this post was submitted on 29 Jan 2024
876 points (98.6% liked)

News

23301 readers
3469 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 
  • 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.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] billwashere@lemmy.world 45 points 9 months ago (5 children)

And if everyone got this, rents would mysteriously increase by $1000 …

Fuck these landlords.

[–] Chriswild@lemmy.world 30 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

For profit housing and for profit healthcare are abominations.

[–] maness300@lemmy.world 5 points 9 months ago

Totally agreed.

[–] porksoda@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago

Don't forget for-profit prisons.

[–] Maggoty@lemmy.world 19 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Rents are being driven up by illegal collaboration anyways. This just like the inflation argument against minimum wage increases. Prices going up is not an argument against giving people more money. Prices will go up anyways.

[–] LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Or you could just have prices not go up, and also give people value through strong nationalized programs i.e. public healthcare, public transport, nationalized housing...

[–] Maggoty@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Price controls have uhh not gone well historically. Usually they lead to an explosion in the black market and a supply shortage in the normal market. Things stop falling off of trucks because the entire truck is gone. So until we figure out a better way of transferring goods, we're stuck with money and prices that can be manipulated.

But I agree with the rest of that. Strong government social supports are a great way to rein in the private markets. Having trouble with housing availability? What if Housing and Urban Development (HUD) buys land, builds something, and rents the units at cost? Why is that not an option? Why isn't there an Online USA University run by Department of Education? Is an opt in government health plan really that scary?

Can we not have one nice thing?

[–] LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I was not talking about price controls. I don't know of the USA but government buybacks of housing stock have helped relieve some of the pressure in Europe as well as purpose built high quality housing like in Vienna.

[–] Maggoty@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Ah yes that would be a good thing to do. In the US though people think the government can't be allowed to compete with private business. So we'll never have anything like that

[–] LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 9 months ago

Unfortunately :/

[–] lolcatnip@reddthat.com 13 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

This trope is dumb and you should feel bad for repeating it. It shows a truly shocking lack of insight into even the most basic middle-school-level economic principles.

[–] Black616Angel@feddit.de 4 points 9 months ago (2 children)

In germany we had a 10k€ bonus for all buyers of an electric car. After the bonus ended, all the cars suddenly cost 7k-10k less in about 2 months.

I would argue that this is an example of how the reduction of consumer demand caused companies to lower their prices, unless there was an increase of 7k-10k when the program started as well.

[–] lolcatnip@reddthat.com 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

So a subsidy on a specific product category affected prices on that category? That doesn't prove anything about UBI. UBI isn't a subsidy on rent—or a subsidy at all—so your example is irrelevant.

[–] BigMacHole@lemm.ee 5 points 9 months ago

EXACTLY! Which is why my Rent has NOT gone in up YEARS!