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
There are excellent results from micro-lending. Just saying.
Not at all. But given
-the only argument you’ve offered is ‘cigarettes,’
-you haven’t responded directly to any argument I’ve provided,
-when I respond directly to your concerns you paraphrase a thoughtful reply as “you have no evidence,”
-you use the troll-y eye-roll emoji,
-when I give you studies because you don’t seem interested in my theoretical reasoning, you’re done with the conversation
That seems like bad faith. Not the bad faith of not wanting to participate, or of deliberately trolling, but the bad faith of not taking your interlocutors seriously enough or paying them the respect of actually writing more than a line or two to explain your position. Bad faith like you demand evidence when I’ve offered arguments, and then can’t be bothered to respond to the evidence (but, and I am assuming, you still want to hold on to whatever policy views you had when you first entered the thread). Bad faith in that you aren’t discussing, you’re doing a drive-by.
I’m just saying, that’s how it comes across. I could be misinterpreting, maybe your one liners are all that was needed to respond to everything I’ve said. It doesn’t seem that way to me.
I’m not aware of any direct comparisons between the two. My impression of microlending is that it still tends to disfavor the most vulnerable, it depends on somewhat more infrastructure than unconditional cash handouts, and the rates can be predatory.
But I take it you care a lot more than I do about Worthiness, and microlending does select better for that. Personally, I think everyone’s Worthy, but I don’t think that entails that outcomes don’t matter. Improving quality of life – and I mean pareto improvement – is a good thing, it’s an outcome that matters. I want to see the greatest improvement possible.
You have a few studies with a few thousand participants and mixed results. The theoretical reasoning seems little more than wishful thinking. Why would you even mention a global initiative with such scrawny evidence? That makes me roll my eyes.
If I question it then I get a knee jerk reaction that I’m imposing my morality on others.
You are proposing to take money from one group of people and to give it to another. Those who are losing the money, have very good reasons to be concerned about how it is used.
There are lots of people who want to spend other people’s money. There are lots of noble experiments being proposed. Lots have gone terribly wrong in the past. There has to be convincing evidence that BIG won’t be another instance of legalized theft.
I mentioned micro-lending because it has a proven track record in developing countries. And it’s relatively cheap.
If you want other suggestions :
- teach people how to handle money (in high school). People don’t know how to effectively use the money that they have.
- teach people how to start and manage a business. If people knew how, they could create service businesses with little up-front capital.
- make micro-loans easier and cheaper. The poor are underserviced by a banking system which does not trust them and charges them exorbitant rates. It seems that the only time that you can get money from a bank is when you can prove that you don’t need it.
Still, it’s much easier to shuffle money from those who have it to those who don’t. 
“worthy” - That’s a society as a whole, not individuals - a society worth participating in.
“No problem can be solved by the same kind of thinking that created it.” -Einstein
BIG is the same old thinking. Throw money at a problem.
There has to be a shift to teaching people how to use their own money effectively and how to use other people’s money effectively(debt). Without that education, the majority will not be able to climb out of the hole that they are in.
[quote=“phyllo”]
“No problem can be solved by the same kind of thinking that created it.” -Einstein
BIG is the same old thinking. Throw money at a problem.
K: ok, so, we should throw batteries at it, whip cream, old socks, cats, I open to
what the answer is, however in this case money is exactly what is needed.
P: There has to be a shift to teaching people how to use their own money effectively and how to use other people’s money effectively(debt). Without that education, the majority will not be able to climb out of the hole that they are in."
K: education by whom? and who decides what method of education is being used?
See almost every answer creates its own questions.
Kropotkin
I just told you the answer : people need to be educated on how to use money effectively. That way, they will be able to use the money that they are given - either through BIG or another program - to improve their lives. If you just give them money without education, then a large portion will be mismanaged and they will remain dependent on handouts.
Seriously?
It’s not rocket science.
Avoiding service fees and high interest rates. Consolidating debt. Using debt to make purchases which move you a chosen direction. Managing business based on services or products.
It should be common knowledge but it’s not because the education system is designed to create dependent hourly labor. The educational system has to teach people to be independent.
If the BIG’s amount wasn’t mandated by the Constitution, people on it would just vote to increase it- perpetually, with no regard for the strain it puts on the system. So it’s just a catastrophe waiting to happen.
Free basic income increases the value of labor to the laborer without increasing the value of what’s produced by the labor. I.e., if people can make 6k a year sitting around doing nothing, that’s a disincentive to get a part time job flipping burgers. You can say ‘but whatever people earn from a job would be on top of the BIG’ all you want, but if I can survive (in a household) without that part-time job, that’s a huge disincentive for many people to get it. A disincentive to work results in one of two things- increased wages being offered, or less work getting done. Increased wages OR less work getting done both result in the same thing- increase cost of whatever is produced by that labor. Free money does this too, by the way. If you give everybody an extra 6k a year that isn’t tied to any labor they did, rich people will not change their habits at all. But poor people will suddenly have more to spend on the things that take up the bulk of a poor person’s budget- utilities and basics goods. If everybody suddenly has more money to spend on something, and this money doesn’t represent an increase in production, prices go up. This becomes an inflation generating machine- everything poor people spend money on becomes more expensive thanks to the BIG, lefties argue the BIG has to be increased to keep up with inflation, etc. Notice that this effect is far far worse than minimum wage laws, as at least with those you are getting labor out of the people you are paying.
As far as the immigration thing is concerned, there is no mystery as to whether or not immigrants are good for a nation or not. If you have an excess of workable land an exploitable resources, then more immigrants to develop that land and exploit those resources is good for your economy. If you are exploiting all the resources you are able/willing to exploit (i.e., running out of land or environmental regulations protect remaining natural land) then immigrants provide nothing. Simply put, immigration is good for a country if you can point to the shortage of something in that country that the immigrants will provide for. It should be fairly obvious that the time for that in the U.S. has passed.
And yes, bringing in other cultures is bad for the natives when the same people that advocate for loose/mass immigration are the people ‘embracing diversity’, pushing multi-culturalism as a virtue, and discouraging integration in general.
Besides, the whole thing is moot- an immigrant that’s just here to collect a BIG from the state is a drain on the economy by definition. The size of the BIG will either be limited by the number of people who collect it without working (i.e., the fewer people taking from the system without paying in, the more we can all have) or it won’t be limited at all and is just a fast track to economic collapse.
And before anyone says it, no Alaska does not have a BIG. They have a dividend tied to the profits made by a specific industry. This ensures that the entitlement is actually funded.
All sorts of lefty fantasies become feasible if you first create an absolute limit in the Constitution to the % of the GDP that can be taken in taxes. Once you do that, every entitlement or proposed program competes for a slice of a pie that only gets bigger if the economy grows. Every increase in taxes is a shift of the burden from one group to another and has to be justified as such. People who promise 'everybody gets free everything!" for votes or internet back-pats have to actually explain what isn’t getting funded to pay for tuition, BIGs, etc.
I think in general when considering broad distribution schemes, people need to look at issues of the vastness of corporate welfare which makes complaining about non-corprate welfare look absurd. For example… I remember about 8 years ago, that Chase was given 70 billion to pay back on all that predatory lending, this is your hard earned money here, your taxes… what did chase do? It opened up hundreds of branches on the west coast to which it previously didn’t have a market, and didn’t pay anyone back. It reminds me of Bush Jr. using taxpayer money to buy and build a stadium for the rangers and then selling it all for hundreds of millions of dollars… he used taxpayer money to give him free hundreds of millions of dollars. That’s corporate welfare. Much larger problem than the average person calculations.