Have you lived in Western style poverty? Have you mingled with those who patronize pawn shops and payday lenders?
Please cite the various randomized control trials, and I would say it is far too early to draw conclusions on the effects of the medicaid expansion as it has only been two full years since rollout.
I speak from experience, as someone from a wealthy family and a wealthy area that shunned the family business and went out with nothing to seek startup fortune. I had a good start in 2009 with a success in affiliate marketing, when that dried up I put all that I had made into another venture that limped along at sub-ramen levels for a while and then I pulled the plug.
The fallout was not fun, and the effects not benign. It was pre medicaid expansion and there was no healthcare to be had, and almost no safety net to be found whatsoever.
I could have gone home and had everything I needed but I wanted to make it on my own. I had been living in Boulder, Colorado and thought a move to Austin would lower expenses and extend the runway for the company.
That was ill-advised, and another story, but it added another dimension to my troubles at the time.
Was it a stupid risk? It was but I was young and felt invincible, and in 2010 with a liberal arts education there weren't a ton of jobs waiting for me.
The wealth transfers you speak of are not easy to get. I'm not even sure where you get the 15-20k number. What else is there for a low earning single male besides SNAP, and now Medicaid.
In that time, as someone who found themselves with no assets and no income the only benefit I seemed to have qualified for was about $160 a month that could be spent at the grocery store.
Feeling a tremendous amount of shame I applied for SNAP benefits, even though I knew that they were really a subsidy for American farmers, ideology had trained me that subsidies for corporations are virtuous, while subsidies for basic human needs are shameful.
Even though I qualified, the overworked staff denied my valid claim. It took them over a month to tell me this. It would have taken another month to apply again and maybe they would get it right that time. I gave up and having good credit financed my nutrition via credit card.
I hadn't coded since elementary school, but I was able to pick up django web dev and find a high paying job in a couple months.
But that happy ending is not typical. There is no way that the stress from that period didn't shave a little bit of time off my life.
And the lack of liquidity prolonged the period by a good bit. I spent so much time doing this or that to get $200 for the rent, it was tremendously inefficient and stressful. Bad terrible memories, a place I never want to go back to. I was sad during all of this. It broke up the relationship I was in with someone I really loved.
I spent a lot of time with those who ride the bus, with those who pawn. Their lives are very different than the lives of the families from my coastal home town. Their lives do kill them slowly, which is why life expectancy is a full dozen years longer for the wealthy.
I have since moved back to the wealthy coastal town I grew up in. Life is so easy here, because there is wealth here. You can get a nice boat for almost nothing because someone just doesn't want it anymore.
Someone I knew was just gifted a boat for $1 because the owner was just happy it was going to stay on the island.
No one ever gives my former bus riding compatriots anything.
The thing is the people that live here are no different genetically than the people at the pawn shops back in Texas. The only difference is the presence of wealth, and the virtuous effects that has when it's sustained for a few generations.
But if I understand correctly, the point of bringing up the Oregon study was that access to medical care doesn't seem to have a lot to do with it. At least not the incrementally better access provided by Medicaid programs.
I would certainly speculate that there is a bundle of ideas that contribute to it. Ideas about personal decisions being impactful, leading to things like less smoking and better diet, and even better life situations (which can presumably lead to a different relationship with stress).
Probably because the poor behave differently from the rich - they tend to overeat more, exercise less, smoke more and drink more.
Also any disabled person (who probably has other health problems that reduce life expectancy) is by definition poor (poverty is defined as low market income).
All of the behaviors you cite could be caused by extreme stress, poverty, or threats to safety/well-being (rather than being a cause of poverty). I've felt it, and I've done it.
tl;dr; Sad personal story and no stats. Also, faith healing worked for my uncle so I know that all those randomized control trials are wrong!
My numbers come from the BLS Consumer expenditure survey, though they moved it and I don't know where it is now. I blogged about it and reproduced it in a graph:
I would call it a comeback story with a happy ending, as I got to semi-retire at 31 in a beautiful place. The thing is I know I was able to do this because of the wealth effect, and not because I am personally better or more deserving. That's a point that many well off people miss.
The experience gave me insight and empathy. I really learned how the other half live. I will never be a poverty scold because of it.
I posted the story because I think your spreading incorrect information. It's not easy to be public about money troubles, something I think hurts workers and benefits the capitalist class.
I read your blog post for the second time (saw it on HN before) just now and I still don't see the mechanism by which people can choose to receive 22,000 per year by not working.
Has UBI been instituted without my knowledge?
For what must one apply to make the rational decision to not work.
Update to reply:
Ok so I read the paper, it says exactly what I state in other comments.
If your not going to work you better be in a protected group.
The paper lists 5 means tested transfer programs
Temporary assistance for needy families - this is only for people with kids and mostly single mothers
SNAP or food stamps - which isn't enough to survive off of unless your pancreas handles carbs really well
Section 8 housing - you can get on a wait list or maybe find a landlord willing to deal with you
Other than that it lists
Ss disability : you have to be disabled or severely mentally ill
Ss. You have to be over 65
Pell grants - students only
So that's it. So tell me how does a 35 year old non disabled man or woman with no kids make the rational choice to not work?
Even with subsidized housing and food and Healthcare they would still need spending money.
I'm telling you that there's a lot of people that get by with work in the informal economy and that isn't accounted for in those BLS stats.
You are right about western poverty if we tall about germany, but not us, unless you are in a protected group.
No, we don't have a UBI. We have a ragbag of cash and in-kind transfers that add up to approx $20k. Go read the CBO study I linked to, it explains in detail.
Why do you keep ignoring the research I've posted, and continue spreading myths? What do you gain from it?
I read a few of the links you posted. To support a claim that "giving people money does not improve health", you cited an RCT examining Swedish lottery winners who were already covered by a UHC program. People who already have high-quality health care don't spend their lottery winnings on more health care, and winning the lottery doesn't cause significant damage to health. Great. This says nothing about the US population in question, and absolutely does not prove your original claim.
In the US we had a lottery that directly gave out healthcare. That also had no effect on health.
The Sweden result shows that money has little/no effect via non-healthcare purchase mechanisms, while Oregon shows healthcare directly has little/no effect.
Please cite the various randomized control trials, and I would say it is far too early to draw conclusions on the effects of the medicaid expansion as it has only been two full years since rollout.
I speak from experience, as someone from a wealthy family and a wealthy area that shunned the family business and went out with nothing to seek startup fortune. I had a good start in 2009 with a success in affiliate marketing, when that dried up I put all that I had made into another venture that limped along at sub-ramen levels for a while and then I pulled the plug.
The fallout was not fun, and the effects not benign. It was pre medicaid expansion and there was no healthcare to be had, and almost no safety net to be found whatsoever.
I could have gone home and had everything I needed but I wanted to make it on my own. I had been living in Boulder, Colorado and thought a move to Austin would lower expenses and extend the runway for the company.
That was ill-advised, and another story, but it added another dimension to my troubles at the time.
Was it a stupid risk? It was but I was young and felt invincible, and in 2010 with a liberal arts education there weren't a ton of jobs waiting for me.
The wealth transfers you speak of are not easy to get. I'm not even sure where you get the 15-20k number. What else is there for a low earning single male besides SNAP, and now Medicaid.
In that time, as someone who found themselves with no assets and no income the only benefit I seemed to have qualified for was about $160 a month that could be spent at the grocery store.
Feeling a tremendous amount of shame I applied for SNAP benefits, even though I knew that they were really a subsidy for American farmers, ideology had trained me that subsidies for corporations are virtuous, while subsidies for basic human needs are shameful.
Even though I qualified, the overworked staff denied my valid claim. It took them over a month to tell me this. It would have taken another month to apply again and maybe they would get it right that time. I gave up and having good credit financed my nutrition via credit card.
I hadn't coded since elementary school, but I was able to pick up django web dev and find a high paying job in a couple months.
But that happy ending is not typical. There is no way that the stress from that period didn't shave a little bit of time off my life.
And the lack of liquidity prolonged the period by a good bit. I spent so much time doing this or that to get $200 for the rent, it was tremendously inefficient and stressful. Bad terrible memories, a place I never want to go back to. I was sad during all of this. It broke up the relationship I was in with someone I really loved.
I spent a lot of time with those who ride the bus, with those who pawn. Their lives are very different than the lives of the families from my coastal home town. Their lives do kill them slowly, which is why life expectancy is a full dozen years longer for the wealthy.
I have since moved back to the wealthy coastal town I grew up in. Life is so easy here, because there is wealth here. You can get a nice boat for almost nothing because someone just doesn't want it anymore.
Someone I knew was just gifted a boat for $1 because the owner was just happy it was going to stay on the island.
No one ever gives my former bus riding compatriots anything.
The thing is the people that live here are no different genetically than the people at the pawn shops back in Texas. The only difference is the presence of wealth, and the virtuous effects that has when it's sustained for a few generations.