- 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.
I prefer to do things right. I’m not against giving people money directly. But after historic tax cuts, it does seem like the government is just rubbing in our faces that our future is to become serfs in a techno-feudal nightmare.
There isn’t really a “correct” way to distribute wealth though. Just different trade offs. At least in a UBI system the poor get to touch it first. It allows for nice things like heating in the winter.
Ugh, we’re not heading for serfdom, that would suppose they still need workers tied to the land or factory in the future. Once a few more breakthroughs happen (It’ll be 10 years away until suddenly it happens 50 years from now) Automation will make even their normal support staff extraneous. At that point they might keep some security around, and maybe some slaves as a statement. Everyone else just gets cut off. Oh it will sound reasonable and it’ll take a couple decades once it really gets going but that’s where Automation is heading if we let the wealthy elite “own” it. They’ll make excuses about lazy poor people and how they can’t keep people on as charity and they can’t keep making food that people can’t afford to buy… There’s absolutely nothing in history that makes me think they wouldn’t just remove the majority of humans from the planet if they could get away with it. They’ve proven time and again they don’t value people as humans. Just as little labor widgets they can fiddle with.
I’d disagree that there isn’t a “correct” way to do it. Basically if the money stays with working class people, it’s good. If it just is absorbed by the richest people, it’s bad.
I didn’t say we were moving towards serfdom per se, probably only for a small amount of time. But we are surely moving towards techno-feudalism. Where rent-seeking is the primary form of wealth extraction, moving from profits being the primary one.
In a good economy money should circulate though. What you’re thinking of is the wealth and standard of living it leaves behind. Giving money to rich people means it does nothing but sit in their bank accounts or the stock market. Poor people have things they need to buy so the money will circulate making the real economy work better.