<story><title>Want to help the poor and transform your economy? Give people cash.</title><url>http://chrisblattman.com/2013/05/23/dear-governments-want-to-help-the-poor-and-transform-your-economy-give-people-cash/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Cushman</author><text>I&apos;m very predisposed to believe this. In fact, I&apos;ll go further and say I&apos;m not sure I can think of a friend of mine who wouldn&apos;t do something really cool if you gave them a year&apos;s income in cash.&lt;p&gt;My friends, generally speaking, spent a lot of money on a very good education that&apos;s not valued by the labor market. To put that another way: My friends are wildly overqualified for what they do, and many of them are poorer than broke.&lt;p&gt;Those without a lot of ambition are pretty much the millenial layabouts you imagine. They&apos;re working median-wage retail jobs to pay the rent, smoking a lot of weed, and just generally hanging out. They don&apos;t want to work more, and they couldn&apos;t really work any less, but they seem pretty happy.&lt;p&gt;Those &lt;i&gt;with&lt;/i&gt; ambition aren&apos;t living much different. They&apos;re working median-wage retail jobs to pay the rent, working second jobs to try to pay down their debt faster, smoking a lot less weed, and using the rest of their time trying hard to find a job in their field of expertise that wouldn&apos;t pay much more even if it did exist. These people could &lt;i&gt;easily&lt;/i&gt; work a lot less if they wanted to, but they don&apos;t. They want to work more, and work harder, but they cannot find work to do. They seem like they&apos;re struggling.&lt;p&gt;So say we gave them all an unconditional grant which erases their debt and provides some capital. (A year&apos;s income wouldn&apos;t do this for most, but set that aside.) Most of the first group, maybe it wouldn&apos;t affect that much. They might quit their jobs or cut down on hours, but actually they don&apos;t mind their jobs that much. They might smoke more weed, but that&apos;s probably not possible. More likely they&apos;ll spring for a car or a house or a home theater and just keep on keepin&apos; on.&lt;p&gt;For those in the second group, though, this changes everything. They&apos;ve instantly jumped a decade into their own future. They&apos;ll quit their jobs the same day, immediately start planning a move to where they &lt;i&gt;really&lt;/i&gt; want to live. They&apos;ll immediately open small businesses. They&apos;ll collaborate on epic works of art. Some of them will buy boats; some of them will buy farms. They&apos;ll travel, volunteer, teach, research, write, direct, design, produce, and &lt;i&gt;make&lt;/i&gt; things. And you know what? They&apos;ll probably smoke even &lt;i&gt;less&lt;/i&gt; weed.&lt;p&gt;It&apos;s just a wishful thought experiment, but it does seem plausible the overall economic effect would be &lt;i&gt;massively&lt;/i&gt; positive. The argument against basic income seems to be basically that it would move people from the second category into the first category. Maybe that&apos;s the case for people in general, I don&apos;t know, but for the poor young people &lt;i&gt;I&lt;/i&gt; know it seems far more likely to do the opposite.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>antoviaque</author><text>There is an ongoing petition to the European Union (&quot;Citizen initiative&quot;) for basic income: &lt;a href=&quot;https://ec.europa.eu/citizens-initiative/REQ-ECI-2012-000028/public/index.do&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https://ec.europa.eu/citizens-initiative/REQ-ECI-2012-000028...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&quot;On January 14th 2013, the European Commission accepted our European Citizens’ Initiative hence triggering a one-year campaign involving all countries in the European Union.&quot;&lt;p&gt;&quot;If we collect one million statements of support for Basic Income from the 500 million inhabitants of the European Union, the European Commission will have to examine our initiative carefully and arrange for a public hearing in the European Parliament.&quot;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://basicincome2013.eu/ubi/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://basicincome2013.eu/ubi/&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Want to help the poor and transform your economy? Give people cash.</title><url>http://chrisblattman.com/2013/05/23/dear-governments-want-to-help-the-poor-and-transform-your-economy-give-people-cash/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Cushman</author><text>I&apos;m very predisposed to believe this. In fact, I&apos;ll go further and say I&apos;m not sure I can think of a friend of mine who wouldn&apos;t do something really cool if you gave them a year&apos;s income in cash.&lt;p&gt;My friends, generally speaking, spent a lot of money on a very good education that&apos;s not valued by the labor market. To put that another way: My friends are wildly overqualified for what they do, and many of them are poorer than broke.&lt;p&gt;Those without a lot of ambition are pretty much the millenial layabouts you imagine. They&apos;re working median-wage retail jobs to pay the rent, smoking a lot of weed, and just generally hanging out. They don&apos;t want to work more, and they couldn&apos;t really work any less, but they seem pretty happy.&lt;p&gt;Those &lt;i&gt;with&lt;/i&gt; ambition aren&apos;t living much different. They&apos;re working median-wage retail jobs to pay the rent, working second jobs to try to pay down their debt faster, smoking a lot less weed, and using the rest of their time trying hard to find a job in their field of expertise that wouldn&apos;t pay much more even if it did exist. These people could &lt;i&gt;easily&lt;/i&gt; work a lot less if they wanted to, but they don&apos;t. They want to work more, and work harder, but they cannot find work to do. They seem like they&apos;re struggling.&lt;p&gt;So say we gave them all an unconditional grant which erases their debt and provides some capital. (A year&apos;s income wouldn&apos;t do this for most, but set that aside.) Most of the first group, maybe it wouldn&apos;t affect that much. They might quit their jobs or cut down on hours, but actually they don&apos;t mind their jobs that much. They might smoke more weed, but that&apos;s probably not possible. More likely they&apos;ll spring for a car or a house or a home theater and just keep on keepin&apos; on.&lt;p&gt;For those in the second group, though, this changes everything. They&apos;ve instantly jumped a decade into their own future. They&apos;ll quit their jobs the same day, immediately start planning a move to where they &lt;i&gt;really&lt;/i&gt; want to live. They&apos;ll immediately open small businesses. They&apos;ll collaborate on epic works of art. Some of them will buy boats; some of them will buy farms. They&apos;ll travel, volunteer, teach, research, write, direct, design, produce, and &lt;i&gt;make&lt;/i&gt; things. And you know what? They&apos;ll probably smoke even &lt;i&gt;less&lt;/i&gt; weed.&lt;p&gt;It&apos;s just a wishful thought experiment, but it does seem plausible the overall economic effect would be &lt;i&gt;massively&lt;/i&gt; positive. The argument against basic income seems to be basically that it would move people from the second category into the first category. Maybe that&apos;s the case for people in general, I don&apos;t know, but for the poor young people &lt;i&gt;I&lt;/i&gt; know it seems far more likely to do the opposite.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jamesaguilar</author><text>I think this is extremely applicable in inefficient third world economies, but I can think of a few reasons it might not be as applicable in a first world country like the United States.&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;    - Most basic skilled services already have many providers.
    - The startup costs for these services are significantly higher in first world countries.
    - The expectations of consumers are also (probably) much higher.
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
So, I want to believe, but I&apos;d like to see some evidence of broader applicability before we leap to conclusions. That brings up another problem, though: this is so much harder to do in a developed country because it is prohibitively expensive.</text></comment>