Would giving everyone a house with renewable energy and water fix poverty?

[-]

EELightning@reddit

I believe studies of giving everyone a universal basic income shows that people will still want to work, but often in different roles they might have chosen if it was just for the money. For example if I had some of the financial pressure taken away I'd probably work as a photographer, rather than my current IT role.

[-]

Henegunt@reddit

What studies?

[-]

EELightning@reddit

Here's one trial in Finland.

https://weall.org/resource/finland-universal-basic-income-pilot

[-]

Henegunt@reddit

"The scheme was not strictly speaking a universal basic income trial because the recipients came from a restricted group and the payments were not enough to live on."

Also only 2000 people for a short time so doesn't show much.

I love when people just say "studies" the google stuff

[-]

peppermint_aero@reddit

Yes! People often say they'd volunteer, or pick work that pays less but is more meaningful to them or they feel contributes more to society.

[-]

Ok_Shirt983@reddit

So who cleans the toilets?

[-]

peppermint_aero@reddit

Nobody needs to be bullied into cleaning toilets by lack of better options.

Plenty of people will do it quite happily if you give them decent pay and decent conditions.

[-]

Ok_Shirt983@reddit

But with UBI they are being paid without having to clean toilets.

[-]

peppermint_aero@reddit

No, it's the "having to" that's the problem.

I guarantee you there are people out there who don't mind cleaning and would do it as a wage top-up on top of their UBI, the same way lots of people would continue working to top up their UBI. It's physically active work, you can listen to music as you do it, you're not stuck behind a desk, and there's probably a certain amount of flexibility with the shifts.

If you think nobody would do it out of choice, that's because you've only seen what it looks like when the pay and conditions are awful and people are forced into it.

[-]

Jaded_Library_8540@reddit

The beautiful thing is that they are people who would still be willing to clean the toilets - for the right wage.

[-]

shredditorburnit@reddit

Whoever shits it up?

[-]

BigFaithlessness618@reddit

It's a hard one.

At the moment if you did work and moved onto UBI likely everyone you know is working.

It would be different if all my friends were off work too and we could hang out all the time.

[-]

MiserableFloor9906@reddit

Good example of how UBI fails. So many people end up painting "art" and call it their societal contribution, now send my welfare cheque.

[-]

VideoNo82@reddit

And whoo would pay for this scheme?

[-]

Unfair_Procedure_944@reddit

There’s always morons who assume everybody but themself is lazy and just wants to sit around all day doing nothing. Probably says more about them. Some people might, most people like to have things to do. Things like universal income or free housing would not discourage people from doing stuff, it would provide them with the stability to choose their pursuits. We’re going to have to seriously consider this kind of safety net soon, as we are going to have to create a way for everybody to pursue more than menial labour. We are rapidly moving towards large scale automation, basic jobs are going to start disappearing, they already are. We need to seriously rethink how we structure societies, as this base layer of unskilled jobs is not going to be there.

[-]

red_black_red0@reddit

it would provide them with the stability to choose their pursuits.

Exactly - everybody would choose to do whatever they wanted.

Which would mean no binmen, no toilet cleaners, any job that's slightly dangerous or unpleasant would no longer be done....

[-]

Unfair_Procedure_944@reddit

Yes, automation would do those jobs, we’re already seeing it. As tech becomes better and cheaper, it will become more prevalent. Companies will always steer towards it, because it’s cheaper than paying people, and therefore more profitable.

[-]

CamflyerUK@reddit

Would you want a robot feeding and bathing your granny in her care home?

[-]

Unfair_Procedure_944@reddit

I would not put any of my family in a home

[-]

Sea-Complex5789@reddit

How much would it cost the taxpayer to give everybody a house and free utilities? Who is going to pay for it? Nice thought but absolutely impossible.

[-]

Appropriate-Cycle-31@reddit

This is one of those things chatgpt or Gemini is really good at doing. I asked how much it would cost to provide every UK citizen with 3 square meals a day, and it gave me a great break down on the meals, and several different meal plans with varying costs. Then you can refine your inquiries to get better more tailored results to fit your specific question.

Regardless, you’re correct, we’re not there yet as a society where we can offer post-scarcity (or near post scarcity) benefits to everyone.

[-]

KeyLog256@reddit

I'd love to have the energy and intelligence to do the maths on what ChatGPT/Gemini's answer was, but I would bet money it is incredibly stupifyingly wrong but looks like it is correct until you do the maths your self.

Incidentally, what was the answer?

[-]

Plastic-Machine-9537@reddit

Maths is something AI finds super easy so I don't understand why you think it would be "stupifyingly" wrong. The maths you'd have to do wouldn't even be hard maths.

You might find the source for the figures it used were not ones you think suitable but the actual mathematical calculations will be correct.

[-]

KeyLog256@reddit

Well yeah, that's my point. It's fine as a calculator, but it's blindly taking in stats it finds online with zero knowledge or comprehension of whether they're correct, and simply spitting out a result.

[-]

Plastic-Machine-9537@reddit

Cool so the maths will be right, the figures used might be wrong. That makes more sense.

[-]

Derries_bluestack@reddit

The collapse of the housing market (Ponzi scheme) would be interesting to watch.

[-]

Active-Strawberry-37@reddit

No. It would just put energy and water workers into poverty.

[-]

Plastic-Machine-9537@reddit

Why? Do you think it wouldn't be paid for and they'd all have to work for free? Weird.

[-]

Active-Strawberry-37@reddit

Ok? Who pays for it then?

[-]

Plastic-Machine-9537@reddit

Ah so you did think it wouldn't be paid for and they'd be working for free. How strange.

[-]

rovstuart@reddit

Not necessarily. In Scotland, your water bill is included in the council tax.

[-]

Derries_bluestack@reddit

How so? We'd still need energy and water. It just wouldn't be individual homeowners/tenants paying for it.

[-]

red_black_red0@reddit

No, because the trillion sand trillions it would cost would mean all other social services would collapse, the market house would crash catastrophically and the economy would sink in a way never seen before in any western nation.

[-]

Impossible-Ad4765@reddit

The housing market is a joke and it collapsing would be for the best. Too many people treat homes as an investment or a business when in-fact they are providing nothing of benefit to society.

[-]

red_black_red0@reddit

Property underpins the economy, wiping out any value it has, overnight would collapse the economy.

This is not an opinion.

[-]

Derries_bluestack@reddit

It's like when people stopped buying sandwiches from Pret during the pandemic. The economy almost collapsed.

Buy your overpriced train ticket folks! Get a daily £7 sandwich and pay £400,000 for a 1 bedroom flat. You need to keep the economy going.

[-]

JakeGrey@reddit

Probably not completely, but it'd help.

[-]

non-hyphenated_@reddit

You can look at the countries where they already do this for an example of how it would work out.

[-]

KeyLog256@reddit

Which countries do this?

I realise that sounds like a snarky Redditor type leading-question, but genuinely I wasn't aware this was a thing anywhere. Free housing, energy, and water?

[-]

CamflyerUK@reddit

The most likely outcome is that a lot of water and energy would be wasted. Why bother turning electric devices and taps off if it's all free?

However, more should be done for the elderly and vulnerable. A 90 year old at home all day will pay more for their heating bills than a young person who is at work.

[-]

Jaffiusjaffa@reddit

I mean, rent and bills is 120% of my paycheck so i imagine that would cost a lot of money.

[-]

Mr_Reaper__@reddit

There's definitely advantages to this but I don't think it will solve poverty. The cost to install and maintain those systems will be huge, so there will always be some cost that someone has to pay. Scaling down production of electricity and fresh water to single homes will reduce infrastructure costs, decrease losses, increase efficiency, and bring down energy costs to the consumer. But the cost of maintaining those systems will be on the homeowner so overall costs won't change much, unless the government subsidises it which means higher taxes or lower spending on other things.

As for making people want to stop work, I don't think that will happen. People need purpose and something to keep them busy. But lowering financial burden allows people to follow passions and focus on what they want to do as a vocation, rather than always being concerned by earning enough money.

[-]

Chicken_shish@reddit

if you're going to do that, you need to pay for it somehow - inevitably that means taxing the shit out of people who are working, to provide a universal benefit for everyone.

There will certainly be people at the margin who say "bugger it, I'm not carrying on working for £X, I'll sit on my arse. There will be another group of people who say "I'm not going to bust myself to earn money, I'll still work, but not earn so much". Your tax base is now falling, so you have to increase taxes more. You thus bring more people to the threshold of not working ... and it becomes a vicious spiral into zero tax revenue.

[-]

rovstuart@reddit

Here's a house free house ..... Here's the council tax to go with it.

[-]

Derries_bluestack@reddit

Won't someone think of the landlords and landed gentry?

How will millionaires survive without their feudal income from ground rent and leases.

[-]

GeorgeLFC1234@reddit

This is an ongoing debate for academics there is no correct answer to this. Interestingly it points to a world before poor laws and work houses where the church believed in caring for the poor without expecting them to have to go through loop holes to get it.

[-]

Round_Caregiver2380@reddit

I wonder if we get enough rainfall over a year to supply a household if all the rain from the roof was collected.

You could probably generate enough electric if you covered the roof and perhaps garden in solar panels and had a few massive batteries.

[-]

Michael_Oxlong@reddit

While it would raise the quality of living for those in poverty, we'd still have poverty, just a better standard of it. Poverty is defined by the lowest x% of the population.

There's countries where comparatively our poverty is like luxury to theirs.

[-]

When repling to submission/post please make genuine efforts to answer the question given. Please no jokes, judgements, etc.
Don't be a dick to each other. If getting heated, just block and move on.
This is a strictly no-politics subreddit!

Please help us by reporting comments that break these rules.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.