Denver basic income reduces homelessness, food insecurity
Denver basic income reduces homelessness, food insecurity
Participants in Denver's basic income program received up to $1,000 a month. They became more housing secure and landed full-time jobs.
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See, I want this everywhere so bad but I worry that without some kind of control on the price of basic needs (food/housing/healthcare/etc) a broader rollout will cause providers of those things to just raise their prices across the board and result in little or no benefit to everyone else. Housing especially, since the market is already in la la land. Am I wrong about this? Or is there an easy solution maybe?
You're not wrong, no. Price controls are ABSOLUTELY necessary. Even without basic income, but of course especially with.
Corporations have demonstrated time and time again that they'll profiteer as much as they're allowed to.
In recent years, they've even stopped caring about whether people are able to afford their prices.
They cynically but correctly assume that people will spend more money than they have when the alternative is them and their families starving on the street.
Corporations are getting increasingly brazen about not valuing the lives and well-being of their customers anywhere near as highly as short term profits, and the vast majority of politicians are as spineless in regulating their own owners as always, if not even worse than they have been since almost a century ago.
Thats why the government issued rations stamps during the depression. That way food aid actually helped people instead of just linning the pockets of grocers. But the past 40 years of neoliberal deregulation has made that an absolute non-starter and most people dont even know how much the government used to regulate and manage everything.
I imagine if you had a lot of competition, prices might stay lower. But the reality is that monopolies or cartels or whatever will form
Yeah, that's how under-regulated markets inevitably work: someone who has no incentive to prioritize fairness or the common good accumulate too much power and use that power to gain more power etc until only the most powerful remain and everyone else, especially consumers, suffer immensely.
This is why it needs to automatically update itself based on inflation and cost of living/goods. If they want to raise prices, the income amount raises too, without need for further input from Congress, and thus their taxes go up again to cover it. They’ll have to dip into their absurd profits and narrow the wealth gap a bit to cover it in the end.
Same thing needs to be done with minimum wage and the “poverty line” btw - though many things contingent on the poverty line need to just be replaced with universal programs anyway, like UBI and single-payer healthcare.
Ahh, daydreaming.
I am shocked anyone thinks the 1% will let a livable basic income alone.
Minimum wage is the OG basic income. "Everyone will have to pay a living wage now!" They said, after negotiating with capitalists.
Well how is that $7.25 treating you now wage slaves?
The 1% will corroded any government, undo any reforms... all using the surplus labor value stolen from the working class.
This is inevitable, any romanticized version of capitalism is merely on step on a stair case leading down to end stage capitalism.
See yall at the last stop. Peace.
most definitely, if you implement BUI without any safegairds, companys just amp the prices of literally everything to match.
(But I'm sure they will be nice and not do that, they whould never be so ruthless and unethical! I'm sure they are fine losing a little profit to help people. /s)