No. I hear this argument about the distribution problem all the time. Logistics and distribution is fucking solved. This argument completely ignores the real issue of people not being able to afford to buy food. Food stamps was a pretty good system (talking about the us, no idea about elsewhere) and it should have been expanded not cancelled.
This argument completely ignores the real issue of people not being able to afford to buy food.
That’s part of the core issue of distribution. Purchasing food is reliant on the machinations of a market economy. Market economies operate by equal exchange; those who lack units of value (ie money) must be given units of value to exchange for food. The decision thus must be made how to give those units of value and to whom. The ‘simplest’ option is a UBI - universal basic income (ie give everyone enough money to live on at a basic level).
However, the difficulty of securely (against both fraud and theft) and universally distributing money in an age before direct deposit consumer banking (as recently as the 70s it was still not standard, and as late as the 2000s I personally knew working people without bank accounts entirely) made any such experiment difficult and costly to attempt to implement - for which reason polities simply… did not. In addition to reasoning about budget concerns and ‘motivation to work’ (the latter of which has been strongly disputed by the evidence provided in modern small-scale UBI projects, which suggest little change in work patterns of recipients).
At present, political capital (and lack of popular consensus) are probably more the bottleneck preventing UBI than economic issues. But it wasn’t that long ago that the very real bureaucratic challenges of a pre-computerized society would have rendered it potentially entirely unfeasible.
No. I hear this argument about the distribution problem all the time. Logistics and distribution is fucking solved. This argument completely ignores the real issue of people not being able to afford to buy food. Food stamps was a pretty good system (talking about the us, no idea about elsewhere) and it should have been expanded not cancelled.
That’s part of the core issue of distribution. Purchasing food is reliant on the machinations of a market economy. Market economies operate by equal exchange; those who lack units of value (ie money) must be given units of value to exchange for food. The decision thus must be made how to give those units of value and to whom. The ‘simplest’ option is a UBI - universal basic income (ie give everyone enough money to live on at a basic level).
However, the difficulty of securely (against both fraud and theft) and universally distributing money in an age before direct deposit consumer banking (as recently as the 70s it was still not standard, and as late as the 2000s I personally knew working people without bank accounts entirely) made any such experiment difficult and costly to attempt to implement - for which reason polities simply… did not. In addition to reasoning about budget concerns and ‘motivation to work’ (the latter of which has been strongly disputed by the evidence provided in modern small-scale UBI projects, which suggest little change in work patterns of recipients).
At present, political capital (and lack of popular consensus) are probably more the bottleneck preventing UBI than economic issues. But it wasn’t that long ago that the very real bureaucratic challenges of a pre-computerized society would have rendered it potentially entirely unfeasible.
Funny you’d mention direct deposit. I don’t trust that shit a damn bit, how the fuck is that even supposed to work?
I closed my last bank account about a decade ago when they refused to accept my tax return as a direct deposit. Fuck Hancock bank!