Launching the Rural Guaranteed Minimum Income Initiative

https://blog.codinghorror.com/launching-the-rural-guaranteed-minimum-income-initiative/

by d4ft • 6 months ago

75 63 6 months ago

blog.codinghorror.com

bryanlarsen3• 6 months ago

Why rural Americans? The same amount of cash will go a lot further and likely be more effective in rural areas of other countries. The source of Atwood's wealth (Stack Overflow etc) is global, not American.

rangestransform• 6 months ago

Deindustrialization has hollowed out most American cities outside of major cities, and the corresponding anti globalism tantrum contributed to the current political situation. Because of the apportionment of House and Senate seats, these people hold most Americans hostage with their disproportionate voting power, and paying a ransom seems better than the alternative we are living through.

hshdhdhj4444• 6 months ago

Nope. Globalism has made America richer than pretty much any nation in the existence of human history.

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.

Sparkle-san2• 6 months ago

Why not rural Americans? When helping someone in my community, I don't first stop and analyze whether my time/money could be better allocated to maximize some sort of utilitarian loss function, I help them because they're there, need my help, and I'm able to help.

evanjrowley2• 6 months ago

I don't disagree with you, but there is value in considering how money could be best put to use for the common good.

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.

bryanlarsen3• 6 months ago

It gives me serious "steal from the poor and give to the rich" vibes. Rural Americans are richer than the majority of humans, and Stack Overflow was a fairly global website.

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.

OGEnthusiast2• 6 months ago

Rural Americans are responsible for the situation they're in.

ralfd• 6 months ago

He writes:

because that’s exactly where my parents and I are from.

antonymoose• 6 months ago

Not to mention one of his choices is a white-minority county in rural Mississippi. The idea that Jeff Atwood of all people is a raging racist is insanely laughable to anyone that has followed his work over the last 15+ years.

jccooper• 6 months ago

Because this is not about charity, but about politics. Specifically demonstration with the intention of advocacy. The advocacy falls down when the demonstration is less applicable.

codinghorror11• 6 months ago

"Why rural Americans? The same amount of cash will go a lot further and likely be more effective in rural areas of other countries."

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.

bombcar7• 6 months ago

A direct answer - because if you donate and work with people near you, you have to deal with the people. It doesn't sound like much, but it's the whole linchpin - you have to face the reality and often realize that what you want to do simply can't be done for any number of reasons, and then you have to back up and try a different tactic.

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.

chrisBob• 6 months ago

If AI and robotics reach their logical goals then projects like this are about to become more and more important. I don't mind machines taking all of the jobs, as long as all of those displaced workers don't starve.

readthenotes12• 6 months ago

"Those 10 words had a profound effect on the world. "

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.

ranprieur• 6 months ago

This is better than nothing, but the big advantage of the UBI is that there is no bureaucracy deciding who gets it and doesn't get it. If there are any conditions on the income, then there's a constant danger that the program will become another tool of control.

wang_li• 6 months ago

Feb 1: receive monthly UBI payment Feb 2: spend all of it on strippers/drugs/alcohol/twinkies/etc. Feb 3: I'm hungry.

Unless you are prepared to let the idiots starve to death, UBI will never work.

cwillu• 6 months ago

Yes yes, your 30 word dismissal completely obliterates all contrary evidence.

ryanmcbride• 6 months ago

I also like getting angry at situations I made up in my head

hmry4• 6 months ago

Feb 1: receive monthly paycheck Feb 2: spend all of it on strippers/drugs/alcohol/twinkies/etc. Feb 3: I'm hungry.

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?

bombcar7• 6 months ago

If you have a requirement that the UBI be for citizens only, or for residents only, you've already introduced bureaucracy.

(Amusingly enough the earned income credit is NOT GMI but it kind of almost is in some cases ...)

codinghorror11• 6 months ago

The EIC connection is covered in the history pages, which are fascinating in my opinion: https://rgmii.org/history-of-gmi/

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.

dragonwriter2• 6 months ago

The EITC was inspired by advocacy for a Negative Income Tax (which is generally isomorphic to UBI funded by income taxes, despite coming from the opposite side of the political spectrum.) But the designers couldn't avoid giving in to all the same problems with means-tested welfare that both UBI and NIT seek to eliminate, except or the separate eligibility bureaucracy, which integrating it into the income tax system avoided.

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.

codinghorror11• 6 months ago

with GMI the conditions are very simple math: what percent of the poverty line are you within?

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.

dragonwriter2• 6 months ago

As a contrast to means-tested welfare the U in UBI (whether “Universal” or “Unconditional”) generally is refers to the absence of means- and behavior-testing, it generally does not actually mean that there is no defined scope of eligibility (usually citizens or legal residents of a particular polity, possibly also with an age floor.)

jmathai2• 6 months ago

all we want to do is advance the concept of direct cash transfer

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?

bombcar7• 6 months ago

Local is often the best way, especially if you don't have resources that would overwhelm them (donating $1 billion to a local food pantry would likely blow it up).

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.

codinghorror11• 6 months ago

100% do things locally. If there is a food bank in your area, support it heavily. That's the absolute base of the hierarchy of needs. For example, in that blog post, expand the immediate donations. Note $100k to Alameda Food Bank, where my partner Betsy regularly volunteers.

micromacrofoot2• 6 months ago

advocate for policy change where possible, locally first

skybrian• 6 months ago

I’m not sure which parts are supposed to be new since his previous post. [1] I think it’s the website? [2]

[1] https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-road-not-taken-is-guarante...

[2] https://rgmii.org/

codinghorror11• 6 months ago

Yes, within 8 months we went from "how do we make systemic change" to actually doing it. This is proof. And the GMI topics are on that dedicated site, not Coding Horror.

codexb• 6 months ago

I'm always surprised how even the people I consider incredibly intelligent get pulled into bad ideas.

codinghorror11• 6 months ago

What's bad about this idea? I'd like to know.

hirpslop• 6 months ago

American government cash transfers overwhelmingly skew rural with the caveat that income maintenance is a smaller slice of the pie.

This report illustrates rural cash transfers beautifully: https://eig.org/great-transfermation/

bombcar7• 6 months ago

Part of this is causal - if you're on what used to be called "fixed income" (read: social security) you migrate to places where your costs are lower; which is often 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.

codinghorror11• 6 months ago

The largest chunk of federal "cash transfers" is not welfare; it is retirement and disability spending. The rural population is significantly older than the urban population.

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.

rightlane• 6 months ago

This honestly rubs me the wrong way. I have very close friends who mightily struggle financially but they are always just outside the threshold for assistance. Basic statistics don't capture the people who are barely making it or living on debt.

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.

bombcar7• 6 months ago

It sounds harsh and mean, but banning unsecured credit cards outright would probably help tons of people in the long run.

codinghorror11• 6 months ago

it's "yes, and". Help those people who are selling their blood to buy happy meals first. I am not exaggerating. I wish I was. Check out the book "$2.00 a day: Living On Almost Nothing in America" for so much evidence. Disclaimer: I know the author now. Because I have to. It's related to the work we're doing. https://www.google.com/search?q=%242+a+day%3A+living+on+almo...

Beyond that, maybe SF really is too expensive a place to live in.

bombcar7• 6 months ago

I think too many people (especially here, but it's understandable) think poverty just is "barely making rent".

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.

micromacrofoot2• 6 months ago

The moderately paid worker barely making rent in SF needs the money as much as anybody

You should look into how not true this is. Financial strain is not financial insecurity.

RickJWagner• 6 months ago

Mary Gates?

A gentleman named Luke said “For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall much be required” a long time ago.

https://www.biblegateway.com/verse/en/Luke%2012%3A48

jwx48• 6 months ago

I’d love to know how Mercer County, West Virginia was chosen. I grew up there.

paleogizmo• 6 months ago

This post is a bit old, but it's worth bringing up just what a terrible idea this is. The author takes the chief benefit of UBI and removes its main benefit which is the lack of means-testing. Then he makes it even dumber by restricting beneficiaries to rural areas where jobs are less prevalent.

Launching the Rural Guaranteed Minimum Income Initiative

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