I thought this was going to be another UBI article. Pleasantly surprised to see data on CCT and UCT programs, but somewhat frustrated that this basically is an article about what works in less developed countries. It doesn't appear to really have lessons for the US.
In the US, there is plenty of capital and infrastructure. Nonetheless, there are systemic problems that make poverty excessively hard to escape.
One of those is the general dearth of affordable housing* in the country. This is worse in some places than others, but it is a problem everywhere.
A second issue is that jobs are moving to big cities. More affordable small towns are being gutted. This means people can go where the jobs are and face a high cost of living, or go where things are cheap, yet still be unable to earn enough due to lack of earning opportunities.
I think we have a potential solution available: Remote work and online earning opportunities.
But one problem I see is that people in big cities are more likely to be clued in about such. Small towns and rural areas seem to be into Facebook and not terribly internet savvy.
I think if we can make a concerted effort to increase the supply of affordable housing and also work on finding ways to help Americans outside of big cities to get more savvy about using the internet to improve their bottom line, we don't need to continue to live in fear of some dystopian future where robots have all our jobs and UBI seems like our only hope.
There are very obvious depravations suffered by impoverished people and those things all have literal price tags. This requires zero critical thought by anyone on HN.
What conditional and unconditional handouts demonstrate is the in the same vein as other social problems we face: Do we offer people the freedom to choose a path and possibly take a bad one? Or do we block all paths but the one we're pretty sure is 'the correct one'?
I'm a trustee of the UK partner organisation. One of the reasons I was attracted to GiveDirectly in the first place was their commitment to robust evaluation and transparency.
A lot of the objections to direct giving seem to coalesce to: "But [some non-zero percentage] will just blow the cash on drugs and sex. So nobody should get anything!"
And then it descends into a bar conversation about incentives, macro-economics, game theory until someone stumbles over the drinks mumbling "but the AI and self driving cars" while the waitress is hoping HN drunks are gonna tip enough to compensate for the low wage industry she's trapped in.
I don't see why giving poor people direct cash transfers requires 100% effectiveness when giving wealthy people tax cuts on the off-chance it will trickle down is considered dogma.
when robotic physical labor and the cognitive tasks capable by automated software eliminates the ability for the bottom 50, 60, 80% of the population to compete economically, what's going to happen?
simply handing out money might have broader negative unforseen consequences with regard to incentives (witness the prescription oxycontin and heroin epidemic in the rust belt), but of course, doing nothing might be worse.
when robotic physical labor and the cognitive tasks capable by automated software eliminates the ability for the bottom 50, 60, 80% of the population to compete economically, what's going to happen?
For all intents and purposes, we're already here. Farmers are only about 1% of the population, yet they feed us all. Add in house construction and clothing, and there's a very small number of people that provide the rest of us with food, shelter, and housing. That's all we need.
The average westerner has thousands of times more resources than required to exist.
So this scary future where robots rule the Earth and people don't have to work for basic needs? We're living it.
We just found other stuff we like. Stuff like iPods, notebook computers, vacations, stamp collections. Then we make money and trade it around for that stuff.
We'll keep automating, fewer and fewer people will be required to provide for our basic needs, and we'll keep coming up with new stuff we like. I don't see any reason that this pattern is going to change.
If there is a future where the technology sector rules everything, then the logical thing is that (almost) everyone is onboard on that sector. That sector will be huge and will have many segments and specializations.
In other words, people will need to adapt. The ones who take the risk to jump onboard before the ruling is (100%) a reality will have an advantage/lead.
There are low skilled technological jobs for the ones that can't study etc.
The world moves this way. If you don't adapt you're out.
If you think giving money to the poor is why the original OC formulation did a lot of damage in that area, you are willfully or ignorantly discarding several critical elements to support your narrative.
Undertreatment of pain is now even worse thanks to prohibition tactics.
There is no perfect lock, nor is there a drug with abuse potential unabused by someone, be they rich and famous (Rush Limbaugh really struggled in that Rust belt mansion while his maid was treated like his personal drug mule) or dirt poor living on 400 bucks a month.
Some people are functioning addicts.
Probably people you interact with and trust.
Not every poor person is going to use a hundred dollars on drugs the minute they have it.
If you want poor people off drugs, decriminalization and the death of the War on Drugs comes first.
Unless you like seeing innoncent folks drop like fucking flies everytime some genius cuts their heroin with fentanyl instead of something inert.
This would be more of a problem in a developed country, right? Sounds like these people are closer to self sufficiently, i.e. farming, foraging, building a roof for $40 etc. Where as in developed countries, with the cost of housing and without a job it will be tight. We'd need to helicopter some money, taxed from that automation, IMHO.
>when robotic physical labor and the cognitive tasks capable by automated software eliminates the ability for the bottom 50, 60, 80% of the population to compete economically, what's going to happen?
The same thing that happened the last time machines replaced most of the labor.
Billions will live in misery and want, a few will become so obscenely wealthy they rival most governments, a world war happens when the contradictions between the old powers and new powers can no longer be managed, revolutions happen just about everywhere when the people have nothing left to lose and the rich are hung from the lamp posts. Give it between 10 to 100 years.
This isn't a new problem that has a technological solution. It is a sociological problem where the people with the power to solve it are the ones who benefit most from the problem not being solved.
When I read this my first thought was how easy it would be to replace the Mechanical Turk team with a neural network trained to distinguish between thatch and tin roofs.
What if what happens is the same exact thing that has happened for the last couples centuries?
This is not a new "problem". Work has been automated away for a very long time, and what happens is that someone people lose their job and move in to a DIFFERENT job, but society is massively better off.
Essentially, this is paying people to take care of themselves, benefit themselves, and benefit society. A form of "trickle-up economics", if you will.
This adds to the value they receive back from society for improving themselves and their situation. It's reminiscent of EIC in the USA. This may be the best distribution method for this sort of funding.
Now the only question is the same as UBI - who funds it? Why is this tested in Kenya instead of Detroit or Wyoming? Is it because the daily income of a Kenyan is a rounding-error to an American? That won't scale.
There are some things like infrastructure that probably makes sense to centralize such as transportation or telecommunication. I think it still makes sense to run these things paid for by the government as opposed to people voting with cash. However, I might be wrong. There are real limits to how much money we have.
So a question like do we spend on a local transit subway system are difficult because there is so much politics. Even trying to get the F train go express in Brooklyn had so much opposition.
When I read the article headline I thought of course cash does not solve everything. We still need roads and bridges and fiber optic cables. However, if the period have the cash maybe they can decide for themselves what they want to prioritize.
Too bad we can't have a single tax system around the world so we could hand the same tax brackets around the world. That would make it so much easier to raise taxes on the top bracket without worrying about money fleeing the jurisdiction and we'd be able to fund things like a basic income.
> There are real limits to how much money we have.
I think it's very important for us to be aware that while this is true for private individuals, companies, and local governments, it is totally false for monetarily sovereign governments like the US federal government.
There is no limit to how much money it can spend. Any discussion of budgets at that level in terms of deficits etc. is completely flawed, and not just because a lot of politicians are extremely hypocritical about it, but because it just makes no sense in terms of economics and finance.
When thinking about the spending and taxation of a monetarily sovereign governments, the only real constraint is inflation. This is because the only real constraint is the amount of real resources that are available.
For what it's worth, this approach is part of what's called "functional finance".
> without worrying about money fleeing the jurisdiction and we'd be able to fund things like ...
That's a terrible idea. Freedom to leave is a powerful force to keep governments from going too far out of control. North Korea is horrible to its people so it has to lock them in. You're effectively wanting the same thing but for everyone. America has important things to attract value producers so that they'll tolerate paying the tax because they're still better off than trying to earn money in some worse country despite lower taxes. It's up to the government to squeeze as much out of them as it can without losing them.
The language of 'poor people' and 'giving' is loaded with assumptions. For instance why is somebody poor and others not? Why do some get access to a stable wholesome upbringing while others have to struggle with access to basics?
We can't make claims of equality when things seem distinctly unfair for those born into poverty and the intense struggle and suffering they have to endure to survive for no fault of theirs.
Access to quality food, a stable environment, learning resources, good education in the early years are critical for future success. We know how important these things are for middle class and rich families when it comes to their kids and future outcomes. But how is someone born in poverty supposed to get this? And we aren't even talking about things like networks and connections.
For those lucky enough not to endure those conditions there is an unfortunate affinity among some to make glib comments about poor people, 'hard work' or social mobility that gloss over the advantages received and fail to comprehend how debilitating poverty is.
Poverty itself is hard work, access to basics are 10x harder. Social mobility and easier opportunities from the 1950 that could help build fairer societies are disappearing in the 80s.[1][2][3]
The whole point of society is to ensure all brains are properly utilized and people do not simply suffer due to an accident of birth. These are serious structural problems that need serious solutions not talk of 'giving'.
The subtitle doesn't match the article's content at all! Bizarre.
The article compares two ways to give money directly to poor people: unconditionally, or with conditions such as their children must attend school regularly. It gives some arguments that the conditional approach is preferable because it addresses "deeper" or generational causes of poverty.
There is no proven link that education helps people to get out of poverty. 60 years ago in many African countries the average education was higher than, say, in South Korea. Yet it did not help with economic growth at all. What it seems certain is that the level of education is a consequence of country wealth, not a cause of it. I.e a richer country can afford for kinds to stay in education longer.
The book "The Tyranny of Experts" by William Easterly shows rather convincingly that it is luck of fairness or even basic respect that makes population poor, not the amount of money or education.
Seems daft, It's already illegal not to send your kids to school. The problem with conditions is it seems to turn
into some kind of punishment and usually doesn't account for nuance.
The article is not about the government micro-managing people's finances.
And giving away money with some strings attached is perfectly compatible with being pro free market if those strings help create the human capital and other capital out of which thriving free markets grow.
In addition to many valid comments here, i have to add that these things will work only as long as they are applied to a tiny minority of population.
In essence, there won't be so many ways to invest the $500 to make $90 a month, as mentioned in the article. When a tiny fraction of people get that money, they benefit. When everyone will, there won't be much to invest it into - just to spend, and poor will remain poor, because being poor is a matter of class, not money (something which is a no-brainer for Brits to understand, for example). It's not about what you do or even what you have, but of who you are. Sadly, there is almost no way to change it with $1000, or even $100,000.
[+] [-] DoreenMichele|8 years ago|reply
In the US, there is plenty of capital and infrastructure. Nonetheless, there are systemic problems that make poverty excessively hard to escape.
One of those is the general dearth of affordable housing* in the country. This is worse in some places than others, but it is a problem everywhere.
A second issue is that jobs are moving to big cities. More affordable small towns are being gutted. This means people can go where the jobs are and face a high cost of living, or go where things are cheap, yet still be unable to earn enough due to lack of earning opportunities.
I think we have a potential solution available: Remote work and online earning opportunities.
But one problem I see is that people in big cities are more likely to be clued in about such. Small towns and rural areas seem to be into Facebook and not terribly internet savvy.
I think if we can make a concerted effort to increase the supply of affordable housing and also work on finding ways to help Americans outside of big cities to get more savvy about using the internet to improve their bottom line, we don't need to continue to live in fear of some dystopian future where robots have all our jobs and UBI seems like our only hope.
* https://www.geekwire.com/2018/every-100-families-living-pove...
[+] [-] LMYahooTFY|8 years ago|reply
There are very obvious depravations suffered by impoverished people and those things all have literal price tags. This requires zero critical thought by anyone on HN.
What conditional and unconditional handouts demonstrate is the in the same vein as other social problems we face: Do we offer people the freedom to choose a path and possibly take a bad one? Or do we block all paths but the one we're pretty sure is 'the correct one'?
[+] [-] RobinL|8 years ago|reply
I'm a trustee of the UK partner organisation. One of the reasons I was attracted to GiveDirectly in the first place was their commitment to robust evaluation and transparency.
This is a good introduction: https://www.ted.com/talks/joy_sun_should_you_donate_differen...
[+] [-] erpellan|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] johnchristopher|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nimish|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] koboll|8 years ago|reply
It's a smokescreen for returning big donors' investment in political campaigns, and for the belief that corporate profits inflate the economy.
[+] [-] ghostcluster|8 years ago|reply
simply handing out money might have broader negative unforseen consequences with regard to incentives (witness the prescription oxycontin and heroin epidemic in the rust belt), but of course, doing nothing might be worse.
[+] [-] DanielBMarkham|8 years ago|reply
For all intents and purposes, we're already here. Farmers are only about 1% of the population, yet they feed us all. Add in house construction and clothing, and there's a very small number of people that provide the rest of us with food, shelter, and housing. That's all we need.
The average westerner has thousands of times more resources than required to exist.
So this scary future where robots rule the Earth and people don't have to work for basic needs? We're living it.
We just found other stuff we like. Stuff like iPods, notebook computers, vacations, stamp collections. Then we make money and trade it around for that stuff.
We'll keep automating, fewer and fewer people will be required to provide for our basic needs, and we'll keep coming up with new stuff we like. I don't see any reason that this pattern is going to change.
[+] [-] int0x80|8 years ago|reply
In other words, people will need to adapt. The ones who take the risk to jump onboard before the ruling is (100%) a reality will have an advantage/lead.
There are low skilled technological jobs for the ones that can't study etc.
The world moves this way. If you don't adapt you're out.
[+] [-] oxide|8 years ago|reply
Undertreatment of pain is now even worse thanks to prohibition tactics.
There is no perfect lock, nor is there a drug with abuse potential unabused by someone, be they rich and famous (Rush Limbaugh really struggled in that Rust belt mansion while his maid was treated like his personal drug mule) or dirt poor living on 400 bucks a month.
Some people are functioning addicts.
Probably people you interact with and trust.
Not every poor person is going to use a hundred dollars on drugs the minute they have it.
If you want poor people off drugs, decriminalization and the death of the War on Drugs comes first.
Unless you like seeing innoncent folks drop like fucking flies everytime some genius cuts their heroin with fentanyl instead of something inert.
[+] [-] quickthrower2|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zeth___|8 years ago|reply
The same thing that happened the last time machines replaced most of the labor.
Billions will live in misery and want, a few will become so obscenely wealthy they rival most governments, a world war happens when the contradictions between the old powers and new powers can no longer be managed, revolutions happen just about everywhere when the people have nothing left to lose and the rich are hung from the lamp posts. Give it between 10 to 100 years.
This isn't a new problem that has a technological solution. It is a sociological problem where the people with the power to solve it are the ones who benefit most from the problem not being solved.
[+] [-] ralphc|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stale2002|8 years ago|reply
This is not a new "problem". Work has been automated away for a very long time, and what happens is that someone people lose their job and move in to a DIFFERENT job, but society is massively better off.
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] stephengillie|8 years ago|reply
This adds to the value they receive back from society for improving themselves and their situation. It's reminiscent of EIC in the USA. This may be the best distribution method for this sort of funding.
Now the only question is the same as UBI - who funds it? Why is this tested in Kenya instead of Detroit or Wyoming? Is it because the daily income of a Kenyan is a rounding-error to an American? That won't scale.
[+] [-] mcny|8 years ago|reply
So a question like do we spend on a local transit subway system are difficult because there is so much politics. Even trying to get the F train go express in Brooklyn had so much opposition.
When I read the article headline I thought of course cash does not solve everything. We still need roads and bridges and fiber optic cables. However, if the period have the cash maybe they can decide for themselves what they want to prioritize.
Too bad we can't have a single tax system around the world so we could hand the same tax brackets around the world. That would make it so much easier to raise taxes on the top bracket without worrying about money fleeing the jurisdiction and we'd be able to fund things like a basic income.
[+] [-] nhaehnle|8 years ago|reply
I think it's very important for us to be aware that while this is true for private individuals, companies, and local governments, it is totally false for monetarily sovereign governments like the US federal government.
There is no limit to how much money it can spend. Any discussion of budgets at that level in terms of deficits etc. is completely flawed, and not just because a lot of politicians are extremely hypocritical about it, but because it just makes no sense in terms of economics and finance.
When thinking about the spending and taxation of a monetarily sovereign governments, the only real constraint is inflation. This is because the only real constraint is the amount of real resources that are available.
For what it's worth, this approach is part of what's called "functional finance".
[+] [-] lopmotr|8 years ago|reply
That's a terrible idea. Freedom to leave is a powerful force to keep governments from going too far out of control. North Korea is horrible to its people so it has to lock them in. You're effectively wanting the same thing but for everyone. America has important things to attract value producers so that they'll tolerate paying the tax because they're still better off than trying to earn money in some worse country despite lower taxes. It's up to the government to squeeze as much out of them as it can without losing them.
[+] [-] pw|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throw2016|8 years ago|reply
We can't make claims of equality when things seem distinctly unfair for those born into poverty and the intense struggle and suffering they have to endure to survive for no fault of theirs.
Access to quality food, a stable environment, learning resources, good education in the early years are critical for future success. We know how important these things are for middle class and rich families when it comes to their kids and future outcomes. But how is someone born in poverty supposed to get this? And we aren't even talking about things like networks and connections.
For those lucky enough not to endure those conditions there is an unfortunate affinity among some to make glib comments about poor people, 'hard work' or social mobility that gloss over the advantages received and fail to comprehend how debilitating poverty is.
Poverty itself is hard work, access to basics are 10x harder. Social mobility and easier opportunities from the 1950 that could help build fairer societies are disappearing in the 80s.[1][2][3]
The whole point of society is to ensure all brains are properly utilized and people do not simply suffer due to an accident of birth. These are serious structural problems that need serious solutions not talk of 'giving'.
[1] http://www.sgi-network.org/docs/studies/SGI11_Social_Justice...
[2] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/07/social-...
[3] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/10/us-social-mobility-mi...
[+] [-] suff|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eutectic|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] bo1024|8 years ago|reply
The article compares two ways to give money directly to poor people: unconditionally, or with conditions such as their children must attend school regularly. It gives some arguments that the conditional approach is preferable because it addresses "deeper" or generational causes of poverty.
[+] [-] _0w8t|8 years ago|reply
The book "The Tyranny of Experts" by William Easterly shows rather convincingly that it is luck of fairness or even basic respect that makes population poor, not the amount of money or education.
[+] [-] Already__Taken|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aaron695|8 years ago|reply
The data surely must be better by now.
[+] [-] akvadrako|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DoreenMichele|8 years ago|reply
And giving away money with some strings attached is perfectly compatible with being pro free market if those strings help create the human capital and other capital out of which thriving free markets grow.
[+] [-] anovikov|8 years ago|reply
In essence, there won't be so many ways to invest the $500 to make $90 a month, as mentioned in the article. When a tiny fraction of people get that money, they benefit. When everyone will, there won't be much to invest it into - just to spend, and poor will remain poor, because being poor is a matter of class, not money (something which is a no-brainer for Brits to understand, for example). It's not about what you do or even what you have, but of who you are. Sadly, there is almost no way to change it with $1000, or even $100,000.