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The cruelty is the point.
deport who
Many economists already argue that the war on poverty is more like war on poor, and that giving housing to the homeless and unconditional income to the poor actually saves a lot more than putting them on welfare with a view to eventually getting them into workforce. Because of extenuating circumstances too complex to be simply explained succinctly, many people could not find jobs as easily and going on the job market for so long and while under welfare puts more financial and mental strain on those individuals. It costs more to put people on welfare, as you have bureaucracies to pay as well, than to simply give the poor unconditional cash transfers and housing. We’re also in an increasingly automated world where jobs are becoming less common so universal basic income is a must.
The one thing that makes this difficult is that if you give someone money unconditionally, it has to go to everyone universally. You can’t just give it to people below a certain income level.
If you have an income level limit to determine who will get it, people will decide against working if it puts them over the limit where they lose the provided income, and people working and getting just above that limit will resent having to work 40 hours a week to make just a little bit more than people who don’t work at all.
But then if you provide everyone with money universally, how will that affect inflation? If everyone gets $1000 every month, stores know they can increase prices, corporate landlords know they can increase rents and get a piece of the pie, and eventually that $1000 is basically useless.
Milton Friedman, a conservative economist from the 20th century, advocated for a negative income tax that worked similarly to a normal income tax. If you made $0 a year and filed a tax return, the government would give you let’s say the standard deduction (currently ~13k). As you increased your income, for every two dollars (could make this 3 or 4 too), you’d lose $1 of that negative income tax, so it would never be bad to make more money.
For a 2:1 ratio you’d have to make 26k+ to get no money. Some number examples:
Normal income + negative income tax = total income
$0 + $13,000 = $13,000
$6,500 + $9,750 = $16,250
$13,000 + $6,500 = $19,500
$19,500 + $3,250 = $22,750
$26,000 + $0 = $26,000
Making more money is never bad, and it still gets money to people who need it most with essentially no bureaucratic overhead.
I’m a socialist who disagrees with the vast majority of the shit Milton Friedman spewed, but negative income tax wasn’t a terrible idea, I might even go as far to say it’s good (as long as the amount is high enough).
To be fair, some people argue instead of universal basic utility. Having free housing and basic utilities to mitigate concerns of increasing inflation and rent. Many experts already advocate to treat housing as basic rights like education and food.
I don’t see either UBI or UBU being implemented in the near to medium term. It would only be practical in the further future when AI becomes advanced enough that many jobs have been taken over by it, displacing many human workers.
I’m convinced that UBI would make the world significantly better for everyone. I’m sure it wouldn’t outright solve problems like homelessness or poverty - financial literacy is still a thing, and people still fuck up or end up in bad situations that they can’t control - but al of these problems would be made significantly less impactful.
I also understand why the ruling classes of the world will never allow it to happen without a fight. If you aren’t dependent on your job… Then why stay in a job with poor conditions? Why stay working for a company that doesn’t care about you? Why tolerate poor pay? Suddenly workers have 1000x more bargaining power in every discussion with their employer… And frankly a lot of people would want to work part time, which is going through start to impact on company’s ability to employ enough staff at all.
Obviously they have a way out - providing employees with a better quality of life, benefits, good pay, work life balance, etc… but all that costs money and they hate that.
I wish [email protected] were more active. I’d be interested to follow any UBI pilot projects or related news.
But my Victorian value system!
Some politician should be in prison for this
Despite the recent uptick in fascist sympathy wanting you to think otherwise, politicians making political decisions you disagree with is not actually a jailable offense.
Some politician should lose re-election for this.
Grossly mismanaging public funds should at least involve some kind of disciplinary action.
I think jail is a little extreme unless the funds went directly into the politician’s pocket. But some kind of heavy fine, or removal from office for egregious or repeat offenses seems entirely reasonable. Do we really want to encourage politicians to waste millions in tax payer money hunting down a fraction of that in fines.
They must have known who had outstanding fines and how much it would total to be. Did no one bother to open excel for this whole fiasco?
Politicians absolutely have a responsibility to exercise their positions appropriately just like any other job. The problem is we’ve all forgotten this and default to the “well vote them out” excuse to excuse some blantly shitty behaviour that nobody else would ever get away with in a regular job.
Just look at how Trump is still bizarrely in the running to become US president again for just how far we’ve let them push it. It’s a disgrace.
Or rather the voters who punish any politician that’s not perceived as “tough on crime”
deleted by creator
Not really of course but just making the point that by and large the policy we get is the policy we vote for.
Ooh, holding the people accountable? That’s a risky move, you sure you want to aggro the hive like that?
It’s really sad and I see why people blame the police for arresting these folks who are already struggling. But, to be fair, the police aren’t acting independently; they are told exactly what to do and who to arrest by people much higher up.
I’ve seen it here with out Trax train system, homeless people getting harassed by the patrolmen who come along to see if you really bought a ticket or not. And it really is heartbreaking, I just want to say “let me pay for them” but it isn’t allowed.
Obviously when this kind of thing is out of control, there’s a system problem not just a people problem. I don’t know why we can’t make mass transit easier for people who are already having difficulties most of us can’t even comprehend.
The fact it isn’t allowed for you as a free person with resources to help somebody else without resources is morally abhorrent.
I agree totally. It’s morally repugnant to me and yet it’s the reality where I live. Here in Utah, they are constantly harassing homeless people, but it isn’t because police (some of who I know) are wanting to do it - the governor here has made it clear that homeless people are to be treated like garbage, and when it comes to transit fare, they must be arrested if they ride without a ticket (although I’d be happy to buy them a ticket anytime, but that isn’t legal to buy them a fare here in Utah).
but that isn’t legal to buy them a fare here in Utah
As a foreigner with no clue of US law, I cannot believe this would hold up in court. Who’s to prevent you from giving a gift to a person of your choice? If corporations can donate unlimited money to election campaigns and call it an expression of their fReEdOM Of SpEeCh, how is it not freedom of speech to buy someone a ticket?
Well as an example, my family and I were riding a Trax train (which is really a nice public transit system) and when we got off, there was a homeless person being pulled off by the police, and she was in tears and obviously very tired and didn’t have a ticket.
I offered to buy it for her, I said, “whatever fare she owes, we can certainly pay it.” But the officer said “No you can’t do that under the law, she is required to buy it herself.” But - how CAN she buy it herself in that situation? And why make the poor women feel even worse about herself.
It just made me angry, but Utah is a very restrictive place with a very authoritarian right-wing government, and there is no recourse for fighting back here. I don’t blame the police, they know their jobs are on the line also.
I don’t blame the police, they know their jobs are on the line also.
You should absolutely blame the police, because they had every opportunity to choose a career other than being an oppressor.
Not even just that, in the situation above the cops seem to have had multiple chances to show some compassion and empathy. I highly doubt it’s actually against the law for you to buy someone else a ticket. Do your kids have to work to earn the money to buy their own ticket to ride with you?
What if you just slipped them some dollars. Or just - say “hey you, here’s that 20 I owe you from last week”.
You actually believe the solution is that there are no police officers? And that would help poor people?
Well I don’t see police as oppressors, except in cases where they unfairly hurt someone. And that’s not the rule, that’s really the exception despite what the media would have you believe. If you’ve ever worked or had family who worked in policing, you’d see why i say that.
There’s some confusion of order going on. In no state would it be illegal to buy someone else a ticket. However, if someone is being arrested for riding without a fare, the crime(whether it should be considered that or not), has already been committed. Even if they could afford to buy a ticket themselves, making that purchase after the fact won’t prevent the fine/arrest. So someone stepping in and offering to purchase a ticket doesn’t change the outcome either.
Well you’re right, once the crime (even if it is fairly petty) has been committed, there’s no way to step in and purchase the ticket after the fact, it’s just that it was sad to see how unsympathetic the patrol people were to her plight. If my family had not purchased a ticket, I still feel like we still would have been treated better than they treated her, they were pretty rough with her and she was already in a lot of distress. There has just got to be a better way.
There’s definitely something wrong with how metro police and police in general profile people and treat some as less than human.
I just wanted to clarify the specific point about paying for another person not being illegal.
I probably should have added that panhandling and loitering are illegal in some areas. So buying tickets for strangers wouldn’t be illegal anywhere, but hanging around and asking strangers to buy you a ticket can be considered illegal.
Also, cops aren’t required to be honest/informed on the letter of the law. So there’s no guarantee a cop wouldn’t tell someone something false about whether helping a stranger is allowed.
That is true in some cases, as in any field there are always bad actors, police are not above being temperamental. I know that I could never do that job, because I’m quick to anger and not very sympathetic when someone gets in my way.
But to be fair, this poor lady, she didn’t ask anyone to buy her a ticket (that I’m aware), she was just caught using the trax train without one. And that is illegal, i get that, no matter who you are. But she was so stressed out, bawling her eyes out and asking for help. I just wanted to offer help but the police were standoffish and took her away.
If she had approached us before she boarded and asked if we could help buy a ticket, we certainly would have. I’d rather spend a little to help someone that watch them being treated like a sick animal with no value. That was a very sad day for me.
babyslime reblogged snussyeating
What an exciting time to be alive 😄
Huh, I was just watching a Cash Jordan YT Video last night about the NYC Subway system and in it he said that the MTA estimates its losing 690 Million dollars per year because of people dodging fares.
That’s a staggeringly high number but based on volume of people fare dodging in the background of the video I can almost believe it.
The way the original post was written it could be they spent $150 million and the people they caught owed $100k. So they didn’t catch everyone and both statistics can be right.
The MTA lost $690 million due to ALL dodgers, including tolls and railroad fares.
$315 million lost in bus fares
$285 million lost in subway fares
$46 million lost in bridge and tunnel tolls
$44 million lost in railroad fares
So yeah, I’m guessing the 104k is the ones they caught, which makes the narrative that the police aren’t unnecessary they are just bad at their jobs…
RuLe oF LaW must be enforced, peasants be damned
And don’t think you didn’t contribute to that $150 mil just because you don’t live in New York. NYPD received $500 mil from the federal ARP Act.
TIL that a yearly Ticket for NY costs over 1500$ whereas a yearly Ticket for the whole of Germany costs 588€… Seems legit…
I thought paying $900 a year for my transit pass was ludicrous, and mine at least comes out of my income pre-tax thanks to an agreement with the city. $1500 a year is almost silly, no wonder people are dodging fare.
$1500 is about 1398.30 euros
That’s not true
The “Deutschland-Ticket” costs 49€ a month and you can use any train, Subway or Bus in Germany (except High Speed trains)… Source: i have one
I don’t know about NYC or Germany, but a yearly ticket that covers the Helsinki metropolitan is 993.70€.
Are people really so dumb they believe that’s a decision directly form the police department? No wonder you suck at elections…
But if this simply deters fare jumpers for the next fourteen hundred years, then it will have nearly paid for itself!
Nobody really considers the long game on these things.
My issue is with incompetent government misusing tax income, demonstrating they don’t deserve to collect it in the first place.
This whole post is dumb as hell. If $100,000 is all the money they collected, in a year, in NYC, that tells me the cops are ignoring the issue. If the city was collecting millions and millions, then it would be an ACAB story.
I’m reading the penalty is typically $100, let’s roll with that. Reading they system just passed 1-billion riders for the first time in 2022. (Wow.)
$104,000/$100=1,040 people busted (assuming once charge each). 1040/1B= 0.00000104 of the total riders incurred a ticket.
Not seeing the percent of those riders that were jumpers, but it’s going to be a few orders of magnitude larger than 0.00000104. LOL, the street cops are utterly ignoring this thing.
You didn’t read it right, the amount of missing fare is $100k from people not paying, not that the subway system only makes $100k in total.
I took economics in my college days and this is a very stark example of people who are bad at economics.
Everything costs money. You can relate everything to a dollar amount in business. From labor, to time spent, to equipment and it’s use, the cost of fuel for transportation etc. Knowing the full cost of selling an item including the time spent making it, the supplies used, the failure rate where you need to replace it at no cost to the customer, everything should be able to be factored in. From there you can set the cost of something, taking the overall price for all involved aspects of creating the thing, and adding some profit margin.
Spending a dollar to make a dime is adequate. If your economic costs are a dollar and you sell the thing for $1.10 then you make money. Sell enough and that’s business.
With all that being said, the cost of transit fares should be set with the expectation that there will be unavoidable times where people will ride for free. Whether that’s because of gate jumping, or other fare avoidance, or that someone simply entered into the system in an unexpected way that bypassed the fare system, or if it’s simply that a fare was given out as courtesy, it’s all baked into the fares that everyone pays.
The only time chasing down the people intentionally skipping their fare, makes any sense is if that amount of loss because of fare skipping is significantly above the expected losses from fare skipping. Googling it, the NYC transit system has a gross revenue around 5.8 billion dollars. Which means the amount of revenue to be gained by chasing down ~$100k in losses is around 0.0017%
If, the process of chasing down the fares costs over 1000% more than the fares are worth to do it, then the simple answer is: don’t do it. That’s basic economics.
In addition, they garner so much negative publicity in that process that they damage their reputation needlessly, which may lead to additional spending to improve their public image.
Finally, if you don’t have more than 0.002% of your earnings set aside for losses like this, then you shouldn’t be running the business. In reality, that number should be much, much higher than 0.002%.
To conclude: the whole thing is stupid from the outset. Tracking the losses makes sense, so you know what the figures are. Once you know the figures, crunching the numbers to see if pursuing action against the perpetrators is trivial, and should show a very clear picture of whether to take action or not.
In this case, no action was appropriate. Instead, they spent $150 million to get their public image ruined chasing after a bit more than $100k, and they will likely spend $100M more to try to repair their public image.
The losers in this situation? The people.
Subway fare dodgers steal $285 million per year, so spending $150 million to try to stop or prevent that in the future isn’t that unreasonable. It turns out to have not paid off because they only caught people who owe an equivalent to $100k.
I imagine that they assumed the increased surveillance would prevent some unknown amount of future fare dodging which can’t be quantified because the overall trend seems to be increasing.
They’re not bad at economics, they’re simply lying about what their goal was. That $150mil didn’t just blip out of existence like in a video game, it ended up in people’s pockets.
I would bet good money that many of those pockets belonged to friends and family members. Neoliberals have been using this tactic for decades as a way to turn public funds into private profits.
Or it just went into overtime for enforcers to sit around a train station watching a monitor.
I keep saying this about politicians in general.
For example, do we really think that Republicans don’t believe in climate change? Their uneducated electorate, maybe, but a bunch of ivy league educated lawyers sitting in DC? They know. They just prioritize profitability over truth, and we’re all left to pick up the pieces.
We in the US have the illusion of democracy, a non-representative government that purports itself to be ‘for the people’. It keeps up the illusion just enough to maintain its own existence.
it’s a nicely written post and although I do believe the costs made to reduce the faire skippers is out of proportion I also believe you should mention another important fact.
That is that the more money that is being put in to prevent it the lower the damage will be. A good example is tax evasion. The bigger the chance of getting caught is, the less people who will attempt it. Thus if you reduce the preventive measures this will automatically go up. But yea again I do not believe 150m weighs up to 100k.
Actually I might’ve forgotten another factor. I believe and please do correct me if I’m wrong. Is that a lot of misbehaving people on the trains also skip the train fair. So it be 2 birds in one stone, safety and revenue.
In society, those people are called capitalists.
Capitalists want to take whatever is available and make it so that it is theirs. More for them, less for everyone else.
They will take whatever the “market will bear” and hide behind caveat emptor when people cry foul.
Ooh I ain’t arguing that mate. Just discussing economics. Providing free public transport is another discussion point that is interesting of course.
Alienated take typical of 'muricans – you do know that there are other countries in the world, right? Loads of places have “free” turnslides that you can take if you can’t afford the fare, and yet not everyone goes through them.
Lal mate, it’s that’s rather funny. No I am definitely not American. So if you could kindly get of your high horse and instead of throwing insults politely tell me about countries where these free turn slides are as i have yet to spot them in Europe and Asia.
Your insults have no other objective than to make yourself feel better. Though I hope that in the future you will be kinder and focus on informing people of another way to go about this issue. I would’ve gladly heard that and probably agreed with your point.
Something I read in discussions about San Francisco Bay Area transit which I did not see in your comment: perception of fare jumpers being responsible for an outsize proportion of antisocial behavior lead to commuters feeling unsafe.
For the record, I support UBI and like the sound of free transit.
That’s more of a social issue than anything.
It may be the case that those who are unable to pay fares, are also those that are likely to have no income or homeless or something. The “dregs” of society if you will.
I don’t want to dive into this too deeply, because homelessness and poverty are another issue than what I was driving at, but it is something that we’re not doing well with and it’s something that needs to be addressed. I also support UBI and free transit would be nice but I don’t think that’s going to happen unless things change significantly. Even UBI is a long shot as is. Giving away services for free to everyone like transit access is basically anti-capitalist and a difficult thing to persuade others (especially conservative leaning individuals - specifically the capitalists) to agree to.
Regardless, there may be some association between the so-called “dregs” of society and criminal and antisocial behaviour. I understand drug addiction and how it starts well enough to know that people who are in -for all intents and purposes- “hopeless” situations, are at high risk of drug seeking behavior and looking to drugs to relieve their mental suffering. Of course this can lead to a whole slew of other issues, but it can be caused by social factors including unemployment, job loss, and homelessness. It can go the other way, that drugs lead to homelessness, job loss and unemployment (among other things), but that’s neither here nor there. The fact is, antisocial, criminal and addict behaviors are often correlated to the poor, destitute, homeless, etc. Whether that correlation is accurate or not is up for debate, since it is difficult to keep any records for those that are displaced, nevermind records that are good enough to really say such correlations are fact. Nevertheless, the general viewpoint of the average person is that the homeless/drug addicted/criminals are going to more often be the ones doing bad things, such as dodging fares. Again, that may or may not be true, but it is the perception that matters in this case.
In the absence of any evidence, it is hard to say that the antisocial types are the majority of fare dodgers. The intent that I derived from the limited information provided by the op, was that they were seeking to end fare dodging. There was no other significant stated purpose for the investigation. In that context, pushing forward with the investigation, given the economics of the situation, the decision was ill conceived, and should have died in the meeting where it was proposed. If the intent was to “clean up” the transit from undesirables doing antisocial things like the example you posted, then that should have been clear in the statements of intent by the NYPD and NY transit authority folks.
I don’t have the context for it to say that was one of their stated intents, as I’m not a person living in New York State, nevermind NYC, and I have no reason to, nor desire to follow the happenings in New York. So if the understanding I have is wrong, I would invite someone to please correct me.
The perspective I was seeking to explain in my previous post was that of an economist (in a very general sense - I have economic background and understanding, though my understanding would be massively overshadowed by anyone with a major in economics), and explain not only that their reasoning was flawed, but that the idea was faulty from the outset.
Unless there was an alterior motive that I’m not aware of, the people running the show over there, and anyone responsible for making this happen, should be fired, since they basically just took $150M and set it on fire for no reason whatsoever.
Getting back into economics in a few weeks, sounds like a great starting point to review and get my head back into it. Disclaimer- I am half asleep.
You are discussing MR vs R, but wording is confusing. You are saying spend a dollar to get 0.10, not spend a dollar to make 1.10. Spend a dollar and profit $0.1 - good. Spend a dollar and get a dime - no.
A common mistake for those who learn econ - especially first year - is that it is taught in isolation. Set price for profit max, trade increases productivity and makes the average better - loss>profit shut something down. But it doesn’t teach the wider considerations - people who are affected, long term run v short term.etc.
In this example, and I don’t have the numbers:
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what is the profit, and what are the fixed costs?
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what long term revenue is being lost, what else will be lost when it isn’t prosecuted?
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what message does doing nothing send to those paying. What other behaviors are these non payers displaying?
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what is the cost of a lawful and ordered society?
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does it need to be profitable, does police action only matter if it makes money, or is it a cost to service?
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what equipment, training and experience did law get to do this, and can it be used elsewhere? What systems were put in place (security.etc) that supports other practices.
Make no mistake - seems well excessive. But there is a wider consideration.
I am by far, not an economics major. I took a few courses, that’s all. I know more about it than the average, but not nearly enough to make a career from it.
Regardless, I appreciate the comment. I’m not sure what else to say besides thank you.
Neither- business major and been tutoring 1st year economics for the last two years or so.
As I say, it’s a common mistake. We teach for the test, theory and how to apply it in a business context but it doesn’t take into account reality and wider issues… that’s later on.
Not a problem - always happy to talk with people who want to discuss rather than argue.
I’m always a fan of discussion. I’m also a fan of being corrected constructively.
To be fair, my understanding of economics, while it may be better than most, is all based on my college courses from more than 10 years ago. It stuck with me, and has helped to guide a lot of decision-making. I rarely buy the cheapest option when I need something, and spend time weighing the benefits of options to try to find something that I believe will provide a low TCO and high ROI.
Of course my needs are fairly simple compared to the complexities of businesses and public facing services. The exercise allows me to stretch my economics skills a little and I enjoy it for the most part; needless to say, I’m a bit rusty on the specifics.
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You also neglected to factor in the economic benefit of people taking a trip they don’t pay for vs not taking that trip at all because they can’t pay. Those people might be taking the train to work, which increases economic activity and value of the entire system, or to school, which is an investment into the future of the system, or to do shopping or eating at restaurants, both of which add value to the system. But I’m also one of those people that think public transit should be free since giving people the ability to freely move around an area can only have net positive outcomes.
The struggle here is that you’re talking about money earned after the fact and not including game theory. It would be a tough experiment to conduct, but say you spent $150 million to save $104. What if you didn’t spend that $150M? Would you have an extra $40k in the bank? Or would the $104M in losses actually end up more like $1.2B because, slowly, everyone realised there was no reason to pay a fare?
I don’t know what the case is here, but I imagine some economists have determined that $150M is enough to balance between actually getting people to ride the subway (increasing fare will eventually drive down revenue) and a substantial enough threat to prevent jumpers (no cops in the way means tons more jumpers).
104k loss, not 104m. It would take 150 years of no change to be worth the tax money wasted.
