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What if they sell their government-provided rations for crack and liquor and then starve, eh? What then? What if the only government-provided apartment available is located a long distance away from their job, or their child's school or what-have-you? If you have so many loans and stuff that you can't afford the necessities of life, that's what declaring bankruptcy is for -- with a basic income, you would then have enough to still pay for food and housing. And yes, of course I think healthcare (mental and otherwise) should be free. That's a gently caress sight more important than a basic income, frankly.
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# ? Aug 18, 2016 21:59 |
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# ? Jun 3, 2024 23:02 |
How can you assume a world with a GMI but not workers comp or UHC? All your situations are the worst of thought experiments. What's more likely to happen is your feed lots and other policies to keep people alive at all costs will result in currently disadvantaged people being exploited at the feeding lots as under the table "free" labor with the allure of that luxury you are certain nobody actually needs or deserved if they don't bootstrap themselves enough.
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# ? Aug 18, 2016 22:00 |
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Lord_Pigeonbane posted:I feel like it's closer to HALF COMMUNISM The problem I have is that participating in modern society requires spending money. There's no way around that. You can provide people with basic shelter, food, healthcare, etc., but all you're doing is creating a lot of people who are alive, but effectively unable to participate in society in any meaningful way. That's a class of people that's going to be desperate to take any work, which is the exact opposite of the kind of positive effect that a GMI can have on the labor market. It's even worse if it's means tested, because then you risk creating a situation where people give up a stable situation for poverty-level wages just so they can have some control over their lives again. Paradoxish fucked around with this message at 22:05 on Aug 18, 2016 |
# ? Aug 18, 2016 22:02 |
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Lord_Pigeonbane posted:Hypothetical situation: I don't understand this example at all. Bankruptcy already exists. The guy files for Chapter 7, lets the bank repossess the stuff he can no longer afford, and struggles on as best he can with a lifetime guaranteed minimum income to provide him with some security. Under your proposed system, he still has to give up the house and the car due to lack of income, but he gets free food and public housing. Both end results are similar, except that your preferred method is more top-down, centralized, and inflexible. Incidentally, did you ever get free lunches in your elementary school cafeteria? I did, and I'm pretty damned skeptical of letting a bureaucracy decide which foodstuffs are to be guaranteed to the poor.
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# ? Aug 18, 2016 22:14 |
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Lord_Pigeonbane posted:I never said that I thought that the plan that I described was going to happen. Honestly, I doubt that it'll ever happen in any society with a population bigger than a few hundred. Your solution doesn't actually lead to fewer people going hungry than just plain minimum income, and it requires a whole bunch of extra costs for little purpose. The same sort of person you're thinking of who consistently blows all their money on gold plated top hats instead of food every month or week or whatever the administrative period is? They're going to trade delivered food for gold plated top hats, or have some weird reason to reject it. So those, frankly crazy people, are going to go hungry anyway and are best served by being under some sort of guardianship because they can't live independently. Most people who might initially blow all their money from the payment the first time it happens are going to learn quickly that they need to buy food next time, and set aside money for that. PT6A posted:
The thing is government provided apartments make way more sense. They can be directly planned for with the public transit system, and they'd be unlikely to be too concentrated in any one space. And the only reason getting to their kid's school would be a problem is if the kid's in a private school, and surely someone with the money to pay for that wouldn't need a government apartment in the first place. Replace that with the government buying up vacant homes in outlying areas or building new ones, in circumstances where there just isn't enough people for apartments to make sense or whatever. Most big cities have housing shortages right now and require new build anyway.
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# ? Aug 18, 2016 22:58 |
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fishmech posted:The thing is government provided apartments make way more sense. They can be directly planned for with the public transit system, and they'd be unlikely to be too concentrated in any one space. And the only reason getting to their kid's school would be a problem is if the kid's in a private school, and surely someone with the money to pay for that wouldn't need a government apartment in the first place. I don't have a problem with the government building or owning housing and leasing at a subsidized rate, but again it should be a thing that people have a choice to pay for out of their basic income or what-have-you, instead of being allocated a specific dwelling by act of government as is done in Cuba, for example.
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# ? Aug 18, 2016 23:03 |
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PT6A posted:I don't have a problem with the government building or owning housing and leasing at a subsidized rate, but again it should be a thing that people have a choice to pay for out of their basic income or what-have-you, instead of being allocated a specific dwelling by act of government as is done in Cuba, for example.
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# ? Aug 19, 2016 00:36 |
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Every two weeks my job gives me a piece of paper with my name and some numbers printed on it instead of the food or housing that I need. What am I supposed to do with that??? I'm so hungry and I can't eat this paper. It doesn't even do a good job keeping the rain off my head. So hungry.
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# ? Aug 19, 2016 01:49 |
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There's a Slate article on the value of simply giving people money with no strings attached. I want to say that I've seen other, subsequent, studies that also show that simply giving people money is far more efficient and effective than all the bureaucracy and constrained funding that we usually use. Wanting to limit GMI payments seems like the same kind of thing as when people complain about people on food stamps eating lobster or other non-poo poo foods. You're applying preconceived prejudices to a situation and extrapolating out to an outlandish degree. Some people are definitely going to go out and blow their money like chumps. However the vast majority of people will use the money to improve their lives in ways you could never structure. Maybe I don't need as much money for food as my neighbor, but I need more money for shelter costs, and our other neighbor could use the steady income to buy a car so they can get a job. In aggregate people will find the best way to use the money to help themselves instead of jumping through various different hoops to get money earmarked for this or that. Even if they do just blow the money on hookers and blow, those hookers and dealers are then going to go around and spend their extra income on goods and services. Food stamps is one of the most economically stimulative forms of government handout, and a GMI essentially takes the already relatively lax restrictions and opens the flood gates. Even if people do nothing but pay off their debt with their GMI checks, that then frees up enormous quantities of their regular income to go out and poor into the economy.
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# ? Aug 19, 2016 01:51 |
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Lord_Pigeonbane posted:Your description of a person wasting money on gold-plated hats makes me think that a basic income would lead to a new version of the mythical welfare queen: people wasting every BI check, while subsisting on government cheese. the welfare queen aint a myth, she was a vicious conniving murderous white con woman byob historian fucked around with this message at 02:21 on Aug 19, 2016 |
# ? Aug 19, 2016 02:18 |
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It's also important to note that actual welfare fraud costs the nation so little money you can really just ignore it. If memory serves it's less than 1% of all the money spent on welfare, which is itself already a small chunk of the overall budget.
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# ? Aug 19, 2016 02:31 |
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Money should be reserved for the wealthy who have proven they know how to manage it. Anyone who needs to sell their labor for a living should be housed by their firm and paid in necessities and goods from the company store for their own well-being, lest they fritter away cash on speakeasies, gambling, burlesque, and jazz records, or are bamboozled by swindlers, or simply misplace it through carelessness and mental dullness.
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# ? Aug 19, 2016 02:45 |
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gmi, creches, and community kitchens, yall
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# ? Aug 19, 2016 02:47 |
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Lord_Pigeonbane posted:Hypothetical situation: I don't know if I want to touch the poop on this one, but the bolded can never be allowed to happen. You simply cannot let corporate America monetize GMI. Once you eliminate that part of your hypothetical, the need for soup kitchens disappears and the simplest option is GMI. Edit: As to why it can't be allowed to happen. The whole point of GMI is to allow the people receiving it to live at a minimum standard. Allowing anyone, for any reason, to redirect that cash is defeating the purpose of GMI. MickeyFinn fucked around with this message at 02:55 on Aug 19, 2016 |
# ? Aug 19, 2016 02:51 |
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Social Security can't be garnished by the courts and creditors can't take liens against future payments. Why the gently caress would we allow that for GMI, that sounds like a stupid proposal. E: You can even deposit 2 months worth of federal benefits in a bank account and private creditors can't touch that amount. VitalSigns fucked around with this message at 03:03 on Aug 19, 2016 |
# ? Aug 19, 2016 03:00 |
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VitalSigns posted:Social Security can't be garnished by the courts and creditors can't take liens against future payments. ss can be garnished by the irs though it seems
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# ? Aug 19, 2016 03:02 |
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Yea the federal government can do it (this is bad and should be ended) but the objection was private creditors would steal GMI this way. We already protect federal benefits from private creditors, the solution exists so this is just an argument against a strawman GMI. Obviously if we implement GMI in a dumb way it will have bad results, but that's not an argument against GMI because there are existing ways to handle federal benefits that aren't dumb.
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# ? Aug 19, 2016 03:06 |
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Lord_Pigeonbane posted:I don't think that a basic income is the ideal solution. If you give money to people that need it, the money can then be claimed by debt collectors, stolen by criminals, or squandered on poor decisions (drugs, gambling, beanie babies, whatever). This leaves people without the necessities that the money was intended for. The UK ran a pilot program a few years ago where they just cut homeless people a check - I think it might have been drug addicts exclusively - and then observed the results. Guess what? They did far better than the folks who were dependent on the sort of centrally-managed bureaucratic hellscape you're thinking of.
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# ? Aug 19, 2016 03:40 |
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Similar things have been done with apartments in some places, actually; programs rounded up some homeless/nearly homeless people and just gave them free apartments. The only real stipulation was that if they got jobs they had to pay 1/3 of their income or the rent, whichever was less. Mysteriously most of them managed to get jobs not long after that.
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# ? Aug 19, 2016 03:50 |
PT6A posted:I don't have a problem with the government building or owning housing and leasing at a subsidized rate, but again it should be a thing that people have a choice to pay for out of their basic income or what-have-you, instead of being allocated a specific dwelling by act of government as is done in Cuba, for example. The current section eight voucher program works pretty much ideally *when it is funded appropriately*. The problem is Republicans always make drastic cuts to it so there get to be huge waiting lists. Same thing for food stamps; it's a good program that works well when appropriate ly funded and there is no reason to reinvent the wheel. I support a mincome but only on top of existing programs (and medicare/Medicaid for all) as an additional benefit. We need that much additional social welfare spending anyway.
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# ? Aug 19, 2016 05:05 |
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VitalSigns posted:Money should be reserved for the wealthy who have proven they know how to manage it. Conservative relatives have said this very thing to me before.
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# ? Aug 19, 2016 09:28 |
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:The current section eight voucher program works pretty much ideally *when it is funded appropriately*. The problem is Republicans always make drastic cuts to it so there get to be huge waiting lists.
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# ? Aug 19, 2016 09:34 |
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:The current section eight voucher program works pretty much ideally *when it is funded appropriately*. The problem is Republicans always make drastic cuts to it so there get to be huge waiting lists. No, food stamps are a terrible program. The various exclusions on foods are utterly unnecessary and needlessly punitive to recipients. They only exist because removing them would get conservatives to go after the program faster. Things like the restrictions on "hot food" in most jurisdictions are very much just spite, especially against people who don't have full kitchens at home, or sometimes any kitchen at all in particularly bad housing situations. It should absolutely be switched to all-cash of at least the same amount of money as soon as possible. That's how food assistance programs get administered in most other countries, and it just works better. Canadians do it that way, for instance.
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# ? Aug 19, 2016 15:55 |
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but then they can eat lobster
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# ? Aug 19, 2016 16:30 |
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How dare you suggest that legislating the morality of others in the most incosequential scenarios imaginable is a waste of time. You monster.
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# ? Aug 19, 2016 16:34 |
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Tiler Kiwi posted:but then they can eat lobster It's expensive, it must be good! Go eat a goddamn Tomahawk Steak if you want expensive gimmick food.
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# ? Aug 19, 2016 16:41 |
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Yeah, GMI is great, but is any part of the Kansas tire fire smouldering today?
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# ? Aug 19, 2016 16:42 |
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FilthyImp posted:I will never understand the compulsion to treat eating a giant sea roach and treat it like an ungodly delicacy. That's part of the joke. During the 19th century, lobster was considered prison food because, well, sea roach.
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# ? Aug 19, 2016 16:54 |
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Cythereal posted:That's part of the joke. During the 19th century, lobster was considered prison food because, well, sea roach. Only in places where it's cheap, which is mostly like Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts (and to a lesser extent down the rest of the east coast to like Virginia). At the same time that lobster was given to prisoners by the ton because it was so cheap in Maine, lobster was an expensive delicacy out in like Chicago or Denver. And that was all down to the fact that it was a real pain to transport lobsters and lobstermeat without it going bad. Even today, lobster is still a ton cheaper around here than in the landlocked states.
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# ? Aug 19, 2016 17:15 |
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Tiler Kiwi posted:but then they can eat lobster the funny thing is, the conservatives I work with complain about seeing "people on food stamps" buying chips and steaks. It's blatant stdh.txt, and part of the gently caress you got mine attitude that conservatives use to justify why they don't like black people. When I lived in Kansas, I knew and worked with several people who were on SNAP, and having seen the cards up close, you'd literally have to know what one looks like, and be spending your time staring at them paying, instead of, you know unloading your own drat shopping cart.
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# ? Aug 19, 2016 17:38 |
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fishmech posted:Only in places where it's cheap, which is mostly like Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts (and to a lesser extent down the rest of the east coast to like Virginia). At the same time that lobster was given to prisoners by the ton because it was so cheap in Maine, lobster was an expensive delicacy out in like Chicago or Denver. And that was all down to the fact that it was a real pain to transport lobsters and lobstermeat without it going bad. One thing I miss out living in Québec is the incredibly cheap and amazing sea food that I hardly get anymore. I used to eat so much lobster, scallops and swordfish, my personal favourite. Now, no restaurants serve it and hardly anyone even carries it for home prep.
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# ? Aug 19, 2016 18:38 |
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IIRC from a previous poster some time ago, the lobster thing was honest-to-god terrible. This wasn't some nice prime stuff fresh from the sea, but rather crushed up shell bits that had been at room temperature for a week.
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# ? Aug 19, 2016 19:24 |
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Lobsters were incredibly abundant along the east coast a few hundred years ago. Like, so abundant they were just harvested off of shorelines and used as fertilizer and bait. The idea that they were fed to prisoners doesn't seem all that ridiculous given how common they were.
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# ? Aug 19, 2016 19:34 |
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Rocko Bonaparte posted:IIRC from a previous poster some time ago, the lobster thing was honest-to-god terrible. This wasn't some nice prime stuff fresh from the sea, but rather crushed up shell bits that had been at room temperature for a week. They would do that from time to time, but most of the time it would be as good lobster as any other lobster is when you don't cook it up real nice. And served sometimes for multiple meals of the day every day of the week. Even if you really like lobster it gets to be a bit much when you're eating it that often.
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# ? Aug 19, 2016 19:34 |
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Oh hey Kansas politics thread, anyone in mission/Roland park area want to laugh about the "totally not a Walmart" but still a Walmart project at missionn gateway getting booted again?
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# ? Aug 20, 2016 01:33 |
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ErIog posted:Conservative relatives have said this very thing to me before.
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# ? Aug 20, 2016 13:21 |
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Just in case you think places like Lawrence are actually sane, the entire-square-block-luxury-apt project to which the city gave 85% tax break was not finished in time for people to move in and has been a gigantic clusterfuck all around. Their automatic parking system did not end up implemented because the company doing it went bankrupt and now there are going to be a poo poo ton of people hogging street parking in the surrounding neighborhood. One of the proposed solutions is to bulldoze a couple houses to build a parking garage near it. Glad I'm out of here in May.
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# ? Aug 20, 2016 21:16 |
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Am I too late to make fun of how they pronounce Versailles, MO?
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# ? Aug 20, 2016 22:50 |
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kiimo posted:Am I too late to make fun of how they pronounce Versailles, MO? In fact, I'd say native English speakers are by far the most deferential in terms of making attempts at preserving the original language's pronunciation when adopting or borrowing words. But sometimes they choose not to, and they call their city Vurr-sails because pretending they're French in the middle of Missouri is even more ridiculous than pronouncing a word the way it should be pronounced for the given spelling in their native language.
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# ? Aug 20, 2016 23:24 |
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# ? Jun 3, 2024 23:02 |
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Is there a list for who is up for election statewide and their stances on things? I'd like to go in armed with some knowledge when I vote this year. If it matters, I live in Shawnee in JoCo.
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# ? Aug 21, 2016 04:48 |