- A guaranteed-basic-income program in Austin gave people $1,000 a month for a year.
- Most of the participants spent the no-strings-attached cash on housing, a study found.
- Participants who said they could afford a balanced meal also increased by 17%.
A guaranteed-basic-income plan in one of Texas’ largest cities reduced rates of housing insecurity. But some Texas lawmakers are not happy.
Austin was the first city in Texas to launch a tax-payer-funded guaranteed-income program when the Austin Guaranteed Income Pilot kicked off in May 2022. The program served 135 low-income families, each receiving $1,000 monthly. Funding for 85 families came from the City of Austin, while philanthropic donations funded the other 50.
The program was billed as a means to boost people out of poverty and help them afford housing. “We know that if we trust people to make the right decisions for themselves and their families, it leads to better outcomes,” the city says on its website. “It leads to better jobs, increased savings, food security, housing security.”
While the program ended in August 2023, a new study from the Urban Institute, a Washington, DC, think tank, found that the city’s program did, in fact, help its participants pay for housing and food. On average, program participants reported spending more than half of the cash they received on housing, the report said.
Wouldn’t this lead you to postulate that the housing crisis in America is real and out of control when the money you give them goes right into housing?
Is this how they intend to fleece America? Give people a guaranteed income paid for by their tax dollars, so it can go right into government subsidized housing, owned and run by a shadow company that the politicians and their buddies just happen to be on the board of?
Honestly if it means guaranteed housing(which it doesn’t) then I’d be down with that. It’s better than getting fleeced with no house.
Who’s tax dollars, it has to be a wealth transfer or the scheme won’t work.
Texas doesn’t have an income tax but it has incredibly high property taxes. In a very real way, this program is literally funded by taxing the super wealthy, including foreign investors. If you are a foreign national that owns a condo in one of the downtown highrises, you still pay property taxes.
Source: Former Austinite.
I had no idea there were so many people who were against a UBI on Lemmy. I’m honestly surprised.
There’s a lot of effort to deny any previous UBI experiment as having even been done. Heck the top reply to your comment here denies this is even a UBI experiment. The line is usually the only way to do the experiment is to do it and that’s the Socialisms so we can’t ever know, sorry poors.
Well, since the “U” in UBI stands for “universal”, and since the group of people who received this money were selected because they were very poor, then this is not a UBI experiment. This is just a welfare program.
I’ve been surprised and super disappointed by a lot of the views I’ve been seeing in Lemmy comments lately. Anti homeless, judging addiction, fairly socially conservative, buying into the whole retail theft narrative, and the worst has been the misogyny framed as “realism” or some shit.
I don’t know, it’s not for me.
I’ve always found people have the most shit opinions if it’s a post popular on Lemmy.world
I’m new to lemmy overall are there some places with better political discourse on here?
Just pay attention to the instances the comments come from. This account is federated with .world and I am always seeing the most awful takes on here and it seems like most of the time it comes from users there.
I have another account not federated with .world, but it is with pretty much everything else. There’s fewer comments (rarely over 100) but it’s usually actual discussion and not revolving around anti-humanitarian practices.
It’s not a guarantee, but it seems very very high.
It makes sense…I think the FOSS/anti-big tech world brings together a weird mix of far-left socialists and also libertarian types (hence the anti UBI sentiment)
IDK, I’m a leftist, and am skeptical about UBI because it’s more of a free-market approach to solving a problems, rather than just directly solving problems. I.e. the government could just build more and better homeless housing, and expand section 8 to cover more of the cost and more people. I’m a bit afraid UBI would be used as an excuse to cut social programs, in a similar way that school vouchers are used to cut spending on education and leave families paying for what the vouchers don’t cover.
Bingo. A UBI is attractive because the people that keep the economy rolling are nearly completely unable to access what the economy produces. Why are we trying to keep this broken mess limping along with a UBI? The economy is designed to produce poverty and a UBI will do very little to change that fact.
This isn’t UBI though. It’s welfare. It just proves that people will use welfare support responsibly. A real test of UBI would be to give everyone in a community, not just a small pool of low income families the same amount (among other things). That ain’t going to happen.
Fine, then people here are anti-welfare. Either way, it’s a surprisingly conservative attitude.
I agree but some of the arguments here have a hint of truth in them such as the whole landlord thing. I think a lot of folk are wary of anything that sounds UBI related because it boils everything down to ‘one simple fix’. Programs like this work, but they’re only one piece in the puzzle such as taking housing off the market, higher taxes on the wealthy etc. I know you know this stuff. The UBI crowd takes theses studies and uses them to say ‘UBI works’ or ‘UBI can work’ even though it’s not UBI.
It’s been done at a town level before, with the same results
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2020/2/19/21112570/universal-basic-income-ubi-map
It not that people are against everyone having the basics, it is that it mathematically makes no sense. As soon as you give everyone this money, not just a small trial you’ll see that it is immediately eaten in inflation, rent etc.
Much better is to make the first $1000 dollars not necessary. Free staple foods, free healthcare, free low tier usage on utilities, free local public transport.
Giving people $1000 means they can spend it specifically on the things they need. They might need to pay off a healthcare debt with that $1000 far more than they need low tier usage on their utilities.
I think a better idea that universal basic income is universal basic services. Give everyone equal access to healthcare, food, housing, etc. Not jobs, though. Giving everyone a job leads to creating jobs that don’t need to exist just to make sure everyone has work. The USSR had guaranteed employment and that got to where you’d have to go through three different clerks at the supermarket to buy a pound of meat. Also, the State decided what was and wasn’t “work”. Oh, you’re a painter? You think the State will pay you to paint? That’s nice. Pick up that shovel and paint a ditch in the dirt. Oh, you are poet? I have a poem for you, comrade!
Roses are red, violets are blue, load those crates into that truck, or it’s the gulag for you!
But there’s no difference between giving someone $1000 for food and providing that food for free.
Either way the food is paid for by someone, whether the government hands over the check and then passes out the food, adding a layer of inefficiency, or the government hands out the check and the people buy the food, offering freedom of choice.
I feel somewhat against it simply because I don’t think it’s necessary once you make a certain point of money. Do people making six figures really need an extra 10% or less on top of that?
Means testing has been shown to cost significantly more. That’s why I’m a fan of universal programs and not welfare programs (like the one in this study).
I would argue someone making six figures getting 10% more will have a big impact still. Give everyone the benefit, even billionaires. Using your argument, the billionaire won’t care about getting an extra $1,000 - that’s nothing to them. But no one feels “cheated” because you arbitrarily put the limit, and you know no one else is cheating the system because there is no system to cheat!
Paying for universal programs would require changing our tax structure, which I’m also supportive of.
That’s a good point. I hadn’t considered about testing costs and people feeling cheated and people actually cheating.
I didn’t feel strongly against it and I’m willing to change my mind, and you brought up some good points.
It does sound like a good idea tbh.
And if everyone got this, rents would mysteriously increase by $1000 …
Fuck these landlords.
Rents are being driven up by illegal collaboration anyways. This just like the inflation argument against minimum wage increases. Prices going up is not an argument against giving people more money. Prices will go up anyways.
Or you could just have prices not go up, and also give people value through strong nationalized programs i.e. public healthcare, public transport, nationalized housing…
Price controls have uhh not gone well historically. Usually they lead to an explosion in the black market and a supply shortage in the normal market. Things stop falling off of trucks because the entire truck is gone. So until we figure out a better way of transferring goods, we’re stuck with money and prices that can be manipulated.
But I agree with the rest of that. Strong government social supports are a great way to rein in the private markets. Having trouble with housing availability? What if Housing and Urban Development (HUD) buys land, builds something, and rents the units at cost? Why is that not an option? Why isn’t there an Online USA University run by Department of Education? Is an opt in government health plan really that scary?
Can we not have one nice thing?
This trope is dumb and you should feel bad for repeating it. It shows a truly shocking lack of insight into even the most basic middle-school-level economic principles.
In germany we had a 10k€ bonus for all buyers of an electric car. After the bonus ended, all the cars suddenly cost 7k-10k less in about 2 months.
We all know that if this was a permanent part of the program, every revolving bill (mortgage, utilties, etc.) would all of a sudden rise to get a piece of that extra income. But because this was a temporary program, it probably only increased by the normal rate. So people mostly got a chance to use it without businesses getting greedier.
To all the people saying “hur dur it’s just giving money to landlords”:
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No it’s not. People who would not have had housing were able to have it. If you think that’s a bad thing because some landlords got paid in the process, you seriously need to have your moral compass checked.
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To those explicitly linking this to the idea (which is often cited but never backed up with evidence) that landlords (and mysteriously no other segment of the economy) will medically capture 110% of the value of any possible UBI program: This is not the evidence you’ve been lacking. The money wasn’t given to everyone as it would be in a universal basic income program. It was given to people who were struggling. Of fucking course people who were homeless or near homeless spent the money on rent. The fact that people who become able to afford housing mostly choose to spend their money on housing just tells you how much people value having a place to live. It says nothing about how money would flow in a full scale system.
Has your rent gone up, ever? Thats what’s gonna happen with a UBI. Your landleech thinks you can pay more, so he can charge more.
Meanwhile government (nationalized) housing programs actually work and are cost efficient.
Rent went up 7 percent this year across my state, and it’s already out of control to the point people are paying 4500 a month for a tiny one bedroom in the main city.
Don’t think everyone getting a thousand extra bucks is going to change that drastically. And anyway, if landlords do do that, put in a rent cap in addition.
Then your bills will rise instead. Whoever can cash in - will do so. It is extremely naive to think it won’t become a wealth transfer from the state (taxpayers) to the rich and corpos, like corporate welfare.
Rent price caps are something, but stopgaps aren’t what we should aim for.
You seem to willingly not wrap your head around the fact I’m not berating UBI because I prioritize the economy over the people like a conservative, fearmongering about inflation etc., but because UBI is prioritizing the economy over the people itself by rejecting the far more effective solution of nationalizing necessities (e.g. housing, utilities) and cutting out the profiteering middle men entirely instead of paying them on the grounds that it’s scary socialism.
Market solutions don’t work on problems that are inherent to capitalism. I wish you could see that.
Has your rent gone up, ever? Thats what’s gonna happen with a UBI.
You haven’t said anything to establish a connection between your question and your statement. You’re using the structure of a rational argument but your only evidence is “trust me bro”. Fuck that and fuck you for trying to use sophistry.
The sad thing is that high cost of housing is entirely unnecessary exploitation anyway. Just pass a law that transfers all house and land ownership into collective hands and erases all dept based on houses. I bet the vast majority of people would vote for it lol.
I Holland we have woning bouw organisaties That are BY law obliged to offer services and structured management, checked by impartial state department and who can be relieved of function (transfering the properties to another organization or splitting them up etcetera). Yes, needs to be overview, laws and such. Maybe even subsidies for new buildings.
But NO PROFIT ANYWHERE.
Not for public basic housing. Come on, do we really wanna admit RUZZIA and CHINA beat us on this?
Yeah, but there’s a difference between a local housing authority, and what that guy is suggesting, which appears to be “the state now owns all property, including stuff I’ve already paid for”.
The only people that would vote for that are people that don’t vote.
I’m all for the government taking the role of building new houses everywhere, in vast numbers in order to stabilise and eventually reduce prices. We used to have this in the UK, they were called council houses and the local government rented them out at reasonable prices. Then Maggie Thatcher Milk Snatcher got in power and sold them all off, under the guise of letting people buy the property they were renting. This isn’t a bad idea in itself, but there was another edge to that sword. No more properties would be allowed to be build with the proceeds. In effect it became a state sell-off. It’s been fucked ever since.
Yeah, surely nothing could go wrong with that plan.
Ever been to public housing? There’s a reason it’s usually shitty, and that’s because the people who live there don’t own it, so they have no reason to care for it because they could be moved somewhere else at any time.
The same is true of a lot of average apartment buildings, especially college housing, but they are rigourously maintained by staff.
Public housing in the US is rarely funded enough or maintained properly. It’s almost a cliche in the US, municipalities purposely underfund public programs so they fail, to encourage privatization.
This might sound surprising, but that’s because people are paying for it, and there are consequences for trashing the place (forfeiting deposit etc.)
I’m talking about state owned public housing, which is almost always a catastrophe. And that’s not just because of lack of funding, but because the people who live there have no sense of ownership, and suffer little to no consequences if they don’t keep it in shape.
Like others said, specific examples of failures are “anecdotal” and you’d need to look at this scientifically and account for variables. Propaganda and neoliberal ideology makes this very difficult for the US.
Well, in that case, assuming that collectivizing housing will solve the issue is just as erroneous as assuming it won’t, isn’t it.
