Take a look at GiveDirectly, which focuses on direct cash payments to the poor instead of traditional centrally planned aid actions. https://www.givedirectly.org/
One of their early findings was that people in Kenya in thatched roof homes used their money to get tin roofs, an intervention that was on nobody's radar, and greatly improved quality of life.
People are in poverty /by definition/ because they don't have money, and are generally painfully aware of what their biggest challenges are.
The parent was talking about American poor who do have enough income for housing and food but spend it on luxuries instead because of mismanagement. Kenya poor are probably completely different - not having enough for either housing or luxuries so when get get money, housing probably comes before a big TV.
Maybe they're different? Maybe not? Maybe the parent poster's parents were anomalous, and we shouldn't slag an experiment on the basis of one anecdote?
Let's do a study and find out! The point of the basic income experiment is that people don't have much of an idea of how it will play out - except that the study in Manitoba seemed to support the idea that the poor know what they need.
The housing voucher wouldn't cover school books, electricity bills, gas to get to work, or materials to keep a small business going. All of which also come up in the GiveDirectly outcomes.
On point 3, the initial Givedirectly interventions gave cash to the poorest members of a village, which created resentment and social problems; going forward, they just give money to everyone in a village. If anything, they've learned to use /fewer/ evaluations on giving money out, and explicitly avoid getting involved in accountability beyond exit surveys. The point is to reduce overhead and increase impact, exactly what we hope to have from a basic income scheme.
I'm definitely in the camp that believes that basic income doesn't take the place of things like alcohol rehab programs or mental health facilities. But it will be a huge boon to people who are poor because they don't have money, people living paycheck to paycheck in bullshit jobs (if they can manage to find jobs at all), which is an increasingly large slice of the US population.
> A housing voucher would cover analogous issues in the US.
Or it wouldn't. I don't really want someone to suffer just because a bureaucrat forgot to put an item on a list of approved purchases. Or someone suffers because they have a particular edge case that wasn't considered.
What were the results of the same experiment in a first world country?
Because I am not convinced that the results transfer. Most poor people are poor because they failed to do things that will get them a job that pays money.
If somebody dropped out of high school because he liked to party, what argument is there for trusting him with a thirty thousand dollar check?
On the other hand if he dropped out because his parents needed him to work, he would still benefit from food and a bed while he studied for his GED.
In Kenya the ratio of accidental indignants is likely so high that the increased efficiency beats the loss for the deadbeats.
Before you down-vote me, my parents didn't have a lot when I was born and my grandparents would qualify as poor by any standard but their own. We still did okay, but I have good friends who make very decent sums of money and their bank accounts are always empty on the first.
One of their early findings was that people in Kenya in thatched roof homes used their money to get tin roofs, an intervention that was on nobody's radar, and greatly improved quality of life.
People are in poverty /by definition/ because they don't have money, and are generally painfully aware of what their biggest challenges are.