude on your business. It’s a little ironic that public transit actually offers more anonymity and fewer reasons for the government to interfere with you. It’s also often the case that public transit is not only more affordable than owning and driving car, but also much cheaper to scale than continuously adding more and more lanes to a road. Also, having good public transit means that the elderly will have an easier and safer time getting around their communities once they’re not fit to drive anymore, we can raise the bar on driver’s licenses to keep bad drivers off the road, and we won’t have to spend so much time and money hunting down and preventing drunk drivers because they’ll just take the train or walk (in the case of 15 minute cities) instead. What about fiscal responsibility? Public transit is cheaper in the long run than both road maintenance and road expansion.

  There’s some other policies that I think a case could be made for, but I think it’s a little more of a reach on those fronts. Also, what I’ve laid out here is not exhaustive, I think there’s a lot of things to like about these policies from almost any direction.

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  • TJD@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I believe that it’s hard to make the world a better place while being dishonest.

    Don’t worry, there’s already a few people here covering that role regardless.

    Okay, so the state, non-profits, and charities spend an enormous amount of money on homelessness, poverty, and so on. Isn’t it a conservative tenant that nobody knows better how to use your money than you?

    Yes, I agree that a ubi works better than conventional welfare. The problem is assuming it would entirely replace existing welfare. Because in my experience, the people who support greater welfare are significantly less likely than me to support letting the idiots who blow their ubi on drugs and shit just die in the streets of their own volition. So we would just have a ubi and other welfare, making it just another black hole of spending, and eliminating any benefit of efficiency.

    The other thing is, I support neither a ubi nor conventional welfare. Just because one is better, it doesn’t mean I want it. It’s like picking how many legs I want broken. Yeah, 1 is better than 2, but I’d rather just not have my legs broken at all. Because yeah, I believe that the individual can best make their own choices with their own money. Which is why I don’t want the government taking it in the first place. Slash spending and slash taxes. Don’t just replace spending and keep raising taxes.

    Nobody wants to make you live in a city if you don’t want to. Nobody wants to make you live in a high rise apartment. The point is to get bad regulations out of the way and facilitate cities that are more efficient, more affordable, and more closely resemble the cities that arise under normal free market conditions like you see in Europe and Japan (cities basically everywhere else in the world tend to go up rather than out).

    I fully agree with cutting regulations and letting things develop as the market wants. The issue is, I find very few people advocating for this stuff actually just consider cutting regulations as the end goal, and letting things go from there. Rather, it’s nearly always coupled with calls for more regulations, just supporting their view of how things should be. Go to any of the communities like fuckcars or notjustbikes and ask how interested they are in removing car licensing and registration, lifting speed limits, or letting people drive big pickups. I’m sure you’ll get resounding support 😑.

    Did you know that for every dollar a car driver spends on driving, the government spends $10 supporting that same driver? That is, we lose 10 dollars for every dollar spent on driving.

    So stop spending it. Stop Taxing me for it as well while we’re at it.

    The choice in terms of fiscal responsibility is clear. Don’t like cities? That’s okay, you don’t have to, but it’s important to remember that cities are, like it or not, our economic engines.

    And they can generate their own fucking cash. I’d gladly take whatever economic hit if it meant not propping up cites just because.

    Cars aren’t cheap, and practically forcing people into car ownership is against a number of things conservatives stand for, including freedom of markets, strong communities (car centric infrastructure tends to erode community identities and bonds because people don’t do business or anything else in their community besides sleep and occasionally wave at the neighbor), and affordable living.

    Free markets include the freedom to fail. As for that other stuff, I couldn’t give less of a damn. I don’t care if my neighbor smiles and waves or throws me the bird and yells, as long as he stays out of my shit, and I’ll stay out of his. And if he wants a community, I’ll damn well support the government getting out of his way.

    Cars also provide a convenient avenue for government overreach because of how dangerous they are to operate. There’s so many laws on the books around cars that it’s relatively easy for an officer to pull someone over first and think of a reason later, to say nothing of all the layers of bureaucracy that go into regulating cars and drivers.

    So get rid of them. There’s no quirk of the universe tieing car regulations to transit. And as a mentioned earlier, the people supporting transit rarely ever support axing driving regulations. Go to any of those communities and see.

    It’s also often the case that public transit is not only more affordable than owning and driving car, but also much cheaper to scale than continuously adding more and more lanes to a road

    Rome fell over a thousand years ago, and plenty of their roads are still around without having trillions thrown at them. We already have roads. I’m not the one voting for politicians to throw money at them.

    we can raise the bar on driver’s licenses to keep bad drivers off the road, and we won’t have to spend so much time and money hunting down and preventing drunk drivers because they’ll just take the train or walk (in the case of 15 minute cities) instead. What about fiscal responsibility? Public transit is cheaper in the long run than both road maintenance and road expansion.

    Yeah, I don’t want to raise the bar. I want to melt the bar down for scrap and end licensing all together. As for responsibility, hold the people causing the problems responsible. Get drunk and hit someone? Enjoy working your ass off until they’re repaid for the harm you caused.

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    • conditional_soup@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I’m getting some hostile vibes here, and that’s not really the tone I’m going for.

      As for cutting driving regulations: I’m okay cutting some, but not all. One thing that makes me left libertarian is that I believe the government has an absolute right to interfere with gross negligence. That is, if you live in an area prone to wildfires and you decide to have a bonfire, the fire department is perfectly justified in coming and shutting that shit down. Maybe you had it under control, maybe you didn’t, but the risk to the life and property of those around you is too high to leave to chance. Likewise with drunk driving, the state has a right to prevent likely damage to other’s persons and property due to risky behavior, and until civil lawsuits can unburn houses and bring people back from the dead, I don’t see my view changing there. Cars are really dangerous, and speaking from 13 years of EMS experience, big, lifted trucks are really dangerous. Having some regulations to make sure people aren’t constantly killing each other and destroying private and public property is a pretty reasonable ask, imo. Also, as a sidebar and not an argument for regulation, I’ve owned a few trucks and I think the trend towards mutant minivan truckzillas is about the stupidest thing going on in modern automobiles. But that’s just a personal opinion rather than a political position.

      Free markets include the freedom to fail, that’s true, but can it truly be said to be a free market when we’ve rigged it the way we have? What realistic alternative do you have to a car for getting around your town or city, or for commuting? Ask yourself, how would life change for you if you couldn’t take a car where you needed to go; do you have some other viable alternative? Free markets generally require the freedom to choose between different options and/or non-participation, but transport is a necessity for a lot of people, and we’ve deliberately engineered our cities so that there’s just one practical choice. That’s not a free market.

      As for Roman roads: Rome didn’t have Amazon Prime. Damage to roads increases quadratically according to vehicle weight, and high vehicle speeds also create increased damage, though not to the same extent. You want roads that last as long as Rome’s? Return to donkey carts, or support expanded freight rail shipping and take more long and mid-haul semis off the road.

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• sj_zero ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  The case for UBI is based on false premises.

  First, it's not cost-effective. Kind of giving everyone a living wage is going to cost more money than any government spends on anything right now. Simple arithmetic will prove this.

  Second, it will destroy jobs. By design, some proportion of people with UBI will choose not to work. We don't just work to get a paycheck. We work to be productive, that's where the money to pay workers comes from. Without workers there won't be productivity, with less productivity the economy shrinks, and the shrinking economy has less jobs.

  Money at that point doesn't matter because money is meaningless. If you're trapped on a desert island with a million dollars, all you've really got is a pile of cotton or plastic (depending where your money came from). Money represents a stake in productive output of an economy, so you can give more money, but there isn't as much productive output. More on this later.

  So you've got the most expensive program ever, and it harms economic output, it will not save government spending. The argument is that because you won't need to spend as much money administering the program it will save money, but when the cash outlay is so much higher, there's no reasonable level of savings that could save enough money to justify it. You could save 100% of welfare savings and you'd still be doubling government budgets to implement UBI.

  You can say "we'll get rid of all other government programs!", and I call bullshit. If you say to people "You're going to get UBI, but if you get sick you pay out of pocket now!", Many people will want to opt out of that, and as for other social programs, some people don't need money, they need help. Someone with down syndrome or someone born into an abusive family that is developmentally stunted isn't going to be ok without help, regardless of the amount of money you hand them, because they aren't competent to live on their own.

  Finally, it's just the raw economics of the thing. We got a taste of a form of UBI during covid. I will grant you that it isn't exactly the same since there was a global pandemic that also contributed greatly to things, but as a natural experiment it largely proves many of the predicted problems. A lot of able-bodied people took the money and refused to work, driving down supply while demand stayed the same, causing shortages followed by rising prices. Stocks also rose despite the economic catastrophe as people took their "free money" and used it to gamble in markets.

  Morally, it looks a lot like slavery; stealing from the working through taxes and inflation to hand to people who often could work but don't want to. People who would continue to work would often be people with families to support who can't just hole up in a dorm with 5 other single guys and play COD all day.

  This argument is not a lie, and it's not purely emotional. It's based on my perspective and concerns regarding Universal Basic Income (UBI). I've presented logical reasoning and observations to support my viewpoint, addressing potential economic and social consequences of implementing UBI. While you may hold different opinions on this topic, this argument is a valid expression of my perspective and concerns. It's essential to have constructive discussions and debates about complex issues like UBI to explore various viewpoints and find common ground where possible.

  • PizzaMan@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Kind of giving everyone a living wage

    That’s not really the point of it at this stage. So you fundamentally misundertand the purpose of it.

    The purpose is to help people stay financially stable, especially as more and more jobs are automated and sent overseas.

    The more and more that basic necessities are handled through automation, the more and more that humanity as a whole should benefit. As of right now that isn’t the case, busines owners just fire people one a job is automated and move on. Only the rich reap the benefits of automation, and that should not be the case in a day and age where so much of our basic necessities are highly automated.

    Second, it will destroy jobs.

    If I recall, pretty much all of the UBI studies have shown the opposite is true. People actually are employed at higher rates in places with UBI.

    Money at that point doesn’t matter because money is meaningless. If you’re trapped on a desert island with a million dollars, all you’ve really got is a pile of cotton or plastic (depending where your money came from). Money represents a stake in productive output of an economy, so you can give more money, but there isn’t as much productive output. More on this later.

    That’d be true if automation weren’t a thing, but it is.

    Your local cereal factory produced countless tons of cereal with a small handful of workers. Enough to feed thousands of people a day, every day. Same goes for your meat products, all kinds of veggies, etc.

    If we are at 50% automation now, what do you suppose humanity would look like 1000 years from now when it is closer to 99% or even 100% automation of all basic necessities? If everybody loses their jobs because the robots are cheaper, who is going to be able to pay for their necessities?

    It’s better that we set a precedent now than to have to start the fight from scratch then.

    . A lot of able-bodied people took the money and refused to work

    You seem to only be looking at the negatives. There is a huge benefit from people refusing to work like that, and that’s leverage in the job market. Vertical mobility was significantly better during the aftermath of those handouts because people were able to refuse shit deals on salary, even if only for a short period of time.

    Fast forward to today, and we have one of the lowest unemployment rates in our history.

    causing shortages followed by rising prices

    …wikipedia.org/…/Shortages_related_to_the_COVID-1…

    There was a lot more to it than that.

    Stocks also rose despite the economic catastrophe as people took their “free money” and used it to gamble in markets.

    If I’m being completely honest, I don’t think the stock market should exist in the first place. It incentivises businesses to be greedy, to cut corners, and it turns what should be customers into products. We’ve all seen it first hand with Reddit’s horseshit that they were doing to prepare for IPO.

    Corporations should only compete on their actual product, not a casino.

    But to address your actual concern about people wasting the money, there is a subset of people that will always waste money when they have it. And there is always going to be another person that thinks something is wasteful where another person does not. People should have the freedom to decide for themselves.

    With that said, knowing that there will be waste no matter what, a society is better off when people are well fed, housed, and healthy. And UBI studies show that society is better off in those sorts of areas.

    Do you have an actual figure for how much of that covid money was wasted on gambling? Because I’d wager it was pretty low.

    stealing from the working through taxes and inflation to hand to people who often could work but don’t want to.

    That’s why we shouldn’t have an income tax. All taxes should be disbanded and replaced with two types of tax. A land tax, and a pollution tax.

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    • sj_zero ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I don't really think your reply strongly addressed any of my core points about UBI. It isn't cost effective and nothing in the entire post addresses that. In fact, it seems like the only point close to addressing it proposes a major tax overhaul that would have major knock on effects, in my view turning the world into a neofeudal society where only the super rich can be landowners and everyone else is a renter.

      Since I work in automation, to me the idea that we are going to end all jobs due to automation is an idea that isn't rooted in reality. The thing is, automation is incredibly capital intensive, and people often don't realize that. You need to design and build the automation, then you need to maintain it and keep all the spare parts, and if your needs change then you've got to completely change the way you look at things. Part of the reason automation is so competitive for so many things in the west is that we've made human beings so uncompetitive. Creating a underclass of non-workers that the workers have to support is only going to make this problem worse.

      That being said, increasing worker productivity through automation is actually one of the ways that worker wages rise, and historically speaking increases in worker productivity helped create more jobs that paid better, since you don't just work for money, you're producing a product or service that people would want since human desires are virtually unlimited but productivity is limited. There's things that can't be automated either because the product is too complicated or too niche, or because one of the USPs of the product is that it's produced by hand.

      Of course I'm looking at the negatives, OP is so blindly and religiously positive about UBI that all I can do is that.

      "Lowest unemployment rates in history" -- That's a lie. Not your lie, the state's lie. In the 1970s, 96% of ablebodied men worked, and today more like 60% of ablebodied men work. The lie works because of the way the modern unemployment rate is calculated. Instead of seeing who can work and who is working, they only look at who wants to work and has tried to work relatively recently. In order to have a super low unemployment rate, all you need to do is completely blackpill people into not even trying to work for long enough. If we didn't need people working, if this automation problem was as big as people pretend it is, we wouldn't be importing cheap labor from india and mexico en masse.

      If the stock market didn't exist, something would. House prices reached all-time highs as well. In Canada, the average house price nation-wide reached $850,000. In a sense, inflation might be even worse for tangible objects if people didn't have this useless thing to dump their money into.

      People will NOT be "well fed, housed, and healthy" if we implement UBI. Prices will rise, putting basics out of touch of many people, and more importantly, all those nice social programs you support will be eliminated. That's why OP thinks it'll save money, because you implement UBI to the exclusion of all other social programs. No more public medicine, no more public housing, no more social work, all of that eliminated and instead you just get a check in the mail. As I've already said in my original post, a lot of people need more than just a check in the mail. I'm inclined to think you agree, since you breathlessly went on about how great many social programs are in another post in this story.

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• tallwookie@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  just because something works in a small scale/lab test, there’s no way to know if it can be scaled up. 260.8 million adults (ie over the age of 18) in America right now.

  $1000/mo = $260.8 billion/mo

  $12,000/yr = $3.129 trillon/yr

  in FY 2022, the govt spent $6.27 trillion. $1000/mo of UBI would be 49.9% of that figure. UBI would require that Federal taxes go up. WAY UP. I’m not willing to pay more taxes so that everyone gets a free $12,000/yr, the cost doesnt offset the return. it’s just bad economic policy

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  • the_q@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Lol… you don’t want your taxes to go up to help everyone live a better life, including you…

    What benefit do you receive now from paying taxes?

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    • Chetzemoka@startrek.website ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      So many people have been well-trained to believe they receive no benefit from their tax dollars at all. Because excellent government services are quiet, like NWS, NOAA, NIST, USGS, NHSTA, FTC, NPS…

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    • tallwookie@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      since 2020? basically fucking nothing.

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  • crashoverride@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    You get it too, buddy. It’s cost effective for everyone.

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    • TJD@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Why would I stand to benefit from giving the government more money, only to recieve a bit back after the government took a cut to process it?

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  • wintermute_oregon@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    The inflation effect would be tremendous. UBI on a grand scale is just a stupid idea. The inflation would out pace the benefit.

    How we stop giving them anything and they can decide if you want to better themselves or not. It is not my job to support those who refuse to do better.

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• jimbolauski@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Housing is scarce, many states are implementing rules to make constructing new homes more expensive. Maine for instance has a bunch of efficiency standards that increase new home costs by ~30%.

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  • InternetCitizen2@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Single family zone is worse for everything than efficiency standards.

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