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from the Having-UBI-would-afford-more-time-to-spend-supporting-SoylentNews dept.
The fine folks at the CBC bring us the following report:
Participants in Ontario's prematurely cancelled basic income pilot project were happier, healthier and continued working even though they were receiving money with no-strings attached.
That's according to a new report titled Southern Ontario's Basic Income Experience, which was compiled by researchers at McMaster and Ryerson University, in partnership with the Hamilton Roundtable for Poverty Reduction.
The report shows nearly three-quarters of respondents who were working when the pilot project began kept at it despite receiving basic income.
That finding appears to contradict the criticism some levelled at the project, saying it would sap people's motivation to stay in the workforce or seek employment.
That's an interesting way of looking at it. An alternative viewpoint could be that over a quarter of the people who were working before the UBI trial stopped working. Unclear are the benefits that resulted from their new spare time — such as providing support to an ailing family member.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Gaaark on Wednesday March 11 2020, @02:43AM (23 children)
Basically that's what I (could be) probably am facing: my son (moderately to severly autistic) does little for himself. I get up at 6 am, shower and get myself ready for work. Then I get him up, shower him if he needs it, and help him dress, get his breakfast ready. While he eats, I get his lunch ready unless I had time the night before. Then I'm heading off to work.
My wife isn't sleeping well anymore:her leukemia is affecting her badly, and is less than two weeks away from starting therapy. She gets up before I leave, showers, etc, then packs our sons bag, writes in his book for the School/day program staff about what he did so they can talk with him about it (like a show and tell thing). Brushes his teeth, puts on his deodorant, brushes his hair, washes his face....
She then gets him on the bus and she heads off to work.
When we get home, we make supper, talk with him about school, etc and watch TV with him (which means, we take turns cleaning, doing laundry, household etc while spending time 'together'.
Then bed.
Relatives help out as well when possible.
As soon as she starts her therapy, I'm going to be doing even more of that because she'll only be able to do so much.
UBI would be nice but is not happening: but SOMETHING would be nice so we(I) don't go insane!
All that and a full-time job makes Jack a dull ......and insane boy.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday March 11 2020, @02:55AM (10 children)
Pay someone to make your life easier. In this case that'd mean something like a highschool girl helping out for a few hours in the evening. That's money's sole purpose: to be easily exchanged for a reduction of misery. Not saying it won't mean tightening of belts but is eating beans and rice more or less of a misery than not getting to rest after work? Weigh up what's less important than a few hours of down time in the evening and make the changes.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday March 11 2020, @03:38AM (3 children)
Average cost to care for an Autistic child, meaningless, but I've seen numbers like $80K/yr thrown around.
We have 2, and due to my (sub $160K/yr) income we are ineligible for ANY benefits, I guess we're tightwads not spending $80K/yr on each of them since we also have a roof, food, cars, insurance, etc.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2020, @04:27AM
Can't you guys form, like a retard circus with those kids? They can do Billy Joel cover on piano while you pull yourselves up by the bootstraps.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2020, @06:25AM
That is an average. I saw similar data for autism and other disabled children. You'd might be surprised how high the outliers actually are, given that many people spend almost nothing in comparison bring down the average way down despite the skewness.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2020, @05:57PM
i don't mean to make light of their condition, but vaccines are great, huh?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Common Joe on Wednesday March 11 2020, @05:32AM (3 children)
I know JoeMerchant (but not Gaaark) mentions his income later, but that's a hell of an assumption to make. Many people can barely afford food for their table. That includes some IT people. I have a friend who is in IT. He makes ok money, but he had an accident that will last him the rest of his life. He has/had good insurance and support, and his bills will be through the roof every year. He meets his deductable every year. And he must still pay a lot out of pocket because those "incidentals" are required for him to live and work.
Another poor assumption. High schoolers (girls or guys) are not always reliable and you even if you have a 100% success rate, you'd have to rotate through them every year or two. And, additionally, I doubt they will have the skills to handle someone who is autistic. Or work 5 - 7 evenings per week. Possibly including holidays. It almost sounds like not hiring someone would be easier. Being sick or having autistic kids are expensive -- both in time and in money.
You make a lot of insightful comments, but sometimes like right now... wow. Just no. At this point, I shouldn't be surprised when you make comments like this, but I'll learn eventually not to be surprised.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday March 11 2020, @02:32PM (1 child)
Maybe I read TMB's comment wrong. I read it as getting "a little help", not as "hire a caretaker". I can easily see having an older girl, or even a young woman, high school or college age, to help out for as little as an hour, or as much as 6 or 8 hours, maybe one evening per week, or as much as 7 days a week. It doesn't need to be a professional, at all. No real training required. Almost any girl in her teens can master relations with a slower child. The same girl can probably master helping to prepare dinner, and then doing the dishes. Maybe it would take three such persons - Betty can work Mondays and Thursdays, Trish would love to have a job on Wednesdays, and Sherry is available almost anytime, just let her know a day ahead.
Something like that would give you a lot of flexibility. One night, the hired girl cooks dinner and cleans up, and goes home. Next night, no girls. The third night, the hired girl plays with and/or keeps an eye on the child, leaving you free to tend to all the chores that have piled up.
Of course, scheduling may be a bigger headache than some people can cope with. On the other hand, there are people who live for that kind of challenge.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Thursday March 12 2020, @03:33AM
If there's a nursing school in the area -- sometimes student nurses can get extra credit for being home volunteers/paid help. That's an incentive for them to be reliable, and turnover doesn't matter so long as the school maintains the program.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday March 12 2020, @03:35AM
Man, don't go getting butthurt with a load of assumptions on his behalf. I said evaluate his priorities and do what gains him the most relief from misery; and offered a suggestion. There is no possible way in which anyone can take that to be anything but helpful, so just stop.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Thursday March 12 2020, @12:09AM (1 child)
Jeez... sometimes you have the approximate insight of a rock. An opaque rock.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday March 12 2020, @03:37AM
Yeah, because hiring some kid to do the dishes, stir dinner, and do a load or two of laundry so you don't have to every evening would be unthinkable, insanely expensive, and wrong. Don't be any more of a jackass than you have to be, man.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday March 11 2020, @03:34AM (5 children)
We have two, 16 and 18, and we can't talk about school with either of them- it's just not in their range of working skills. On the other hand, they dress themselves and even will shower and use some soap with sufficient prompting. Wherever you are at, it could always be better - or worse.
I/we don't need UBI as long as I can still work, but after we're gone, a world with UBI would be a hell of a lot better for our kids than a world where somebody else has to run the benefits maze for them, and gets paid for doing it.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2020, @04:29AM
You don't need UBI until you do. People don't need health insurance until they do. Where are you going with this?
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Thursday March 12 2020, @12:16AM (3 children)
By talk, I really mean 'talk': he has a couple real words, some words only we understand and then noises.
He can type on his laptop, but that's not handy for conversation, just homework.
We chat 'to' him and he mostly nods or shakes his head.
" Wherever you are at, it could always be better - or worse."
Yeah: some days you think "Holy damn, gimme a big fecking break!" (To be, uhhhh... polite) But then there are the days you realize he could have been sooooooooooooo much worse.
He was born 2.5 months early: another baby in the neo-natal unit did not demand feed (cry or anything showing it wanted to eat)... It just laid there like a living lump.
Hydro-cephalus was a SHOCKER my first time seeing it.
Yeah: we get by... because we have to. If he were harder to deal with, we would deal.
YEAH... could be worse: we have no life, but it's ours, lol.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday March 12 2020, @02:00AM (2 children)
Things I am grateful for:
Lack of seizures in our home.
Good sight, hearing, and a fair degree of understanding of speech - even if they're not conversationalists.
Some degree of self-care skills, one even takes dishes to the kitchen after dinner.
No problems walking / running / balance / etc. Although, at "special needs" conferences I am sometimes secretly envious of the caregivers of the wheelchair bound...
We, too, have no life, though in this "no life" we did take a 3 week Caribbean vacation - and didn't involve the local authorities until the day before we left, it was an 85% good time. A couple of years before that we took a 3 week driving tour of the Southwest, and only pissed the hotel beds 4 times. We have had a sailboat for over a year, gone on 20+ pleasure cruises to nowhere of 3-5 hours in duration, and the only time anyone has been in the water was when the oldest decided he wanted to jump in off the dock - in 55-F water, that never happened again. Only one grocery store has asked that we never come back...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Thursday March 12 2020, @03:56AM (1 child)
Yup: 'Normal' people have ZERO idea.
One time my son was dead set on going to Toys R Us and tried running across traffic (look both ways? WTF does that mean?). She caught him, luckily, before he got very far. He went limp and laid down half on the sidewalk, half on the street.
She muscled/dragged him back to the car and proceeded to PUSH him with all she had back into the car.
She said she was lucky no one called the cops because she was sure it looked like an abduction,.
Got him in the car and then the shakes hit her.
'They' have NO clue.
Good luck to you and yours. "Could be worse!": the 3 most ironic words in the English language.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday March 12 2020, @12:49PM
Long story, but, our oldest liked to go for walks, like 4 hour walks, when he was ~8 years old. There was a small neighborhood a little too far to walk from home called "Apple Tree" that he would call out every, single, time, we drove past - repeat it like 4 times "Apple Tree! Apple Tree! Apple Tree! Apple Tree!" so, finally after about 6 months of this, I took him for a drive to Apple Tree, and we got out and walked - not much else to do in a suburban residential neighborhood with about 80 homes and nothing else... We walked around the whole thing in about 15 minutes, all civilized like, but then he didn't want to get back into the car - meltdown, throwdown, in front of the residents talking on their porch. So, I finally managed to wrestle him to the grass, put him up on my shoulders and carry him over to the residents to explain the situation... they seemed to understand, and he calmed down and got in the car with me, we drove home and "back to normal." 45 minutes later there's a LOUD knock on the front door, local cop asking if I have a blue car (it was in the closed garage), we cooperate - giving the cop free transit through our home to the garage to confirm, explain about the autism - he doesn't even see Conrad when he calls on his shoulder radio "Yep, this is them, it's o.k. tell everybody else they don't have to come." He was extremely cool about it all, I'm just glad we don't have anything in the "privacy" of our home that we don't mind showing to cops. Oh, and the "Apple Tree!" callouts did slow down quite a bit after that.
I think he was 12 when he decided one night to dart away from the car in the grocery store parking lot, across 6 lanes of traffic without slowing (I _think_ he might have had an idea to look for cars, but when he's moving slower sometimes he does just wander out into traffic in front of moving cars...) across the street to use the bathroom in the Starbucks. That was the first time I decided: he's faster than me, I can't really catch him and there's no point in endangering myself while trying to. So, I just walked across and caught up with him a minute or two later. Luckily the younger one doesn't do much of these type things, but... he's the one who got himself banned from Trader Joe's...
Take care of yourselves first - if you want to keep helping your kids you can't do that if you're gone, or incapacitated. Reality is: it will happen eventually - I'm just hopeful that we'll reach some kind of "manageable" situation to hand off before we're dead.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday March 11 2020, @10:30AM (1 child)
Damn, Gaark, my heart goes out to you. That's tough sledding. I hope your wife's treatments yield positive results. Prayers for all of you.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Thursday March 12 2020, @12:19AM
Thanks: we deal... there's no other choice.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2020, @04:52PM
I think there is a difference between UBI and services intended to help the legitimately disabled. What you may be arguing for is more services to help those that legitimately can't help themselves. I would argue that that's different than something like UBI where you are just giving people that can work money in exchange for nothing. I would say those are different conversations.
Slashdot had some good comments on this. Aside from the people that would have probably been working that quit working (which is bad) and the fact that this wouldn't scale to larger proportions (if everyone got UBI it would just be a wash in terms of how it helps everyone and how that gets adjusted when it comes to increases in the cost of living. Or I suppose you can say it's the equivalent of a tax cut for all which one may argue is good) there are some other useful comments.
"by inhuman_4 ( 1294516 ) on Thursday March 05, 2020 @07:41PM (#59801270)
The report shows nearly three-quarters of respondents who were working when the pilot project began kept at it despite receiving basic income. That finding appears to contradict the criticism some levelled at the project, saying it would sap people's motivation to stay in the workforce or seek employment.
Contradict the criticism? More than 25% of employed people quit working when they start getting basic income. That sounds like a pretty clear cut confirmation to me! Worse the whole report is based on a self-reported online survey, and written by a pro-basic income advocacy group. No doubt an actual review based on hard data would be much less flattering. As would a study that includes the hard part of basic income: raising taxes to pay for it. Handing out free money or pumping it in to a local community is easy. Close the loop and let see how well the system can sustain itself.
...
"
https://news.slashdot.org/story/20/03/05/2024220/people-kept-working-became-healthier-while-on-basic-income-report [slashdot.org]
"by Jane Q. Public ( 1010737 ) on Thursday March 05, 2020 @08:03PM (#59801374)
See my other post further down the page.
Most attempts at UBI-like systems were with far more people, and lasted longer.
And they all failed. Because many people stopped working.
But you need time to really see that happening. People aren't going to change their ways overnight."
Another person notes
"by sabbede ( 2678435 ) on Friday March 06, 2020 @10:42AM (#59802974)
The survey had a lousy response rate. 217 out of about 4000. So, it was pretty much worthless."
and those that do fill out the surveys are probably less lazy, and benefited more, than those that didn't. So they aren't exactly a representative sample of everyone that participated in the study. The fact that so few people even filled out the survey says something about the majority of the people that participated. They received all this free money that someone else paid for and they aren't even grateful enough to, and they're too lazy to even, fill out a survey? Really? Ingrates. They don't deserve this money.
"by Oligonicella ( 659917 ) on Thursday March 05, 2020 @08:44PM (#59801474)
I know of one where many of the people who quit working took the opportunity to pursue further education which could give them a more promising career than the one they had before
Perhaps a cite would bolster your case. Would also be interesting to know if those people actually went out and *got* the new promising career."
It would be interesting to note what percentage of people that receive UBI spend it on education, get their degrees, and get a good job as a result. Because if my taxpayer money is going to go to this I want to know the results of where my money is going.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday March 11 2020, @05:39PM (1 child)
And if my wife got leukemia I would be driven bankrupt in addition to dealing with all the stuff you have to deal with.
I seem to recall you're in Canada. So I wonder, why do you consistently support the people in the US who prevent us from getting the same medical benefits you already enjoy?
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Thursday March 12 2020, @12:40AM
You have that wrong: I've been supporting Sanders for a few years now (or Warren).
Biden will be same-same and nothing will change.
With my son being in the neo-natal unit for 2.5 months and almost dying and now my wife with a hysterectomy and leukemia...I'd be very bankrupt. Maybe divorced. Could be dead.
Glad ......SO glad we live in Canada.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 11 2020, @05:53PM
https://naturalsociety.com/sulforaphane-broccoli-kills-cancer-cells/ [naturalsociety.com]