So because somebody has a lot, you have nothing? Because somebody has a house worth 5M and don't have a house, means you have no dwelling? Because somebody earns 10x what you have, you have no income?
"They have more capital than I do, therefore I have none".
"A person with more capital than I chose to vote and lobby, that means my vote is null and void and so are my efforts".
"There's no point in doing anything ever if somebody else is better at it".
First recorded in 1175–1225; Middle English; (adjective) from Anglo-French or directly from Latin capitālis “of the head” (capit-, stem of caput “head” + -ālis adjective suffix; see -al1); (noun) from Medieval Latin capitāle “wealth,” noun use of neuter of the adjective capitālis
You can argue that national poverty lines are made to be kept under a certain percentage, sure, then we can ignore that. Globally, yes, the majority doesn't have capital (as in financial capital), but per country, there are stark differences. More things to consider
Especially GNI PPP: if you live in Europe, North America, Australia, China, Japan, and a few other countries, there's a good chance you belong to the global 20% of high income earners. The minimum wage in your country will probably be higher than what a low income family earns in a year
For the current 2024 fiscal year, low-income economies are defined as those with a GNI per capita, calculated using the World Bank Atlas method, of $1,135 or less in 2022; lower middle-income economies are those with a GNI per capita between $1,136 and $4,465; upper middle-income economies are those with a GNI per capita between $4,466 and $13,845; high-income economies are those with a GNI per capita of $13,846 or more.
We are talking about people who have the capital in society to make actual systemic changes to society. Such as restructuring our economy to value lives, wellbeing, and sustainability over profit.
Quite obviously 80% of people do not have that capital.
You are cherrypicking statistics, seemingly to deliberately miss the point.
Global comparisons of income mean exactly nothing to the quality of life of people living within their country.
Even people deemed in that global top 20% are living paycheck-to-paycheck, and are unable to leverage that to make changes.
At the beginning of the Industrial Revolution there were an estimated 200 million people and virtually 100% poverty.
Now there are over 8.5 billion people and yet we've managed to reduce both poverty and hunger to the lowest levels in history. Along with the lowest rates of people dying due to war.
So in your fantasy world we would be at 8.5 billion people along with low poverty, hunger, and deaths from war... but replacing capitalism with socialism.
Likely you fantasize no income and instead it would be the whole "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" thing, right?
Unfortunately for your fantasy... the result of socialism has always been the deaths of millions of people through starvation and murder (followed by collapse and/or acceptance of capitalism)
What I wrote is completely germane, you just can't admit it or argue against what I'm saying because then it would be harder for you to gaslight people into voting for socialism.
I'm not ranting about anything, I'm just responding to your posts. It's not my fault you choose to speak in euphemisms rather than directly say what you mean.
Anyway, this is not about me. So unless you want to try and defend your indefensible positions... have a nice day.
'm not ranting about anything, I'm just responding to your posts. It's not my fault you choose to speak in euphemisms rather than directly say what you mean.
So you have imagined my entire worldview and all the positions you are arguing against.
No, dickhead. When I argue for socialism, I actually argue for socialism with my full chest, not with euphemisms.
Anyway, this is not about me. So unless you want to try and defend your indefensible positions... have a nice day.
So you slither into my mentions, hallucinate things I didn't say, and expect me to "defend" arguments that only exist in your head. Sod all the way off.
Dropping the biggest turd of an argument and expecting me to pick it up. Pick it up yourself, and eat it.
And there it is, the extremist trademark. Attack and demonize anyone not in your "tribe". They're just an "other" right?
I haven't demonised you. I called you a dickhead. And I called you a dickhead because of your actions, not your beliefs.
Thanks for confirming everything I thought about you.
Think whatever you want about me. It was clear from your first message that you were going to do that anyway, considering you imagined my entire worldview.
No, that’s a complete lie. It has never resulted in the death of anyone, but rather has saved millions of lives and improved their - and our - standards of living.
But then, you don’t actually know what socialism is, so you just make up lies for the evil boogyman hiding in your closet.
Now imagine if you lived in a society where someone gave a shit about your problems. And maybe they even have the skills and resources to fix them more efficiently than you would. Or not, does it matter, theyre willing to help.
It actually is. We all have problems. Humanity formed society to solve problems. Society has been hijacked (for a loooong time in many different ways) to extract value from others. Some people want to combat that.
Who is "us"? Unless you're politically well connected or have nine figures in the bank, you aren't wielding significant power to make systemic changes.
You know that UBI is cheaper than policing the problems that runaway wealth disparity causes, right? UBI also means that employers cannot easily exploit workers with the threat of destitution, meaning that wages, including yours, go up. It also makes society more pleasant as people with prospects turn to drugs or crime less frequently.
The only people UBI doesn't benefit, is the absurdly wealthy. Your myopic worldview has you voting against your own interests.
Maybe you’d like to explain who and why people would choose to work when they entirely don’t have to?
Two reasons:
UBI provides a baseline level of income to keep people out of poverty. But people tend to want more than just the basics, and deciding to work provides additional income for luxuries.
People, in general, are inherently motivated to create, and will do so without the threat of death on the streets. Meaning people will still voluntarily work, only they will do so on their terms.
But also, with the increasing levels of automation possible, human labour is needed less and less to fulfil our needs. We need to decouple being able to live from employment. Because the path we are currently on involves artificially increasing consumption and creating meaningless jobs to justify paying people enough money to live.
What do you mean doubt? That people often choose to work more to afford more stuff is utterly uncontroversial. That's how the capitalist system is argued in favour of today.
On the other hand if you are admitting that capitalism forces people to labour under the threat of death, then it is an evil system, and morally must be eradicated.
Well it’s a nice utopian thought but not realistic.
Because of troglodytes like yourself. Here I thought you were asking in good faith. Serves me right.
No. It isn’t. Some people? Sure. Many people already live off of welfare and already choose not to work.
Yes. It is utterly uncontroversial. Most people aspire to have some luxuries in their life. And people go the extra mile to afford them. The fact that some people are on welfare, which often effectively prohibits even small amounts of work those people might otherwise want to do, doesn't change that.
And who cares if some small proportion of people just want the basics and aren't willing to work more? Do you literally want to force them with death to make them work? Why? They don't want to be there, they're unhappy to be there, they aren't motivated, they aren't productive. And I don't blame them!
And now you think I’m not? Why? Because I didn’t roll over and agree with everything you said?
Because you responded to something easily observable with the brainless "doubt".
You are either trolling or just remarkably stupid. I was giving you the benefit of the doubt.
And who cares if some small proportion of people just want the basics and aren’t willing to work more?
Not “work more”. Work at all. Because society needs people to work to function. Money doesn’t grow on trees, it represents other people’s time. If there’s no time, there’s no money. Money just becomes completely without value .
Do you literally want to force them with death to make them work?
What even the fuck are you talking about?
Because you responded to something easily observable with the brainless “doubt”.
Buddy your position is the only thing here that’s brainless.
You are either trolling or just remarkably stupid. I was giving you the benefit of the doubt.
I see we’re persisting with the personal insults. I think it’s pretty clear you have no interest in an honest and productive discussion and simply desire to lambast those who disagree with you. I have no interest in such a discussion, so you can be gone, thanks.
Lots of people pick up garbage “for fun”. Where “for fun” means “because they care and it’s the right thing to do”. And by lots, I mean it’s such a common thing there are thousands of organisations around the world who do it. There are multiple national days in many, many countries based around picking up garbage. I myself have organised several beach clean-ups for a local group as part of a larger nation-wide beach clean up day.
Look up the organisation “Trash Hero” for another example.
Then there’s the engineers who work on ways to clean up the Pacific Garbage Patch.
There’s people who clean up slobs’ tables in fast food places because it doesn’t take any extra time to help out when you were going to do it anyway.
The point is: who picks up garbage for fun? Everyone else but you.
As for nurses… there are huge international volunteer organisations based around doctors and nurses volunteering their time. How have you never heard of any of this before?
If someone has “more” then yes of course someone needs to have “less”, merely by definition.
The question is really whether those with less are living below the poverty line or living comfortably. I guess it’s a question of semantics whether “capitalism” requires people to be living below the poverty line but I don’t think it does. It’s just shitty regulations which allow wealth to become as concentrated as it has.
Socialism in principle sounds great, but most times it’s been implemented it’s suffered from the same problem as capitalism - the people with power are greedy and use their power to manipulate and oppress the populace.
German politics and energy consumption aside, I think they have the best base of knowledge for what your proposed economic model has in store for them and their allies. They had that model forced upon them, and fought for change and economic freedom. There was a freaking wall dividing their country over that.
Are we just going to ignore the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, wherein Stalin let Hitler invade Poland as long as he got half of Poland, Lithuania, and Estonia?
You know what the US never did? Call Hilter and agree to a joint imperialist effort in carving up sovereign nations.
Edit:
“there is one common element in the ideology of Germany, Italy, and the Soviet Union: opposition to the capitalist democracies” or that “it seems to us rather unnatural that a socialist state would stand on the side of the western democracies”.
No he’s a historian, all of their videos are extremely well researched and he’s gone on record to clarify multiple times that he is not a socialist. There was even a video where they complained that their work could only get reach if they framed it as entertainment, making it very clear the only reason he does these videos is because they get a lot of reach and make him a lot of money.
You just don’t want to watch the video because it showcases how fundamentally evil your underlying views are and you’re not ready to accept that maybe you’re a lot more pro-nazi than the western media and education has programmed you into thinking.
You think I give a fuck? Liberals will always just dismiss anything with “source??” if they disagree with it, but accept nazi lies wholesale.
For example whenever Ukraine, Russia, China, or North Korea come up, people just believe everything they hear unquestioningly even when they’re saying shit like “NK believes that unicorns are real”
I just think it would be funny if you talked all this talk about being antifascist and yet haven’t ever put your money where your mouth is.
Like are you genuinely antifascist, or are you just a racist liberal who hasn’t come to grips with the fact that they’re not the good guy, because I’ve dealt with a lot of guilty white people caked up on cognitive dissonance who will go around projecting accusations but the instant it’s time to show up for real action, they’re nowhere to be found. You don’t have to answer because normal people don’t get this invested on picking a side when both sides are overwhelmingly evil.
50 bucks. Food not bombs. Prove me wrong. Don’t do it for me, do it for your community.
You can address the fascist roots of Nazi Germany originating from America while also recognizing the fascist roots of modern day Russia originating from the USSR. This is the problem with building your world view around “which side” you’re on, it makes you completely blind to the underlying evil from your faction. Like bless their hearts because they’re absolutely in the right place but I cringe every time a communist feels they need to side with something everyone can agree was bad because it was their side doing it, just like I cringe every time a liberal opens their mouth because they can’t go three sentences without supporting some fascist regime.
You’re the one supporting a fascist regime, this entire discussion started because you claimed that being anti USSR is someone being pro Nazi.
The USSR was demonstrably more friendly to Hitler than the US, because it was fascist, ruled by a dictator, and had imperialist dreams of cutting up Europe with Hitler.
The US sure is imperialist and fascist and bad, the USSR was the imperialist and fascist parts of the US, dialed up to 12.
I cringe every time a tankie opens their mouth because every sentence is a nostalgia-fetishizing ultra-nationalism for Soviet fascist dictatorship.
I give up. You refuse to do even the bare minimum to address the fascism that you carry. You’re a fraud who deep down believes in the nazis and likes what they did. You’re just waiting for an opportunity to betray the left, mark my words it’s only a matter of time before it happens and when it does, remember that I told you so and that there won’t be any going back when people see you for who you are.
No man, it’s really easy to denounce fascism. Fuck fascism in Nazu Germany, in the United States, in Russia, and in the USSR.
You’re the only one who feels the need to defend a fascist institution. Ironic to talk about addressing “that fascism that you carry” when you have that going on my dude.
Socialism in principle sounds great, but most times it’s been implemented it’s suffered from the same problem as capitalism - the people with power are greedy and use their power to manipulate and oppress the populace.
This is true, the “dictatorship of the proletariat” is self-contradictory and impossible IMHO. Because as soon as a member of the proletariat is a dictator, they are now no longer a member of the proletariat.
Now you don’t need a dictator, you can enact socialist policies democratically. This is very slow and kind of difficult, because the capitalists will lobby and fight so hard against it, and you need to maintain public support.
That isnt what dictatorship of the proletariat means. It means that the former bourgeoisie are temporarily politically disenfranchised from proletarian democracy
But if we raised the bottom up enough, it wouldn’t really matter if they were on the bottom. Many people would be happy if they had a stable place to live, food, healthcare, and freedom, and many don’t really need or even want “more” all the time. The problem is the vast differences in wealth and ownership.
Conservatism is built on hierarchy. Capitalism just says markets work and investment is gambling. You can do that and still keep everyone fed / clothed / sheltered, specifically because markets work, and can make food / clothes / shelter more plentiful. Some people having more doesn’t require private space station versus duplex cardboard box.
Conservatives only say market failure demands misery and successful gambling means unchecked power because that’s what they always say. That’s their only conclusion, applied to literally everything. That’s how conservatives think things work. The entire tribal worldview boils down to “well somebody’s gotta be king.” Just a fractal pyramid of militaries over empire, rulers over courts, owners over workers, and patriarchs over families. If you’re at the bottom you’re lucky to be alive, and how dare you question your betters.
The unspoken assumption is that change is impossible. This is genuinely how they think everything works. Like the universe itself dictates a steep gradient, and the only way things could be different is by shuffling around who goes where. So if someone is suffering, they must have fucked up to deserve it, and if you want to help them, you’re putting someone else in their place.
Like the one recent CEO saying the quiet part aloud by saying government should promote higher unemployment, since in the high employment environment employees aren’t desperate and have more demands costing him money. That employees arent feeling enough pain and despair in economy.
To be fair, this isn’t that far away from the economic theory underlying using interest rates to manage inflation - it’s just phrased in a different way.
That’s the problem with fractional reserve banking it’s making up money for those who lend theirs. It’s about extracting value from those who work for those who accumulate. It’s not a tbf, it’s a this is also an issue in every area of our society.
In most cases, yes; but in this case in particular, with UBI increasing the buying power of the poor, those with capital would actually profit off of implementing such a service. No, this one boils down to good old fashioned classism.
Remember that politics can be changed with votes. Tax them to finance change.
I agree the wealthy need to pay a lot more in tax than they currently do.
They also have disproportionate control over the electoral process in many countries, and most political parties are not even considering taxing them to the extent that they need to be taxed. Nor are most political parties challenging our capitalist society in any significant sense.
Voting is important, but don't expect voting alone to solve our problems.
It’s difficult, but blaming billionaires takes away our agency.
No it does not. Sod off with that. Correctly identifying a major contributor to an issue does not take away agency.
People have tried to fly for centuries. The nonexistance proofs nothing. It just indicates that it is not easy.
Voting doesn’t work because voters are like internet users, they are a given. Citizens have to offer their votes like lobbyists offer money to have an influence.
Voting alone also doesn't work because the options provided and the specifics of the voting system are decided by people who have an incentive to rig them in their favour. You cannot vote for options that are not allowed.
Hence needing to vote, and do more outside of voting, rather than sheepishly just doing the same thing for decades while it fails over and over again.
I would like to believe in your approach but I don’t believe in protests. That’s transferring union tactics from companies to the state. It’s valid in a monarchy but in a democracy, you can talk to other voters and have them support your cause. The citizens are the state.
Votes drive change. Believing in other means distracts from the real origin of power.
But votes have to be negotiated. Blindly voting for one’s own team turns citizens into a product.
There are other origins of power but votes are special because they control the law.
No votes do not control the law. They elect the government, who controls the law,
The government can be influenced by various means. Voting is but one of them.
Nobody cares if you do not like other methods, such as strikes and protests, they are still effective. And the owning class already uses other methods, such as lobbying and outright bribery, so to constrain oneself to methods that don't work is voluntary surrender.
Which protests are not ignored?
Pretty much every civil rights and liberation movement around the world has been accomplished through a diversity of strategies, which almost always include protest.
If citizens debate before the election about what they want and coordinate their votes, then the state represents their will.
If we could change politics by voting, we wouldn’t be allowed to vote.
We’re not stretched thin to finance these changes. Taxes aren’t holding us back. This is what those with true power in society and their cronies say to not do anything. This is the whole point.
No one is only blaming “billionaires.” This is you patronizing them, portraying yourself as a genius and the person you’re responding to as too naive and stupid to understand how life really works.
And no, we don’t have agency. We have a deluded sense of agency where we think we can vote and change the system from within.
There are levels. Voters don’t have agency. But if voters would coordinate they would have agency.
The difference is believing in agency.
I am aware how stupid I sound. But how else can I phrase it that there needs to be a believe in change to create change? Right now I just hope that readers ignore the stupid part.
There hasn’t been internet for most of history, nor global warming, nor automation.
The joke is that people don’t want a fair revolution because the situation will be worse at first if resources are shared globally. People don’t want agency because they would be responsible for all problems.
Thank you. Judging by the downvotes and objections, people deeply don’t believe it. I had expected some technical issues that prevent UBI but reading those replies makes me sad.
This is Lemmy. People on Reddit will feel even more disenfranchised. But it could be the other way round because Marxism states that capitalist democracy doesn’t work and that a revolution is needed.
I don’t like this logic because it’s predicated on an nondescript “they” with unlimited shadowy power. It leads to unhelpful conspiratorial thinking bordering on the magical. It obfuscates the real problems we face, and if we don’t understand them, even a violent revolution to defeat it would eventually replicate the system we destroyed because we didn’t understand how it came to be in the first place.
The reason it’s hard to change the system is because the system is self-reinforcing through individuals acting in their own immediate best interests and not acting as a class, not because “they wouldn’t let you change it, they’d just [rig the elections/not let you vote/kill you with a space laser]”. But that’s a complex answer, and it’s much easier to believe in the latter and call it a day.
Holy shit, what an anti-Semitic piece of shit you are. Absolutely classless.
It doesn’t matter that you think this sort of “logic” leads to conspiratorial thinking. There is a “they” and it’s the ruling class. The ruling class, and its defenders, is made up of a lot of people and institutions who create, dictate, and govern the systems that keep them and their power firmly in place. Sorry that society is a bit more complicated than you want it to be. Reality is a hard pill to bite sometimes for you racists.
And if you knew anything about anything, you’d know that democratically elected leaders are toppled by their ruling classes and/or outside forces (i.e. US) when something doesn’t go in the interest of the ruling class. To think somehow the US is immune from this is absolutely delusional thinking. Not surprising you’re into Western exceptionalism with your views on race.
And again, I just want to reiterate how much of a bottom barrel racist scum you are.
It makes perfect sense. What are you confused about? Are you going to try to “it’s just an OK hand symbol” your way out of this? What else would “space lasers” mean in the way you meant it?
My entire post was warning against gesturing towards a vague power controlling everything because it leads to conspiracism. One major example of that conspiracism is antisemitism. I have literally no idea how you can read my comment and come back thinking I’m arguing in favor of antisemitism. Yes, the space laser thing was a jab at the infamous “Jewish space laser” conspiracy, and I was explicitly saying avoid that kind of thinking.
The problem with our society isn’t that there’s a nonspecific ruling class directly dictating everything. There doesn’t need to be. We proletariat as a class are fractured instead of united. There’s no need to rig elections or prevent us from voting because we don’t act as a threat against power in the first place. The system amorally chugs along unimpeded as we go about our individual lives instead of acting together. Our daily compliance is what sustains it, and the system is designed to punish noncompliance automatically.
The scary truth isn’t that there’s a puppetmaster pulling our strings, it’s that there’s nobody at the wheel at all.
1K a month is pretty trivial compared to the cost of all the public money used to punish them (e.g cops). Even if you don’t care about the humanity aspect at all UBI makes sense just from a pure numbers perspective.
I know it’s a popular sentiment, because private prisons are so in-your-face evil, but they’re not as ubiquitous as the population seems to believe.
Twenty-seven states and the federal government incarcerated 96,370 people in private prisons in 2021, representing 8% of the total state and federal prison population.
Yes, that’s too many. Yes, we need to ban these things at the federal level. But let’s not forget the grift from state and local prisons, in many cases worse because they can’t be as readily audited.
$1,000/mo. is not UBI, not like it’s usually discussed. I’d go for widening this program, let’s keep the experiment rolling until it pans out or collapses.
Socialism, in an extreme simplification, is a mode of political and economic organisation in which the workers own the means of production, and receive the full value of their labour. While social welfare programs are often attached to that, they are not socialism in and of themselves, nor are they a prerequisite to socialism (but it is nice to have).
Inherently, the funding of social programs must be derived by taking value away from capital and redistributing it to the public. In general, social programs might not be socialist, but in the particular case of UBI it’s literally a direct redistribution of (some) surplus value from capital accumulators to society. Just like how the term “capitalism” today doesn’t describe a perfectly capitalist economy, the term “socialism” has been co-opted to refer more to progress towards socialism… In that regard, I think UBI programs are distinct from typical social programs (i.e. expanding universal healthcare further does not make a society socialist, nor does improving support for homelessness) in that they are direct progress towards socialism (i.e. expanding UBI further literally redistributes value entirely from capital to society and basically achieves the goals of social ownership).
My understanding has been that the entire point of a progressive tax system is to sap money from the wealthy and redistribute it towards the public good. Whether that system works is debatable, sure.
Point being, actual UBI would require significant tax hikes and closing of tax loopholes which predominantly target the wealthy. While that may lead to capital flight, it’s not a bad thing. As a whole, UBI wouldn’t be a small step but a massive stride towards achieving socialism.
I’m totally in favor of UBI it just needs to come with rent control, food price controls, healthcare, etc. And it needs to not be paid for by taxing the working class
UBIs can be a good part of socialism, but not necessarily an essentialist value of it, though it’s not as well-utilized under capitalism…
If Feudalism means the rule of Feudal lords, by ownership of the land and thus crop rents, and capitalism means the rule of capitalists, by ownership of capital and thus profit
Then with socialism, it’s the rule of society, by communal ownership (state or not) of our industry towards societal goods, such as food, shelter, etc. and avoid the crises that come with it
If you reform the system without changing its system, it will rhyme up its mistakes all over again (do the same action but with worse effect to society)
Btw though: don’t most of the ideal Socdem countries, whom you call socialist, in the West rely on exploitative unequal “exchange” , and the Socdem countries of the Global South are slandered and sanctioned, the most extreme example being Venezuela?
That’s a fair point, but I’d like to clarify that I’m not calling socdem countries socialist. I think there’s a difference between socdem policy and UBI in terms of their impacts on the economy, on the social contract, and on politics.
Oh ok… I think the main pt is that UBI and Socdem policies are similar in that, while not inherent in Socialism, they would be better executed under it, as a policy…
It's basically... what happens if you give money to people who are only homeless because they don't have money.
They exclude from these studies anyone with problems like mental health or substance abuse issues that can't be addressed with just giving someone money.
No single golden bullet? You wouldn't know that from the coverage of these bunk studies.
Heck, the original article doesn't even reference the study they're talking about. I had to search for it and hunt through multiple sites/pages to find it.
They gave the money to people living on friends couches. That is not exactly homeless but was considered a roommate at one time. Ubi is universal. It is in the name. Give it to every person regardless of status and see how effective it is compared to the money spent. I bet it is a poor return.
Pretty much they're giving money to people who are most likely to be transitionally homeless and then claiming success even though most if not all of the participants wouldn't be homeless after a year anyway.
That is pretty much bullshit. From a brother in law that died of substance abuse and another I house for same reason, nearly every homeless person I have met has had some type of substance abuse. Being you are making that claim, do you have a source to back it up?
Addiction Disorders: The relationship between addiction and homelessness is complex and controversial. While rates of alcohol and drug abuse are disproportionately high among the homeless population, the increase in homelessness over the past two decades cannot be explained by addiction alone. Many people who are addicted to alcohol and drugs never become homeless, but people who are poor and addicted are clearly at increased risk of homelessness. Addiction does increase the risk of displacement for the precariously housed; in the absence of appropriate treatment, it may doom one’s chances of getting housing once on the streets. Homeless people often face insurmountable barriers to obtaining health care, including addictive disorder treatment services and recovery supports. Source
The prevalence of mental illness and substance use among those experiencing homelessness is clear, but Kushel cautions that the vast majority of mental illness among the study participants is anxiety and depression. It’s likely the lack of resources exacerbates those conditions, rather than the illness causing the homelessness, she says.
“I think that the driving issue is clearly the deep poverty, that the median [monthly] household income for everyone in the household in the six months before homelessness was $960, in a state with the highest housing costs in the country,” she says. Other studies have noted that the end of pandemic stimulus payments and rising inflation has led to rents outpacing wages. The study notes that in 2023, California had only 24 units of affordable housing available for every 100 extremely low-income households.Source
Just because you know one or two people that were homeless and also had problems with addiction, doesn’t mean the addiction caused their homelessness.
Figure 17 Primary Reasons for Leaving Last Housing, All Participants
Lost or reduced income: 12%
Conflict among residents: 9%
Didn’t want to impose/wanted own space: 7%
Conflict with property owner: 7%
Someone else became sick, disabled, or died: 6%
Building was sold or foreclosed: 6%
Violence or abuse in the household: 5%
Breakup between residents: 4%
Participant’s substance use: 4%
Other needed more space: 4%
and also:
To understand what participants believed may have prevented their homelessness, we asked them to engage in a thought experiment about the likelihood that their homelessness could have been prevented had they received financial intervention. We provided all participants with three different scenarios and asked them whether each intervention would have prevented their becoming homeless for at least two years.29 The interventions were: (1) a monthly rental subsidy worth $300-$500; (2) a one-time payment of $5,000 to $10,000; or, (3) a voucher that limits rent contribution to 30% of their income (such as a Housing Choice Voucher).
FIGURE 21 Participant Report of Effect of Hypothetical Homelessness Prevention Interventions by Family Structure
All
$300-$500/month shallow subsidy: 70%
$5,000-$10,000 one-time payment: 82%
Housing voucher: 90%
So while “not enough money” might not have been the most common cause for people being homeless, the vast majority of people think having more money or cheaper housing would have prevented them from becoming homeless.
You read the first study? The money was not given to those that has substance abuse, mental health symptoms or alcohol abuse because they felt they represented a small portion of the homeless. Was given to people that were sleeping in friends house and some in cars and didn’t abuse alcohol or drugs. That is a joke of an experiment and in no ready ubi. Not does it indicate on any meaningful way how it is paid for as it doesn’t include everyone.
The second study found only 3/4 of the people continued to work and ultimately the 150 million dollar program was cancelled because it did not appear to increase contribution to society in any economic way.
the Pew Charitable Trust wrote in a recent analysis that research had “consistently found that homelessness in an area is driven by housing costs.”
Well, yeah, and we can thank investors, landlords and capital funds for that. Housing in Denver is ridiculously expensive currently… and it was bad but not to this extent a few years ago. A house next door to me that was $250k and $1000 a month a few years ago is now $450 and $2100 a month.
Houses in the Netherlands have increased on average like 33% since 2018. Not made up numbers. They’ve gotta go down this is so unaffordable for starters.
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