Oakland To Launch One of the Largest UBI Programs In the US, Giving Some Low-Income Residents $500 a Month With No Strings Attached 331
RoccamOccam shares a report from The New York Post: Some low-income families of color in Oakland will soon receive $500 a month in no-strings-attached cash as part of a privately funded program, Mayor Libby Schaaf said in a Tuesday announcement. The Oakland Resilient Families program has raised nearly $7 million dollars to help families of color with at least one minor child making less than $30,000 a year. Under the plan, participants will be randomly selected, and white people -- who earn three times as much as blacks on average in the city -- are not eligible. "We have designed this demonstration project to add to the body of evidence, and to begin this relentless campaign to adopt a guaranteed income federally," Schaaf said. The Oakland project is one of the largest in the US so far, targeting up to 600 families. The project is reminiscent of Andrew Yang's "freedom dividend" -- a universal basic income program promoted by the tech entrepreneur while running for president in 2018. The plan involved distributing funds to citizens via a tax on the "big four" tech companies.
Ensuring Equality? (Score:5, Insightful)
By excluding whites because of their skin color? Way to go Oakland!
Re:Ensuring Equality? (Score:5, Insightful)
How is such a racist policy even legal ?
They are means-testing, so explicitly excluding poor whites based on skin colour? "You are white so you should be rich"?
What next? Exempt convicted white criminals from prison time, because other whites commit less crime? Not just racist, it is bonkers.
How do they even determine who is white? Seems it is only the "full-bloods" excluded, not all people with white ancestry, which is taking them down a very dark road of policing racial purity.
Re: Ensuring Equality? (Score:5, Interesting)
What happens in bi-racial families, or families where the parents are white, but their child is not (adopted)?
Systemic Racisim, on display, in Oakland
Re:Ensuring Equality? (Score:5, Insightful)
How is such a racist policy even legal ?
It is privately funded. But the city is involved in running it. So the legality is ambiguous.
Expect it to be challenged in the courts.
By making the project openly racist, they are alienating many voters and making UBI look like part of the wacky-left agenda.
Re: Ensuring Equality? (Score:3)
"It is privately funded."
Not sure if you're serious or not?
By that statement, you're suggesting that if someone set up, say, a private fund explicitly for whites only, it wouldn't be challenged as racist?
Pretty sure a number of scholarship programs are routinely attacked for not giving enough to "diverse" (code word check: non white) recipients.
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"I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of th
Re:Ensuring Equality? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm a scientist. I do research. I also understand ethics (having served on research ethics boards as well).
I can assure you in no uncertain terms that this 'research', if it is 'research' at all (which it isn't) is NOT ethical.
Slashdot has not turned anti-science and right wing. The irritation here is quite mainstream centre of the road, and well founded philosophically.
You're showing your own particular Overton Window, which appears to be very left skewed and very narrow.
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Oh, for the day when a civil rights leftist replies to Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech with not just hostility, but attempting to cancel it as well for being too right wing.
This timeline sucks.
Re: Ensuring Equality? (Score:2)
No human research subject review board would allow this to pass.
You canâ(TM)t select participants for any research based purely on color of skin. You can control for race in your statistical outcomes but both control and research groups are required to be selected either without bias (in most cases) or you have a recruitment goal to reflect the some race distribution.
Doing research on blacks just because they are black, especially if the end goal/prediction has nothing to do with race will skew your re
Re:Ensuring Equality? (Score:5, Funny)
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I'm sure they just assumed white people wouldn't want it. Since they're always saying it's a bad idea.
That's kind of racist. Have you no shame?
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I said *they* assumed that, not that I assume that. But you sound like a white person who thinks it's a bad idea.
WTF with the racist ad hominem?
I happen to think UBI is inevitable, but that is not relevant here.
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I didn't think the "stimulus" payments in the form they took were a good idea.
I took my family's anyway.
We will have to pay the taxes that will fund them, and the higher prices that will result. We have no choice in that.
But I will still advocate for fiscal responsibility every day, and twice on Sunday.
It is not hypocrisy when you are robbed, but then, when offered back some part of what was stolen from you, you accept it.
It *is* hypocrisy when you try rob, enslave and murder others who aren't like you, us
Re:Ensuring Equality? (Score:4, Insightful)
Most people do. If you didn't, you would be the exception rather than the rule.
Most people think NOTHING of using the power of government to hurt other people, so long as they think it will benefit them.
That's one of our culture's most fundamental problems, and, arguably, the one that will most directly cause our demise.
Re:Ensuring Equality? (Score:5, Informative)
And they have the gall to call it a test of universal basic income.
The whole point of UBI is that it's universal. Not only on race (you'd think that would be uncontroversial) but on wealth and income too.
The only thing this is testing about UBI, is how divide and conquer strategies might be employed to stop UBI from happening.
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The only thing this is testing about UBI, is how divide and conquer strategies might be employed to stop UBI from happening.
That makes sense. Could there be people involved in this who actually want to sabotage the idea of UBI? I don't see the motive, but this would be a good way to go about it.
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And they have the gall to call it a test of universal basic income.
Where do they call it that?
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Re:Ensuring Equality? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's probably justified by being limited to people who faced historic and systematic disadvantage due to their race.
So I guess the Irish must be eligible? No?
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It's 2021....please its time to get the fuck over it and move on.
There's nary a slave or slave owner still alive in the US.
The institution of slavery was dismantled a LONG time ago...hell, the British empire had slavery long after it was abolished in the US, and it still runs rampant on other places on earth currently.
The US by FAR is ahead of the curve. This victimhood energy would be m
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Let me suggest that you go back and read the 13th amendment again, perhaps more carefully this time and reflect on the fact that African Americans are far more likely to be incarcerated than other races.
https://www.theguardian.com/co... [theguardian.com]
Re: Ensuring Equality? (Score:3, Insightful)
Next they'll exclude Asian students from advanced classes because they are too smart.
I didn't think I could think any less of Oakland, then they went and came up with this racist non-UBI program.
Imagine another city implementing the same program, but excluding blacks - that would be racist, why isn't this racist?
Answer: It IS racist!
Re: Ensuring Equality? (Score:5, Informative)
Next they'll exclude Asian students from advanced classes because they are too smart.
They already do. There was a huge case about it last year: [wikipedia.org]
Arcidiacono suggested that the applicant's race plays a significant role in admissions decisions. According to his testimony, if an Asian-American applicant with certain characteristics (like scores, GPAs, and extracurricular activities, family background) would result in a 25% statistical likelihood of admission, the same applicant, if white, will have a 36% likelihood of admission. A Hispanic and black applicant with the same characteristics will have a 77% and 95% predicted chance of admission, respectively.
Harvard itself found a statistically significant penalty against Asian-American applicants in an internal investigation in 2013, but had never made the findings public or acted on them. Plaintiffs and commentators have compared the treatment of Asians with the Jewish quota in place in the early 20th century, which used the allegedly “deficient” personalities of immigrant Jews as the reason for excluding non-legacy Jews in elite universities.
Re: Ensuring Equality? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's worth noting that Harvard won that case, and UT Austin also won its similar case alleging discrimination against white people.
The crux of it is that ethnicity is often correlated with wealth and opportunity, so e.g. a white or Asian person having an application full of extracurricular activities and high test scores may be less impressive than a Black person with the same, if that Black person was disadvantaged by poverty or lack of good schools where they live.
It's like two people getting the same lap time, one in a Ferrari and one in a Lada. The difficulty of achieving those two equal times is not the same.
Re: Ensuring Equality? (Score:5, Insightful)
The crux of it is that ethnicity is often correlated with wealth and opportunity,
It's also correlated with crime and defaulting on your loans. But we've long established that those are not acceptable reasons for cops and banks to racially profile. What schools are doing is exactly that, racial profiling. It's a disgusting double standard from institutions that claim to have zero tolerance for racism.
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Re:Ensuring Equality? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is there a typo here?
"white people -- who earn three times as much as blacks on average in the city".
How is that possible? As a foreigner, this is hard for me to believe.
The median income for white households in the US is "only" about 50% higher than blacks (And Asian about double), partly due to there more commonly being two breadwinners.
But how does Oakland get 200% more? That is a massive difference form the national data. I see on the map it is prime Bay-area real estate, so having high-income Whites is no surprise. But the "three times" says it is simultaneously having poorer than average blacks. How can that be?
I'd have thought San Francisco land prices and rents would be pushing all poor people out to more distant and cheaper areas, but is this somehow only affecting whites and leaving poor blacks on prime land? Can anybody enlighten this confused foreigner?
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Oakland is far from homogenous.
Some areas, like the Macarthur District, are crime-infested SHs.
Other areas are inhabited by prosperous commuters who take the trans-bay BART to work in SF.
Figuring out which of these areas are black and which are white is left as an exercise for the reader.
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But how does this happen?
I get that you have racial segregation, but why are the black areas not being gentrified too?
Why the polarisation within one district?
Re:Ensuring Equality? (Score:5, Informative)
Gentrification is happening. In the 1980s, Oakland was a "chocolate city" (majority African-American). Today, it is about 25% A-A.
But gentrification tends to spread outward from where it already exists rather than evenly throughout the city.
As an area gentrifies, rents rise, low-income people are squeezed out, and crime falls. This causes the area to gentrify further.
This is happening adjacent to Piedmont and the region close to Emeryville and downtown BART stations.
It is happening less (so far) in Macarthur, but even there, rents are rising.
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None of this explains the extreme racial polarisation in Oakland. Much more than the state or national average.
Maybe this is obvious to Americans, but can you explain for us please? Why are there no middle-class black people moving in?
There must have once been poor white people in Oakland, so how is it that poor whites have left, while poor blacks have increased?
In growing cities in other developed counties, inner suburbs are highly desirable and therefore expensive. Old houses get bulldozed and replac
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Maybe Americans think that is just how big cities are, in which case you should travel more.
They would not have to travel far. A 10-minute drive across the Bay Bridge is the city of San Francisco, which has no poor areas. A 40-minute drive to the south is the city of San Jose, which has more people than either Oakland or SF and also has no poor areas.
Re:Ensuring Equality? (Score:5, Informative)
Disclaimer: This is going to be talking in broad generalizations. In reality, there are poor parts of each city, but addressing all the nuance is way too long for a Slashdot post.
But how does Oakland get 200% more?
We've got a long history of racial segregation. White people lived in San Francisco, and Redlining meant blacks couldn't buy houses there. The result is Oakland was much, much poorer than San Francisco. The low-wage workers for San Francisco would commute from Oakland, or work a low-wage job in Oakland.
Time passes. San Francisco real estate gets more and more expensive, creating more and more capital for the whites. Oakland's real estate doesn't go up nearly as fast, because Redlining still exists and loans are very hard to get. The difference in capital means the mostly-white San Franciscans can make more money via tapping into that capital (eg. start a business, pay for kids to go to college, buy a rental property in Oakland using a loan on their SF house, etc).
In addition, higher property values mean higher tax receipts. So San Francisco schools were much, much better funded than Oakland schools. The kids of the San Franciscans get better educations, and thus more income. Which then leads to more wealth, which creates more available capital, which then leads to more wealth.
Some more time passes, and we create the "War on Drugs" because prohibition's ending and some powerful people need an excuse to maintain power. Police do a pretty good job of limiting major drug operations in San Francisco, but the Oakland PD is funded by Oakland. Less money -> less enforcement -> more drugs. Essentially Oakland becomes the wholesaler for the San Francisco's drug dealers.
Some more time passes, and we ramp up the War on Drugs, because you're Nixon and it's a great way to "other" the people who won't vote for you. Now Oakland's PD is supplemented with state and federal money, and there's large crackdowns on the drug trade there. But the police don't back off when they catch a kingpin, like they did in wealthier cities because that sweet, sweet state and federal cash keeps coming in for the police. That means a lot of stupid teenager stuff that does not get caught in San Francisco does get caught in Oakland. Eg. dumb teen gets in a fight in SF, it's over and broken up before police arrive, so nothing happens on the legal front. Dumb teen gets in a fight in Oakland, greater police presence means police arrive before it's broken up and arrest the dumb teen.
Once the kid is caught, we have to prove how "tough on crime" we are, so the kid gets the book thrown at them. Gets kicked out of high school and has to serve some token sentence for a misdemeanor. Doesn't have a HS degree and has a record, so it's much harder to get a good job. SF teen wasn't caught, got his HS degree, and went off to college with a story about how he was dumb once.
Oakland former-teen can't make ends meet at minimum wage, part time job, and that's all the work he can get. So he starts doing small deliveries for a drug dealer to get by. Gets caught 'cause the police are still all over Oakland, gets a worse record, which makes it even harder to get a legal job. Since he still has to eat and nobody else will hire him, he has to go back to working for dealers. Gets caught 'cause the police are still all over Oakland, and repeat. Fox News laments he's an absent father, pretending that there was no difference in how the government handled these two teens and it's all the Oakland kid's fault.
Yet more time passes. San Francisco starts approaching the utterly unaffordable housing costs that it experiences today. That causes some of the San Franciscans to look for a cheaper place to live. And hey, Oakland's cheap thanks to 4 generations or so of being left behind. So they start buying houses in areas of Oakland. Ta-da! Gentrification. Oh, they also start private schools for their kids, or pressure the city council to change school fundin
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Ah, that's a problem caused by actual racism.
Now, given those facts, see if you can figure out why you'd want to excluded white in an experiment like this.
Nope, no idea what you are on about. Are you having trouble putting your vague notion into words?
It does sound like you could take away the racism, and 90% or more of the recipients would be non-white and non-Asian anyway.
So what is to gain by racist eligibility criteria?
But this does not address my question. Why are middle-class blacks not moving into the area? Why the massive localised racial disparity?
The 3x number is astounding. Is it true?
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That's why it's racist. There's an underlying assumption being made that Blacks and Whites would behave differently. If this were truly a scientific experiment (as narcc implies), they would enroll Whites as a control group.
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It seems utterly absurd to add this blatantly racist exception. Indeed, I doubt its legality.
If the aim is to help people who are poor, why does it matter what colour they are? USA has lots of very poor white people too, indeed, some of said white folks are staggeringly poor.
It amazes me, as a non-American (Australian, actually, and yes, I know we have our own problems), that such an approach is even considered. Obviously, if poor people are overwhelmingly black, then it's going to help mainly black people.
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Re:Ensuring Equality? (Score:5, Insightful)
3/10 Obvious troll is obvious.
You are clearly an idiot. Obvious racism is obvious.
Re:Ensuring Equality? (Score:5, Insightful)
Raising a family on less than $30K is a problem regardless of skin colour.
Re:Ensuring Equality? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure it is. I don't know why that matters here though. Do you really not understand why they've be interested in just this specific demographic in this particular area?
I do not understand why poverty would ever be considered an issue for some races, but not others. Please explain.
Re:Ensuring Equality? (Score:5, Insightful)
The very first criterion for eligibility is race. That is literally racist by definition.
Re: Ensuring Equality? (Score:2)
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Re:Ensuring Equality? (Score:4, Insightful)
It is one hundred percent factual.
They have excluded whites from participating.
It is a privately funded program.
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Re:Ensuring Equality? (Score:5, Insightful)
I get it is privately funded.
And if it were just the private entity running the program and giving money out, that would be perfectly legal.
Private people and private entities can give money out as they please.
However, you now have government participating in this, using public funds for their participation (city and state workers get paid)....and the government is supposed to represent everyone, every race.
The fact that elected government officials and resources are being used for this should make this illegal right out of the gate.
Someone needs to bring suit against this pronto, or this could set a VERY dangerous precedent.!!!
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It doesn't matter what the reason is. It's still racist.
Re:Ensuring Equality? (Score:5, Insightful)
I am not racist, and I am logical.
If the purpose is to see how Blacks use the money, there is an underlying assumption that Blacks will use it differently than Whites. That's racist.
If the purpose is to compare usage by Blacks and others, then Whites should be included as a control group.
If there is an underlying assumption that Blacks need it more than Whites, that's racist. Poverty doesn't care what color you are.
If the entire purpose of excluding Whites is to virtue signal, that's also racist. It's implicitly stating that all Whites are guilty for the actions of others.
No matter how you look at it, the specific decision to exclude Whites is racist. If the criteria happened to exclude them for other demographic reasons, that would be fine.
I can tell from your other comments that you think racism is not racism if it's "for science". That's pure shit.
What about poor parents? (Score:3)
to help families of color with at least one minor child making less than $30,000 a year.
What if the minor child makes more than $30000, but the parents don't?
Welfare (Score:5, Insightful)
Giving only some people $500 a month isn't UBI, it's welfare. The first word of UBI is *universal*
That being said, I'm all for replacing *all* government aid programs with simple cash remittances. Pour all the money wasted managing the programs back into the programs.
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Re:Welfare (Score:5, Informative)
$500 a month also isn't basic income in Oakland, it's supplemental income. If that's all you have in Oakland, you're homeless.
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Yes, "universal". Therefore, unless everyone in the universe is included, this experiment means nothing! There is absolutely no way that we could possibly learn anything by running this kind of experiment on a carefully selected population! /s
Seriously, have none of the self-taught "science" experts on Slashdot learned about experimental methods or statistics?
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OK mr statistics expert. Tell us how cash payments targeted on race, income AND social situation is a good way to test the effects of a UBI policy whose whole point is that it's not targeted on any of those categories.
It looks to me that the people who paid for this, are more interested in how UBI can be undermined by divide and conquer tactics.
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I'm honestly in the 'I don't know' if UBI will work camp.
However, there are a lot of attempts throughout the world to 'prove' UBI works. We had one in Canada a few years back as well. I personally don't think any of these even begin to touch on the impact of UBI. Mainly because they've all basically operated on a small limited scope to try and show that poor people will use it effectively and it improves their lives.
That to me isn't even part of the important questions. Let's assume the best possible UBI tr
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Interest free? In what world?
26 U.S. Code Section 6611 (a):
Interest shall be allowed and paid upon any overpayment in respect of any internal revenue tax at the overpayment rate established under section 6621.
Systemic Racism, on display, in Oakland California (Score:5, Insightful)
This is what systemic racism looks like.
They exclude poor white families that would otherwise meet the criteria of the program, except for their skin color.
Don't kid yourself, this is racism, plain and simple.
Why shouldn't a white family with at least one minor child and annual income under $30,000 be eligible for this program?
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Well no, that would be overt racism. Systemic racism is more subtle.
It would be systemic if the programme were open to white people, but due to the way it was structured it was very difficult for white people to apply or be accepted. Like maybe it required a form of ID that few white people had, or the application forms were only available in Spanish.
Re:Umm... hello? (Score:5, Insightful)
You keep repeating this shit, but it doesn't make it smell better. This criterion is racist, by definition.
There are medical studies that focus on race because race sometimes makes an objective difference. This is not such a study.
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There are medical studies that focus on race because race sometimes makes an objective difference.
According to you, those are studies are "racist, by definition".
This is not such a study.
And you can't to this conclusion ... how, exactly? Tea leaves? Gut feeling?
Europa Europa (Score:4, Interesting)
Has a scene somewhere in the middle where the main character, a Jewish orphan born in Germany but fighting for the Soviet Army, defects back to Germany and is put through basic training and n@zi indoctrination.
An SS man shows up to give the recruits a lesson on how to identify The Jew. He rummages through his bag of phrenology equipment, produces an absurd looking set if calipers, measures the cranium and nose of our nervous protagonist, and pronounces him a fine specimen of the Master Race.
This scene always pops to my mind when I read about some clearly and transparently racist project undertaken by lefties in the service of "antiracism."
FWIW (Score:2)
Poor white families are excluded from the boon.
I don't think it fits the bill (Score:5, Informative)
"Universal Basic Income" is the name, not "arbitrarily restricted private welfare".
To iterate:
Universal = Every member of the society, including poor and rich are eligible
Basic = Should cover basic needs, i.e.: above poverty levels.
Income = self explanatory
The program is neither Universal nor Basic. It only covers a small portion of the population with restrictions based on race of all things. It is also not enough to cover basic needs, so that people can have sustenance on only this program.
It might be a good program, or not. I don't know. But I know it is definitely not UBI.
Re:I don't think it fits the bill (Score:4, Interesting)
This is not a study of UBI by any stretch of the imagination. It is essentially just a vote buying exercise.
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You can see no reason why you'd want to run this kind of experiment with a smaller amount on a very specific population?
I'm glad you don't do science.
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Explain how it's poorly designed.
Oh, wait, you can't.
Re:I don't think it fits the bill (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't test the original hypothesis.
For example, the UBI theorizes giving money without any restrictions will help avoid "welfare cliffs". i.e.: you earn too much to lose benefits, so you stop working to avoid essentially 100% tax.
Here the same exact thing happens. If you earn more than a certain amount, you lose the $500 monthly benefit. If you make $30,000 + $1, you lose $6,000 (or probably more depending on how this is taxed).
That is not UBI, this is just another welfare. And calling this UBI is actually a disservice to those who want a proper UBI implemented.
UBI? (Score:2)
UBI = Universal Black Income, at least in the city of Oakland.
The whole idea of UBI was to distribute funds equally, not to this group or that group at the exclusion of others. This is Jim Crow laws turned on its head. How is this not racist when poor white families are specifically excluded?
I used to love visiting California. This is just one more reason that I'll never set foot in that leftist cesspool ever again.
Give it to everyone, then tax it back, (Score:5, Insightful)
All the worst aspects of American history are present in the demographics of poverty. We can talk all we want about treaties and tribal land restoration, or slave reparations and civil rights, and still not resolve a damned thing. Let's start with replacing inefficient and ineffective aid programs with direct funding and choice, literally give folks the freedom to choose where each individual person needs that money to go to produce the most needed benefits.
Do UBI across the board, at all levels, including billionaires. But count it as normal income, to be taxed accordingly. Those in poverty will not be taxed until they earn income, at which point I suspect paying taxes will be seen as a social good, to give the next person that funding and opportunity.
That's the dream. But we need data to see if it is both realistic and achievable. So, no matter where you fall on the spectrum of approval or reproach, you must agree that UBI experiments must at least be attempted, if only, at least at first, to gain data.
Somebody explain something to be (Score:3)
I always thought that the expression "no strings attached" meant that whatever accompanied it and was being talked about had no preconditions.
But there is quite plainly a precondition, mentioned right there in the same sentence. "Low income".
Have I always just had a misunderstanding on the use of this phrase, or is it just being used incorrectly here?
Re:Somebody explain something to be (Score:5, Insightful)
For example: I have an extra 5 bucks in my pocket and decide I'm going to give it to a homeless person "no strings attached". The pre-condition is the person is homeless -- I'm certainly not giving my 5 bucks to a well-dressed passerby on the street carrying a leather briefcase. But when I find a homeless person and hand him the 5 bucks I do NOT say something like "Don't buy cigarettes with this" or "Go get yourself a hot meal" - that is "no strings attached" - the person is free to do whatever they want with the 5 bucks.
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I always thought that "no strings attached" more generally meant that there weren't any conditions to whatever is being talked about. Here there is a supposed UBI program, but it's conditional first on being low-income enough to quality, and because of that condition, there is a definitely a string attached to offering of that money as I see it.
Not that I'm saying that it is bad, only that because it's a condition for receiving any money it seems odd to me to use the expression that there's "no strings
No strings (Score:2)
Actually at least 3 strings. PoC. brat. low income. Funny definition of no strings.
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by strings they mean control of how you spend. Welfare programs often limit and control that you spend it on basic stuff like food and bills. This will be just cash handouts, so you can as well spend it on booze or drugs.
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A great deal of the money _will_ be going to cigarettes and scratch tickets.
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This will be fun. (Score:5, Funny)
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It feels like Oakland is just trolling Tucker Carlson at this point.
Well, that is a worthwhile endeavor in and of itself.
Pointless and stupid (Score:2)
Spend that money on better education, or at least something to encourage better job opportunities for people.
Give someone a fish, they eat for a day.
Teach someone to fish, they eat for for a lifetime
Re:Pointless and stupid (Score:5, Funny)
Give someone a fish, they eat for a day. Teach someone to fish, they eat for for a lifetime
Or, even better:
Build someone a fire, they are warm for a night.
Set someone on fire, they are warm for the rest of their life.
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Give someone a fish, they eat for a day.
Teach someone to fish, they eat for for a lifetime
I'd love for you to teach me how to fish, but I don't have the time working multiple dead end minimum wage jobs just to be able to make rent.
Maybe you privileged people can tell me your secret?
Wow only $500 a month (Score:2)
Way to increase racial tensions, Oakland (Score:5, Insightful)
Conditional welfare is almost never a good idea, because of overhead, because of producing perverse incentives, and because of increasing tensions between people who get it, and people in just as shit circumstances that the government doesn't give anything to. And this is a textbook example.
Middlemen (Score:2)
Let's Say . . . (Score:2)
For all those crying "racism"... (Score:2)
...you are not wrong here.
I'm just pointing out one single fact that may make your argument rather moot.
"as part of a privately funded program"
If a private individual choose to provide funding for a program like this, could they not also dictate their specific funding rules? Certainly seems that way. In other words the only "racist" here, is the one paying for all this.
Yes, a rather horrible decision, but sadly it's probably a perfectly legal one.
Ohh slashdot (Score:2)
This slashdot community is more fucking poisonous than the comment section on YouTube.
The most openly racism I've ever seen (Score:3)
oh ffs... (Score:2)
Its not UBI unless it is (U)niversal. And its not an actual study unless there is some means to collect the funds paid from the recipients and then re-distributed. Money is not free.
Yes, an increase in welfare to needy individuals does help them. There, study done. For the record, I'm totally for helping those in need ... but doing it under the guise of pushing a terrible idea like UBI is just a politician trying to buy your votes with your neighbor's money.
Of color, what color? (Score:2)
Some Low Income? (Score:2)
So it's not Universal Basic Income then.
The left sees things like this: (Score:3)
Black people canâ(TM)t succeed because of a institutional racism.
Black people who do succeed (Herman Cain, Ben Carson) are part of the racist culture of white supremacy.
Re: (Score:2)
Really? It's California.
Re: (Score:2)
You guys love taxes.
Re: (Score:2)
..Used to be it was difficult to get much more than codeine if you were not either hospitalized or near death. Now they give you 30 days of percocet for a bad tooth. We need to find balance instead of always setting ourselves up for failure often for profit but frequently for revenge.
While I agree 110% regarding the profit motive, care to explain and elaborate as to exactly how a doctor over-prescribing, is considered a frequent "revenge" tactic?
Doctors run a business. First and foremost. Profit is the #1 motive behind the "pill mills". I kind of doubt any other outcome, was intentional or beyond a side effect of Greed.