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Study: Public Assistance Programs Lessen Poverty

posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday May 29 2018, @07:39AM   Printer-friendly
from the at-what-cost dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Yahoo Finance reports

Poverty-alleviation programs like food stamps (SNAP), Social Security, and other "welfare" programs are broadly effective at reducing poverty, a new study from University of Chicago researchers found.

The study, performed by researchers Bruce Meyer and Derek Wu, conducted a more comprehensive analysis than most studies, because it used administrative data from the programs' payment records, not just survey data of recipients from the Census Bureau.

[...] For the elderly, Wu said the research found that Social Security benefits "single-handedly slashes poverty by 75%." Social Security's overall effect on all poverty is also enormous, responsible for by far the largest poverty reduction among all these programs, the study said.

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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday May 30 2018, @03:00AM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday May 30 2018, @03:00AM (#686064) Journal

    That's kind of interesting, but people can already provide that themselves from their wages.

    Somewhere in the neighborhood of half the U.S. population has less than one month's income worth of savings.

    While I grant that a small fraction of that portion doesn't earn enough to save money, the point of needs-based benefits would be to cover them. As to the rest, if it's not important to them, it's not important to me.

    Maybe that's just evidence that half the population has really bad money management skills

    Gets my vote.

    As for an inflationary argument- you're NOT changing the money supply - you're simply redistributing the existing amount.

    I don't buy that argument. At the least, you're increasing money velocity which is inflationary. And if any borrowing happens in order to cover the UBI (or offset federal spending for such), then that is very inflationary.

    However - you could set it to something that would naturally follow economic fluctuations, for example: set a flat rate 10% income tax, and then redistribute that equally to everyone.

    Which would be fine, until the people in power promise 15%. Or 20%. Or 95%.

    10% is a reasonable rate, and maybe one could set up a stable system, say via constitutional amendment that would be hard to game in the above way. But basic legislative law is wide open to such abuse.