Sure, let’s just give homeless people money

This looks like a good idea to us:

Homeless people have been given £2,000 lump sum payments to spend on whatever they want.

The move – the first of its kind in the UK – is designed to test unconditional payments as an alternative to social support measures such as aid from charities.

It is based on the idea that giving people personal responsibility over their finances increases their chances of escaping homelessness and being able to work.

Humans value agency so yes, it’s long been known that people having money to spend as they wish is of more value to them than the same money spent upon what the bureaucracy thinks they should get. Census over in the US has pointed this out for years - people value what they get from Medicaid and so on at leass than it costs to provide Medicaid and so on.

Thus those ideas of universal basic income - for us the important word there is “basic” while proponents all too often seem to mean rather more than that - have an attraction. It’s possible to make poor people better off at the same cost to the rest of society by simply giving money to the poor rather than whatever The Fabians and the like think poor people should be grateful for getting in terms of goods and services.

But much more important than any of these is that this is an experiment. Something that will be monitored to see how it all works out. Obviously, in one sense, this is not a market experiment and yet, in another, it is the very beating heart of what a market economy is all about. Try many things, try all of them perhaps, then do more of what works and less of what does not. So, it’s necessary to try unconditional cash grants to see how it works out then we can decide to do more of this or perhaps less.

We approve of the experiment. We’ll all have to wait and see whether it’s something we should do more of, of course.

Tim Worstall