Newborns to get $1,000 “Trump Account” under new law

Is this a good idea? It costs several trillion dollars per year at current birth rates. Is this another form of basic income for everyone?

What if universal rental assistance were implemented to deal with the housing crisis? Really!

Two nutty US professors call for socialist Big Government! They pretend and claim to bey "housing policy experts". Laughable!

What "housing crisis"? Pure propaganda and demagoguery!

If these two men were students of economics, they sure would receive a fail grade!

Why don't these two nutty professors not take a pay cut in support of needy tenants in their community instead of calling for socialist Big Government!

"Disclosure statement

Alex Schwartz has received funding from the Catherine and John D. MacArthur Foundation. Since 2019 he has served on New York City's Rent Guidelines Board. He has a relative who works for The Conversation.

Kirk McClure received funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and receives funding from the National Science Foundation."

The opening sentence is already pure demagoguery!

"If there’s one thing that U.S. politicians and activists from across the political spectrum can agree on, it’s that rents are far too high. ..."

More economic nonsense:

"... As experts on housing policy, we’re concerned about housing affordability. But our research shows little connection between a shortfall of housing and rental affordability problems. Even a massive infusion of new housing would not shrink housing costs enough to solve the crisis, as rents would likely remain out of reach for many households. ..."

"... However, there are already subsidies in place that ensure that some renters in the U.S. pay no more than 30% of their income on housing costs. The most effective [big government] solution, in our view, is to make these subsidies much more widely available. ..."

What if universal rental assistance were implemented to deal with the housing crisis?

OpenAI Founder Sam Altman Gave Thousands Of People Free Money. Here’s What happened. Really!

This is about experiments on universal guaranteed basic income! I am afraid this is a fallacy like manna from heaven! Small scale experiments may work.

If this was introduced on a large scale who is going to pay for it? Mr. Altman? Who will set and adjust the amount?

Money For Nothing: Universal Basic Income to Be Trialed in England

What an absurd fantasy! One of those favorite topics of naive intellectuals, useful idiots, and media!

Who will ultimately pay for this absurdity! Perhaps, once we have cheap robots to provide us with the essentials of life, we can come back to similar ideas.

This trial is apparently limited to 30 individuals! Why not 100,000 or multiples of 100,000 individuals? Very telling!

Money For Nothing: Universal Basic Income to Be Trialed in England A trial of universal basic income (UBI) will be trialled for the first time in England where 30 people will be given a monthly stipend with no strings attached.

City of Cambridge, MA will give $500 a month to every family below the poverty line

This is a very slippery slope! First it is cities, then entire states, and followed or preempted by federal government. 

This is vote buying on steroids! Receiving money from the government is very seductive! It is a step towards the utopia of guaranteed universal basic income for everyone!

It starts small and grows. People get used to manna from heaven. Today it is $500 per month, tomorrow perhaps $1000 per month. Today, it is the poverty line, tomorrow perhaps the median income ...

Well as long as taxpayers can vote with their proverbial feet, this does not have a chance to go very far.

"... The direct cash assistance — in the form of $500 dollars per month for about 18 months — will be for every single eligible family under 200% of the federal poverty level in the city. ...
The city last year launched Cambridge RISE, a guaranteed income pilot for single caretakers that gave out monthly cash disbursements to 130 families. RISE has had a “life-changing, stabilizing impact” on these families, Siddiqui said."

Cambridge will give $500 a month to every family below the poverty line The first city in the country to take this step, the mayor said

McKinsey & Company peddles universal basic income utopia

Truly amazing that this prestigious global consultancy firm is pushing such pie in the sky absurd, utopian nonsense that would bankrupt any country that implements UBI!

"Readers who are familiar with the inequality debate or the fears that robots will take all of our jobs will almost certainly have heard about the idea of a universal basic income. As typically conceived, basic-income programs are meant to provide a financial safety net, with no obligations and without the bureaucracy and associated administrative costs of means-tested benefits."
It will take at least 10-20 more years before robots will be able to do many laborious tasks! And who designs and builds robots? 

"... However, to date Finland is the only country that has managed to complete a nationwide randomized control trial of a basic-income program. ... It is also worth noting that the methods and conclusions of the Finnish study were not undisputed ... In Finland’s two-year study, a treatment group of 2,000 randomly picked, initially unemployed people received a guaranteed, unconditional, and automatic cash payment of a modest €560 per month instead of a basic unemployment allowance in similar amounts. ... Interestingly, the final results of Finland’s program, released this spring, found that a basic income actually had a positive impact on employment. People on the basic income were more likely to be employed than those in the control group, and the differences were statistically significant, albeit small."



An experiment to inform universal basic income | McKinsey As income inequality and economic upheaval take center stage, is a guaranteed minimum income worth considering? Results from a two-year experiment in Finland offer clues.

How a basic income experiment helped these Kenyans weather the Covid-19 crisis

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is promoting the utopia/fantasy of universal basic income!

In this research experiment conducted in Kenya only about 6,000 people from rural areas participated in a country of 51 million population. The 12 year study started only in 2017. One of the researchers of this study is from MIT.

Would this UBI extended to the whole population it would collapse for lack of financing!

How a basic income experiment helped these Kenyans weather the Covid-19 crisis - Vox People getting a UBI were less likely to go hungry as Kenya shut down

Here is the link to the so called preprint paper (which is not even published on the usual preprint servers, but on the website of a anti poverty advocacy group):
Effects of a Universal Basic Income during the pandemic

A Critique Of Arthur Murray's Guaranteed Income For Every American

Posted: 6/12/2016

Trigger

Just read Arthur Murray’s A guaranteed income for every American  Replacing the welfare state with an annual grant is the best way to cope with a radically changing U.S. jobs market—and to revitalize America’s civic culture. It astounds me that the American Enterprise Institute is behind that. Apparently, this gentleman has written a monograph in 2006 on this topic.

Anyway, I am going to reflect on Mr. Murray’s arguments here, because I believe he is not the only proponent defending this baloney of universal, guaranteed income in similar ways.

A Critique

1. Mr. Murray extensively denies that he is not a Luddite. Au contraire, he is one. His argument rests on the fallacious claim that the impending technological revolution of robotics and AI is so extensive that it must be “this time is different”. That is a truly laughable argument. Every time a technology revolution has happened before this claim surely was raised by contemporaries of that time
2. To his credit, Mr. Murray describes in some detail how successful private, voluntary networks of charity and welfare were “displaced” by the New Deal and later the Great Society. Here is a salient quote (emphasis added):
   “A key feature of American exceptionalism has been the propensity of Americans to create voluntary organizations for dealing with local problems. Tocqueville was just one of the early European observers who marveled at this phenomenon in the 19th and early 20th centuries. By the time the New Deal began, American associations for providing mutual assistance and aiding the poor involved broad networks, engaging people from the top to the bottom of society, spontaneously formed by ordinary citizens.
   These groups provided sophisticated and effective social services and social insurance of every sort, not just in rural towns or small cities but also in the largest and most impersonal of megalopolises.”
3. So why does Mr. Murray then argue for a new, universal government program (i.e. guaranteed income for everyone) to displace all old, universal government programs (e.g. social security, medicare etc.)? His conclusion is flawed. Mr. Murray should have argued for a return to more private, voluntary charity and welfare to aid the poor or unfortunate.

Previous, Related Blog Posts

See here.

Guaranteed Basic Income For Everyone Utopia

Posted: 5/1/2016 Updated: 5/3/2016

Evolution Of Welfare Systems

There is no question that the welfare systems developed over about the last 100 years in Western democracies are awful, significantly broken and a waste a lot of money.

These welfare systems do not at all achieve what politicians promise or what they want us to believe. Not to mention that these welfare systems are full of government paternalism degrading its recipients and come with dependencies on government stretching from one generation of recipients to the next.

Poverty of humans is a very relative and subjective concept. The causes and reasons for human poverty are many. Poverty is dynamic, e.g. few able bodied and mentally able adults are poor all their live. Poverty is a fact of live.

Utopia Or The Fall Of Nations

The basic income for everyone idea is a fallacy like any cornucopia idea before.

1. The Roman Empire tried more welfare, we know what happened to the empire. The historical lessons are clear on this. Unfortunately, government run public education is so bad that many citizens do not know about that (probably intentionally so)
2. Basic income guarantees for everyone are extremely expensive measures. So expensive that government would need to restrict access to basic income etc.
3. Enormous disincentive to open a business or to work for a living. Why would I work or bother to open a business with all its attendant troubles, if I can vote for my income to be automatically and reliably transferred into my bank account?
4. Exploitation of the minority by a majority in a democracy. Just 51% of voters could vote themselves a nice income at least theoretically expecting the rest to produce the income. What a folly!
5. Enormous incentive for immigration from abroad to obtain such benefits instead of building a business or working for your living.
6. Universal programs like guaranteed basic income for everyone are, once introduced, extremely difficult to repeal or reform because beneficiaries and lobbyists will prevent it (e.g. see U.S. Social Security or Medicare)

Baloney Or Lunatic Arguments In Defense

1. Advances in technology (e.g. robots) would supplant many jobs previously were carried out by humans. If history is any guide, then we heard these type of arguments latest since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution

Better Solutions

1. More individual and economic freedom so that individuals or families can built their own businesses or find better jobs, buy cheaper homes and health care etc.
2. More limited and smaller government
3. More private and voluntary charity and initiatives to help people in need
4. To replace the multitude of existing welfare programs like in the U.S. with some kind of targeted income only benefits for the poor or disabled

Some Critical Articles About This Subject

There are probably better articles out there.

1. The Danger of the Universal Basic Income Giving everyone a “basic income” is the latest trendy idea sweeping Silicon Valley. It’s a terrible solution to a real problem.
2. Ending Welfare as We Know It
3. The Worst Thing about a Basic Income: You'll Never Get Rid of It Social Security Shows What Happens to Universal Programs