(Amusingly enough the earned income credit is NOT GMI but it kind of almost is in some cases ...)
As for a "does this person actually live in this area" criteria, I have a hard time seeing that single thing alone as "bureaucracy" -- it's quite common.
Of course, a GMI also differs from a UBI/NIT because that term generally refers to means-tested welfare with a sharp (usually 1:1 but not >1:1, which sometimes happens with means-tested welfare programs in aggregate in some ranges) cliff at starting at $0 in outside income up to the level of the minimum guarantee, whereas UBI/NIT benefits have a (usually much) <1:1 clawback via the tax system.
I agree that adding a lot of conditions is part of the problem, but "help those who most need it first" seems like a very logical primary (and perhaps only) condition.
Unless you are prepared to let the idiots starve to death, UBI will never work.
Unless you are prepared to let the wagies starve to death, wages will never work.
Or to put it in less sarcastic terms: Why would UBI payments be more likely to be squandered than any other monthly payments? Especially by people who can't afford food without it. Are there any studies that show such behavior?
This report illustrates rural cash transfers beautifully: https://eig.org/great-transfermation/
Bear in mind that rural poverty rates (~17%) remain persistently higher than urban poverty rates (~12%).
And in a high-wage urban area (e.g., Seattle), a $20,000 Social Security check is a tiny fraction of the local per capita income. In a rural area, that same $20k check represents a much larger slice of the total economic pie. This makes the reliance on government cash appear massive -- ~29% rural and ~17% urban -- even if the absolute dollar difference is more modest.
Also, metro areas receive MASSIVE amounts of federal contracting money (defense, science, universities, federal employees), whereas rural areas get virtually none.
Mostly this is caused by the "graying" of rural America and the persistent lack of high-wage employment in rural areas.
Another part is that they're looking at total income over county-levels, which means that one Bill Gates or Elon Musk in your county will wipe out millions of people receiving "transfer payments".
> In contrast, many metropolitan hubs, affluent suburbs and exurbs, and high-income, high-productivity farming and mining communities remain minimally reliant on transfer income to power their local economies.
This may or may not be true; depends on the money flow, rich cities can have large swaths of poor people.
And are a paraphrase of even older words:
"From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked." ~30AD
And probably even older than that.
I love the simplicity of this. I've been thinking a lot about generosity myself.
And while I don't have $100m, our family also has everything we need. What ideas, resources and tools are there for folks like me who want to be as generous as possible with what we have?
To start, I've set up a Donor Advised Fund because I learned that it's a great way to do something with a bunch of appreciated stock that I don't want to pay taxes on. What other tips do you all have?
But get involved personally; attend meetings, talk to people in the community, get to know what is being done and by whom, and places where some money goes a long way will start to become clear. In my experience the all-volunteer places are often way underfunded and don't really know what they're doing beyond helping people; if you can help guide them it can be incredibly valuable.
[1] https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-road-not-taken-is-guarante...
A gentleman named Luke said “For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall much be required” a long time ago.
The appeal to me of UBI was always that it was highlighting that everyone needs their basic needs met. The moderately paid worker barely making rent in SF needs the money as much as anybody but would never pass a means test.
Beyond that, maybe SF really is too expensive a place to live in.
Oh, that's the rich poverty! There are so many layers below that where it ceases to be poverty and starts being something else entirely, an entire alternate system of bartering and deals and staying alive day to day.
You should look into how not true this is. Financial strain is not financial insecurity.
The election of leaders who prioritize the distribution of wealth from the poorest to the richest rather than vice versa has hollowed out rural America.
And rural America disproportionately votes for such leaders.
One perspective overlooked here is the purchasing power of non-Americans (i.e., not U.S. citizens). Dollars in developing countries can be worth multiple times what they are in the United States. For example, you could help 5000 rural Vietnamese for every 1000 rural Americans. There is also a higher potential for rural Americans to obtain dollars vs. non-Americans. In utilitarian terms you have the potential to do more good by sending money to rural communities overseas.
I'm saying this as someone who loves Appalachia.
Rural America also has a government that is fully capable of taking proper care of it's underprivileged; most governments across the world are not.
> because that’s exactly where my parents and I are from.
If you ship your money across the globe you can sit back and be content that it's working well based on the glossy reports you get; you don't have to actually deal with the people as people; just as statistics.
Again, the data goes into an open global repository that DOES help the entire world. We will all learn from it. When our house is currently on fire, I think we should deal with that first.
It's also "yes, and". Gates Foundation (among others) is working on other areas of the world and has vastly more money.
