Anti Wage-Slavery Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 1720-1722

As for where the money will come from, there are a multitude of proposals on how it could be funded, but the money is there. Plus, the idea is that basic income will significantly reduce the cost of tax-funded services. Experiments in basic income have found that it reduces emergency room visits and mental health care costs, plus costs related to crime. It’s a big investment into giving everyone a better world instead of using that money to clean up the results of poverty.

But the best and most feminist part of basic income is how it will help all women and all people of marginalized identities, particularly those who are so often forgotten by privileged feminism. Disabled and chronically ill women won’t have to worry so much about whether they’ll be able to live. Though you can get welfare payments for disability, the hoops that these individuals are forced to jump through in order to get a sum that is no longer enough to live on are a full time job and a constant source of anxiety. Basic income is unconditional.
Basic Income:
A Feminist Issue
By Lindsey Weedston
Equality For Her
[emphasis JS]



A new study by Apartment List, a rental aggregator, shows that over half of high-income households claim the tax benefit, called the mortgage interest deduction (MID) because it reduces a filer’s taxable income by the amount of interest they owe on their mortgage. More than $10bn goes to households with incomes in the top 1%.

More expensive properties mean a larger deduction, so homeowners in pricey coastal regions – including Silicon Valley, San Francisco and surrounding towns such as Berkeley, and southern Connecticut – lead the country in the amount they are rewarded by the government, with subsidies of about $3,500 per household.

By comparison, only one in four Americans in need of rental housing actually receive it. In fact, the rental-assistance system – which is called Section 8 and generally covers costs that exceed 30% of someone’s income – is so overburdened that until recently, the city of Los Angeles had declined to even accept new applications for a voucher for a staggering 13 years, and New York’s waitlist has been closed since 2009. When Los Angeles finally started accepting new applications again, for only two weeks in October, almost 200,000 people applied for only 20,000 spots on the waitlist.

Indeed, in none of the country’s 25 largest cities do low-income residents receive more than half of the money that goes on housing benefits. This despite the fact that stable housing has been linked to improved educational outcomes, health and psychological wellbeing. Mostly, the cash goes to the well off.
US spends twice as much on tax break for rich as on rent for the poorest
Alastair Gee
The Guardian[emphasis JS]

Just who are the poor? Alston says that many of them are children and women. And they are all races. "The face of poverty in America is not only black or Hispanic but also white, Asian and many other colors."
...
I saw sewage-filled yards in states where governments don't consider sanitation facilities to be their responsibility." And "people who had lost all of their teeth" because dental care wasn't covered by their health insurance plans. And homeless people who were told to move by a police officer who had "no answer when asked where they could move to."

"People in the U.S. seem particularly unable to stomach the sight of homeless," he says, "yet are unwilling to enact policies to help them."
..
Still, he concludes that American innovation, money and power aren't being channeled to address poverty — and there is a lot of poverty to address. In 2016, 40 million people — more than 1 in 8 citizens — lived in poverty, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. "The reality is that the United States now has probably the lowest degree of social mobility among all the rich countries," Alston says. "And if you are born poor, guess where you're going to end up — poor."
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 at the end of the day, particularly in a rich country like the USA, the persistence of extreme poverty is a political choice made by those in power."
Sasha Ingber
U.N. Investigator On Extreme Poverty Issues A Grim Report — On The U.S.
December 21, 2017
 [emphasis JS]