to think we could solve poverty by simply giving everyone money?

[aufaniae]

This article makes a compelling argument for giving everyone a "mincome".

Why we should give free money to everyone

The basic idea is that poverty costs society money, and that it's cheaper, and of great benefit to society if everyone has a basic income, no questions asked - so no one ever drops below the poverty line. The intro says.

"We tend to think that simply giving people money makes them lazy. Yet a wealth of scientific research proves the contrary: free money helps. It is time for a radical reform of the welfare state."

They actually did a study in Canada where a whole town was on a mincome for some years, and it seems it was a great success.

I must say I find the idea compelling. What do you think?

(Please have a look at the article before responding if you can, there's some surprising and thought provoking stuff there).

if poverty is below 60% iof the average income surely if average income goes up or there is a basic level the average will be higher so they will still be below

where anything is an average they must be some below if there are some above the average might go up so being below is not real poverty but it is still less than everyone else

The difference between this and a decent benefits system is that you take away all the costs associated with administering a means-based system.

Also you do away with the requirement to look for work or whatever. You just simply free money to everyone, at the same level (taking into account number of DCs), no strings attached - people are allowed to chose to spend it as they see fit.

Did you read the article?

How much would it be? In the Canadian experiment,

"The basic income regulations had to ensure no one would drop below the poverty line. In practice this meant that about a 1,000 families ... received a monthly paycheck. For a family of five, the amount would come down to $18,000 a year today (figure corrected for inflation). No questions asked."

This will never happen in this country. A huge part of poverty is in housing. We are living in a Ponzi scheme based on over-inflated property prices. No one will touch it.

"We tend to presume that the poor are unable to handle money. If they had any, people reason, they would probably spend it on fast food and cheap beer, not on fruit or education. This kind of reasoning nourishes the myriad social programs, administrative jungles, armies of program coordinators and legions of supervising staff that make up the modern welfare state. Since the start of the crisis, the number of initiatives battling fraud with benefits and subsidies has surged.

People have to ‘work for their money,’ we like to think. In recent decades, social welfare has become geared toward a labor market that does not create enough jobs. The trend from 'welfare' to 'workfare' is international, with obligatory job applications, reintegration trajectories, mandatory participation in 'voluntary' work. The underlying message: Free money makes people lazy.

Except that it doesn’t.

...

Free-money programs have flourished in the past decade

In the 2010 work Just Give Money to the Poor, researchers from the Brooks World Poverty Institute, an independent institute based at the University of Manchester, give numerous examples of money being scattered successfully. In Namibia, malnourishment, crime and truancy fell 25 percent, 42 percent and nearly 40 percent respectively. In Malawi, school enrollment of girls and women rose 40 percent in conditional and unconditional settings. From Brazil to India and from Mexico to South Africa, free-money programs have flourished in the past decade. While the Millenium Development Goals did not even mention the programs, by now more than 110 million families in at least 45 countries benefit from them.

Researchers sum up the programs’ advantages:

(1) households make good use of the money,
(2) poverty decreases,
(3) long-term benefits in income, health, and tax income are remarkable,
(4) there is no negative effect on labor supply – recipients do not work less, and
(5) the programs save money.

Here is a presentation of their findings.

Why would we send well-paid foreigners in SUVs when we could just give cash? This would also diminish risk of corrupt officials taking their share. Free money stimulates the entire economy: consumption goes up, resulting in more jobs and higher incomes.

‘Poverty is fundamentally about a lack of cash. It's not about stupidity,’ author Joseph Hanlon remarks. ‘You can't pull yourself up by your bootstraps if you have no boots."

Poverty is defined relatively in this country, meaning that there will always be poverty unless we change the definition.

The countries mentioned in that article don't to my knowledge have free universal healthcare and education. All UK kids are enrolled in school or other education etc.

I can't see it in England any time soon, but how about the brave new Scotland, if the polls change and you get independence expat?

I would support this too.

I've seen figures though and it turns out it's not actually sustainable in the UK - we can't afford it as a country.

Ditto BertieBotts. I thought our natural resources were shot to pieces?

MorrisZapp did you read the article or just the quote above? (I highly recommend the article!)

The article focuses on a mass experiment which took place in Canada in 1973[ Canada introduced universal free healthcare in the early 60s, and education is free.

The results of the Canadian experiment:

• ‘Politicians feared that people would stop working, and that they would have lots of children to increase their income,’ ... Yet the opposite happened: the average marital age went up while the birth rate went down.

• The Mincome cohort had better school completion records.

• The total amount of work hours decreased by only 13%. Breadwinners hardly cut down on their hours, women used the basic income for a couple of months of maternity leave and young people used it to do some extra studying.

• [The] most remarkable discovery is that hospital visits went down by 8,5%. This amounted to huge savings (in the United States it would be more than $200 billion a year now).

• After a couple of years, domestic violence rates and mental health also saw improvement.

• Mincome made the entire town healthier.

• The basic income continued to influence following generations, both in terms of income and health.

Where did you see these figures Bertie?

I am fascinated by the example of the 13 homeless people at the beginning of that article. Each were just given £3,000 cash and achieved more in a year than all the costly charitable outreach programmes had been able to. None of them blew it on drink or drugs, and after a year 11 of them had homes.

"You can't pull yourself up by your bootstraps if you have no boots". Quite.

That makes bags and bags of sense. If people are homeless because they have no money, then give them the money. We are anyway with all the programmes we have to help them, but it's us making their decisions for them that way rather than treating them as competent adults who can make their own.

This works if we widen it out to third world aid too, apparently...as the Kenya example shows.

Thank you for linking to that article, Aufaniae. Fascinating.

isn't it called 'benefits' already?

I've read the article. I don't see how this model could be applied in the UK. Where the level would be etc, how it would be paid for. And of course the many many working people who would feel thoroughly pissed off at having to contribute.

I live in Edinburgh, where property prices are stupidly high. If we give people more money, landlords will charge more rent. Supply and demand will still rule, unless the free money comes alongside a comprehensive house building programme.

This was done in Soviet Russia by the way, where it worked fabulously.

So who'd be daft enough to get up in the morning and go to work when they could stay at home and get free money

Why should working people be pissed off at contributing to a better society?

To no child growing up in poverty, instead of the 1 in 3 it is today? To a safer society with less crime and better health? Where many more working mothers are free to take the maternity they want to, rather than being forced to go back to work before they want to.

And why would LLs charge more rent? I agree supply and demand would still rule. I don't understand how you equate that to rents going up? Supply and demand brings in competition which is meant to drive prices down not up.

MyCatIsFat have a look at the article. The whole point is that people did bother to get up and go to work.

People would still get up and go to work for lots of reasons. Perhaps because

• they want more money
• they enjoy their job
• they do something they feel is important (I doubt any nurse is in it for the money!)
• they have financial commitments above the mincome level

LumpySofa it's not Communism. It is kinda the Capitalist take on Communism though!

mousmous, not at all, that's a totally different scenario. Perhaps read the article (or the thread)?

There would be no increase in the supply of housing, and all these people with new income would increase demand. Prices would go up.

Seriously, you have to ask why workers wouldn't want to pay for it? Because people are generally self interested. That's why no political party who states they will increase taxes to provide better services will ever be voted in. I know there are lots of people who do feel socially minded and who would like to pay more to support others, but these people are in the minority.

HettiePetal thanks :) It is fascinating isn't it?!

And it all just seems so obvious, once you think about it ...

"That's why no political party who states they will increase taxes to provide better services will ever be voted in."

Many other countries embrace the idea of higher taxes and better services, for example all of Scandinavia. It's not such an outlandish idea.

I think some people will al