Along the same lines, it turns out to be drastically cheaper to not means-test welfare payments and just hand out money without regard to the financial status of the claimant. That is to say, if the amount of money invested in means-testing and the current welfare system were withdrawn and put instead into a universal basic income, it would be drastically cheaper.
On top of that, but we have a well-grown mound of evidence now that universal basic income isn't just cheaper but also leads to improved socioeconomic status of the lower classes and improved health and decreased stress in communities, pretty much across the board.
But instead of actually implementing that, our government instead focuses on putting out propaganda against "welfare cheats", implementing progressively more punitive means-testing measures, and the argument around UBIs is held in a permastate of "the evidence isn't there yet, we need one more study-" (likely with the hope that the study contradicts the current body of evidence and swings against UBI, no doubt).
The conservative (and the new labour) approach is always to push towards the punitive option, to the point where I wonder if it's a pathology among people who have attended public schooling (if you're reading from the US, I mean private school).
Can you link to some of the studies that form this mound of evidence?
I tried a search on Google Scholar, but new information seems to dry up around 2021. After that I see a lot of people talking about it but no new evidence. This 2020 summary [0] found that much the research to that point was lacking—we've studied various components of UBI, but never all together (for example, many pilots were apparently means tested).
The biggest theoretical concern I have is inflation. The papers I can find (like this one [1]) agree that inflation will most likely occur, the question is how much. With a limited understanding of economics, I have a hard time imagining how giving everyone $1000/mo could do anything but raise prices on basic things until they are once again out of reach of our poorest people. We can't study that directly without a full scale test, but are you aware of attempts to address the question?
The answer to the inflation problem is to basically ignore it. The result is that poor people have enough to live, and rich people have less buying power. That's not a bug: it's the entire point. Wealth concentration is the problem.
Here in the US, the wealth owned by half of the population totals up to less than the total wealth of 50 people. Wealth concentration is beyond out of hand. It's destroying every facet of society.
I didn't say it was, I meant that too communicate "so this 2020 summary probably isn't missing much".
Inflation in the last few years has been far worse for poor people than for the rich. Homes and rent are unaffordable. Groceries are coming in smaller and smaller (and emptier and emptier) packages for the same price. Wages at the lowest levels are stagnant, while CEO salaries continue to go up.
Yachts do not inflate beyond the capabilities of the top 50, but inflation has put real pressure on the bottom X% of the population.
Do we have reason to believe that UBI-caused inflation will be better targeted at the ultra-rich?
As one of the people impacted by losing the $150 a month extra SNAP (food stamp) money we were getting throughout the pandemic, inflation was barely noticeable while we were getting it. The effects of inflation became most noticeable when the extra $150 a month was ended, because the inflated prices never went down when the inflationary pressure was removed.
But if the extra $150/mo were never removed and the inflationary pressure never let up, I would expect it to become noticeable eventually, and UBI would exert even more inflationary pressure than pandemic-era stimulus/welfare.
When inflation does catch up to the UBI, do you just keep raising the UBI forever and ever? How does that not turn into hyperinflation?
I'm working on a business degree to try to get back into the economy myself, so when I find out the answer to your questions, I'll let you know. I suspect the answer is very complicated and difficult to implement, but there is sufficient worldwide desire for some outcome that both supports the poor and disabled while not over-encumbering the rest of society in supporting us.
I would argue that inflation has revealed an already-present problem: many people are expected to live just above the poverty line. When inflation inevitably moves that line, income must move with it proactively. We are watching that fail to happen, which I consider all the more reason to support UBI. Waiting for income to pick up the slack reactively leaves people behind the poverty line, and that's not OK.
I'm not saying we don't have a problem, but nothing you've said reassures me that UBI won't make everything worse. If you keep raising UBI to match inflation (which you'd have to do to fulfill the goal of eliminating poverty), how do you prevent that from turning into hyperinflation, where everyone's assets are completely devalued in a matter of decades?
We need to do something to raise the poor into the middle class, but eliminating the middle class altogether in the process is neither politically viable nor (for me, subjectively) desirable.
> how do you prevent that from turning into hyperinflation, where everyone's assets are completely devalued in a matter of decades?
You are welcome to provide an answer. In the mean time, do we have to stop all progress in fear of that outcome? Just like you said, we need to do something. This is the best something I have heard of. You are welcome to present any potential alternatives.
Here's what I envision happening: UBI causes inflation. UBI must increase to accommodate that inflation, because that is its original intended purpose anyway. If this was the whole story, then it would fail exactly as you predicted. Thankfully, it isn't, because there is one more variable in this equation: property value.
When the rate of inflation increases, UBI must increase to accommodate two distinct assets: goods and housing. Goods are already at pretty tight margins, so their cost will stay roughly the same relative to inflation and wages. Housing, on the other hand, is incredibly over-valued. The cost of rent has skyrocketed, with no end in sight. By increasing both UBI and inflation, the relative value of housing should decrease. Cheaper housing means cheaper rent, which means less need to grow UBI. Eventually, this system finds an equilibrium.
The problem we are seeing already is that despite ever-accelerating inflation, the rise in property value is also accelerating. This is because the wages of middle-class workers (everyone above the poverty line) has increased fast enough to accommodate it. That sounds like a good thing, until you think about the growing collection of people who are left behind the poverty line.
By redistributing the general increase of wages into UBI, middle-class workers would get relatively less income. That means that middle-class workers would not be able to afford the ever-increasing cost of rent. That sounds like a bad thing until you see the solution it provides: the market for ever-increasing rent would evaporate. Property values would finally find a ceiling, and rent would stop consuming such an outsized percentage of general income.
If you can find another way to slow the growth of property values, I'm all ears. If not, then let's give UBI a shot.
All this explanation does is reinforce my fear that UBI is about wealth redistribution from the middle class to the poor, rather than from the rich to the poor. Under the best case scenario that you describe, the rich would be largely unaffected, while the middle class would merge in with the lower classes to form a new lower class (though one that's at least over the poverty line).
This makes it politically a complete non-starter, but it also feels wrong to me. If we're going to redistribute wealth, let it be from the top down, not shared between the bottom 80%.
Doing something, anything is not guaranteed to make things better than leaving the current system intact. If UBI makes wealth and power even more centralized in the few at the top of the food chain, with the rest of us comfortably above the poverty line but more dependent (on average) on the government and on the 1%, that is not necessarily a good outcome.
The best case I described would move wealth from landlords, through the middle class, to the poor and middle class. It would accomplish that by both expanding and devaluing the middle class. Expanding the middle class would eliminate poverty (no more poor category). Devaluing the middle class would shrink the housing market (not enough high-paying renters to sustain runaway rent growth). Shrinking the housing market would move wealth from property owners back to middle-class income, which is exactly where it came from in the first place.
The primary method that the poor and middle class are exploited by the rich is housing. The benefit of middle class life is captured by rent and mortgages; then moved into the portfolio of wealthy real estate owners. If we can put that in reverse, we all win.
Ideally, UBI would move wealth back from real estate portfolios back into wages and disposable income. The middle class would be less wealthy on paper, but have more disposable income from not spending it on housing.
It's not as elegant as directly stealing from the rich and giving to the poor, but that doesn't seem possible anyway.
It's the demand that would change. If only X people can afford the rent or mortgage for Y homes, raising the value of each Y becomes untenable.
Right now, there is no floor for income. People who can't afford housing simply become homeless. This system functions because there are enough people who earn a high enough wage (X) to pay rent or mortgages (Y). Anyone who can't afford housing is unable to participate in the market, and has no effect on the system.
The first goal of UBI is to set a high enough income floor for every person to afford housing. That would allow the lowest income earners to participate in the housing market.
No matter where the money comes from, the higher UBI is set, the more inflated currency will be. That's the inevitable effect of putting money into circulation. The more inflated currency is, the more is needed by the poorest earners to afford the cheapest housing. The more money that is needed for housing, the more that is given through UBI.
This cycle is specific to low wage earners (UBI recipients), but inflation affects everyone. More inflation means less buying power for average income earners. Less buying power makes housing less affordable.
Everything up to this point sounds like the worst idea ever. Why would you want housing to be less affordable? Because it already is! That problem is here right now, and it's only getting worse. There is no sign that it will ever stop, because there is always room for the real estate market to grow. That room is made of income inequality. The housing crisis only affects poor people. The smaller your wage, the greater portion must be spent on a competitively priced home. The greater income inequality, the higher a competitive price is set!
If we use inflation to move wealth from the middle class (and everyone else) to the poor, then suddenly there won't be enough money in the middle class to pay competitive rent/mortgages. With no one able to pay, housing prices must drop. Once housing costs drop enough that everyone can afford housing, the cycle is complete, and both UBI and inflation growth level out.
The extra benefit is that despite the middle class losing buying power (from inflation), they get to hold onto a greater percentage of their income, because they don't have to spend as much on a hyper-inflated housing market anymore.
Of course, all of this is theoretical, and could be broken through anticompetitive real estate behavior.
Welfare is taking money from productive people and giving it to unproductive people.
In order for this to work in a democracy, you have to convince the productive people that the unproductive people are unproductive for good reasons (i.e. means testing). If you don't do this, the productive people will vote for anti-welfare politicians.
So you would rather burn away money than giving it to someone who doesn't deserve it?
The idea is honestly crazy to me, if you had to choose between giving money to the 70% most needy people or giving it to the 80% most needy and also to a random 20%, would you really choose the first option?
Your hypothetical has no relation to actual choices that voters and governments face. The point I made was that people will not vote for welfare unless it's means tested. It's really that simple.
Politics aside, I'm skeptical of UBI. UBI advocates claim that people will start companies and launch careers with their stipend. Yes, some people will do that but most will become layabouts. When the machines do all the labor, we can all become layabouts. But as long as our food, housing, healthcare and so on comes from other people's labor (and it still does) then we have an obligation to be productive.
> people will not vote for welfare unless it's means tested
I would. We have so much wealth, food and stuff in Western countries. We could provide a basic level of comfortable living for anyone with no strings attached. We could then remove minimum wage and all the things we do to subsidise low income workers and let the market find the floor that motivates people to work for a more luxurious existence.
Not that it would ever happen. I feel like a significant number would rather people would just die rather than being poor and "lazy". Of course, if you're rich and lazy, no matter how the riches were acquired, that's fine.
> We have so much wealth, food and stuff in Western countries. We could provide a basic level of comfortable living for anyone with no strings attached. We could then remove minimum wage and all the things we do to subsidise low income workers and let the market find the floor that motivates people to work for a more luxurious existence.
1. How is a system fair in which some people work producing food and other people get that food for free? The people who work will not put up with such a system. Why should they?
2. In such a system, over time, fewer and fewer people will choose to work. The economy will shrink, the country will become poor, and it will no longer be able to afford UBI.
When we have robots performing labor then we can reassess all this. Until then, means tested welfare is the only acceptable kind.
Are you saying that you'd rather live a very basic life with no work? That's the compromise I offered - a life of basic amenities without the system hassling you, and if you want more than that then you'd need to start working.
> In such a system, over time, fewer and fewer people will choose to work. The economy will shrink, the country will become poor
I don't think this would be a change for a lot of people, I certainly want more than the basics.
> How is a system fair in which some people work producing food and other people get that food for free
Our current systems are far from fair. Probably less fair than this by a long way. If you are a farmer and produce food what do you care where it goes so long as you're compensated for it?
>The point I made was that people will not vote for welfare unless it's means tested. It's really that simple.
I would agree with your point about the voters. But that just means the electorate are too stupid to realize that it is more efficient and cheaper to NOT means test.
Those who administer the means test are unionized, pensioned employees who cost the taxpayer a lot of money. The argument for UBI is that it is cheaper because you don't need all those bureaucrats/administrators who work in social services gatekeeping.
An argument against UBI, to me, is that the landlords will just raise their rents accordingly and scoop up the money. I believe that's what happened when the govt starting giving out money for low income earners to help them with their rent. I might be wrong on that.
A pragmatic question is: will it help more people than it harms?
It's wildly insane to assume one can simply "know" who "needs help".
It's even worse to assume that a person - regardless of whether they can or can't easily tell - would be motivated to find out if they weren't handing out own food or money.
- "The calculations included in the full report show that extra
spending (around £600 million) could be expected by putting
more cash in the pockets of lower income households, via basic
income."
- "This, in turn, would generate greater VAT returns for Welsh
Government - a crucial source of revenue"
- "It would reduce child poverty by two thirds, to 10%"
- "With the financial protection of a basic income, a wide range
of hypothetical new freedoms can become possible. People
would be able to do things like finding suitable jobs, undertaking
financially risky ventures such as starting a new business or
developing their education or skills."
None of these quotes has anything to do with what I posted.
Normal, productive people will not sign off on their money being redistributed to unproductive people unless those people have a good reason for being unproductive. Therefore, even if such policies (welfare without means testing) are a utilitarian good, they are not politically feasible.
The government is taking money from productive people, and using it for all sorts of unproductive ends. Most people on welfare don't have enough to become productive - living is already a struggle.
The government would take the money anyway, and just redirect it to wars/innovation/PPE... it is not the 'unproductive' people - or the immigrants - that are taking most of the money. It's the wealthy abusing it to make themselves and their friends even more wealth.
How, in your system, does one define productive? Is a person who chooses to care for a disabled relative full time instead of working productive? Is a middle manager who provides little more than bureaucratic oversight (but none the less draws a salary and pays taxes) productive? Is an undiscovered-in-their-lifetime artist productive?
To be fair, the article says that universal credit claimants were given a £20 uplift in their payments during the pandemic, and food bank usage and shoplifting fell.
Seems to me it's hard to visit a food bank when you're not allowed to leave the house, and hard to shoplift when all the shops are shut. And of course nobody was spending money on commuting, workwear, eating out, parties, holidays, haircuts, sports etc so a lot of people had more money during the pandemic (albeit with a far worse quality of life)
So it's far from clear that the drop in shoplifting was caused by the £20 uplift.
I just can't see it making a difference. If they somehow catch the thieves, will they arrest them? What will happen afterwards? Will anyone sit in jail? Will it actually make a difference?
My experience with living in the UK is that new laws/regulations/whatever come into effect but in reality there is very little enforcement.
The rules only worked because people generally just followed them. If people don't follow them, I don't believe the system is equipped to handle it.
There courts are overloaded, the police are overworked and I don't know the state of the prisons, but my gut tells me it's not great.
This is UK government at its finest - create regulations that are unenforceable, and espouse metrics that are meaningless. It's going to get more crazy in the run up to the election, as all the new promises appear, despite never finishing those from the last decade.
That's a strange spin when the article clearly mentions stolen confectionery. I would be confident to say that the problem isn't actual starvation. The poor I know consider cheese a restricted luxury. It is unclear in the article whether meat is luxury meat (say scotch fillet) or cheap meat (say beef mince).
Of course if you're gonna do something illegal, might as well get the best stuff!
>It feels like blatant disregard for a starving population.
Seems we in the US get our attitude toward the homeless from the brits as well. People like to say we have a problem with it, but there is something unique going on in the UK. Some mind boggling numbers I recently noticed:
UK: 67m population, 300k homeless
US: 330m population, 600k homeless
I guess it could come down to reporting who is "homeless", but still mindblowing that the UK is in such a dire state.
I don't see how this is relevant to people stealing to sell on the black market. Reducing usage of food banks has nothing to do with stealing to sell on the black market.
This was quite common in the UK in the `80s, in pubs a chap would wonder in and discreetly ask "Want some meat? Sausage? Bacon? I've got some gammon in the van ..."
Food poverty and especially child food poverty are inexcusable political choices. This political choice is supported by a small plurality of morally defunct voters who have been compromised by several decades of propaganda from the oligarch class via tabloids and the press.
I don't remember voting yes on any "starve the children" act, nor any of my representatives -- even though I suspect that my politics align with your "morally defunct" remark.
Some of us are more okay than others with society and life generating winners, losers, challenges, and hardships.
Do you have any outrage left over for the parents who brought children into the world without the ability to feed them?
I don't have many words for you, but I would like you to consider that:
"Do you have any outrage left over for the parents who brought children into the world without the ability to feed them?"
Is an unnatural question. One that is not just inhumane, but inhuman. It has been etched into the back of your brain by a continuous assault of vested media designed to manufacture your consent.
Wow. It's not often an HN comment leaves me speechless.
I hope I'm misunderstanding your point. Because it's pretty morally repugnant to suggest children should be made policy "losers" -- and "hardship" as a euphemism for "hunger" is wild. Not to mention that the circumstances of a child's birth are irrelevant when determining whether we should feed and care for them.
Because people who you want to come and work in the UK won't bother coming if it's hostile. The quality immigrants will simply not bother turning up. There are not the British bodies to fill these roles.
Instead, you'll be left with the less desirable and desperate.
Do you really want a workforce of those who grudgingly turn up, or would you rather the happier workforce of those who can enjoy family life?
What about training local to do these jobs? Have you considered the fact that importing skilled labour from low income countries is a selfish act? The higher income country doesn't have to train these workers and the higher income country is creating a brain drain that leaves the low income country with one less skilled worker. You're effectively poaching talent from worse off countries.
They need skilled immigration. By making students be the target of short-sighted fear based policies, they make it clear to those students that Britain is not where they want to end up. They end up losing many of their potential brightest minds.
Keep in mind that due to the demographic crisis, countries are soon to be competing for them.
Also: immigration is good, and the grievance based policies that attacks immigrants while achieving marginal gains is dishonest.
Also: hacker news seems like it has a sea lion problem.
That's not very charitably of you. I asked you a plain question, because you stated a problem without the consequences. Don't assume everyone is in your little bubble.
This article is incredibly heavy-handed with its presentation.
> Taylor said people told themselves it was a victimless crime, that theft was built into the business models of big retailers, that supermarkets were the real criminals for raising prices or that shops were ripping off farmers or their own staff.
> She said this was known as neutralisation, essentially “moral justifications that people conjure up to make themselves feel better when they’re doing something wrong”.
All the writer has done here is to say that crime is definitely always obviously wrong; all while providing a poignant counterexample.
The whole thing reads like they are simply embarrassed to admit the reality in front of them.
Whilst it's certainly more 'left' than the Mail, the comparison is well off. I'm not a supporter of either, but The Guardian at least has well researched/written articles in general, whereas The Daily Mail is pure tabloid gutter 'press'.
My criticism is specific to the presentation. The content itself looks fine, and that's what counts.
The presentation is only as absurd as it is because the facts were stubbornly included.
There is nothing leftist about it either: this article is clearly written to be intentionally moderate. That's precisely what I am criticizing here: the moderate political voice is blatantly shoehorned in a way that makes the whole article incoherent.
It would be one thing to actually support a moderate stance; but that isn't happening either. Instead, we have a vain appeasement to the pipe dream that is political neutrality. Who is it for? You?
I don’t think there is any point tackling food inflation without tackling rent inflation (by extension house prices). The rise in rent/mortgage has hit people way harder than any increase in food staples, you could even double the price of eggs, cheese and milk and it will still have less impact on cost of living than a 20% rise in rent/mortgage. A person I know was paying 700/month mortgage in 2020 and is now paying 2400/month, and this isn’t an atypical story in London.
> A national lobbying group has retracted its startling estimate that “organized retail crime” was responsible for nearly half the $94.5 billion in store merchandise that disappeared in 2021, a figure that helped amplify claims that the United States was experiencing a nationwide wave of shoplifting.
> In fact, retail theft has been lower this year in most of the country than it was a few years ago, according to police data. Some exceptions, including New York City, exist. But in most major cities, shoplifting incidents have fallen 7 percent since 2019.
It's wild how poverty and depressed circumstances among lower income people, especially when they see business profits continuing to grow in spite of wages, can lead to crime!
Being poor doesn't lead you to becoming a criminal. The evidence we have for that is the vast numbers of poor people who are not criminals.
Being taught that everyone is against you, that you are a victim, and that you are being oppressed does lead to crime, however. In other words, the current fashion for leftist politics is to supply justifications for stealing, so long as you steal from someone who has more than you do.
> Being poor doesn't lead you to becoming a criminal.
You're misunderstanding. Not all poor people are criminals, however, being poor is a motivating factor in crime.
> Being taught that everyone is against you, that you are a victim, and that you are being oppressed does lead to crime
Leftist rhetoric doesn't actually state "everyone is against you", sorry buddy. In fact, there's over 100+ years of leftist rhetoric and writing stating the exact opposite -- "we are stronger as a a community". Right wing rhetoric and views absolutely parrot "everyone is against you". This is why left wing circles create mutual aid groups (to benefit the community), and right wing circles create... well.. do they actually create anything? Has anything notable come out of incel circles that isn't "school shooters"?
> In other words, the current fashion for leftist politics is to supply justifications for stealing, so long as you steal from someone who has more than you do.
The majority of theft that outweighs all other theft by the measure of billions is theft of labour, though. So who are we to complain when people start stealing in response?
Can anyone in the U.K. confirm first hand experience (either themselves or knowing someone with no degree of separation)? I know lots of people in there, visited myself recently, and this seems like complete bollocks.
There was a butter theft in the news in Canada recently as well. Just anecdata, but nobody had these problems five or ten years ago either. It's the result of policies that import poverty to create demand/interchangable-subjects for the expansion of government. It's hard to care about as everyone was warned, and it's all on purpose to demolish western societies.
In terms of products to develop, the optimistic case is for anything to manage the obesity, waning fertility, narcissistic supply, social isolation, underclass status signalling, and capital flight for the growing pantsuit apparatchik class struggling to manage it.
As much as people in North America (rightly) complain about the cost-of-living crisis in North America, the situation is much more dire in the UK. Over the winter, it was so expensive to heat houses that there needed to be warm hubs [1] where people could get warm. This was in part due to a bad energy policy exacerbated by Ukraine but things weren't great to begin with.
Salaries have been historically low compared to the US and the cost of housing and food is extroardinarily high and has only gotten worse.
Crime is an inevitable consequence of poverty. The Conservative Party however is dedicated to transferring wealth to the already-wealthy at the expense of everyone else. This pattern is being played out to varying degrees in pretty much every Western country. At some point, we as a society need to start asking "how much wealth is enough?"
Brazil eviscerated extreme poverty with the Bolsa Familia [2]. Raising the living standards of the least fortunate in our society is not only a moral imperative, it's good for quite literally everyone.
So it was found that an extra £20 payment to state benefit claimants sharply reduced the usage of food banks.
Yet, the UK government has invested £600,000 in curbing the rise of these organised food thieves.
This move feels like treating the symptom, not the problem.
It feels like blatant disregard for a starving population.