I also support a shift to UBI, but your description of TANF/WIC is not grounded in reality. TANF has a 5 year lifetime, and many states actually have lower limits food stamps do not come close to covering the costs of feeding a family People do sell food stamps sometimes, not because they have more than they need, but because they are desperate for cash to pay for other necessities such as utilities.
The idea that people are getting by for years and years based on these as sources of income is a myth.
Thanks, to clarify I don't begrudge TANF/WIC but those two are a short list of benefits that are available. Rent assistance ($), daycare assistance ($), free healthcare that's better than what I can get on the market regardless of $$$$, etc. I explained in other comments how a lot of it works, and I think rather than means testing I would like to see a different form of enforcement for these programs.
That's not what the Canadian system is, though. The state kills people, and not just the terminally ill. There is lots of room for coercion, and more than a few disabled people have stories of someone trying to persuade them to consider MAiD even though they have never expressed any interest.
For many decades, California has had extremely restrictive building regulations, especially in the most desirable areas. That is slowly changing, but the actual building has always been straightforward. It is getting the permission to do so that is complicated, expensive, and often just impossible.
Agreed on all counts, but that doesn't make the problem of politics any less real. People problems are always the hardest to solve, especially when deeply problematic policies like Prop 13 are written into the state constitution.
That's a permissions problem, not a demand problem. If the free market would be let loose there, we'd have skyscrapers on every block. The issue is nibmy-oriented citizens who are actively resisting that.
Ironically, I live in the notoriously high-crime city to your north, with kids basically the same age. The older one has free reign of our neighborhood at this point. We live in a walkable neighborhood with streets narrow enough that cars can't pick up any significant speed. Everyone agrees that Columbia is "safer," but I'm way less worried about my kids up here.
This kind of thing is much more likely to happen in the discussion section of a large lecture class than in a small seminar, because the discussion section is likely taught by a graduate student with little prior teaching experience.
This is a plot point of the season of The Wire set in the school system. In Baltimore, it is definitely tied to funding--schools get per-pupil funding, but students have to actually be in attendance a certain percentage of the first six weeks of school in order to count for the funding formula.
There's significant research showing that housing-first policies (which means getting people into housing with basically no strings attached) are effective not only at reducing homelessness but also at improving mental health and addiction outcomes.
Literally incarcerating people just for being too poor to afford decent housing is also ethically abhorrent, of course, but it's also not the most effective way to reduce the problems that are bothering you.
It's a result of not funding appropriate community-based supports after deinstitutionalization. Deinstiutionalization could have worked out very, very differently, if we'd been willing to pay for the alternatives.
The idea that people are getting by for years and years based on these as sources of income is a myth.