This is better than nothing, but the big advantage of the UBI is that there is no bureaucracy deciding who gets it and doesn't get it. If there are any conditions on the income, then there's a constant danger that the program will become another tool of control.
> all we want to do is advance the concept of direct cash transfer
I love the simplicity of this. I've been thinking a lot about generosity myself.
And while I don't have $100m, our family also has everything we need. What ideas, resources and tools are there for folks like me who want to be as generous as possible with what we have?
To start, I've set up a Donor Advised Fund because I learned that it's a great way to do something with a bunch of appreciated stock that I don't want to pay taxes on. What other tips do you all have?
This honestly rubs me the wrong way. I have very close friends who mightily struggle financially but they are always just outside the threshold for assistance. Basic statistics don't capture the people who are barely making it or living on debt.
The appeal to me of UBI was always that it was highlighting that everyone needs their basic needs met. The moderately paid worker barely making rent in SF needs the money as much as anybody but would never pass a means test.
If AI and robotics reach their logical goals then projects like this are about to become more and more important. I don't mind machines taking all of the jobs, as long as all of those displaced workers don't starve.
Why rural Americans? The same amount of cash will go a lot further and likely be more effective in rural areas of other countries. The source of Atwood's wealth (Stack Overflow etc) is global, not American.
Deindustrialization has hollowed out most American cities outside of major cities, and the corresponding anti globalism tantrum contributed to the current political situation. Because of the apportionment of House and Senate seats, these people hold most Americans hostage with their disproportionate voting power, and paying a ransom seems better than the alternative we are living through.
Nope. Globalism has made America richer than pretty much any nation in the existence of human history.
The election of leaders who prioritize the distribution of wealth from the poorest to the richest rather than vice versa has hollowed out rural America.
And rural America disproportionately votes for such leaders.
Technically you're not wrong, but without globalization, deindustrialization wouldn't have happened and unions (and strike threats) would probably be strong enough to prevent the poor to rich redistribution.
So even if globalization made America richer on average, it also destroyed the fair redistribution mechanism.
Rural and semi-exurban people consider themselves a nation¹ that the urban majority are not members of. And now they want that nationalism socialized. If you see what I mean.
¹: by the formal denotation in sociology, which they agree with but not describe it that way if asked.
Why not rural Americans? When helping someone in my community, I don't first stop and analyze whether my time/money could be better allocated to maximize some sort of utilitarian loss function, I help them because they're there, need my help, and I'm able to help.
I don't disagree with you, but there is value in considering how money could be best put to use for the common good.
One perspective overlooked here is the purchasing power of non-Americans (i.e., not U.S. citizens). Dollars in developing countries can be worth multiple times what they are in the United States. For example, you could help 5000 rural Vietnamese for every 1000 rural Americans. There is also a higher potential for rural Americans to obtain dollars vs. non-Americans. In utilitarian terms you have the potential to do more good by sending money to rural communities overseas.
There's a lot of value in helping out locally as well.
I don't have as much lived experience of someone in Vietnam as I do someone in my community. Nor do I understand the language or the culture. There's more overhead in making it happen and there will likely be a lot of things I'll never take into account or understand. On the other hand, I know what it's like living in a HCOL state where many jobs don't pay enough for a family to survive and have struggled in my own past. Could my money have more purchasing power elsewhere? Sure. And they're still people in my community struggling and I have the power to help them and a greater understanding of what they're facing. Community seems to get discounted a lot in the discussion around effective altruism and I think that's unfortunate.
What I know for sure is, if I could, I would invest my money into clean drinking water infrastructure for both communities. Helping families pay the water company to distribute jugs of filtered drinking water is great, but infrastructure that's not contaminated would be so much better for everyone.
It gives me serious "steal from the poor and give to the rich" vibes. Rural Americans are richer than the majority of humans, and Stack Overflow was a fairly global website.
Rural America also has a government that is fully capable of taking proper care of it's underprivileged; most governments across the world are not.
These statements paint with a rather broad brush. There are parts of the US that are so impoverished that it defies belief and more closely resemble pre-industrialization countries than they do what most associate with the United States.
They also ignore that even if other rural areas are technically speaking more rich than the rest of the world, still struggle with an extreme shortage of opportunity, upward mobility, and sense of purpose.
I speak from experience, having been raised in one such area. Had I not moved to a tech hub in search of greener pastures (which is not something everybody is capable of), my life would look so different now as to be unrecognizable. Instead of earning the upper end of the salary band for my line of work with numerous upward trajectories to pursue and a solid bit of retirement stuck away, I'd be working a job earning maybe ~20% as much that doesn't keep track with inflation with zero mobility and an even smaller fraction of retirement funds, and that's one of the best possible outcomes in that region and inaccessible to most.
I've not aligned with the area I hail from politically for a long time now, but clearly it needs help.
I would be too, but I can also see how someone in such a situation could feel depressed, hopeless, and neglected, particularly with the sheer amount of wealth other parts of their own country are producing.
Not to mention one of his choices is a white-minority county in rural Mississippi. The idea that Jeff Atwood of all people is a raging racist is insanely laughable to anyone that has followed his work over the last 15+ years.
Your point with regards to criteria has merit, but this is unlikely to move the needle as Rural America continues to hollow out, so it's their funds to run the experiment. West Virginia has one of the oldest populations in the country (3rd [1]) while having the lowest birth rate (~16k/year and falling), for example (one of their pilots was in Mercer County, WV). Similar for Mississippi (highest out migration in the US [2] [3]).
There is simply no political appetite for the spending required in this regard without broad system changes to enable remote work to support rural communities as employers leave and agriculture dies. As you mention, this population cohort is what SNAP and Medicaid was stripped from. If some people have better lives through direct cash transfers while the outcome isn't going to change, that's fine I suppose. There are worse hobbies someone with resources could have.
TLDR Rural America will remain in decline [4] [5], urbanization will continue (because that's where the economic potential and jobs are).
[4] ‘Too many old people’: A rural Pa. town reckons with population loss - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44583495 - June 2024 (81% of rural counties recording more deaths than births between 2019 and 2023)
(I track the decline of Rural America broadly to reach out to institutions to ingest their data and collections for long term archival before they evaporate)
"Agriculture dies" makes zero sense. Have people stopped eating food and plants? There are hundreds to thousands of plants with commercial value that are grown around the globe. You're trying to tell me that WV can't grow one of them profitably. Or maybe it's because they've so thoroughly and irreversibly poisoned their soil and water to where nothing good will grow anymore.
Average age of a farmer is 58, China has reconfigured their imports towards South America for trade stability. "Agriculture dies" = Rural America agriculture, which is needed to sustain Rural America economies.
Farmers also commit suicide at ~3.5x the rate of the general public; it is too early to tell imho how much of the strife I enumerate below will lead to changes in that statistic.
This report illustrates rural cash transfers beautifully: https://eig.org/great-transfermation/
Unless you are prepared to let the idiots starve to death, UBI will never work.
I love the simplicity of this. I've been thinking a lot about generosity myself.
And while I don't have $100m, our family also has everything we need. What ideas, resources and tools are there for folks like me who want to be as generous as possible with what we have?
To start, I've set up a Donor Advised Fund because I learned that it's a great way to do something with a bunch of appreciated stock that I don't want to pay taxes on. What other tips do you all have?
[1] https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-road-not-taken-is-guarante...
[2] https://rgmii.org/
The appeal to me of UBI was always that it was highlighting that everyone needs their basic needs met. The moderately paid worker barely making rent in SF needs the money as much as anybody but would never pass a means test.
A gentleman named Luke said “For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall much be required” a long time ago.
https://www.biblegateway.com/verse/en/Luke%2012%3A48
And are a paraphrase of even older words:
"From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked." ~30AD
And probably even older than that.
The election of leaders who prioritize the distribution of wealth from the poorest to the richest rather than vice versa has hollowed out rural America.
And rural America disproportionately votes for such leaders.
So even if globalization made America richer on average, it also destroyed the fair redistribution mechanism.
¹: by the formal denotation in sociology, which they agree with but not describe it that way if asked.
One perspective overlooked here is the purchasing power of non-Americans (i.e., not U.S. citizens). Dollars in developing countries can be worth multiple times what they are in the United States. For example, you could help 5000 rural Vietnamese for every 1000 rural Americans. There is also a higher potential for rural Americans to obtain dollars vs. non-Americans. In utilitarian terms you have the potential to do more good by sending money to rural communities overseas.
I'm saying this as someone who loves Appalachia.
I don't have as much lived experience of someone in Vietnam as I do someone in my community. Nor do I understand the language or the culture. There's more overhead in making it happen and there will likely be a lot of things I'll never take into account or understand. On the other hand, I know what it's like living in a HCOL state where many jobs don't pay enough for a family to survive and have struggled in my own past. Could my money have more purchasing power elsewhere? Sure. And they're still people in my community struggling and I have the power to help them and a greater understanding of what they're facing. Community seems to get discounted a lot in the discussion around effective altruism and I think that's unfortunate.
Rural America also has a government that is fully capable of taking proper care of it's underprivileged; most governments across the world are not.
They also ignore that even if other rural areas are technically speaking more rich than the rest of the world, still struggle with an extreme shortage of opportunity, upward mobility, and sense of purpose.
I speak from experience, having been raised in one such area. Had I not moved to a tech hub in search of greener pastures (which is not something everybody is capable of), my life would look so different now as to be unrecognizable. Instead of earning the upper end of the salary band for my line of work with numerous upward trajectories to pursue and a solid bit of retirement stuck away, I'd be working a job earning maybe ~20% as much that doesn't keep track with inflation with zero mobility and an even smaller fraction of retirement funds, and that's one of the best possible outcomes in that region and inaccessible to most.
I've not aligned with the area I hail from politically for a long time now, but clearly it needs help.
positive change is slow and revenge politics makes it slower.
> because that’s exactly where my parents and I are from.
There is simply no political appetite for the spending required in this regard without broad system changes to enable remote work to support rural communities as employers leave and agriculture dies. As you mention, this population cohort is what SNAP and Medicaid was stripped from. If some people have better lives through direct cash transfers while the outcome isn't going to change, that's fine I suppose. There are worse hobbies someone with resources could have.
TLDR Rural America will remain in decline [4] [5], urbanization will continue (because that's where the economic potential and jobs are).
[1] https://www.wboy.com/news/west-virginia/west-virginia-has-th...
[2] https://www.wapt.com/article/mississippi-ranks-among-top-sta...
[3] https://mississippitoday.org/2025/07/15/faq-mississippi-brai...
[4] ‘Too many old people’: A rural Pa. town reckons with population loss - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44583495 - June 2024 (81% of rural counties recording more deaths than births between 2019 and 2023)
[5] Map Shows 21 States Where Deaths Now Outnumber Births - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46889024 - February 2026
(I track the decline of Rural America broadly to reach out to institutions to ingest their data and collections for long term archival before they evaporate)
Farmers also commit suicide at ~3.5x the rate of the general public; it is too early to tell imho how much of the strife I enumerate below will lead to changes in that statistic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_West_Virginia
https://usafacts.org/articles/us-agricultural-exports/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farmers%27_suicides_in_the_Uni...
https://www.propublica.org/article/utah-farmers-therapy-ment...
Former Farming Leaders Warn U.S. Agriculture Could Face ‘Widespread Collapse’ - https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/03/us/politics/us-agricultur... | https://archive.today/dDebF - February 3rd, 2026
China to favour Brazilian soybean imports in 2026 H1 despite renewed US inflows - https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-favour-brazilian-s... | https://archive.today/NXFCC - January 27th, 2026
$12 Billion Farm Aid Package Not Enough, Farm Leaders Say - https://farmpolicynews.illinois.edu/2025/12/12-billion-farm-... - December 12th, 2025
Farm Bankruptcies Rising in 2025 - https://farmpolicynews.illinois.edu/2025/07/farm-bankruptcie... - July 15th, 2025
Q1 2025 U.S. farm bankruptcies exceed 2024 - https://www.uaex.uada.edu/media-resources/news/2025/july/07-... - July 7th, 2025