The following is the transcript of an episode of my show “Fred’s Front Porch Podcast.”
If I have an overarching goal of this show, it is to help, in my microscopic way, create a world without homelessness and poverty, and a world with education, health care, and freedom for all. I have no power to do this, myself. My power lies only in finding new ideas that I believe will bring us closer to this goal, and then sharing those ideas with others in the hope that the ideas become a part of the national conversation. In this way, it’s just possible those with the power to enact policies and legislation will help us to create the Utopia many of us envision.
The first response of many listeners will be a litany of reasons this can’t be done. I have to begin with this disclaimer: I am not an economist or a sociologist. I have no expertise that I can bring to bear that will change the world. All I can do is share ideas. It’s up to those with better minds than mine to give those ideas a concrete form that changes the world. Can it be done? We couldn’t fly in 1900. In 1903, Orville and his brother built an airplane. In 1969, Neil Armstrong was walking on the Moon. More things can be accomplished than many of us think. It begins with Imagination. I’m proud of mine. I hope to spark yours.
I have spent some time enjoying Rutger Bregman’s excellent book, Utopia for Realists this month. I’ve filled my copy with underlines and a couple of pages of my paper with notes. Most of the ideas you will hear this evening come from his book, and I recommend you read it.
Universal Basic Income
Bregman advocates a Universal Basic Income. Before we delve into this any further, we should understand the term. It means that every person (and here already begins the debate… every person… only adults? Only citizens? You may debate that with the economists and sociologists. For me, it’s every living human, but others may have different and better ideas) receives from the government a monthly check that is sufficient to pay rent in a modest home, provide them with food, and keep the utilities functioning. Again, we can debate endlessly how much this check should be, but I’m interested in general ideas, and I will decline to have such debates. You’re welcome to do so with anyone who is interested. You’re even welcome to call the show or comment, and I’ll add your voice to the conversation. I am too old, too tired, and too slow to do debate anymore. Had you met me 40 years ago, I would have had a wonderful time making mince meat of my competition, but those days are in my distant past.
“You may not want to debate, but you have to deal with some facts. One of them is that people are, basically, lazy, and your UBI will destroy any reason they have to work. We work only to avoid homelessness and poverty. If you want to end those, forget your UBI and put everyone to work.”
Well, that sounds like a compelling argument. Fortunately, however, Mr. Bregman has some hard data with which to refute it.
Meet Bernard Omondi. For years he earned $2.00 a day working in a stone quarry in an impoverished part of Kenya. Then one morning he received a peculiar text message… A sum of $500 had just been deposited into his bank account. For Bernard, this was almost a year’s wages.
Several months later, a journalist from The New York Times visited Bernard’s village. It was as though the entire population had won the lottery: The village was flush with cash. Yet no one was drinking their money away. Instead, homes had been repaired and small businesses started. Bernard invested his money in a brand-new Bajaj Boxer motorcycle from India and was making $6 — $9 a day ferrying people around as a taxi driver. His income had more than tripled.
“This puts the choice in the hands of the poor,” says Michael Faye, founder of GiveDirectly, the organization behind Bernard’s windfall. “And the truth is I don’t think I have a very good sense of what the poor need.”
I suspect someone has already said that what I just quoted was one small example, and the sample size is too small to be significant. I understand your concern, and I shared it… until I read what comes next.
According to a study by The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, GiveDirectly’s cash grants spur a lasting rise in incomes (up 38% from before the infusion) and also boost ownership of livestock (up 58%) while reducing the number of days children go hungry by 42%.
https://academic.oup.com/qje/article-abstract/129/2/697/1866610?redirectedFrom=fulltext
The odds of getting hired when Uganda decided to distribute $400 to nearly 12,000 people went up 60% for those receiving the cash. And, for those who believe it’s wrong to give “free” money to people because it will end up getting spent on things of which you don’t approve, “… a major study by The World Bank demonstrated that in 82% of all researched cases in Africa, Latin America, and Asia, alcohol and tobacco consumption actually declined.”
https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/18802
It’s important to note that the decline was not statistically significant. The point, though, is that it didn’t increase. When people have less stress, we smoke less and drink less.
The Perils of The Scarcity Mindset
The Scarcity Mindset is, essentially, the fear that you won’t have enough of something you desperately need. It’s one that is shared by hundreds of millions of people in America, and by billions in the world. Many of us work as hard as we can, not to improve the world, or make our lives better, but simply to survive. We rarely create anything new or beautiful because we’re obsessed with creating replicas of the mundane that our employers want us to produce. It leaves us sitting at the bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and it allows us few resources to advance. It is simply not true that hard work will always lead to success, financially or otherwise. Sometimes it does; sometimes it doesn’t. This mindset makes our lives more difficult. As Bregman explains:
Compare it to a new computer that’s running ten heavy programs at once. It gets slower and slower, making errors, and eventually it freezes — not because it’s a bad computer, but because it has too much to do at once. Poor people have an analogous problem. They’re not making dumb decisions because they are dumb, but because they’re living in a context in which anyone would make dumb decisions.
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This is true regardless of the scarcity. If you have a meeting in 5 minutes, your time is short, and your mind is on that meeting to the exclusion of all else. Have you prepared sufficiently? Do you have everything you need? What will people think of what you have to say?
A deadline forces you to focus your attention on meeting it. I, for example, spend lots of time thinking about Sunday and Tuesday at midnight, because those are the deadlines for posting on Patreon and Anchor respectively. If you would like poor people to make more intelligent decisions, let’s give them back the mental bandwidth they need so they can make those choices.
And, yes, that’s also supported by evidence. Here’s something from Princeton.
In a series of experiments, the researchers found that pressing financial concerns had an immediate impact on the ability of low-income individuals to perform on common cognitive and logic tests. On average, a person preoccupied with money problems exhibited a drop in cognitive function similar to a 13-point dip in IQ, or the loss of an entire night’s sleep.
And Harvard conducted a similar study and got similar results:
The poor often behave in less capable ways, which can further perpetuate poverty. We hypothesize that poverty directly impedes cognitive function and present two studies that test this hypothesis. First, we experimentally induced thoughts about finances and found that this reduces cognitive performance among poor but not in well-off participants. Second, we examined the cognitive function of farmers over the planting cycle. We found that the same farmer shows diminished cognitive performance before harvest, when poor, as compared with after harvest, when rich. This cannot be explained by differences in time available, nutrition, or work effort. Nor can it be explained with stress: Although farmers do show more stress before harvest, that does not account for diminished cognitive performance. Instead, it appears that poverty itself reduces cognitive capacity. We suggest that this is because poverty-related concerns consume mental resources, leaving less for other tasks. These data provide a previously unexamined perspective and help explain a spectrum of behaviors among the poor.
https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/sendhil/files/976.full_.pdf
So, for those of you who want to blame poor people for the stupid choices they make, Princeton and Harvard have explained why that’s more likely to happen. The most important thing to realize is that while I can take a vacation from work so that I can reduce my stress and increase my cognitive ability, I can’t take a break from Poverty. Neither can anyone else.
Free Housing Saves Money
I know that many of you are already scoffing. Dwellings are expensive. We can’t afford to hand them out to people who are too lazy to work for a living.
First, I want to drop the objections to laziness. I think the term is ill-defined. Is someone lazy because they work only 30 or 40 hours a week? Is someone lazy who is unemployed? Am I lazy because I am disabled? And… why is laziness so evil? Again, I refer you to Episode 93: “The Devil’s Second Greatest Trick” to hear my objections to worshipping at The Altar of Hard Work. That’s your religion, and you’re welcome to believe in it, but you don’t get to force me to share those beliefs. Life is too short, in short, to spend well over half of it being miserable while enriching others. We’ve worked, collectively, for 200,000 years to reach a place where humanity doesn’t need to work ceaselessly to survive. It’s time to accept the abundance we, and those who came before us, created. The truth is that we don’t need to work as hard as we once did.
I applaud hard work. I work as hard as I can without winding up in the hospital to produce this show for you every week. I’m proud of the work I do. I’m happy to do work that is meaningful and satisfying to me, and I believe most of the rest of the world shares that feeling. Good things come from hard work. But those good things are the reasons we work. There is no inherent virtue in being miserable for most of one’s life. There is no inherent vice in enjoying it. I also believe that calling someone lazy is a wonderful way to make yourself feel superior to them. I find that petty. If you want to feel superior, by all means, do so, but find a legitimate reason for it. Stop attacking people who have different lives than yours.
The point, though, is that, even if you don’t want to help those whose choices you don’t like, it’s cheaper for you to do that than it is to let them suffer. Seriously. This has been shown over and over. One of our most conservative states, Utah, found this out for themselves.
Lloyd Pendelton, the director of Utah’s Task Force, a staunch conservative, was tasked with the getting all the unhoused people off the streets. Certainly, he could have police round them up, shoo them away, and put spikes on sidewalks and under bridges to keep them from sleeping there. These are common practices in many states. They get the homeless out of sight, but they don’t actually solve the problem. “I grew up on a ranch, where you learn to work hard. I used to tell the homeless to get a job, because that’s all I thought they needed,” Pendelton said. When that didn’t seem to work, he tried something more radical. He found the most abject street sleepers in the area, and he gave them all apartments. Two years later, when all 17 had a place to live, he expanded the program. If it worked with a few, would it work with many?
Giving away free housing, it turned out, was actually a windfall for the state budget. State economists calculated that a drifter living on the street cost the government $16,670 a year (for social services, police, courts, etc.). An apartment plus professional counseling, by contrast, cost a modest $11,000.
https://www.fastcompany.com/3066204/the-man-who-reduced-homelessness-in-utah-by-91
https://endhomelessness.org/what-i-learned-about-housing-first-from-lloyd-pendleton/
I wanted to give you the article Bregman cited, but I can’t do that because the Orlando Sentinel doesn’t keep their old work, at least as far as I can tell. The link exists, but it just takes you to today’s news. I am including several other links that offer the same data. According to one of the links, before he died in 2019, Pendelton had helped to reduce homelessness in Utah by more than 90%.
Reducing homelessness also increases the odds of getting more people employed. Your odds of getting a job increase if you show up to the interview after a good shower that leaves you clean and smelling decent. It also gives people a mailing address so they can avail themselves of some of the welfare programs available. Giving people a place to live decreases the jail population because the police don’t need to arrest the unhoused for occupying a space illegally. Finally, giving people a place to live helps the local economy. These folks can get a job now, and that means they can spend money to support businesses. Giving people homes is a win all the way around.
I know you think you’ve got this nailed, but you’re not dealing with the most powerful study of them all: Speenhamland. This form of UBI was devastating for the public in Britain in the 19th Century. The Royal Commission Survey showed that basic income was to blame for the population explosion, poorer wages, and increased immoral conduct. The report showed that once we got rid of their program, the poor became more industrious, they developed good, moral, “frugal” habits, demand for their labor increased, their wages advanced, they entered into fewer “improvident and wretched marriages” and they became more moral. Those are facts. You can’t get past them. For all of your good intentions, your ideas are leading in exactly the wrong direction.
You’re right. That’s what The Royal Commission Report on Speenhamland said. Fortunately, modern researchers have looked more carefully at the data. It’s a 13,000 page report, with lots of appendixes, and it looks powerful. That is, until someone actually reads it. As a friend of mine said recently, “Just because you have data or facts does not mean you have any clue how to accurately interpret and use that data at all.”
In the 1960s and 1970s, historians took another look… and discovered much of the text had been written before any data was even collected. Of the questionnaires distributed, only 10% were ever filled out. Furthermore, the questions were leading, with all the answer choices fixed in advance. And almost none of the people interviewed were actual beneficiaries. The evidence, such as it was, came mostly from local elite, and especially the clergy, whose general view was the poor were growing more wicked and lazy.
Like much modern research, this also had an agenda. The objective was to keep those with less in the worst poverty possible so they could be used at wage slaves. It’s hardly a shock to learn that throughout history there have always been those who exploit people who lack power so they can enrich themselves.
Conclusion
I’ve spent this evening giving you logical arguments, supported by powerful evidence, for creating a Universal Basic Income, and for giving people homes. I’ve done this because I want poverty and homelessness to end. But, since I have a home, and since I have enough money to buy groceries and keep the utilities running, why do I care about other people who can’t? They’re probably no good anyway. They’re lazy, or they’re stupid, or they’re just not willing to do what needs to be done to improve their lives. Why should I care?
I do care. I care a great deal. I care because I recognize that my judgment is often faulty, and I don’t feel I have any right to substitute mine for someone else’s. I may think they make foolish decisions, but I know that there is too much I don’t know about a person to be able to decide they are worthless. I decline to believe anyone is worthless, whether I agree with them, or approve of their choices, or not.
There are people I love that many others reject because those I love are “different.” Two people I love deeply, for example, are transgender. A few others are homosexual, while still others are lesbians. Some of the people I love are Muslims. Many people who mean the most to me are “unemployed,” in that they don’t earn money for themselves while enriching others. Other people I love despise some, or even all, of the groups I just named. I love those people even while I disagree with them. I hope for Joy, Meaning, Comfort, Serenity, and Love for all of them because I recognize and celebrate their value to the world, in general, and to me, specifically. I appreciate the brush strokes they add to the canvas of life. I care because we all have our own Art to contribute to the world, but few of us have the time or resources to create it.
I care because I don’t like the thought of someone suffering, particularly when we could end that suffering easily. I care because I know that I am one disaster away from being among those who are suffering. I know, too, that most of the people I love are in the same position, whether they recognize it or not. The loss of a job, a medical emergency, an accident, a relationship gone bad, or giving in to the Prosecutor who lives in all of our heads to tell us how horrible we are can all lead to a situation none of us wants to endure. I care because I recognize that I’m different.
I often believed everyone saw the world as I do, but I’m growing to learn that, in fact, no one sees the world as I do.
I see it as moments that are like brush strokes in a picture.
Each one matters.
The picture is a collection of all those moments combined into something.
“Starry Night” is a collection of extraordinary brush strokes.
But others just see the picture, and frequently in black and white. It’s not a painting as much as it’s a balance book, perhaps even an emotional ledger. Who did what for whom is a more important question than what makes this painting the way it is.
I don’t understand the world.
People who owe me nothing have bent over backward to help me, even when they know I can do nothing in return. My gratitude is endless as my confusion.
People for whom I have done everything are resentful when I ask for help. For them, I have changed from an asset to a liability. They point out that I am less than I once was. And, of course, they’re right. I have lost most of my health, most of my income, and most of my will to live. There are fewer and fewer things I can do for anyone.
And I don’t know how to reconcile the two disparate ideas. Why do I have such great value to those for whom I have done, and can do, nothing? Why have I such small value to those for whom I have done everything?
It’s that I see and remember each brush stroke of the painting. I recognize how we got where we are. And I think I have higher expectations of those on whose canvases I have painted so much.
In the way I see the world, I should be able to expect some paint on my canvas from those whose paintings I’ve improved. In the way the world sees itself, all canvases are the responsibility of their individual painters. But then, why do other painters offer me so many beautiful brush strokes on my canvas?
If I can’t understand the world, perhaps I can add my voice to those calling for a world in which we see the whole picture, in all its nuance and diversity. We can all be a part of that Starry Night, if only we allow each of us to Shine.