A study by USC and a San Francisco-based nonprofit has found that a $750 monthly stipend improves the lives of homeless people.

If 100 homeless people were given $750 per month for a year, no questions asked, what would they spend it on?

That question was at the core of a controlled study conducted by a San Francisco-based nonprofit and the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work.

The results were so promising that the researchers decided to publish results after only six months. The answer: food, 36.6%; housing, 19.5%; transportation, 12.7%; clothing, 11.5%; and healthcare, 6.2%, leaving only 13.6% uncategorized.

Those who got the stipend were less likely to be unsheltered after six months and able to meet more of their basic needs than a control group that got no money, and half as likely as the control group to have an episode of being unsheltered.

Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20231221131158/https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-12-19/750-a-month-no-questions-asked-improved-the-lives-of-homeless-people

    • @EngiNerd
      17•9 months ago

      That’s 0.7% of the 2023 US defence budget ($857.9B). I’d much rather have my taxes going to help people in need.

    • @[email protected]English
      15•9 months ago

      That is $489M. There are 160M tax payers in the US.

      Everyone gives and extra $5/mo, and we can raise it to $1000/mo UBI. Then incorporate more people as the tax base increases.

            • @[email protected]English
              0•9 months ago

              Do basic math. If we are talking about $5/mo per person, that means you got $60/yr per person. 60*160M=$9.6B.

              When taking taxes, 1 $10B isn’t a ton of money, let alone half that. And that’s just taking total tax payers at a flat rate. If you graduate it according to income, you could easily make this manageable for all persons. $5.89B is .13% of the total US tax revenue. So an additional .13% of tax revenue to help out .17% of the US population.

              Keep up.

    • @Pogbom
      6•9 months ago

      Translation: “I have money so you can go die, you stupid poor”

        • @[email protected]
          3•9 months ago

          If you want a serious answer, there are a lot of options. Closing tax loopholes for corporations, higher taxes for the wealthy, a freeze on additional military spending, stop outsourcing so much to contracted companies that blow through money for nothing (e.g. the reason why most people think government services are bad), etc. Those could all allow UBI to exist without raising taxes on the lower and middle class.

            • @[email protected]
              3•9 months ago

              Okay? It sounds like you just don’t want an answer. Many of those changes are actually very possible if more young people start voting in elections instead of just being apathetic or having that defeatist/“realist” attitude. If you think nothing can get better ever then yeah, every solution is “fantasy.”