This makes sense to me because I have a feeling most people who would need to rely on BI also have a problem managing money.
As an example, I once had a homeless guy ask me for money outside a grocery store. I suggested that we go inside and get him whatever food he wanted, and he said he'd wait for me outside. Sure enough he was gone by the time I returned. I'm fairly certain he only wanted the money for alcohol or drugs. That kind of person doesn't save money for food, they beg for food and use the money for other purposes.
If you made the program automatically adjust your BI down when you started accepting food from government programs, that would basically act as the government stepping in for people who just aren't able to handle money.
As a counter-example, I had a similar experience with a mother and her daughter, except that they were still there when I came back out and were thankful for the food. I'm not saying that they're not bad at managing money (maybe they are), but there are more than one group contained within the label "that kind of person".
I've had other experiences with homeless men turning down food when I offered it. I know that my father-in-law would be (and has been, in the past) happy on the street, using his money for cigarettes and gambling with his friends. There are a lot of different kinds of people that would need to be accounted for and different motivations.
But the alcoholic might need the drink more than food, and the drug addict might need the drugs more than a place to live. Perhaps not being sick for a couple more hours is the best thing for them at that moment. I'm not suggesting that you are under some moral obligation to buy them drugs, only that not giving them anything is not a moral position in itself.
So what if he did buy booze with it? I buy booze with my money and there's nothing wrong with that. If someone asks me for money, and I feel inclined to give it, the money becomes theirs, and why shouldn't they spend it on whatever seems like the best choice for their circumstances? And what gives me the right to decide what that best choice would be? I'm not living that life. Maybe a bottle of whiskey really would offer the most comfort per dollar. That's pretty sad, but why judge the person making the choice? Judge the situation offering them that choice instead.
I don't want them to destroy their bodies. I don't want them to fuel black markets with my money, and this is speaking as an occasional consumer of mind altering substances not available in pharmacies.
Further, I don't have much money. I cannot afford a lot of stuff for myself. So I can only help with necessities. And I don't want to judge whether any given person is lying.
In conclusion, I never hand out money. But I've bought quite a few bags of groceries for strangers.
Well, that seems reasonable. I'm just not OK with the whole "deserving poor" idea that seems to be baked into American political philosophy when it comes to homelessness and poverty support, because I don't want to have control over other people's lives any more than I want them to have control over mine.
Freedom isn't freedom without the option to fuck up.
The problem is that the US system has such incredibly low social mobility that it prevents any alternative to fucking up.
The mythology of personal choice applied to situations over which hardly anyone has actual personal control is perniciously misleading.
The "undeserving poor" - feckless, addicted, irresponsible - is just as much of a cliche as the opposite.
In fact, BI research shows that most people don't waste the money. They use it to improve their lives - sometimes by starting small businesses that wouldn't be possible without BI.
Your response is phrased in the form of a rebuttal, but I think I agree with everything you are saying, so far as I understand it, which leaves me to wonder if I didn't explain myself clearly.
I believe that the concept of "deserving" or "undeserving" poverty is not just unhelpful but actually misleading, and creates a great deal of unnecessary confusion. It is more useful to ignore the personal details and look at the systems. We can't change other people; we can rarely change ourselves; but we can certainly change systems, because they are human creations in the first place. So that's how we should approach poverty.
I am in favor of basic income as an improvement on and replacement for other forms of social support, for a variety of reasons: it seems like a more efficient way to move money around, it seems like a more effective way to distribute resources to people in need of them, and it seems overall like a more egalitarian, less judgemental way of dealing with a whole complex of problems which currently create a great deal of suffering. It is simple enough to feel like good engineering. It is fair enough to feel sustainable. It is non-ideological enough that I feel reasonably sure it would be difficult to use it as a mechanism of social control against weirdo outliers, like I am, but who aren't fortunate enough to have access to the same resources I do.
By "option to fuck up" I mean simply the freedom to do something other than mainstream opinion thinks you should. In these examples, people clearly believe it would be a bad idea for someone begging on the street to use the money they earn to buy alcohol. Well, on average, that's probably true. But just because someone is in a desperate way, I don't believe that gives me (or you, or anyone) the right to tell them what choices they should make. It's still their life. If I am willing to hand the guy on the street corner my spare $5, I have to be willing to accept that he's going to do whatever he thinks best with that money. If I can't be happy with that I shouldn't give him the money. But I believe that each person generally is the best judge of what is best for themself; I'd like it if the society around me would leave me free to make my own choices, not because I'm successful enough not to have to beg for money on the street, but because that's how I think we should all treat each other all the time, regardless of circumstances.
In general, I favor freedom of determination; if your randomly selected person wants to spend their BI on drugs or alcohol, fine. But the persistently homeless are not at all a representative sample population. There are a number of intersecting problems, especially mental health and addiction, that place them among the least credible cases for self-determination. We can argue about where the cutoff is, but there will always be people out at the end of the bell curve that need more active intervention.
And that's without even getting into the problem of perverse incentives involved in giving money to people for asking for it.
Then why all the philosophy about what "kind of person" he was and whether he would use the money "for other purposes"?
If someone asks me for money, and I give them money, it becomes their money, and it is none of my business what they choose to do with it, any more than it is any of their business (or yours!) what I would have done with it if I kept it.
Otherwise, you're not really giving them help, you're taking some amount of control over their life.
"If someone asks me for money, and I give them money, it becomes their money, and it is none of my business what they choose to do with it"
It isn't if your idea of help is unconditional donation. But is there anything wrong if I see donations as investments (in society) with expected returns on the same? Would I be wrong in trying to maximize my returns?
Where did I mention that my objective was maximizing my influence? The objective is improvement in the society. My influence has nothing to do with it.
The point is, just giving money does not absolve us of our moral responsibility. If I donate with an objective of social good, not just with the idea of dispensing my spare wealth, it is my right and duty to see that my investments give the maximal return, i.e. maximal social good.
Of course I can be wrong/ suboptimal in my investment strategies but then I can improve.
On the other hand, if you were paying part of the bill for his treatment, you'd also be incentivized to help him out in ways that might prevent that fate. I believe that, at the end of the day, we're all in this together. So to me, clarifying that economically is a feature of public healthcare, not a bug.
This has always struck me as one of the stronger arguments against the idea of public healthcare, which otherwise seems like a good idea. I feel quite certain that this tool of social control would be used against me, to dissuade me from engaging in some of the dangerous activities which give me great pleasure, and am therefore extremely reluctant to accept the argument that this is a legitimate use of power against other dangerous activities I don't happen to prefer.
> I have a feeling most people who would need to rely on BI also have a problem managing money.
I think this depends on what you mean by "rely on". I could see many people who are very capable of managing their money relying on BI to allow them to take behaviors that would be risky in the absence of BI. For example, a college student who is choosing between starting a small business or interviewing at larger companies may significantly rely on the BI when deciding to start their business.
However I agree that, when viewing BI as a safety net, those who would need it are disproportionately likely to also need help managing the money.
> dozens of high-quality evaluations of cash transfer programs spanning Africa, Asia, and Latin America and including both unconditional and conditional cash transfer
The richer the society you live in, the more it becomes lbhe snhyg[1] that you are poor. Imagine how hard you would have to work to be homeless in the world of Star Trek TNG, for example.
[1] I rot13'd that text because it's not the best expression, and it might knock some people off, but I don't have time to euphemize things for adults.
Yeesh just put it in scare quotes next time. Rot13 doesn't make it any less offensive to those who would be offended and just makes it more annoying to read for everyone.
Understandable point of view comming from a man selling books how to change your behaviour towards money :p In general I can't even begin to take the statement serious though.
Dave Ramsey has ascribed to an unbelievably unrealistic view of peoples' responsibilities for their financial outcomes, as well as what they should sacrifice to be solvent. All this coming from a huckster who sells rainbow snake oil.
We live in a world now where we get half the porridge our parents did, and he's teaching us how to starve and hide porridge in our pockets for rainy days. He's part of the problem and a distraction.
As an example, I once had a homeless guy ask me for money outside a grocery store. I suggested that we go inside and get him whatever food he wanted, and he said he'd wait for me outside. Sure enough he was gone by the time I returned. I'm fairly certain he only wanted the money for alcohol or drugs. That kind of person doesn't save money for food, they beg for food and use the money for other purposes.
If you made the program automatically adjust your BI down when you started accepting food from government programs, that would basically act as the government stepping in for people who just aren't able to handle money.