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The idea of giving people free money is so radical, even some recipients think it's too good to be true.
Later this year, roughly 6,000 people in Kenya will receive regular monthly payments of about a dollar a day, no strings attached, as part of a policy experiment commonly known as basic income.
People will get to use the money for whatever they want: food, clothing, shelter, gambling, alcohol — anything — all in an effort to reduce poverty.
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But instead of accepting the cash transfers with open arms, many Kenyans have recently been saying "No, thank you." It's a legitimate concern: As GiveDirectly moves into its larger basic income experiment, the last thing it wants is for people to turn down the money.
Basic Income is a concept often mentioned on SN, and this is an experiment to do exactly that. Many potential recipients of the basic income are skeptical about the goals of the experiment, though, and rumors have arisen that it's tied to a cult or devil worship.
Opponents of such wealth transfers argue they lead to indolence, while another school of thought believes they would reduce poverty and directly produce economic stimulus because the poor would immediately spend the money.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Monday September 12 2016, @12:14PM
I would imagine the wide spread level of insanity and addiction in that sub-population will achieve that end result.
There's quite a bit of diversity in poor people. In that way basic income isn't much use for some, like homeless or entire inner cities. On the other hand its probably going to be very productive for "hipster artists colonies" or former company cities where the company downsized and left.
There's people who are F-ed up and giving them money just results in turbocharged F-ed-up-ery and then there's decent people suffering from a temporary lack of money and giving them money tends to turn out really well. Almost like the Turing Halting problem aside from dumb political arguments and some general demographic trends, the cheapest and most efficient way to tell them apart seems to be to give them money and see what happens...
(Score: 2) by tibman on Monday September 12 2016, @01:42PM
I think you nailed it. Already productive people who then go on BI would be better. Maybe Detroit would be a good test?
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(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday September 12 2016, @07:48PM
Exactly. However, at least here in the US, the problem will be that naysayers will point to those F-ed up people to justify not having this, or any other social services at all really, as they do now.