Cash for the poor doesn't work very well

[Canard DuJour]

http://www.straighttalkonevidence.o...break-the-poverty-cycle-in-the-united-states/

The left keeps being after this but the data says it doesn't work.

I doubt it, since it's framed around the assumption that poverty exists because of failure to acquire middle class habits. That's very much an assumption of the right. The left "keeps being after" a flatter income distrubution not least because the poor go straight out and spend into a demand-constrained economy - not "invest in their own development."

 

[Elixir]

Chris Hughes (Facebook co-founder) had a lot to say about it this morning.
"I think if we raised rates on income above $250,000, we could pay for a guaranteed income for 90 million Americans that would lift 20 million out of poverty overnight."

Of course, that begs the question - for how long? It ain't quite as simple as he lays it out, IMHO. Maybe if they each got $140,000,000.00 ?
Still, there is truth in the aphorism 'Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he will no longer have to feed a wife".

 

[SimpleDon]

Debunking the Stereotype of the Lazy Welfare Recipient: Evidence from Cash Transfer Programs Worldwide




The short-term impact of unconditional cash transfers to the poor: experimental evidence from Kenya

It works when the problem is a lack of jobs. It doesn't work when the problem is people nobody wants to hire.

- - - Updated - - -

http://www.straighttalkonevidence.o...break-the-poverty-cycle-in-the-united-states/

The left keeps being after this but the data says it doesn't work.

This is not a surprise to me. What the poor need isn't an UBI or welfare payments, it is higher wages for the work that they do. The poor work hard in the US, often at two or more jobs. There is no reason for the US, the richest country in the world, to have anyone who is willing to work to be living in poverty. If your choices are to work hard and to still be poor or to accept support from the government and to be poor, why would we expect anyone to choose to work?

By far the biggest cause of poverty is a lack of hours worked.

Hence the poor have to work two or three low paying jobs, each of which should pay more. We have been here before discussing your memorized single sentence responses.

As I remember the one time that you tried to defend this one sentence nugget of wisdom you did so in thread about Seattle's experiences with their increased minimum wage and your logic depended on your misreading of data presented the study. The total numbers of hours worked by the minimum wage workers dropped, but you didn't realize that the number of minimum wage workers had dropped and the numbers of near minimum wage workers had increased.

You treat jobs as if they were charity that employers dole out when the mood hits them. Employers hire people when they have work that has to be done. They pay them as little as they have to so that the employer makes more profit. If they can hire people to work at a lower wage they will. If they have to pay more they will If they have to pay more because all of their competitors have to pay more they will pay more and for the most part they will grouse and accept a lower profit, until they can try to raise their prices to cover the increase. Whether they can raise their prices depends on the competitive pressures from the market produced by competitors who also have to pay the higher wages.

 

[Elixir]

By far the biggest cause of poverty is a lack of hours worked.

Yeah, it's that 40-hour work week for sure. The poor should be able to work at least 120 hours/week, without saddling their employer with bothersome shit like tracking - let alone paying - overtime.
After all, if it wasn''t for their employer, they wouldn't have a job at all, right?

I don't know how old you are Loren, but it wasn't all that long ago that a gardener* could save and buy a house (without starting up a landscaping Company and paying some wetbacks a dollar a day to do the actual work), and even send their kids to college. Of course back then, we didn't have the fantastic benefit of watching zillionaires become famous for being rich. I guess the trade-off was worth it, eh?

* or dish washer, trash collector, school teacher etc.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

1) Look at the hours worked in the bottom quintile compared to the others.

You keep evading the issue - you made a specific factual claim about the poor not working full time. Your own link proves your claim is false.

2) Look at the full time/part time ratio in the other quintiles.

The other quintiles are irrelevant to the your claim about the poor. duh.

You were claiming the number was high. I was providing a context to compare it.

Note that your "high" figure is less than 20%. Less than 20% of the bottom quintile worked full time. More didn't work than did work. That's the fundamental problem.

 

[laughing dog]

You keep evading the issue - you made a specific factual claim about the poor not working full time. Your own link proves your claim is false.
The other quintiles are irrelevant to the your claim about the poor. duh.

You were claiming the number was high.

No, I was not. I was showing that your claim that the poor did not work full time was false. Your link shows that a higher proportion of the people in the lowest quintile who work do work full time. Which means your claim was literally untrue. Moreover, it is not clear that full time includes those poor whose hours in multiple different jobs add up to full time or not.

In other words, your claim that the problem for those poor who work are poor because they do not get enough hours is factually UNTRUE.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

You keep evading the issue - you made a specific factual claim about the poor not working full time. Your own link proves your claim is false.
The other quintiles are irrelevant to the your claim about the poor. duh.

You were claiming the number was high.

No, I was not. I was showing that your claim that the poor did not work full time was false. Your link shows that a higher proportion of the people in the lowest quintile who work do work full time. Which means your claim was literally untrue. Moreover, it is not clear that full time includes those poor whose hours in multiple different jobs add up to full time or not.

In other words, your claim that the problem for those poor who work are poor because they do not get enough hours is factually UNTRUE.

Address the point, skip the bullshit.

Less than 20% of the bottom quintile works full time. This is by far why they are poor.

 

[laughing dog]

No, I was not. I was showing that your claim that the poor did not work full time was false. Your link shows that a higher proportion of the people in the lowest quintile who work do work full time. Which means your claim was literally untrue. Moreover, it is not clear that full time includes those poor whose hours in multiple different jobs add up to full time or not.

In other words, your claim that the problem for those poor who work are poor because they do not get enough hours is factually UNTRUE.

Address the point, skip the bullshit.

The point is that your claim that the problem of the working poor is that they do not work fulltime is bullshit which is proven by your own data.

Less than 20% of the bottom quintile works full time. This is by far why they are poor.

You are babbling again. The original point to which prompted your bs is that people who work fulltime ought not to be poor. Moreover, as I have repeatedly pointed out (and which you have evaded), it is not clear that what portion of the those in the lowest quintile who are classified as working part time are, in fact, working multiple jobs where the hours add up to full time.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The point is that your claim that the problem of the working poor is that they do not work fulltime is bullshit which is proven by your own data.

Less than 20% of the bottom quintile works full time. This is by far why they are poor.

You are babbling again. The original point to which prompted your bs is that people who work fulltime ought not to be poor. Moreover, as I have repeatedly pointed out (and which you have evaded), it is not clear that what portion of the those in the lowest quintile who are classified as working part time are, in fact, working multiple jobs where the hours add up to full time.

The original point was don't come griping about being poor unless you work full time.

 

[laughing dog]

The point is that your claim that the problem of the working poor is that they do not work fulltime is bullshit which is proven by your own data.

Less than 20% of the bottom quintile works full time. This is by far why they are poor.

You are babbling again. The original point to which prompted your bs is that people who work fulltime ought not to be poor. Moreover, as I have repeatedly pointed out (and which you have evaded), it is not clear that what portion of the those in the lowest quintile who are classified as working part time are, in fact, working multiple jobs where the hours add up to full time.

The original point was don't come griping about being poor unless you work full time.

If everyone who is poor has the capability to work full time and full time work is available to them, your view would have universal applicability. However, it is not true that every single person is poor is able bodied and able minded and who has full time work available, so your view seems rather limited in applicability.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The original point was don't come griping about being poor unless you work full time.

If everyone who is poor has the capability to work full time and full time work is available to them, your view would have universal applicability. However, it is not true that every single person is poor is able bodied and able minded and who has full time work available, so your view seems rather limited in applicability.

16% of the population isn't disabled.

 

[laughing dog]

The original point was don't come griping about being poor unless you work full time.

If everyone who is poor has the capability to work full time and full time work is available to them, your view would have universal applicability. However, it is not true that every single person is poor is able bodied and able minded and who has full time work available, so your view seems rather limited in applicability.

16% of the population isn't disabled.

No one said it was. Of course, you have not produced a link to support yet another one of your claims of "fact". Given your documented abysmal record of promoting "fake facts", you should not be surprised when readers request documentation of one of your "facts".

To my knowledge, a vast majority of the poor are not going around griping about being poor. To my knowledge, the vast majority of the poor are too busy trying to survive and don't have the time to gripe. So what exactly are you trying to discuss?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

16% of the population isn't disabled.

No one said it was. Of course, you have not produced a link to support yet another one of your claims of "fact". Given your documented abysmal record of promoting "fake facts", you should not be surprised when readers request documentation of one of your "facts".

To my knowledge, a vast majority of the poor are not going around griping about being poor. To my knowledge, the vast majority of the poor are too busy trying to survive and don't have the time to gripe. So what exactly are you trying to discuss?

It's called thinking. Try it.

You suggested disability as for why they aren't working. If that's the answer it means 16% of the population is disabled.

 

[laughing dog]

You suggested disability as for why they aren't working. If that's the answer it means 16% of the population is disabled.

I wrote "However, it is not true that every single person is poor is able bodied and able minded and who has full time work available, so your view seems rather limited in applicability." I did not suggest that it was due solely to disability. If any one of the conditions (able bodied, able minded or full time work is available) is not met, then one would expect the person to lack full time employment. Hence your response is based on a straw man that anyone with moderate reasoning and reading comprehension whose head is not up his/her ass would have avoided easily.

 

[braces_for_impact]

You know, it would be a small sample size, but I'm willing to be the recipient of funds for the purposes of data collection. Just let me know guys. I'm fairly certain we could glean some kind of conclusion from at least trying it a few dozen times.

 

[Worldtraveller]

The point is that your claim that the problem of the working poor is that they do not work fulltime is bullshit which is proven by your own data.

Less than 20% of the bottom quintile works full time. This is by far why they are poor.

You are babbling again. The original point to which prompted your bs is that people who work fulltime ought not to be poor. Moreover, as I have repeatedly pointed out (and which you have evaded), it is not clear that what portion of the those in the lowest quintile who are classified as working part time are, in fact, working multiple jobs where the hours add up to full time.

The original point was don't come griping about being poor unless you work full time.

Why not? What makes you the arbiter of who deserves to live or not? Why does only what you define as 'work' count? You are a perfect example of the toxic mindset of capitalism.

 

[bilby]

Cash for the poor doesn't work very well; just better than anything else.

 

[Emily Lake]

http://www.straighttalkonevidence.o...break-the-poverty-cycle-in-the-united-states/

The left keeps being after this but the data says it doesn't work.

I am unaware that anyone promotes cash transfers as long-run solutions to poverty (the conclusion of the OP study). The issue is whether cash transfers are better shorter term remedies than in-kind transfers. As a result, the OP claim is poorly stated and misleading.

Proponents of Universal Basic Income promote cash transfers as a long-run solution to poverty.

 

[Emily Lake]

By far the biggest cause of poverty is a lack of hours worked.

Yeah, I'm going to go ahead and disagree with you on that. If I thought you were being humorous, maybe, but that's not my impression here.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The original point was don't come griping about being poor unless you work full time.

Why not? What makes you the arbiter of who deserves to live or not? Why does only what you define as 'work' count? You are a perfect example of the toxic mindset of capitalism.

1) Being poor != dying. I'm not objecting to a safety net.

2) What I am saying is that you shouldn't be whining that the system is unfair until you've done what you reasonably can to solve your problem. The reality is that hours worked is a far bigger deal than wages in explaining poverty--yet all the obsession is about wages.