With UBI, one thing that would happen is probably decreased demand for high-interest payday loans, budget rental properties, emergency room trips due to neglect of routine medical care, and crappy jobs taken because the risk and expense and energy demands of further education was prohibitive. This is the poverty trap.
If you believe in the poverty trap, then the way that UBI helps our economy become more efficient isn’t by unlocking our entrepreneurial potential. It’s by breaking us out of our first-world poverty trap that keeps us underinvested in our communities and in ourselves.
Of course, Americans don’t like to think of themselves as poor. We like to think of ourselves as entrepreneurs, self-made, strivers. So wrapping a social benefit in that language is a canny political move. And it isn’t exactly wrong, either. Although most people won’t launch a company, there’s not that sharp a distinction between a self-employed person and somebody who’s got enough demand for their skills that they can jump from employer to employer in pursuit of higher wages and better work.
This is my story for how UBI can make our economy more efficient. Of course, you have to modulate that by the possibility that allowing people to live off their UBI or blow it on frivolous spending will cancel out those good effects. That question is beyond my pay grade, and I suspect nobody really knows.
Of course, you have to modulate that by the possibility that allowing people to live off their UBI or blow it on frivolous spending will cancel out those good effects. That question is beyond my pay grade, and I suspect nobody really knows
This makes me think of something. Can’t we look at what people who experienced windfall gains spent their newfound money on? Looking into lottery winners seems like an easy enough to obtain sample, although not unproblematic—it takes a certain kind of person to participate in a lottery in the first place. But if we can break that sample down by some demographic factors—maybe cultural factors, or education level, or something like that—maybe there can be some emergent pattern that tells us how many of those people and which will go “fish”, or use that money to propel themselves out of the poverty trap, or blow it on frivolous spending.
Another one I heard recently is re-enlistment bonuses in the US military. Soldiers can get up to around $100,000 for signing up for another tour of duty. They’re apparently notorious for blowing it on stupid shit almost immediately. But maybe that’s just the vivid stories. I’d like to see empirical data before I made up my mind.
With UBI, one thing that would happen is probably decreased demand for high-interest payday loans, budget rental properties, emergency room trips due to neglect of routine medical care, and crappy jobs taken because the risk and expense and energy demands of further education was prohibitive. This is the poverty trap.
If you believe in the poverty trap, then the way that UBI helps our economy become more efficient isn’t by unlocking our entrepreneurial potential. It’s by breaking us out of our first-world poverty trap that keeps us underinvested in our communities and in ourselves.
Of course, Americans don’t like to think of themselves as poor. We like to think of ourselves as entrepreneurs, self-made, strivers. So wrapping a social benefit in that language is a canny political move. And it isn’t exactly wrong, either. Although most people won’t launch a company, there’s not that sharp a distinction between a self-employed person and somebody who’s got enough demand for their skills that they can jump from employer to employer in pursuit of higher wages and better work.
This is my story for how UBI can make our economy more efficient. Of course, you have to modulate that by the possibility that allowing people to live off their UBI or blow it on frivolous spending will cancel out those good effects. That question is beyond my pay grade, and I suspect nobody really knows.
This makes me think of something. Can’t we look at what people who experienced windfall gains spent their newfound money on? Looking into lottery winners seems like an easy enough to obtain sample, although not unproblematic—it takes a certain kind of person to participate in a lottery in the first place. But if we can break that sample down by some demographic factors—maybe cultural factors, or education level, or something like that—maybe there can be some emergent pattern that tells us how many of those people and which will go “fish”, or use that money to propel themselves out of the poverty trap, or blow it on frivolous spending.
Another one I heard recently is re-enlistment bonuses in the US military. Soldiers can get up to around $100,000 for signing up for another tour of duty. They’re apparently notorious for blowing it on stupid shit almost immediately. But maybe that’s just the vivid stories. I’d like to see empirical data before I made up my mind.