Oh hey, also the same thing with environmental issues
Yup. Programmes that have experimented with giving homeless people hundreds in no-rules cash find that within a couple of months most of them have secured accommodation and reconnected with family and friends. After a while the majority are in paid employment.
Who would have guessed that the most of the problems of extreme poverty could be solved with money?!
Next you’re going to tell me you can solve homelessness by giving people housing
Yes. But in more controversial news, you can solve hunger with… money!
It’s like giving people money empowers them to choose to fix their problems, most important ones first.
The surprising bit is that drug use rates drop substantially if people can cope with everyday life.
Drug use rates also decrease with accessible medical and mental health care. It’s almost like treating the cause works better than punishing the symptoms…
Well then, seems to me like money itself is the issue
Who’d’ve thunk it?
Problem: poverty.
Solution: money.Problem: no money
Solution: you guessed it it’s money
Problem: money
Solution: get rid of money.
Obviously, we should stop people from sleeping outside by adding pikes everywhere. That’s how you solve the problem!
But I’m using these bootstraps, they can go find their own!
I almost thought this was going a different way. I’m happy to be wrong.
I imagine some capitalist, right-wing fucker is screaming at their screen going “nu-uhhh” and furiously typing that you’re wrong despite having done zero research.
I’m employed, and I live like I’m in poverty. As much as I want to lift up the homeless, I would also appreciate fair wages for the employed.
Since rent/housing has gone insane, I’m having a hard time making things work on the money I’m making. I’m well over the “poverty” line and I can’t afford to put fuel in my car and buy name brand products, even if I wanted to. Products like… Idk, Campbell’s.
I knew such a right wing fucker had to exist, so I found him for you: https://youtu.be/lNgqNE78N1g
Guy runs two channels, both animated right wing propaganda. That’s the more serious of the two, the other has shit like this: https://youtu.be/X6Xe3SGUH6A
Minimum wage desperately needs to rise. It’s not either or.
I agree.
Everything needs to rise IMO. Except for the highest levels of management.
My job in 2016 paid 90% of what I make now. Inflation in that time has been around 25%, and I’ve only increased around 10%…
Minimum wage is far worse, I know this, but just because minimum wage needs to increase doesn’t and shouldn’t imply other areas don’t also need to be increased.
I’m in a more senior position, and I’ve changed jobs at least three times to get where I am now. If minimum goes up, I won’t be angry about it, but I will be left wondering why I’m not also getting more.
Companies need workers and wages have been stagnant, and plenty of working people who used to be middle class, are now homeless, despite still being employed.
The whole situation is fucked and the only people profiting out of everything are the wage theives at the top and their shareholder friends.
But to take it a bit further, high capacity public infrastructure can go a long way towards improving the lives of low income working people.
Trains, buses, and subways can eliminate the need to own and maintain a car. Public housing can get people off the street, where they won’t be at risk of harm from interpersonal violence or exposure to severe weather. Public education and public health care have more benefits than I could list.
At an individual level, “Just give people money” is an immediate and useful generic panacea. But at a more macro level, geographic access to grocery stores and clinics and colleges and bus stops and permanent homes and factories matter just as much.
Clearly, the Venn of those who’re empowered to make those changes and those who’ve played at least a couple hours of SimCity is two estranged circles.
It needs to be quality of those things, as well. And they know this. It’s designed to keep us too tired, broken physically and mentally to get off the wheel, and not just under it, either. There’s enough for everyone, just some few want to hoard it like decades worth of paper, not because it may come in handy, just because bloodsport is still entertainment, no matter how well they dress it.
It needs to be quality of those things, as well.
Oh absolutely. I have a bus stop on my corner, but it only picks up every 2 hours and then doesn’t go to downtown.
There’s enough for everyone, just some few want to hoard it like decades worth of paper, not because it may come in handy, just because bloodsport is still entertainment, no matter how well they dress it.
Kropotkin was saying it over a century ago. Bread Book, baby.
People periodically ask how a country like Denmark or New Zealand or Japan can have such high standards of living relative to their individual incomes. Or why a country like the UK or Saudia Arabia can be so rich and yet appear so poor from a street level view.
So much boils down to who has access to quality infrastructure.
True enough. With apologies to mlk2, I may not get there with you, but I’ve seen it in my dreams. I hope we get there, with or without me. If you do, guard it vigilantly.
But to take it a bit further, high capacity public infrastructure can go a long way towards improving the lives of low income working people.
Trains, buses, and subways can eliminate the need to own and maintain a car.
The real problem is zoning. If the density is high enough (and mixed-use enough), people can just fucking walk places whether you’ve got public transit or not!
Even in areas where we have zoned for dense real estate, we’ve built these four lane boulevards with barely a crosswalk between them.
At some level, we could use a little zoning. Pedestrianization isn’t going to happen via the free market.
I Sweden a liberal lobby group suggested “build apartments without kitchens” for poor people. It is so fucking dystopian.
Removed by mod
You could build more affordable housing if you lowered building standards like demanding there must be a kitchen.
WTF, just build an apartment out of tiny houses and make sure there are common and private areas for people to relax in. Tack two together for family apartments. You can build a really small, cheap house without removing the kitchen.
Like, okay, if they were arguing for bachelor dorms, where each person has their own bedroom but they share a common area with showers, bathrooms and kitchens, then okay. But that’s not gonna work for couples, they’re gonna at least want their own bathroom; and families with children? Forget it. They’re gonna want their own kitchen and bathroom so they don’t have to wander out into a common area in the middle of the night in their underwear because their baby wants milk and won’t stop screaming if it doesn’t get warm milk.
I’d be okay with a tiny studio apartment with just a separate bathroom, even sans closet, as long as I have a functional kitchen with space for a full fridge (not those BS “bachelor” units with a barely functioning kitchenette).
The bachelor fridges are fine in communities not designed entirely for cars.
How do those things equate? I don’t get it.
Isn’t that just a hotel room?
Housing without kitchens has come up in modern history multiple times: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-frankfurt-kitchen/
their designs just had single family homes with kitchens. But Marie Howland convinced them to sketch in small groups of kitchen-free houses, each with access to a shared kitchen, where residents would take turns working.
Austin thought it could be a city of kitchen-less houses. And she thought that the food could to each house on a system of underground trains. She drew maps upon maps, and tons of floor plans. She published her ideas in a journal called ‘The Western Comrade’ and even applied to patent her underground food train idea.
But the kitchen-less house movement still didn’t die. In England, the urban planner Ebenezer Howard actually incorporated kitchen-less homes into some of his “garden city” communities. He called these homes “cooperative quadrangles.” They had a shared courtyard and shared kitchen, surrounded by smaller kitchen-less dwellings.
When I took out a loan from my bank I swear to God for the first 6 months they were absolutely terrified of my spending habits and I got emails daily about how to spend and and how my spending habits were reckless. I’ve made every payment I don’t understand what f****** high horse they were coming from.
And on the flip side, when you’re not spending much money, you’re being accused of ruining the economy. Especially if you like avocados.
So … People who have billions of dollars sitting around doing jack and shit, are ruining the economy?
That actually checks out.
I’m gonna be that guy, since there are a lot of comments saying that “research suggests”.
Source?
I do fully agree with it. The drug trade is impossible to stop, but decriminalisation and funding of healthcare will help many that are homeless. From tackling these aspects, helping those that want to free roam to do so safely, basically leaves you with those that just need some money to get back on their feet.
But, even if these things seem obvious, they need a source if you’re going to speak from a position of fact.
Assuming the link works, this is a great resource of research papers on the topic - https://www.givedirectly.org/cash-evidence-explorer/
Here’s one local to me. Slightly old but quite relevant.
There are a bunch of interacting factors, too. Something like 10% of the homeless are chronically homeless and don’t really have good prospects of being able to give themselves housing stability even if given money. This population in particular seems to be better served by the “Housing First” movement where they are given homes and supervised so that they can then get the treatment they need relating to substance abuse, mental health, etc., from a position of at least having a place to go home to. Here is a summary with citations to studies.
But for the housing insecure people who are at risk of becoming part of the 80% of the homeless experiencing transient homelessness, or the already homeless in that category, dropping money in their lap might be an effective way to improve their lives permanently, putting them on a better trajectory. From what I’ve seen of the reporting of very recent studies, many of which were complicated by the fact that a pandemic happened right in the middle of the experiments, there is some evidence that giving money directly is helpful. But there’s open questions about whether it should be a lump sum, whether big numbers ($500+/month) result in something different from small numbers ($25/month), etc.
So yeah, I think even if we start from the assumption that giving directly is more effective than in-kind support like free/subsidized food or healthcare or housing or childcare, or treatment for mental health or substance abuse, we have to figure out which populations are best served by which intervention, and whether temporary/time limited programs are as cost effective as long term commitments, etc.
There have been hundreds of UBI studies at this point. Most of them with headlines in major papers. They all say the same thing.
Source?
There are other comments on this chain hours older than mine with sources. But sure, I’ll take a jab at it just for you.
The pilot programs have created scores of stories like Everett’s about how a small amount of money led to massive change in a recipient’s life. And a growing body of research based on the experiments shows that guaranteed income works — that it pulls people out of poverty, improves health outcomes, and makes it easier for people to find jobs and take care of their children. If empirical evidence ruled the world, guaranteed income would be available to every poor person in America, and many of those people would no longer be poor.
We’ve known for years, decades really.
That’s true, but my original point is that we shouldn’t state facts without sources. Otherwise, it’s very easy to sneak falsehoods, or to twist that research to fit a narrative.
Except this really is well reported. It’s not obscure or contested in science. It’s not really what asking for sources is supposed to be for.
Ok but have we tried telling them about Jesus instead of giving them money? They’re poor because they’re bad. If you give them money then they’ll use it to be bad again, which will keep them poor. /s
no that would be socialism, silly
Fun story. My FIL couldn’t afford to travel to our wedding. I loaned him 3k for travel and a tux and hotel fare for his family. That Christmas we got one of those books from Ollies titled “500 ways to save money” from him. I lost the fight to send it back with torn out pages and a note that would say “1-500. Don’t lend money to family”.
Amazingly shitty.
Idk… Maybe he knew he sucks with money so couldn’t offer his own wisdom on the topic, but wanted to help his kid avoid his mistakes however he could
The wealthy’s deathgrip on their money is phenominally strong
Noo poor people will just use up the money if we give them some!!1!
Then we’ll have to give them more pie, and they’ll just eat the pie! Eventually they’ll eat all of the pie and the poor rich folks won’t have any pie :(
Yeah, I’m still salty about that vile skit.
Money is religion now. It’s scary to be rational about it. There’s a dogma and that’s that. Any other way and we freak out.
Ok reusing clothes is not a bad thing. Even in a perfect world with no poverty, it’s important to reuse.
Works the same with the climate crisis, amazing!
Edit 3: one last edit that I’m putting at the top because I’m not sure if people are only reading part of what I’ve written, jumping to conclusions and then putting words into my mouth; or if I’ve just been very bad at conveying what I’m trying to say.
Firstly: I’m arguing from an American perspective, something I failed to specify.
Secondly: money is great, however, many people need more than money. By all means, give them money, but make sure they have other resources in case they need it. If nothing else, there are a lot of people in homelessness or poverty with serious mental health needs. Money isn’t going to help if they can’t afford healthcare.
Thirdly: I also failed to give examples of what I meant by, do something else too. I meant, cap rent, build public housing, ensure that people have access to food even when CEOs are renting out pineapples, etc.
Finally: the US runs on greed. Prices in the US are outstripping wages dramatically because CEOs realized they could charge more. I think the reason why giving money works in studies is because CEOs don’t know who’s getting the handouts; if they did, they’d absolutely try to fleece them for the assistance money. That’s why doing it universally, so that CEOs know that a lot of people are getting additional money, without any other form of assistance, will just lead to people being priced out of life again.
Not sure how much I’ll contribute or respond after this. I’m feeling kinda discouraged due to how many people are putting words in my mouth (it may be a misunderstanding, but it’s still demoralizing).
Oh my god, I’m using fish as a metaphor for money, and teaching someone to fish as a metaphor for ensuring their ability to provide for themselves. That’s what the metaphor is about. Ensuring people’s ability to provide for themselves. Is that really what y’all are confused about? If you see me referring to “fish” then I’m talking about money, not food.
I’m not convinced that just cash will solve homelessness or poverty. It may help, but it seems like a “give a man a fish, he’ll eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he’ll eat for a lifetime” kinda situation. Give people the fish so they can eat, but if you want them to actually be independent, then you gotta make sure they have the tools they need to do so.
And you know what, maybe they just are that way, maybe they’re just cursed to always be a dependent on someone. However, if that’s the case then they’re going to need way more help than just fish. In the meantime though, maybe treat them like human beings that are down on their luck but otherwise capable of supporting themselves. Yeah, make sure they have food, a roof over their head, water, toilets and so on, but don’t stop there. That’s why I’m saying this, there may be people who see your post and think that just throwing money at the problem will make it go away. It’ll help, but it’s not gonna fix it 100%.
Edit: I’m not sure why it’s controversial to say that people need more help than just money. Personally? If I was homeless or in poverty, I’d want more than just money. Like, I’m not saying to not give people who are homeless or in poverty money, but what I’m trying to say is that you shouldn’t stop there.
Edit 2: I don’t understand why people are so confused here. I’m not saying it won’t work for some people, but there are people that it won’t work for. To repeat something I said further along, in my experience, there are people who take these things literally. In my experience, there are people who would look at this meme, say, “sounds good, let’s do that” and then get mad when it doesn’t work for everyone.
I’m not saying that money won’t help a lot of people; it would. It’s just that there are people who will take this literally and believe it’s the only thing you have to do.
Most people who are homeless were a paycheck or two away from homelessness.
It’s easier for the housed to become homeless, than for the homeless to become housed. It’s systemic, and a good chunk of it is employers mistreating employees.
Okay, and? Again, some people are gonna need more than just money. Furthermore, money doesn’t help the fact that they’re being overcharged for rent, food, healthcare, whatever. Give them money and the prices will just go up. You have to address the cause too.
The cause is doofuses saying crap like “don’t raise the minimum wage, it’s inflationary” so that the corporations get away with hunger wages. Countries with significantly higher minimum wages famously don’t have significantly more expensive burgers.
I can tell you for a fact I’m working for a burger place right now they haven’t raised the wages in 3 years but they’ve raised the prices three times since then. I’m about to not be working here anymore
Well done for going for something better.
The cause of most inflation is corporate greed, not excessive wealth amongst poor people!
That’s because they go the extra mile and do things like cap rent and shit. If you want to solve poverty, that’s the kind of thing you have to do. The US is run on greed, which is why prices are rising faster than inflation, but wages aren’t even keeping up with inflation.
So what on earth made you think that giving money to poor people would be the cause of inflation?! I’ll tell you what, it’s corporations spending a lot of money and time buying politicians who will parrot their line that raising the minimum wage will make inflation get out of control, whereas the main thing they’re worried about is not making quite such astronomical profits. MW has barely changed in the USA over decades but has risen much more elsewhere. If the theory were right, USA would have been largely free of inflation and the rest of western democracies would be far worse, but I’m fact inflation is bad everywhere. Why? Corporate greed. Poor regulation. International tax avoidance.
US dollars make up nearly 60% of the world’s reserve currency. I could be mistaken here, but my understanding is that means a significant chunk of the world is using the USD as a significant part of their currency standard (#2 is the euro with just under 20%). As such, if I understand correctly that means that if the US dollar undergoes inflation, then the rest of the world will experience at least some inflation as well.
MW has barely changed in the USA over decades but has risen much more elsewhere. If the theory were right, USA would have been largely free of inflation…
This is only true if you look at federal minimum wage. Wages aren’t keeping up with inflation, but most US cities have an official or unofficial minimum wage of $15/hr. I think that shift happened about 10yrs ago, and afaik nothing’s changed since then.
Why? Corporate greed. Poor regulation. International tax avoidance.
Exactly. They knew they could charge more, and so they did. That’s what inflation is. Everyone realized they could charge more, so they did. The dollar decreased in value because prices went up across the board.
Inflation.
Seriously? You went from giving some homeless people enough money to get accommodation and food to a global inflation crisis?
I mean ,that’s some really absurd fear mongering right there.
You’ve got to be a Republican if you can swallow or invent nonsense like that. No, global inflation crises are caused by corporate reactions to war and stock market scares, not by charity projects.
Who the f*** ever heard of the global RedCross inflation crisis of 1987?! There wasn’t one!
The World Food Programme guacamole price hike of 2014?! There wasn’t one!
The International Rescue Committee credit crunch of 2018? There wasn’t one!
The The World Health Organization cancer treatment rising expense scandal of 2023? There wasn’t one!Why didn’t these things happen?
Because giving people in dire straights enough to get them back on their feet IS NOT a cause of any kind of inflation. Stop making out that your crazy catastrophe theories are even slightly plausible,
Charitable crisis solving is safe. It’s unequivocally good for the economy. Keeping people on the streets and hence out of work is bad for the economy. Alleviating abject poverty is unequivocally GOOD.
Research seems to show that a lot of people just need a small step up to get back on track.
So you basically just did the meme.
What about the people that don’t? That’s what I’m saying. Yes, it’ll help significantly, but the meme is presenting it as if it’s the only solution.
No, it’s presenting as the “primary” solution, which it is.
So start by throwing money at the problem, then see what’s left.
What will be left will be mentally ill and addicts which can further be helped by throwing money at support instead of punishing them.
The meme literally says,
“How do we solve poverty”
Research: give poor people money
“Maybe with cheap canned food?”
Research: no, just give them money
“I have old clothes I hate now. I bet giving them away would help!”
Research: No…
“Budget lessons!”
Research: fuck you guys.
It literally says, “no, just give them money.”
The reason why I’m hung up on this is because the meme is trying to be informative and funny at the same time but imo it misses the mark because it oversimplifies the issue. It’s literally saying that you just give money to poor people and poverty goes away; but that’s not how that works. It may help reduce poverty, but capitalists will just raise prices again and now you’re back at square one.
Edit: expanded a sentence (in bold).
So it’s best to leave the money where it is then?!? WTF? You think that corporations raise prices in order to prevent homeless people from buying their products? What kind of crazy logic is that?
No. What I’m saying is to do more than that. Why is this so fucking hard for people to understand? I feel like I’m going crazy.
In my experience, people take these things literally.
In my experience, there are people who unironically would read this and think, “oh, all we gotta do is give money and then it’ll be fixed” and then get mad when it didn’t work for everyone.
What am I missing here?
Edit: also,
You think that corporations raise prices in order to prevent homeless people from buying their products? What kind of crazy logic is that?
No. But they’re going to hear the words, “[homeless will have] more money to spend [for necessities]” and then start salivating because they’re greedy as fuck. Haven’t we established that greed is the reason why prices keep getting raised?
You’re missing that you yourself argued that giving poor people money would push prices up and wouldn’t solve the problem, but charities are increasingly finding that no strings money is the most effective and fastest and surprisingly, cheapest way of getting people out of destitution and into accommodation, employment and reconnection with family.
So please stop saying that giving people money is somehow an ineffective way of dealing with extreme poverty. You’re incorrect. It’s very effective indeed.
I’m not convinced that just cash will solve homelessness or poverty. It may help, but it seems like a “give a man a fish, he’ll eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he’ll eat for a lifetime” kinda situation. Give people the fish so they can eat, but if you want them to actually be independent, then you gotta make sure they have the tools they need to do so.
I think the reason you’ve taken so much flak is that money isn’t fish. Money can be converted into tools. Yes, of course you’re right that some people won’t use the money in a way which will end their homelessness, and may benefit from ‘other programs’. But the meme was specifically about people objecting to the idea of giving poor people money so that they can solve their own problems. Rolling out ‘other programs’ is great, but the ‘other programs’ will be much more effective if they’re not clogged with people that can solve their own problems with a bit of cash.
Right… But they gotta be able to afford to continually afford those tools. Rich people try to suck at much money out of people as possible. The moment they hear that poor people are receiving money is the moment they smell blood in the water. They’ll just hike up prices in response. That’s why I’m not convinced that throwing money at poor people will work.
It’s not their fault.
They didn’t do anything wrong.
It’s the rich people who are the problem.
Get rid of the rich people or their ability to price people out of life and boom! Now the money you give poor people will remain effective. Otherwise they might be able to buy tools today, but the money might not be enough to buy tools again tomorrow.
Thing is, the research into direct cash transfusions and other straight basic income has shown that poor people generally have a very good idea of what they specifically need to do to get out of poverty, be that a gym membership to shower, good clothes, a bike or car, an apartment, someplace to keep documents and medications where they won’t be thrown out by cops, getting a GED after their parents threw them out for being gay, a preschool because their minimum wage job won’t let them keep a baby around the building, or other prerequisite to getting a job / a job that pays well enough for an apartment, they just don’t have the money to actually do any of it.
A person have a good community kitchen they can go to and get free food, and as such food stamps are worthless to them, but they can’t spend that same pittance on something that would actually help them get out of poverty like clothes and a gym membership or saving up for a small car where they can store their stuff and get to jobs, all because a government commite of people and lobbyists who have never lived outside of a gated community have decided what each poor persons budget should look like and coincidentally they all look the same.
People know how to learn to catch fish, they just can’t do it without the right tools, or because they have to be back standing in line at the shelter by 3PM each day.
We can choose to either provide for those who lack food, housing, and other things, or we can choose not to. We often choose not to despite having both sufficient food and shelter.
We can also choose to pursue the goal of making the poor independent.
But if we choose to leave people unprovided for, that is just what we have chosen. There is no way around that.
Making the poor independent is a separate project, in the same vein as making people stop being violent, or unhealthy, or depressed, or sick. An eternal pursuit , with a curious caveat. Because in the case of the poor, if the population of dependent poor die off while the newly improved Independent population remains, it would be a success. No more dependants is the goal, quite literally. It is treated more like ridding ourselves of leeches.
Because contribution is demanded, no matter how banale, cynical, useless, performative or downright harmful. Marketing, manipulation, waste and serving up garbage is all much better than the insufficiently productive poor. Learn to weld, only to make giant steel flower beds to decorate an apartment building, supply the ridiculous demand. Supplying something is the point, regardless of how necessary the demand is.
There’s also the matter that we’ve chosen very explicitly to disallow the poor any power to simply leave the city and establish their of towns of rejects with the materials that exist in nature, as harvesting huge quantities of wood and clay without permissions – unlikely to be obtained – is expressly illegal. Apparently we have to, to protect the environment from people. But it’s not civilization’s responsibility to rectify that injustice, is it? It can just disallow you your shelter and leave it at that. Civilization does not have to compensate a man for the option it has taken away from him.
People just need enough to buy a rod
Financial education, it’s practically intentional that we don’t learn proper finance management and if you’re family didn’t manage money well (poor or rich) you’ll struggle to use any money you get effectively when your out on your own
