That’s all very rosy.
How much of that money will be spent on booze, smokes, drugs, junk food, etc?
Any idea?
K: and why does that matter?
Kropotkin
If you give out food stamps, you force people to get food with it. Thus, the government money is invested into a specific social change which we, as a society, may agree is beneficial.
If you simply give people money, then they can spend it in any way that they wish. Money is spent but society is not necessarily improved.
Why would people buy nutritious food simply because you give them $3000? They might but they will probably buy the same junk food that they have been buying. Cause that’s what they know.
K: your specific point was they might buy junk food, booze, smokes, but you aren’t making
an economic point, you are making a moral point. this is important to understand.
You would deny them money based on your morality about what people is or isn’t supposed
to buy. I hate fish. I hate especially eating fish. I wouldn’t eat fish on a bet. and for me,
I wouldn’t pay anybody any amount of money to eat fish. that is a moral choice for me because
I fucking hate fish. If I hate it, so why would I want other people to eat fish when I am paying for it?
It can go both ways. We can make an argument for almost anything based on morals.
smokes, hell no, meat say the vegan, hell no, fish says Kropotkin, hell no, hamburgers, hell no
because they aren’t healthy, You can basically argue against anything because it is not up to
YOUR standards and your MORALS. Some diets are religious based, pigs and the like, but I like
pigs, so of course everyone should eat pig regardless of their morals based on religion. Right?
Kropotkin
The economic point is irrelevant… either the original taxpayer spends the money or the BIG recipient spends the money… either way it ends up in the economy.
You’re going to take away $3000 from somebody who worked to earn it and you are going to give it to someone else. Don’t you think that the taxpayer should have some say in how that money is spent?
If someone earns some money then he can spend it in any (legal) way that he wants. But if he is getting money from someone else then that other person has a legitimate interest in how that money is spent. Unless it is a gift from one person to another which taxation is not. 
K: and in taxes, do you have any say in how the government spends YOUR money? No, as a
taxpayer you get no say in how the government spends your money, thus one of the many
reasons, I did the full on anarchist thing for several years. In life, we get very little choice.
For example, in breakfast cereals, you think walking down the cereal isle, you have
a billion choices but in reality, you have three choices, as over 95% of all cereal made
is made by three companies. Post, Kellog and drawing a blank for the third. Choice is
a modern myth. The government gives us no choice in how our money is spent, companies
give us little choice as for our cereal example shows or in cars as in for all the cars
being sold, in reality we have just 4 car companies, 4. The government spends trillions upon
trillions in defense spending, how much choice did you have in that?
Kropotkin
You seem to be okay with that since you would perpetuate it by supporting BIG - take money from taxpayer and give it to someone else without input from the taxpayer.
(not that I agree that government actually works that way. 
)
You also have a choice not to buy any of the cereal. A choice which taxation does not give you.
I’m not okay with that and so I don’t support systems which are based on that idea. If you say … let’s do something over which the taxpayer has no control … I won’t agree to it. It’s wrong.
I agree with you, remember former anarchist, however, the BIG theory
does achieve something that is important and that is to make more
citizens invested and part of society. The more people you drive out
of society, the weaker the society is until it collapses, much like the
Roman empire drove enough people out until it burn and crashed.
You have to keep your eye on the prize which is simple,
keep your society strong, viable and able to adapt. So what makes
a strong society? That is really the question, how do we create and keep
a society that will continue on long after we are gone and BIG is one method
of that, the only method, no, but one method.
Kropotkin
Are they invested and a part of society? Show me.
Maybe the Roman empire deserved to burn. When a system becomes too corrupt, then the healthy members must leave and build a new system. Why should they stay and support corruption?
It’s not enough that a society is strong… it also has to be worthy.
K: I am going to ignore the rest for the moment to understand one word, worthy.
Worthy for what? and who judges? Why must a society be worthy? I really don’t understand
this idea of “worthy”.
Kropotkin
Worthy of survival. Judged by its members. What kind of society do you want to help prosper? Do you know what a corrupt society is like?
Can you say that one society is better that another? If yes, then you understand ‘worthy’, if no then all societies are equivalent.
There are a lot of ways to respond to this question; let me start with the most direct: I don’t know, and neither do you. Perhaps we can agree on a range: greater than 0%, less than 50%? Less than 25%? Less than 10%? 5%? (I’d wager so)
But a better response it to point out that that’s the wrong question. It immediately frames the question in myopic terms. Lets say 75% of the money is spent on booze, smokes, drugs, junk food, and prostitution, but the other 25% produces a 7000% return for society, would you cancel the program? Does the return on investment of food stamps weigh in? Does the drag on society of an otherwise unsupported poor factor in? It seems like they all should, but how much weight do you put on making sure poor people don’t buy smokes with money they didn’t earn (speaking of: if a person earns $50k, and buys $3k worth of smokes, have they spent the BIG on smokes? Or did they spend the BIG on necessities and then have more earned income left over?)
The concern is political, not practical. A whole bunch of the money could be spend on cigarettes and beer, and the net impact of the program could still be positive.
This is worth keeping in mind. As it turns out, the way welfare funds are spent is only partially about nannying the poor and pacifying tax payers. The other, large factor in making these decisions is the influence of special interest that perpetuate the programs to seek rents. The food lobby loves food stamps, because they’re a virtually guaranteed revenue stream that must be spent on food, even when food isn’t what a poor person needs most.
One big improvement with the BIG is that it decreases rent seeking. Rather than government deciding how money is spent, individuals decide. Companies get money only if they produce goods and services that consumers value. The poor get the goods and services they prioritize, not the goods and services provided by the company who’s CEO was the same frat as the Senator from Iowa (or whatever).
If the BIG makes a better society for less than any other program, and yet requires that ‘unworthy’ poor people get free money as part of the deal, would you still oppose it? Would you prefer a society where worthy people get less just to ensure that unworthy people get nothing?
We are passed that point. There’s no where else to go. You and Elon Musk can try to start over on Mars, but until you get there, you’re stuck in a gravity well with 7 billion other people, and you need a society that works.
K: the word “worthy” is a moral judgment, nothing more. and like all moral judgments it
depends on the speaker. I deem this moral or I deem this immoral and based on… whatever
sounds like a good idea at the time.
Kropotkin
In other words, you don’t know if this is a waste of money or not.
You haven’t shown that it would make society better.
This is purely US-centric stuff. At least 18% of the global population does not even have electricity… They have bigger problems than BIG.
C: We are passed that point. There’s no where else to go. You and Elon Musk can try to start over on Mars, but until you get there, you’re stuck in a gravity well with 7 billion other people, and you need a society that works.
PH: This is purely US-centric stuff. At least 18% of the global population does not even have electricity… They have bigger problems than BIG."
K: and so we should give up because we can’t solve everyone’s problem? Let us work
on the problems and solutions we can work on because we can’t solve all the problems
of the world. Lets do what we can with what we got.
Kropotkin
No, but I’ve given a lot of good reasons to think that it would. Do you have reasons to think any of my arguments are invalid? Is “some people might by cigarettes” your only objection?
It hasn’t been tried on a very large scale. Some small scale studies show positive results, but they aren’t direct analogs to what would happen if everyone were a recipient. In the interim, we can reason and model and find parallels and argue theory.
I agree, and I think the BIG should be global eventually. In fact, the benefits and the moral justification for a BIG are significantly more obvious if we consider implementing a global BIG.
I don’t know when morality became such a huge problem. Either you believe that life and society should go in a certain direction or you don’t. If you don’t, then you don’t give a shit about what happens.
If we disagree about the direction, then we can talk about it and maybe arrive at an agreement. Or maybe not.
I tend to think that you are human and we have some things in common … so an agreement seems possible.
Do you care about justice? Then a poor member of society deserves fair treatment but so does the taxpayer. You can’t have a fair society by mistreating one or the other.
You don’t even have evidence that it’s a good idea for an isolated society and you are already thinking about implementing it globally. 
I’m not sure what you’re looking for in terms of evidence. This is a philosophy site, I’m talking theory, and I’ve given you reasons. Is there a specific premise you’re doubting?
The program I’m advocating hasn’t been tried on the scale I’m advocating, but there are small programs that have produced good results:
- There was a study of native american reservations that compared students whose families receive an unconditional income to their white neighbors that don’t.
- There were short term experiments in negative income tax in the US. They showed mixed findings, but they were for very short duration, and didn’t track e.g. the well-being of children raised by families receiving the benefit. Notably, they did find that the negative income tax did not increase the rate of expenditure on e.g. cigarettes. The also found decrease in hours worked and some analyses suggested an increase in divorce, but I don’t find these results surprising in the course of <5 year pilot program, nor do I think they represent proof that the program would decrease net hours worked or net family stability long term.
- There is a charity called GiveDirectly which is having some success using unconditional cash transfers in poor countries to relieve poverty, rather than in kind aid such as mosquito nets or food. They have shown good results so far, finding significant positive short- and long-term effects, and often show a decrease in what they call “temptation goods” (e.g. cigarettes), and an increase in hours worked.
There’s also the example of Alaska’s state fund that pays out some portion of oil revenues to all citizens. I can’t find good evidence about the effect of that, and it’s difficult to draw comparisons since Alaska is a fairly unique state in many ways.
Do you have contradictory evidence? Would evidence even sway you, or are you still stuck on the cigarettes? I feel like you’re not grappling with the proposal in good faith, and instead using eye-roll emojis to distract from the lack of arguments.
If I question it, then I’m imposing my morality on the poor oppressed unfortunates.
If I think that public money ought to be spent responsibly on proven systems, then I’m some deranged lunatic.
Okay, I’m not here in good faith.
bye