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.
I sure hope you’re never down on your luck in your life and need help with food or rent. I hope we never have another Covid-type incident where small businesses need help, where millions of people (maybe you?) need extensions on their unemployment. Hopefully you never need social security income. I’m sure that you don’t use anything in your daily life that other people have paid taxes for but don’t use themselves.
I guess the countless people who spent their lives working and paying taxes, only to get laid off, unable to afford rent, and have to live out of their car just get nothing in return for having paid into the tax system for years. Oh, and especially all those people who work full time, sometimes at two jobs, only to have to go home to their car or tent at night. Fuck them, amirite