This is very misleading reporting. First: All studies so far show a pretty consistent ~10% work disincentive. This is what all the detractors say when they say it disincentivizes work. So how about this one? From actually reading the study's conclusion:
> Slightly less than one-fifth were employed before but unemployed during the pilot (17%)
So even worse than what we've seen so far. 17% dropping out of the labor market when its a short-term study is huge.
Personal opinion: If you consider multi-generational entrenchments of poverty as its own problem, worth serious merit, then the work disincentive could be a disaster. In UBI long run, the children of parents who have never worked are probably going to be at a large disadvantage. I think its already a problem today for children of SSI recipient parents (even compared to children of SSDI parents), but its not easy to prove.
And this is a very misleading summary of the results.
Here are some actual quote from the study:
> Ten respondents moved from unemployment to employment while 32 moved from employment to unemployment. Of the participants who moved from employment to unemployment, 13 (40.6%) enrolled in full-time education during the pilot with the intention of re-entering the labour market later as more qualified workers.
Almost half of people who stopped working did it in order to train for a better job. That's great!
> most of the respondents who were unemployed during the pilot reported experiencing health issues that made it difficult or impossible for them to work.
Receiving BI allowed sick people to not be forced into work to pay for a basic existence? That's great!
Take into account those two factors and almost no able bodied, employable person opted to not work.
You can argue that the only way to perform a completely accurate UBI experiment would be to run it for at least 60-80 years for everyone. Social experiments are very hard to do and have many flaws, but it seems unreasonable to say that the information gained by doing such studies should be "thrown out the window".
> You can argue that the only way to perform a completely accurate UBI experiment would be to run it for at least 60-80 years for everyone.
You could get decent results in less than 60-80 years by granting each participant a fully-funded fixed annuity guaranteeing them a specific income for the remainder of their lives independent of the continuation of the study. Of course, that would raise the cost of the study to something approaching a real (non-universal) BI program.
Yes, and a depressing number of lottery winners end up poorer than they started within a few years after burning through all their winnings and then going into debt to support their new lifestyle. Easy come, easy go.
This issue is not a "flaw". It's a root problem. We want to know the effect of permanent UBI, not of a temporary one, and we know (strongly suspect) the effect will be different.
Maybe the simple solution is that the researchers establish a dedicated
million dollar bank account for a participant and automatically withdraw $1000 for the participant every month.
But there is no such thing as "permanent UBI", though.
UBI is a political decision which is renewed with every government.
The perspective of the participants makes sense. Whether they believe their access to UBI will continue or not, it makes sense to up-skill.
Besides, we do know how people behave when they are born with a million dollar bank account, and it's relatively very rare that they are criticised for how they choose to live.
"UBI is a political decision which is renewed with every government"
If this is true than implementing UBI will be more problematic than I thought. All UBI proposals so far call for all other financial safety nets to be removed in order to finance UBI. Managing that will be a nightmare if you can just cut off UBI, then you have to spin up everything else again. I imagine UBI to be something similar to how the pension system is, once in place it stays there forever-ish (meaning that it can potentially collapse).
"we do know how people behave when they are born with a million dollar bank account, and it's relatively very rare that they are criticised for how they choose to live" - that's an excellent point.
Hmm, Yangs proposal did not eliminate all other safety nets. His program simply made people opt out of one or the other, and encouraged people to stick with whatever paid them more.
The knock on effect is that it'd likely reduce funding for other safety nets because they have an inherent safety net in UBI. But the existing welfare programs are either highly prohibitive or extremely difficult to qualify for and maintain even if you should be using them. UBI eliminates that barrier of entry if you only need 1k a month (using Yangs plan here).
So, yeah, less people would likely use food stamps because they can get more from 1k a month than from 1.2k in food stamps. Most people do not qualify for that much in food stamps as it is. With fewer people using that program, the government would funnel less money to that program, reducing net costs and allowing more money to go elsewhere. Eventually this would likely lead to the end of that program.
This could allow us to create new social programs that are more focused. With fewer people requiring other social safety nets, the new ones that are created would require less funding and can address root cause issues vs symptoms which are what we address today.
Most people just need money. A minority of people using a social welfare programs need something significantly more than just money. We should not leave those people on the street, but Yang never planned on that happening. He proposed a VAT tax to cover the costs. Whether that would actually work or not is debatable, but that was his plan.
Welfare isn't UBI. Give everyone the same amount and you'll have a hard time convincing the people earning 70k to vote against another 12k... That's the secret formulae.
People earning 70k will vote against "another" 12k if it reduces their taxes by 16k. That money isn't free—a minority will see a net benefit, with everyone else footing the bill. If you're earning 70k then you're unlikely to end up on the "net benefit" side of the equation.
This is why the "Universal" aspect of it is so important. It's ridiculously easy for people to vote for defunding services that "other" people benefit from, and politicians can always whip up support by scapegoating some minority group as the root of all of our problems. But if the benefit is shared by everyone then it becomes near political suicide to suggest cuts to it. How many politicians successfully can campaign to get rid of social security or medicaid? Those are programs shared with a significant percent, but not even a majority, and as such it's really hard to successfully push for cuts to such systems. With a total universal application of basic income it would be political suicide to push for cuts, everyone's life would be planned and organized already around such a program. Look at how hard it is for universal healthcare systems to be cut in nations that have such a benefit.
> But if the benefit is shared by everyone then it becomes near political suicide to suggest cuts to it.
The benefit isn't shared by everyone, though. The payouts may be equal but the taxes to support those payouts are not. If a majority of voters are paying more in taxes than they receive in payouts (as is likely) then it shouldn't be hard to sell them on the idea that reducing or dismantling the program would be in their own self-interest.
On the other hand, if it would be difficult to dismantle the program even knowing that it benefits a vocal minority at the expense of the majority, that should make us think twice about instituting it in the first place.
The study is meant to look at the effects of UBI, not provide a universal basic income to everyone. The study wouldn't be super useful if you included a billionaire, because nothing about their lives would change. They have limited money to do the study, so they have to draw a line somewhere.
I'm not sure how we went from $35k to billionaire, but I agree with your point. I am definitely curious though how it affects people earning 50k, 70k, 100k though. I suspect a chunky increase in index funds, retirement plans, and investing at some threshold, which affects the market at large. Social programs, children's sports (hockey equipment and ice rentals aren't cheap!), real estate, the list goes on. Obviously untestable, but interesting. Could be extremely transformational, or maybe cost of living simply jumps.
That would more accurately gauge the effect on how much it disincentivizes, and how it changes the lifestyle of the recipient.
It does very little to test economics. Perhaps UBI leads to a lot of people deciding to tend bar at the local tennis club, volunteering for the job. Maybe introducing UBI across a large area has marked effects on gym memberships.
Those seem easier to test if you put a large area on UBI for a short-ish term (though I admit I haven't seen any UBI research that analyses such social effects - perhaps somebody knows of some?)
Is that anything but conjecture? I see a study showing that UBI is a "good thing", and you didn't provide a source for your reasoning.
Edit: to all those saying that the parent comment is straightforward, or common sense, or whatever, it's not straightforward or common sense because I disagree that UBI would be a failure. No one knows what would happen under UBI, but these types of studies give some evidence as to what is going to happen.
Everyone saying the parent is correct is basically similar to saying we should stop studying fusion because it's common sense we'll never achieve it (there are people who say that, too).
It's a good first step to study this, at least, and goes to show we need to test UBI on a greater scale.
The main thing being said is there's a drastic difference between knowing the BI you're getting is temporary and it being a 'permanent' government program. There's no way to provide a citation for that because the only way to run that is to have a full UBI and study the results to see if these short term BI studies still hold water.
However it's not a stretch at all to say people will act different when they're temporarily receiving money than when they'll receive it 'forever'.
The main argument I, and I believe the OP, was making is because the period of these programs are limited, and not even the full period is guaranteed as this shows, it affects how people act. If it's a program I believe I can count on existing for 10-20 years I can make significant life changes around receiving the money, eg move somewhere super cheap and volunteer or something, but at just a few I know I'm going to have to go back to normal at the end so making those big changes is harder.
What I am saying is that a temporary UBI experiment cannot simulate the changes that a permanent UBI would bring. Especially when everyone is aware that this is temporary.
I think you'd then be skewing towards a sample that spends a lot of money on lottery tickets (certainly not something I do but maybe I'm the minority), and your sample size would be pretty small, and you wouldn't see how it affects a community.
Or keep the studies and make UBI non-permanent: much like cold-war brinkmanship - incentivizing recipients to always keep in mind the possibility of future work.
I understand it's much more stressful than permanent guaranteed UBI, but it's truer to the real intent of UBI (which I believe is reducing the friction when deciding to try new job or state or whatever in a pursuit of self-actualization).
Education does not equate to a successful job. I know a few career students that acquire one useless degree after another because every time they try to get a job they find no one is hiring.
Career academics are a tiny minority of the population. The median salary of a BS degree in the US is 2x over non-degree holders. The median salary of an advanced degree is 3x. Twice the salary for having a 4 year degree, that is enormous.
How much of that is correlation and how much is causation? How much is selection effect and how much treatment effect?
The average person who is capable of getting a Bachelor’s degree but doesn’t is very distant from the average high school graduate. And if you drop out of college after two years because you can’t cut it your labour market outcome is only very slightly better than a high school grad but your debt load of half of a college grad.
That study I put a link to is attempting to answer that very question methodically, and the answer in this study and others is it’s both correlation and causation. Some of the “income premium” you get for having a bachelor’s degree is cultural bias toward education (causation), some of it is having more and broader skills (causation), some of it is the many jobs that require degrees or pay higher with more education (causation), and some portion of it is due to things like whether your parents got degrees or have money (correlation).
But, I’m curious, what does it actually matter in this context, if any non-zero portion of it is causation? This thread is discussing whether people are better off getting some education, whether they should spend their UBI income in search of opportunity via education, and whether going to school is a “work disincentive”. (Seem like the opposite to me.) They’re attempting to improve their lot via schooling, and there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that more education will, statistically, improve their lot at least somewhat.
If you’re interested in this topic you should read Bryan Caplan’s The Case Against Education. Getting more credentials can be individually rational but socially wasteful. So there are tons of people working as bank tellers now and there were tons of people working as bank tellers in the ‘70s. Now they all have college degrees. In the ‘70s they were high school graduates. Their degrees don’t make them more productive and they cost them four years of their lives but they couldn’t have gotten the job without them.
Some of education’s pay off is privately and socially useful, increases in human capital, some of it is privately useful but socially useless or counter productive, wasteful signaling in an arms race, like that which leads to people who would have stopped with a Bachelor’s a generation ago getting a Master’s now.
Insofar as education is socially wasteful we should discourage it, not encourage it, tax it, not subsidize it.
Lucky for us, social waste is not the criteria for taxation, or we’d be dead broke from sharing beliefs on the internet alone.
What is your metric of social waste, and why do you think education has enough to worry about compared all the millions of other socially wasteful things we do when not working?
Us GDP per capita is not going down, and education rates are going up. Both monotonically since the 70s, despite the supposed degree requirements of bank tellers. That alone — the economy — seems to squarely contradict the notion that school is somehow bad for us.
If you’re measuring social productivity in terms of capital, I think you’re failing to account for the increase in income tax the government receives from the average 2x higher salary of educated people. That extra income tax is so much money, it could fund education for every man, woman, and child in the US, and still have 90% of it left for the socially productive spending we do now on such things as maintaining the military industrial complex. We are being taxed for education already, and we are still better off.
It seems like you might also be ignoring the social evidence for education in countries where it is subsidized, like Norway, Finland and others.
US GDP per capita is going up at the same time as education for the same reason the size of the v average dwelling has gone up; Richer people consume more. Education doesn’t make people more productive. More productive people buy more stuff.
If you give everyone a Bachelor’s degree they will not become 2x as productive. The people are different. The education is less important than the difference in the people. Education is not making them that much more productive. It’s certifying them as already being more productive.
The evidence for the economic effects of evidence is really weak. Richer countries spend more on education but the extra spending on education follows the getting rich, not the other way round. Ghana is a lot more educated now than 1950’s France, and a lot poorer. China’s massive economic growth from the 1980’s to the 2000s was based on a populace that mostly hadn’t finished primary school.
Regarding other first world countries the US is far, far richer than them[1] and has a better education system.
> Education is not making them that much more productive. It’s certifying them as already being more productive.
How do you measure productivity? And (asking again, since you didn’t answer) how do you measure social waste? Where is the evidence of your claims?
If what you claimed is true, then if the rate of education were to go up, then the income premium for education would go down, because you’re saying the income premium is correlation and not causation of education’s effect on society. But education rates have been going up for the last 50 years and the income premium for education is stable, despite more people being educated. Why?
> Richer countries spend more on education but the extra spending on education follows the getting rich, not the other way around
Your argument is that education is an economic drain. Where is the evidence of that? Even if true that wealth precedes education (and citation is needed there), your argument here is contradicting your earlier argument that education is socially wasteful - countries are getting richer and staying richer with increased education rates, regardless of whether it’s causation or correlation.
Ghana is an outlier with political issues not representative of most of the world, it doesn’t prove much about education. China’s massive economic growth coincides with an increase in education, framing it as being “based” on an uneducated populace because their education rate was lower at the start seems like it’s dodging the inconvenient fact that their education rates have risen while their economy has grown? Why are you so convinced that education is not even part of the cause for their economic growth, or anyone else’s?
You seem to be claiming that education teaches nothing of economic value, does not help people personally gain any skills, does not help people improve their productivity? Is that what you’re saying, and if so why?
>How do you measure productivity? And (asking again, since you didn’t answer) how do you measure social waste? Where is the evidence of your claims?
That's the entire point. We can't quantify if education actually makes people more productive and if it does, is that productivity applied to helping or hurting society. For example, an aspiring software dev could get educated in computer science which would increase their productivity (provided they actually learned something which is not a given). However, they could become a white or black hat hacker with differing effects on society. Another scenario is that a person doesn't know what they want to do and so they take a variety of courses until they find something they like. A lot of that education is wasted energy that doesn't help anyone if they can't use it.
How do you define productivity? Why can’t you define it? Why can’t you quantify it? If you can’t quantify it, why do you believe it? Maybe it’s not quantifiable because it’s not true?
If you define educational productivity as GDP or income, or in financial terms, then the evidence is pretty clear and very strong that education doesn’t hurt. For education to not improve “productivity”, then you must be defining productivity some other way that you’re expecting me to intuit. I’m only hearing some rationalizing for why you’re ignoring the data we actually have.
The Fed study I posted does attempt to quantify the causal effect of education, and so do quite a few other studies. I recommend doing some research about what has been done to find out how this issue has been quantified already. I have looked into quite a few of these studies and their methodologies, and I haven’t seen a single one claim that education has zero or negative causal effect, even when their summary leans toward the income premium being more correlation than causation. All of them conclude it’s a mix, and there’s a positive contribution from the act of attending school, learning history and skills, gaining independence, etc. I don’t think education is by any means 100% efficient, whatever that would even mean, but claiming it’s zero or negative is really extreme, especially if you can’t produce any evidence.
Education does correlate with a more successful job and it also correlates with a better functioning society. I believe that there is plenty of evidence to suggest that there is some causal relationship (note: this does not say that higher education leads to a successful job, but rather says that higher education increases the chances of you getting a more successful job).
No, because you can be educated in any topic up to and including the history of the Kardashians. This in no way contributes to a better functioning society. Your entire premise that education = more intelligence is completely wrong. Would you argue a person educated by extremists correlates with a better functioning society?
The only thing that betters society is the positive application of knowledge to creating something of value for others. It's not enough to learn a topic, you must actually apply it make a difference.
the point is a degree in a subject where there is no money to be made is a WASTE of money. A degree is not inherently worth the time & money spent earning it if you can't make a career with it. You'll also have student loans to pay for. Don't bother saying "free college" is the issue either. There's no such thing. Somebody is paying for that "free" college in the form of higher taxes.
This is a superbly short sighted and harmful perspective.
Education conveys benefits besides merely financial: a technician might receive no financial benefit from knowing about DNA, nuclear fission and distance to Mars. However, these people make life choices informed by their general knowledge, they vote on policy, they act when Covid-19 is in the news.
If we take your perspective far enough, we will have a society of idiot savants that are clueless outside if their narrow speciality.
Education in my opinion would be a bargain compared to insane levels of military spending, gas and oil subsidies, bank bailouts, etc. This is selfish though. One, I have to pay for my kids education some day, and two, I think it's overall a good thing for our species (depending on the quality).
Eventually we'll look back at college (including trades) education being free like we look now on elementary education being free.
I don't have kids and I'm happy to pay for your kids to go to school. I don't want to live in a country full of idiots. It's also selfish though. Because smarter kids result in better medicine, better inventions, etc.
GP's point seems currently the improvement of society is not guaranteed by a degree because either it's based on knowledge that is not applicable to improving society or their job applies that knowledge to something net negative to extract value.
It is unclear to me if you are being obtuse on purpose or on accident. But I want to reiterate that trolling is not allowed on HN and it is presumed that you are going to take arguments on good faith. So I will answer as if you aren't being needlessly obtuse.
We're talking about institutional education, not gaining more information. So in this discussion we're not talking about people spending their money to become more informed on Kardashians. We're talking about them going to school. As far as I'm aware, there's no school that teaches the history of the Kardashians.
At any rate, I believe the poster you responded to was using hyperbole to equate "history of the Kardashians" with some degree that he or she deems "equally as useless."
It was obviously a good faith response, and if you look at what people do versus what their degree is in, it's obvious that college education for many students might as well be studying the Kardashians. I think literally none of my relatives use their post-secondary education, except for a lawyer (who doesn't use his undergrad degree) and a guy who presumably went to culinary school. And a retired college professor, I guess.
It didn't misrepresent anything. If I was enrolled in a study where I was given free money, I'd stop working and pursue study or other interests too. Seems like these people knew the study was temporary, and took advantage of it. A permanent basic income would produce results no study is capable of measuring.
> First: All studies so far show a pretty consistent ~10% work disincentive. This is what all the detractors say when they say it disincentivizes work. So how about this one? From actually reading the study's conclusion:
>> Slightly less than one-fifth were employed before but unemployed during the pilot (17%)
> So even worse than what we've seen so far. 17% dropping out of the labor market when its a short-term study is huge.
Child comment proved this to be misleading. I myself was misled. Anyone reading this would think that this study showed that UBI disincentivizes work. Child comment showed that this conclusion does not follow from the study.
You can speculate all you want on what permanent UBI would do but what the parent comment said is absolutely a misrepresentation of the study.
Parent was correct in quoting the study. 17% were unemployed. What were they doing instead? Studying, or not working (with a small minority on sick leave).
From this we can conclude that: UBI encourages people to leave the workforce, or this study encouraged people to leave the workforce. Studying is still a productivity activity in the right context, but you cannot pretend it is the same as being employed from the perspective of analysing the economic impacts of UBI.
> All studies so far show a pretty consistent ~10% work disincentive. This is what all the detractors say when they say it disincentivizes work.
When the parent invokes the detractors, it brings up the arguments that all the detractors use, saying that UBI will turn people into lazy freeloaders that do not want to work. That it will lead to people just living off the government and contributing nothing. Going back to get an education for the purpose of work does not fall under that category.
The thesis of the parent is not that they're simply leaving the workforce. They're quoting the same old claims that UBI will make people lazy and not want to work. That frame is why quoting the study as a means to further that claim is so misleading.
You assumed a lot about the parent comment's interpretation. "Disincentivizing work" can be interpreted to mean more likely to study than work. This doesn't mean lazy. Nothing in the parent comment called people lazy for leaving the workforce, just that it disincetivized participating in the workforce.
> You assumed a lot about the parent comment's interpretation. "
No I did not. That the THE primary argument detractors make when they say that UBI disincentivizes work. Read enough on the arguments against UBI and you will realize that for yourself.
Your interpretation indicates that you have not been steeped in debates about UBI, otherwise you would know this already.
Interpreting the parent's remarks, ESPECIALLY when they bring up the existing "detractors" as simply meaning "not working", instead of what is the primary argument the existing detractors make is absolutely disingenuous.
> > You assumed a lot about the parent comment's interpretation. "
> No I did not. That the THE primary argument detractors make when they say that UBI disincentivizes work. Read enough on the arguments against UBI and you will realize that for yourself.
"If you've read enough comments, you can predict the arguments people use. So I wasn't assuming anything."
> "If you've read enough comments, you can predict the arguments people use. So I wasn't assuming anything."
"If in an argument, someone brings up the people that debate policy and write essays on it and they invoke them and the conclusion of their argument, a reader can choose to interpret that someone as having a different argument than those people that policy debaters they invoked and that's completely legitimate".
Yea OP totally was referring to internet comments instead of politicians or people in think tanks that debate policy, especially given that they quote statistics from studies, when they wrote "detractors" /s
I like the concept too, but we have to be careful what we wish for.
If, somehow, UBI becomes real there will be a huge push from the libertarians and far-right to dismantle whatever is left of the social safety net. They actually would love the idea of replacing medicare, social security and other programs with a quick 1000/month that would enable even more shrinking of government.
I mean, part of the allure of UBI to me is that it is a social safety net except it benefits everyone. Because it's universal and not means-tested, it removes the stigma of being 'on welfare' which IMO is incredibly discouraging and makes it harder to rise out of your unfortunate situation. So yes, I would love if UBI replaced some programs while augments others.
At the end of the day it's the most direct and effective way of combating poverty and goes a long way towards closing the wealth gap. Especially when we can divert those funds from corporations into the hands of the people.
I do generally favor shrinking the government but not at the expense of the people's safety, liberty or well-being.
> At the end of the day it's the most direct and effective way of combating poverty and goes a long way towards closing the wealth gap.
Where do you think all this Income is going to come from? The middle class will shoulder the bulk of it which will widen the wealth gap. You will end up with 1k in UBI and 1500 in taxes to pay for it.
Under Yang's plan even if you made $100k/yr (single person household) you'd get an increase[0]. You'd be having to make roughly $140k+/yr to see a decrease in total income (140k results in -$66/yr). (If you were the norm of 2 adults and 2 children your household income would need to be north of $315k/yr to "shoulder" his UBI)
So I'm not sure why you think the middle class will shoulder the bulk of the cost. Do you think $150k/yr earners ($300k/yr families) are middle class? The median household income int he US (2018) was $62k/yr[1]
Yang's plan also involves one of the highest deficit spending proposals of any of the UBI plans listed on that calculator.
It's all very well and good to say "look, virtually everyone would see a net income increase!" until you realize that's only possible by literally just printing money.
The costs of such high deficit spending are pretty certain, but the benefits meant to offset those costs are only speculative (and highly speculative, at that).
You're right and this is the criticism I have of Yang, though I supported him. I'd rather have a higher VAT and other methods to gather revenue than through deficit spending. Especially since it is inflation tied and deficit spending leads to inflation.
Though I'm also not an economist and lots of economists seem to like deficit spending. So I'm just going to say I'm naive here.
I appreciate your perspective. The problem of course is that a higher VAT would also reduce the effective purchasing power granted by the UBI.
I get that one of the benefits of UBI is that it's supposed to empower people to use the money in the way that satisfies their needs best, rather than rely on inefficient bureaucracies to determine what needs are worth subsidizing and who qualifies.
The problem is, there's no free lunch. It seems to me like any sensibly funded UBI is going to probably negatively impact many middle-class folks. Politically that's just a non-starter in the U.S.
While you're right in that a higher VAT __can__ reduce the effective purchasing power, it doesn't have to. 1) Yang's VAT was at 10% which is under half the rate of most of the European countries. So I'd feel confident that we could follow similar procedures, which would halve the deficit spending (if the carbon tax was doubled to $40/ton, there'd be a surplus). 2) VATs don't have to be applied uniformly. I'm also not opposed to a wealth tax. But from my understanding, it is harder to avoid a VAT. This is probably an easier loophole to close (and Republicans like consumption taxes, so easier to pass). But you are right in that things would need to be reformed dramatically to actually capture a wealth tax.
I still do not buy the argument that a UBI will be shouldered by the middle class. I have yet to see evidence that it will be shouldered by anyone but the 1% (really the 0.01%).
I was waiting for this reply. The obvious answer to that being that it doesn't make printing money for a UBI any better of an idea. It's completely irrelevant.
Let's not try and justify bad ideas by pointing out that people currently do bad things.
> Where do you think all this Income is going to come from?
As I mentioned:
> divert those funds from corporations into the hands of the people
To be fair, it's true that won't cover the entire bill. However, between reducing spending in other welfare programs, the increase in economic output and implementing a VAT, the gap closes pretty quickly.
As a sibling comment mentions, the math is pretty straightforward. Let's also not forget the second- and third-order benefits to society and the economy that will result from most of the population having more purchasing power and economic freedom.
Do you think it's fine that Amazon and friends pay next to nothing in taxes by exploiting the tax code? Why are we (taxpayers) subsidizing mega corps who are making money hand over fist?
>> divert those funds from corporations into the hands of the people
There's a limit to how much you can tax corporations until they just up and leave. Just ask Sweden in the 70's.
> To be fair, it's true that won't cover the entire bill. However, between reducing spending in other welfare programs, the increase in economic output and implementing a VAT, the gap closes pretty quickly.
All UBI programs I've seen also require deficit spending. And good luck canceling other welfare programs.
> Let's also not forget the second- and third-order benefits to society and the economy that will result from most of the population having more purchasing power and economic freedom.
People will have more dollars, but between increased taxes and inflation from deficit spending, I'm very suspect that people will have more purchasing power.
> Do you think it's fine that Amazon and friends pay next to nothing in taxes by exploiting the tax code? Why are we (taxpayers) subsidizing mega corps who are making money hand over fist?
I have no idea what Amazon should pay in any moral sense, but I'm fine with taxing them more so long as
1) A marginal increase in tax rates would increase net revenues (and not drive jobs/business offshore)
2) The increase in tax revenue was for a compelling public interest (not merely because "they're not paying their fair share") OR because it involved closing a tax exemption that was not available to their competitors (so that the market stays competitive)
Medicare isn’t going anywhere. Once people get the taste for single payer healthcare, they don't give it up.
Social security should be replaced with privately held accounts, just like superannuation in Australia. But in the transition people would need to be paid out their entitlement. So no problem there.
But if UBI replaced all normal welfare (excluding disability etc) is that such a bad thing? As long as the UBI is high enough and indexed to cost of living, welfare that’s broadly targeted at the poor should be unnecessary. Not just unnecessary, it tends to have the effect of making poverty stickier. Any time benefits are inversely tied to how well you're doing, you reduce the incentive to do better.
> But if UBI replaced all normal welfare (excluding disability etc) is that such a bad thing?
Part of the problem is that some welfare is not about the money, but the support. UBI is less likely to help someone with mental issues than someone who hates working at 7/11 while studying. Generalised, UBI likely helps those who have an impermanent problem over those that have longer term issues.
Society likely would still need welfare services for those people who struggle with the multiple travails of existence.
Personally, I'm less interested in UBI in the first world, where welfare is pretty good already and the negative affects are unknown and complicated. I'm more interested in what affect it would have on the third world, where the downsides - disincentives to work etc - seem far less of an issue. https://www.givedirectly.org/ubi-study/ is a good example.
Nothing wrong with that. The government is severely bloated. Also nothing wrong with reducing or replacing horrid, administratively wasteful, degrading, stigmatized, means-tested social safety nets with UBI.
I’m confused. Is “means-tested” supposed to be a degrading adjective? Because I think the fact our existing social safety nets are “means-tested” is exactly why people have doubts about UBI.
> Is “means-tested” supposed to be a degrading adjective?
Yes. People who are on means-tested social safety nets are subject to these test which often make you feel degraded. They often make people fear they will lose their benefit. And in many cases they encourage people not to improve their lives (e.g. I better not take that part-time job, because then I will lose unemployment benefits.) It also creates an incentive to falsify information so that you can continue to receive said benefit.
UBI solves all that because it isn't means-tested, you just get it no matter what (Oh you improved your situation? You got a job, got healthy, etc. That's great! You will continue to get UBI.)
This is why Yang wanted to make it a choice. The average welfare recipient is getting less than $1k/mo in help and are limited in how they can use it (food stamps can't buy the car repair you need to keep your job).
But I do think that is is an overstated concern __because__ most welfare recipients are already receiving less assistance. Btw, there's capitalist oriented arguments for single payer options that libertarians are in favor of (tldr: health care operates under a network effect and single payer can minimize individual and public costs).
The point of UBI is not to fund people's vanity adventures in education. It's to support people who would otherwise be starving or homeless without a job.
Regarding "sickness", the severity is important to know. If UBI enables people with slight depression issues to just give up working entirely, UBI could be entirely counterproductive by accelerating depression's spirals of inactivity.
And this completely ignored the issue of inflation that comes with society wide UBI.
The whole notion of UBI is nonsense. Rather than throwing money at people to spend on broken institutions like Education and Healthcare, let's reform these institutions in the first place to make them more affordable and effective.
> The point of UBI is not to fund people's vanity adventures in education. It's to support people who would otherwise be starving or homeless without a job.
Who gave this strict definition. In my opinion, the point of UBI is to benefit society. I do think people being more educated benefits society as a whole, and thus I think people using their UBI on this is beneficial.
Perhaps if you're a person who looks at your cleaners or servers or cashiers as people with no potential for self-betterment; as people who are unable to expand their horizons.
> […] its value as a signaling mechanism, which is where the majority of modern education's value lies in the first place.
I’m not sure education is a very high-resolution or effective signal for much, and I think its dilution as a signal would help force us to find a better one. I’m curious though, given how self-assured you seem: what do you think education signals right now?
Education signals that you are "better" than those with worse education. Smarter, harder working, etc.
We need to create better options for students. We can do this by refocusing education on learning practical skills for real world jobs rather than maintaining an educational system built upon a foundation over 1000 years old that up until 100 or so years ago was intended for the elites and scholars, not the average person looking for a job.
That would not be "better", that would be myopic: Practical skills are only a part of what an education is or can be; information and skills which are not practical are still quite significant for us and for society at large; practicality changes over time; and the determination of what is and isn't practical is itself quite contentious.
A lot of our education - practical or otherwise - may be useless fluff, or even ideologically biased. But that's mostly not because of the chosen discipline.
> The point of UBI is not to fund people's vanity adventures in education.
That is YOUR OPINION of what UBI should be. It happens to be wrong.
What people do with the money isn't the point of UBI at all. The point is to improve their lives, and boost the economy. Who cares what specific the money is spent on if it is making people healthier, less stressed, and happier?
>Who cares what specific the money is spent on if it is making people healthier, less stressed, and happier?
And here, in one sentence, is why we will NEVER see UBI in the United States of America. There is no ability to be the moral whip and maintain control over someone else's choices to make sure they don't 'waste my money'. Therefore, it will never happen.
In the US, at least, it's not about doing what's right. It's not about making sure people are healthier, less stressed, and happier. It's about making sure they live the 'best' life they can, as defined by groups like the "moral majority".
> If UBI enables people with slight depression issues to just give up working entirely, UBI could be entirely counterproductive by accelerating depression's spirals of inactivity.
What if it enables those same people to take the time off work they need to treat their depression? Getting help takes enormous energy that a depressed person likely doesn't have if they're spending all their energy just trying to survive.
Of course the UBI is for personal growth and development even if it isn’t a guaranteed success. People have a fallback and would be more likely to take risks.
"If you consider multi-generational entrenchments of poverty as its own problem, worth serious merit, then the work disincentive could be a disaster."
Multi-generational entrenchments of poverty are already a disaster, and not because of fuzzy ideas like "instilling a work ethic", but because many millions of people lack the basic material resources needed to fulfill anything close to their potential.
A kid watching their parents break their backs as minimum-wage slaves living paycheck to paycheck doesn't prepare them to do anything other than the same thing with their lives.
Wait, what? I mean, I guess that just watching your parents work doesn’t “prepare” you for work any more than watching TV does, but that’s because it’s completely unrelated. Watching your parents go to high-powered executive jobs doesn’t “prepare” you for work in the 21st century either, education does. My father was a police officer (they don’t make much money) and my mother stayed home with us - they both encouraged us to study so we could do better than they did. Watching my father go off to a dangerous job every day didn’t “prepare” me for work, but it did help me grow up with a sense of “work is part of adult life” that I wouldn’t have gotten if he’d spent every day watching TV and drinking beer.
"they both encouraged us to study so we could do better than they did"
And the parents who do this are not the ones who will sit home and drink beer all day just because they're getting a $2k/mo basic income. Instead, they could go back to school, or start a business, or travel outside the country once in awhile, or spend more time teaching their kids an important skill like music or math or programming because the intense, ceaseless, soul-destroying pressure of just getting by has been lifted a bit.
Also, while I understand that police officers don't make a lot and it's very tough job, it's also a very stable job with benefits, a pension, etc. so I imagine that despite not being anywhere close to wealthy, your parents also didn't need to spend their days focused solely on survival like someone who works minimum wage with no job security, who has possibly no health insurance, who likely has to frequently get high interest payday loans to make rent or buy food... that kind of lifestyle is extremely difficult to dig out of, and it leads inevitably towards family breakdown, crime, health-destroying habits, mental illness, and general despair. That's who basic income is really for. I mean these people are literally killing themselves just to get by, and the response of many folks with far more privilege is "eh, you'd just be sitting around drinking beer otherwise".
The only folks I saw working minimum wage to support the family didn't have those worries. Now I'll grant that health insurance was a lot cheaper 20 years ago, but still they didn't worry about payday loans - they weren't dumb enough to take them out. (I don't know who does - my personal experience doesn't show anyone doing it, but again that was 20 years ago when they weren't a thing)
The ones I knew working minimum wage lived cheaply. They didn't worry about losing their jobs because they were hard workers who could be counted on - the type of person who gets the maximum raise until they top out the pay scale. They were also the type of person to be offered job in management and have the potential to make as much as anyone with an engineering degree (we haven't kept in touch - typically the requirement to move for the job every few years catches up and they decide the next promotion isn't worth it and so stagnate at nice wage that is better than average)
I knew people who sit around drinking bear and working part time. Everybody knew they were losers. It wasn't lack of opportunity that is keeping them down it is lack of following up on it. They would abandon their kids even if you paid the a million dollars a year (even assuming they don't overdose on some drug)
I also know mentally ill people. Their abilities vary, but UBI won't help them as they will just waste it on some other scam. (I know someone who lost money to the Nigerian prince scam, and a dozen others - the family is careful to lock down his money now so he can't do that)
"Their abilities vary, but UBI won't help them as they will just waste it on some other scam."
This is correct. For scammers this will be a new gold mine. But I guess it will be a gold mine for everyone. It's 2.8 trillion every year injected into the economy. If you look at it like that than the question is, how can I divert some of that money into my own pockets?
Sounds like a good incentive to start services to actually help protect those most vulnerable to scams - my own mother could have benefited from something similar as one of her caretakers bilked her out of a few thousand dollars toward the end of her life.
A 'fool them once, shame on you... but it won't happen again!' policy would be a welcome thing.
> […] services to actually help protect those most vulnerable to scams
Services? This sounds more like a legislative than a marketplace problem. Pardon if it’s forward to ask, but what service do you envision could have helped protect your mother?
For quite a while, she had a financial assistant and a home visit assistant, each of whom visited at least twice a week. Because of insurance changes, the financial assistant had to stop.
It was in the gap of finding this out and getting myself back in the loop that the home visitor managed to get checks cashed that she didn't know about.
The services are already in existence, just not consistently or as comprehensively as they could/need to be.
A legislative issue to stop nickel and diming social assistance, for sure. These kinds of services should be available for anyone who needs them, not just whatever narrowly defined criteria in current funding mandates.
I grew up poor in a very wealthy suburb and went to high school with a lot of children of high powered executives and attorneys. In my experience they were in no way prepared for the real world, unless by prepared you mean living with zero parental guidance and no sense of the value of money.
I said exactly the opposite. If I had watched my father sitting around doing nothing, I probably would have grown up to sit around doing nothing. I saw him working instead, and he set a positive example, even though his job wasn't a high-paying "powerful" one.
If you knew why multi-generational poverty existed you would win a Nobel Prize and who knows what else.
No one has been able to figure this out so far, and what you wrote above is not necessarily even a good description of what multi-generational poverty looks like.
Well, given that UBI studies have been promising so far (despite their limitations), there seems to be a decent chance that quite a lot of multi-generational poverty is primarily caused by... multi-generational poverty, meaning it's a self-reinforcing cycle that's difficult for people to escape. Or in other words: when you're broke, it's really hard to build wealth, so you're likely to stay broke.
Perhaps it's an over-simplification, or perhaps a lot of people have been over-complicating the problem, particularly when they're trying to prop up a pet political bias.
If we implement UBI on a large scale and it drastically increases upward mobility, I suppose this hypothesis will be more or less proven. I hope that day comes sooner rather than later so we can find out.
> A kid watching their parents break their backs as minimum-wage slaves living paycheck to paycheck doesn't prepare them to do anything other than the same thing with their lives.
I'm sorry but you don't have the first clue.
Plenty of immigrant families leave low opportunity nation states and work what you consider demeaning work whilst taking steps to ensure their children seek more aspirational jobs and careers.
Some do, but it's a small percentage. Many more struggle their whole lives to survive without being able to make any significant improvement to their family's economic status.
Posting statistics without a source or context isn't very helpful.
Though I have no idea where you got it from, or whether it refers to one country or the whole world, getting out of the bottom 20% and ending up the in the bottom 30%, for example, would still leave you in a situation where you're struggling to get by in most countries in the world. Which is why this doesn't contribute much without more context.
It's quite interesting that you left out the very next phrase, cutting off your quote in the middle of a sentence:
"Forty-three percent of Americans raised in the bottom quintile remain stuck in the bottom as adults, and 70 percent remain below the middle."
Also, right above that is:
"Americans raised at the bottom and top of the family income ladder are likely to remain there as adults, a phenomenon known as 'stickiness at the ends'."
You said: "Some do [make any significant improvement], but it's a small percentage."
I posted the fact that 43% start and stay in poverty, but that means 57% get out. 57% is not "a small percentage".
Even using your new data source of "and 70 percent remain below the middle." (which is counter to your original claim that people stay stuck in poverty - you could still remain below the middle, but not be in poverty any more), that still means 30% make their way out, which once again, is not "a small percentage".
Whatever your point is (I really can't tell), it doesn't seem relevant to the post I was responding to, which said:
"Plenty of immigrant families leave low opportunity nation states and work what you consider demeaning work whilst taking steps to ensure their children seek more aspirational jobs and careers."
Nothing you posted indicates that's not a small percentage of people. But it certainly does show that growing up poor is a huge obstacle, and that while upward economic mobility does exist in the US, it's quite limited. To me, that all points toward favoring UBI, and against the idea that people can reliably escape living paycheck to paycheck (or worse) just by developing a good work ethic.
Also, it's not "my new data source". It's your data source. You just didn't bother to reference it.
> millions of people lack the basic material resources needed to fulfill anything close to their potential
There is a limited amount of capital in the world. Distributing it now might help those at home, but it does not help the billion people who still lack electricity. There simply is not enough capital in the world to build trillions of dollars worth of infrastructure for free. Investment is a much better vehicle for distribution than UBI as it also creates wealth.
"There is a limited amount of capital in the world."
You've already lost me. This is provably false, as any programmer should know: if you sit down and code something useful today, you've just increased the amount of capital in the world. Out of thin air. A carpenter who buys a bunch of lumber and turns it into a thousand-dollar piece of furniture does the same. The more people can learn to add value to the world, and the more value they can add, the bigger the total pie of wealth can grow.
Investment distributes wealth primarily from the elite to the slightly-less elite. It doesn't break the cycle of poverty and immediate survival focus that prevents millions and millions of potential Einsteins or Feynmans or Musks from doing anything with their lives other than scraping by.
I mean that there isn't enough capital to distribute to everyone in the world, not that it's fixed forever. You can grow it. That's my point. It's better to increase capital than redistribute it.
> Investment distributes wealth primarily from the elite to the slightly-less elite.
If you've seen how China changed in the last couple decades, you'd see how this obviously isn't true. Basically all electronics are manufactured in a developing Asian country by the children of subsidence farmers.
Yeah, so now instead of barely getting by on subsistence farming, they barely get by working 16 hour shifts in dangerous conditions with no rights. While the workers may be mostly better off than they were before, they still have to spend almost all their time and energy on meeting the basic needs of survival. The people who benefitted by far the most from all that investment were the owners, executives, and shareholders of the companies that run the factories. So I would say that distribution of capital was still quite lacking in terms of where it could have the most leverage to increase opportunity.
The book Sapiens has a similar message. The children of farmers who move to textile manufacturing were worse off than their parents in the 1800s. But the great great grandchildren of those people have material wealth greater than upperclass people in the 1800s when comparing clothes, entertainment, transportation, health care. And none of them would prefer to live as an 1800s farmer today.
Keep in mind what the factories were producing - it was not luxury goods for the wealthy. It was textiles, clothing, pots, pans, all sorts of things that made life better for ordinary people.
This, in turn, is what made it possible for us today to enjoy a high standard of living unimaginable back then.
People aren't so stupid that they'd do something that completely against their best interests. If you're a subsidence farmer and get sick, you have no means of making enough money to see a doctor. Historically, people didn't care about leisure until they accomplished stability.
>People aren't so stupid that they'd do something that completely against their best interests.
The world is actually full of such examples. There's quite a bit of work done in psychology and sociology as to why this happens. Often, the move from, for example substinence farming to other jobs is a kind of throffer - and so it was, historically documented, in the 16th and 17th centuries in England, too with the move from rural cottage industry to wide-scale factory production.
> in the 16th and 17th centuries in England, too with the move from rural cottage industry to wide-scale factory production.
The industrial revolution started in the late 18th century. Keep in mind that the population was booming then, so there wasn't enough space on the cottage to support the same standard of living.
I feel like the concept of a idyllic peasant is the modern iteration of the "noble savage." For complex decisions, you indeed run into the paradox of choice and other strange psychological phenomena. However, choice between sacrificing time in order to accumulate capital is an easy one, as this has been done billions of times. You need extraordinary evidence to prove otherwise.
While the move to factories was only being completed by the end of the 18th century, the process had started much earlier, in laying the groundwork for the creation of industry, from the enclosures to the transformation of the peasantry to farmers who rent their land (rather than tithes to their lord). The market for land leases, necessary for the creation of the English capitalist class, flourished in the 16th and 17th centuries.
>However, choice between sacrificing time in order to accumulate capital is an easy one, as this has been done billions of times.
It's curious why so much land had to be expropriated forcefully if it were such an obvious choice to the modern-day noble savages - and even moreso when one considers modern union activity and intense revolts against the increasing duration and intensity of the working day in America, and to no lesser extent other countries which did not have the privilege of being so readily acquainted with capital. These are no edge cases either. The largest debate in the literature being the question of why the majority does not rise up against the unfair conditions implemented by a minority. Whether you subscribe to the false consciousness solution or the capability solution, both allow you to say that the "rational choice" of not rising up (or accumulating capital) is simply an element of playing the game. The only difference between the theories turns on the point of whether the players know it's a game or not.
> It's better to increase capital than redistribute it.
Consider the notion of leverage where both A and B can increase their capital more in absolute value if some part of A's significant capital is redistributed to poorer B. UBI just takes risk out of this equation so A does not have to lend to B in order for this to happen. Though yeah, this makes A poorer in absolute value than they would have been without this sneaky taxation (= involuntary expropriation of money).
Isn't it a case of investment efficiency versus efficacy? If all you care about is capital increasing capital, then efficiency is a good measure. If you care about how the increase in capital impacts peoples lives, then giving $1 to a billionaire is less effective than someone on minimum wage.
Money will eventually circulate everywhere, but it's a matter of efficiency. This is an immense simplification, but to illustrate the intuition, consider 2 options:
1. Apple spends $10 million dollars to build a factory in a developing country. This creates 2,000 jobs over a couple years. These people can finally afford to see a doctor and heat up their homes during the winter.
2. Apple gets taxed $10 million that funds 1000 people's UBI. Their lives are somewhat less stressful. There is a higher demand for Iphones, so Apple can charge a bit more money for them. After a decade, they are able to open an additional factory. However, within that decade, 100 people in that developing country died of a disease that would be easily cured with medicine had they had they been able to work at the factory 10 years ago.
The fallacy in that argument is that you're equating "dropping out of the labour market" with doing absolutely nothing of any value.
For life.
The other side of the fallacy is that any occupation based on investment or speculation is essentially parasitic, unless it includes a rare commitment to stick with an enterprise until it's a net benefit to all stakeholders. (Not just shareholders and the board.)
The latter occupations are "in the labour market" but still making a net negative contribution.
Essentially you're attempting to frame this as if UBI encourages freeloading. In fact the most influential freeloading is mostly at the other end - and the fact that it's considered a heroic and noble kind of sanctioned freeloading doesn't change its basic nature.
So unless you're sure that everyone who is temporarily out of the labour market does nothing of value to anyone, ever, and also that their negative influence is worse than that of speculators and rent-seekers, it's hard to be convinced that this is a serious problem.
The other issue - social capital - is a complete different problem. People who are in work don't necessarily have access to social capital either. But as a rule it's easier to start a business with a safety net than without one.
UBI could always be associated with opportunities for extended education. Money alone is rarely the issue, and there aren't many downsides to extended adult ed.
Part of the reason for ubi is that a lot of work is exploitative or underpaid. Ubi puts people in a negotiating position to not work and demand higher payment, or to not work and contribute to society in other ways.
Might it be worth considering that choosing to not work and choosing to contribute to society in other ways could, for some people and in some circumstances, be slightly different decisions?
There are absolutely people who would contribute to society in other ways but there are also people who would not work, not contribute and, sit in their rooms all day not having the will to do anything but debate with strangers on internet forums(lol). In my opinion the problem with UBI is that it would take away the necessity for people to do something to survive and it would make a significant minority of the population miserable because they wouldn't have to do anything but consume.
> In my opinion the problem with UBI is that it would take away the necessity for people to do something to survive and it would make a significant minority of the population miserable
With all due respect, but this opinion reeks of someone who actually has the ability to choose his own job, say no to exploitative employment-practices, all while actually getting payed decently.
Someone who has to work a shit job they hate for a salary that barely pays the bills because they simply have no other option might as well be miserable because of this situation. This endless slog they cannot escape, a treadmill they despise but have no other choice than to keep going.
And let's not kid ourselves - there are _a lot_ of people out there who are doing jobs they don't want to do, or at least wouldn't want to do for the kind of salary they receive.
Why do you think this is not a meaningful contribution to society? In order for sitting-in-the-room people to debate on the forums, someone else – a part of society! – has to spend their time on said forums, creating demand for discussion. Otherwise the forums would have no posts at all. One person sitting in the room could effectively “free up” time of dozens others that they could spend otherwise.
Absolutely, there are plenty of things to do other than consume and there are definetly people who would discover that they had a talent at writing poetry, but doing those things require effort that a significant minority would not be ready or willing to make, and consummation is incredibly appealing to those who aren't strong enough to put effort into anything else.
I see where the sentiment is coming from, but I don't agree with the premise of "doing something to survive" being what people need. I think it's the relationship of the person to its community through labour that could be missing (Karl Marks writes about how capitalism fetishizes commodities and removes this relationship in Das Kapital. If you're into this subject it's an interesting read).
I know a senior lady, for example, that works fixing clothes. She doesn't need it to "survive", and sometimes work piles on and becomes another worry on top of other things she needs to think about. But she does it, in part as alternative income but also to keep herself entertained and as a way to relate to her community. She is the person you go to if you need mending, and that's a social relationship. People from the neighborhood will look need her and seek her for this. Receiving or delivering work is also an excuse to interact with people.
Would she go to a factory and fix stranger's clothes even if it were for the same amount of time and money? Probably not. She doesn't need it to survive, she needs it to relate.
So in that sense I do worry that UBI could disincentivize forming these work and exchange relationships or finding your place in a community/society. Just like kids given the choice might pick not to go to school, but eventually this would probably lead them to isolation and not growing in other ways, I wonder if a percentage of adults that haven't realized work can be better than no work could isolate themselves from social and mental growth in the same way.
In general thus I think UBI might work better as a compliment to reformed labour laws. Say, a 4 hour week. Or unionization, to push back on crappy management and predatory workplace policies. A goal should be to have as much people working as possible, but not because they are forced to in order to survive, but because they want to.
Or could put them out of business forever because they are less keen to work hard than those not living on UBI (for different reasons, it doesn't really make a difference)
I think UBI is a good redistribution strategy if it's truly universal and with not requirements, but work wise I doubt it will change much...
> We have to accept that some people will accept free subsistence income and not work.
It is already like this in many countries.
In Italy it has always been like that at least since the end of WW2.
It has produced one of the largest youth unemployment rate in the west.
Unemployed parents that never worked, grew up disadvantaged kids with no other alternative than become NEETs
In my opinion balancing it out without creating first as many jobs as possible is a really hard task, doomed to fail given the current state of the world politics
Why is a reduction in labor supply bad at present for low / unskilled labor? We're moving in that direction anyway using automation and software anyway, correct?
Also I see no mention at all of frictional unemployment as part of Mr. Stucchio's conclusions and if I suddenly had the ability to look for new jobs I would certainly take advantage.
The 10% number is created because people would now have actual OPTIONS, which is exactly what you want to create with this program. It's one of the goals. I don't see the disincentive being an issue except that it might increase wages in a tight economy which, is an actual thing people also want to do with these kinds of programs.
As for the personal opinion: obviously you're entitled to it, however I'd recommend a deeper look. Are you drawing this conclusion from personal experience? Do you know people whose parents never worked and are you really saying they're at a disadvantage because their family never worked, or is the real cause of the disadvantage of the "entrenchments of poverty" the lack of money?
The issue seems to be less "look at this poor role model - they never worked, so neither will their kids" but rather "we didn't have any money to actually consider a life that would allow me to focus on the things that make one successful, but rather food was difficult, and we were one broken arm away from bankruptcy". There seems to be a bias in your opinion. Please go speak with or listen to some actual human stories. I don't know anyone who would be less likely to be successful as a result of UBI. (Nor am I sold that it's a magic bullet either - it would be very costly)
> I don't know anyone who would be less likely to be successful as a result of UBI.
I have an acquaintance who works at min wage jobs just long enough to qualify for unemployment, then he manages to get laid off. He lives off the unemployment until it runs out, then gets another min wage job, and the cycle repeats as long as I've known him. He's quite content with this arrangement.
Wouldn't he be more successful with UBI, then? He would likely overall save the corporations he's being employed on and off by money by reducing their turnover. Also, it's likely most low wage jobs would have their wages increase because there would be less fear of unionizing if striking meant that nobody would be going hungry.
Thus, UBI can reduce the degree of low wage exploitation at both the worker's side (getting laid off asap for unemployment) and the business's side (exploitative policies countered by stronger unions and more incentive to unionize) while at the same time providing a fixed rate cost and less bureaucracy needed compared to the current welfare systems
How would he be more successful by not working at all?
> He would likely overall save the corporations he's being employed on and off by money by reducing their turnover.
Businesses are used to high turnover with lower paid employees. It's ok, though, because their jobs tend to be interchangeable and easy for someone new to get up to speed on.
> win-win
The lose part is supporting people who would otherwise work and contribute to the economy. I don't know many people, but the fact that I personally know several that would not work if they didn't have to means that there are likely plenty of them. (I'm talking about able-bodied adults without dependents.)
> The lose part is supporting people who would otherwise work and contribute to the economy.
Why do you think that having everyone contribute to the economy should be the goal? Are you absolutely certain that your acquaintance does not have a positive impact on those around him while he is not working?
So would they be less successful with UBI? This would save your acquaintance the effort of applying for a job, and instead they could either not work (Sure, fine I guess) or focus on something else full time instead of the cycle of unemployment. UBI might actually reduce their cost to society since stringent auditing / compliance / processing for unemployment would not be required. No more in-person filing and check-ins, etc.
I had an uncle do the same thing. He loved skiing, so made sure he took seasonal work so that he'd get unemployment insurance over the winter so he could spend all his time skiing.
What are the demographics of those that dropped out of the work force? Didn't some UBI studies observe that while there are people that dropped out of the workforce, these people consisted of mothers that can now go back to child rearing or younger people that can now pursue an education?
It is extremely unfortunate but studies like this are almost always done by people with somewhat close-ended goals. This research in this one is mostly self reports, and then, mostly "did free money make you feel better?"
They are not recording, or interested in recording, the nature of who dropped out of the workforce and why, even though that seems like far more important, and somewhat more empirical, information.
In your criticism you are missing some crucial details surrounding this report.
This is essentially scrounging to make the most out of what was a single, but fully budgeted, study on BI with the intention of running more studies.
The study was cancelled by the incoming government out of spite. All people who set up plans, knowing the full length of the study beforehand were suddenly tossed out of the program and it was just down, including any study occurring.
They're trying to gather what and any information they can from the program that wasn't even given the chance to run to completion.
Our high cost of education should be teaching people to create more value than the 15k/yr of value it is raising a child before the age of 5.(daycare costs, 4 children per 1 adult)
As an ancedote, it seems part time mothers are significantly happier than stay at home moms.
Trying to distill 'child rearing' to $15k/year and calling it a 'waste of talent' is absurd. Not everything can (and should) be broken down into a monetary amount and optimized for.
You can classify anything as a 'waste of talent' when looking through this lens. Are you a software engineer? If so, then doing literally anything apart from developing software is a 'waste of talent'. Cleaning dishes? Gardening? Exercising?
Yes, having a software engineer cleaning dishes for a restaurant is a waste of talent.
Maybe if overtime was flexible, you could suggest hiring unskilled workers to do those tasks at home.
I love my kid, but it's not like he's learning cutting edge stuff that requires an engineer to teach them. And there's many hours in the evenings and weekends we spend together where he learns how his dad behaves.
A huge part of growing up is developing bonds, understanding relationships and getting your kid on a firm footing so they can deal with what the world throws at them.
A lot of that develop happens when they are not learning, or at least you don’t think they are.
My son never used a babysitter. He was raised by both his mother and me at home 24/7 (she didn't work, I worked from home).
He is hardly dependent on us. More on his grandparents because they spoil him, but the first 4/5 years of his life, he would see them only a few times a year.
You don't need to justify working full time, or your wife/husband doing the same, but there is no way childcare in a nursery/pre school is as good as stay at home parents (assuming normal parents of course).
Heck, it is common for kids that are put in nurseries when very young, to develop very very strong bonds with the caretakers, sometimes more than with the parents. (source: studied/worked as one)
I would never crap on parents who use childcare (I don’t think you are either), because I know not everyone has the ability to have a stay at home parent or family to look after their kids.
My original comment was more targeted to the OPs statement that little kids can’t learn much, so having a parent around doesn’t matter.
As a parent myself, I come to realize that even though you might not think your teaching your kids, you are, even just the basics of socialization and play. And on top of that, those shared activities are was build a bond between you and your child, which is necessary to raise a well adjusted child.
I am not. My cousin had to put her daughter in a nursery when she was 2 months old as she had to work and grandparents weren't available. I know it is hard, and most people can't stay home. I tell my son he was very lucky to grow up as he did. I know that, and I know a lot of people sacrifice as much as possible for their kids.
I was replying to gp about using never using nanny's services or how it is a waste of talent for parents to do so if they can have more 'important' things to work.
Go create this lean startup factory that raises children from infants to 18 year olds. After all interested parents are superfluous to the well being of a child.
Child raising is invisible and yet so crucial to our economy. What happens to our economy when parents refuse to raise the needed labor inputs for free anymore?
I'm not going to do the leg work to validate unsourced claims that you made, but I will assume you don't have kids based on your comments.
It's possible that things are more complex than you suggest (or realize). One simple example is the typical start/end time for school. In Houston (a random example, but a very large school district), this is the school schedule [1]:
* 7:30 a.m. - 2:50 p.m. for elementary schools and K-8 campuses
How well does that schedule fit with a typical job?
Your link leaves out the study of the Alaska Permanent Fund
https://www.nber.org/papers/w24312
I believe it's left out because it contradicts the premise - it found more people actually looked for work because prior to the Alaska payment they were too poor to venture far from home.
Similar findings are repeated all across the social safety net. For example, the Scandinavian countries with their robust social programs routinely top lists for ease of entrepreneurship. [0] (e.g. Losing health insurance is big disincentive to starting a new company.)
There are also have been repeated studies that found that financial stress causes people to perform worse on cognitive tasks, and removing that stressor increases performance.[1][2]
So your gotcha is comparing the relative ranking of two countries in the top 10? A top 10 that has multiple European counties with robust safety nets in it?
I don’t think this data is saying what you think. There’s no evidence of disincentivization.
This reminds me of the people that complain that UBI causes people to work less, and when you dig into it, they stopped working overtime, or went back to school, retired, or started a family. You know, engage in behaviors that society says it values.
Also, I would be really surprised if one couldn't make the US drop in those rankings by subtracting San Francisco and the bizarro-world VC tech economy that centers on it.
Sounds like UBI gave them the negotiating power to decline jobs that did not meet their needs, were too exploitive, were not in alignment with their goals, and so on. That's part of the point: to increase labor power.
This “necessity of work” is an evil that we must get rid of. So many jobs are absolutely useless and degrading from a societal and human perspective. If basic income enables one to stop doing these jobs, humanity as a whole is better for it.
UBI is a tool for dealing with rising inequality and economic insecurity, not a solution on its own.
People will be incentivized to work despite UBI because they still want better things, and will work to pay for things that provide social signalling value.
A UBI shouldn't be designed to try to cover all desires and eliminate all reason to work, but rather should be tailored to give people more flexibility in choosing jobs and locations.
Even Andrew Yang's $1k/mo/adult proposal will not allow anyone to live very well in even the low COL areas of the US. But it might help them not to lose their roof or car while unemployed.
This is analogous to how universal healthcare will never cover cosmetic procedures, but that's ok because it will cover your healthcare even if you end up unemployed.
> UBI is a tool for dealing with rising inequality
Just want to point out that inequality globally isn't necessarily rising.
See e.g. the evolution of the distribution in wealth per wealth group per region based on data from table 3.2 of Credit Suisse's 2014 and 2019 Global Wealth Databooks.
> Just want to point out that inequality globally isn't necessarily rising.
My comment specifically referred to UBI in the context of the US, so I'm not sure what the relevance of global inequality is to whether or not an individual country does UBI.
If anything, the globalization that is driving global inequality down (a good thing), when coupled with domestic policies in the developed world that massively favor owners of financial capital, are driving domestic inequality up, which further bolsters the argument for UBI-like measures.
> so I'm not sure what the relevance of global inequality is to whether or not an individual country does UBI.
Because UBI is a misguided effort. It aims to fix inequality in any given country without addressing the root cause for increased domestic inequality: that low-skilled workers in developed nations are more expensive than low-skilled workers in developing nations in an age of cheap global logistics and telecommunications.
More sustainable solutions would arguably revolve around improving the educational system and revisiting {fiscal, educational, cultural, ...} incentives broadly across society to get the population trained to a a higher average skill level so that they may compete (and hopefully outcompete) for jobs currently performed by equivalent workers abroad.
Such an effort would presumably lead, in the long term, to a higher skilled global population who is equipped to bring about visions of the future. UBI, meanwhile, is tantamount to subsidizing low-skilled workers so they may continue to create little value (in terms of technological advancement and economic progress) and perpetuate the societal imbalances that preclude them from realizing their true potential.
It seems like an easy choice to make, at least if you buy into the assumption that we indeed want to maximize technological advancement and economic progress, and that those are bona fide proxies for improving standards of living and diminishing poverty.
> Because UBI is a misguided effort. It aims to fix inequality
No, it's a tool among many that can be used to fight inequality, not a solution in itself, despite attempts to depicted otherwise by both its supporters and detractors.
> More sustainable solutions would arguably revolve around improving the educational system and revisiting {fiscal, educational, cultural, ...} incentives
This reads like a thinly veiled recommendation to privatize schooling, reduce government supports to make people"hungrier" for success, and leave people's welfare to the conditioned charity of narrow cultural interest groups. Let the "best" rise to the top in the arena of struggle.
Dr King had the best summary of this: socialism for the rich, rugged individualism for the poor.
Incentives working ways that can drag society backwards also. Set up the system so the masses struggle to keep their heads above water, and what you'll likely end up with is a lot of destructive behavior whose cost is borne by society at large.
> This reads like a thinly veiled recommendation to privatize schooling, reduce government supports to make people"hungrier" for success, and leave people's welfare to the conditioned charity of narrow cultural interest groups. Let the "best" rise to the top in the arena of struggle.
You're putting words into my mouth and your comment just derailed completely thereafter, so I'm not even going to waste time addressing your criticism if you're not assuming good faith on my part.
I suggest you pause and reflect upon your apparent assumption that others who hold opinions different from your own do so because they are morally inferior or somehow driven by less noble motives.
My sincere apologies for assuming the motivation behind your comment. If that's not the correct interpretation of your comment - which was very vague - please do explain the concrete manifestation of it.
I doubt that the 17% who quit were working in jobs that they liked.
If a employer's job requires a "work or die" sword of Damocles dangling over laborers' heads to be filled, perhaps it shouldn't exist.
The New Testament Bible aphorism from 2 Thessalonians 3:10, "He who does not work, neither shall he eat," has been used by many to incentivize work, including John Smith of Jamestown colony and V.I. Lenin of the Soviet Union. It is an aphorism borne by a world of scarcity, where all available labor is not only required, but must also be allocated wisely. It isn't just "work or die", but "if you won't help, we all might die."
In a world of excess, wherein machines supply most of the labor required to produce the necessities, that becomes counterproductive. If everyone must work to eat, but no person can work as efficiently as a machine, and there isn't enough discretionary work to go around, then that game of economic musical chairs ends when someone starves because someone didn't want their hedges trimmed into topiary, or they didn't want to upgrade to the fused basalt railings on their luxury yacht. If the machine-owners can't spend the profits from their machines fast enough, people cannot afford to buy what the machines produce.
As someone that grew up in an area where there are many families that have at least two generations of non-working family units I'm actually thrilled by UBI. It won't encourage that any more than the current social welfare system does, even if those numbers increase slightly the rest of the benefits to the rest of the population are still worth it.
Not doing things because some of the population take the piss is not sensible.
When my kids were younger my wife and I had to work to pay the bills, but the majority of her income went to child care. After a year or so I got a raise and she could be a stay at home mom and our kids just jumped ahead mentally with mom their to interact with them all day.
If UBI could enable a parent to stay home full time that would be a very good use of funds.
I think it would be hugely advantageous to my children if they had two parents who could dedicate themselves full time to raising them. In what world is having a parent stressed out and absent most of the time good for kids?
It dis-incentivizes killing your emotional and physical well-being for a dead-end position at a slave-driven agency that's forcing all their workers into race to the bottom.
Which in turn incentivizes trickle down to attract those workers back into jobs again with worthwhile pay and adequate benefits to survive or gasp maybe even raise a family!
As long as you and others _choose_ to define value of a person only for their economic value (work output), we will always have poverty, no matter how enormous our total economic output (humans+machines) will become.
I know and know of many people who don't want to work or contribute to society. Sitting at home and not contributing to society is kind of a goal. Some groups are negative to those who try to work or contribute. I know families who have passed that on from parents to children.
This isn't everyone but it is a segment. I don't see much talk about this.
The folks in this segment aren't bound to be on HN.
I point this out just as a piece of information. There are opportunities in that. Maybe not to make a bunch of money but to understand people and maybe help some.
Would the world be worse off if people who have no interest in working and will siphon off as much money as they can from their employer until they get fired left the workforce? Those jobs would be freed up for people that actually want them.
I added my comment as a data point. One that I find is often overlooked or not talked about. How that data point is considered is something else.
As for how an economic system considers perceives immorality is a long winded conversation. Which economic system? What are rewards vs weapons in that economic system? For example, an economic system could reward work with money and not make money a given. Part of the idea is to look at rewards and how they work in a culture as well.
Do these studies account for people who drop out of the workforce to pursue education or training? It seems like that would be one of the benefits: allowing someone who is under skilled and working a low skill job to quit and focus on acquiring the skills they need to get a higher paying job.
AFAIU That's what a number of the people were doing on the Ontario program. That and looking to start a business.
They were promised 3 years and planned around that before the program was suddenly pulled out from under their feet after they'd already made major life changes.
One other thing to add to it: The community in the experiment were not self sustained. What I mean is that extra money was pumped into this experiment.
In real life the money needs to come from that same community, which boils down to increased taxes on labor. I would love to see the statistics on work incentive when your taxes double on that same work.
We need to get past "Your worth is your work". People don't deserve to be neglected simply because they produce nothing that society currently values. We all reach that point with age.
And multi-generational problems are generally solved with your educational system.
Your right in that the reporting needs a lot of help in this article. It does a terrible job of painting a picture of how the province's welfare works today.
Welfare in Ontario strongly disincentives work. Basic income may not be enough, but the current system is fundamentally broken. It punishes people who do what they can, by cutting them off from the system. So, by working, in many cases people will earn less.
I also would like a break down of the savings the province had on healthcare.
There is a lot of potential in Ontario and we need to help people get there. Health, wellness, education, and supporting those in a bad spot financially are all ways to do that.
Anecdotally, I live just outside of Hamilton, one of the places the trial was run. That city needs help desperately. For Canada's standard, it's in a very very rough place. It needs every bit of help it can get.
Would be good if they could somehow disentangle work from valuable work. Many (maybe most) hold down “bullshit jobs” that create no value and serve mainly as a kind of de facto socially subsidized welfare. The aim of UBI ought to be the elimination of worthless jobs.
There could be other factors involved too, like the short-termness of the study. One year isn't a lot of time, and it's definitely enough to coast on savings and take a break from a job you hated until you get bored and/or need to take on another one.
Also, more so than UBI (or perhaps as a compliment to one another), IMO reforms to labour policy are due. The 40 hour work-week has been standard for a long time, but if we have the productivity surplus to even consider UBI, why not consider a 4-day workweek, for example?
> All studies so far show a pretty consistent ~10% work disincentive. This is what all the detractors say when they say it disincentivizes work.
Most of these studies aren't done independent of existing means-tested government benefits. Then the UBI amount in itself is typically not enough to disqualify from eligibility for means-tested benefits, but a UBI plus a job would phase out nearly everything.
So you have on the one hand more subsidy living on the UBI plus existing government benefits than you would if the UBI would replace existing government benefits, and on the other hand still all the same disincentive to work of the existing system because taking a job results in the loss of government benefits, which results in a very high de facto tax rate and corresponding disincentive to work.
Also can you understand why I'm not shocked that an American-born statistician choosing to live in a third world country has evidence to support UBI being a bad idea?
> This is very misleading reporting. ... Slightly less than one-fifth were employed before but unemployed during the pilot (17%)
From the article:
> The report shows nearly three-quarters of respondents who were working when the pilot project began kept at it despite receiving basic income.
While they didn't say "83% of people kept working" saying "nearly three quarters" is much easier to read. The article under-reports the number of people who kept working, if anything.
What is work? With a large portion of labor subject to automation in and economy that doesn't need much of work anymore, people can rediscover their own form of work that brings value to the us as humans: caregiving, volunteering, arts, creativity, music, journalism, teaching, and revitalize local communities where all our main street stores are shuttering and local newspapers die in the thousands.
You must also consider the amount of shitty jobs going away. I'd refuse a work that had terrible conditions, since I wouldn't die of hunger anymore. The other working people would also have better job condition, so they would be freer to quit their job. Everybody improves, but the business that exists just based in brutal exploitation of their workers.
"work" is a funny term. Accepting for the sake of argument that it disincentivizes economically beneficial work, what if it frees up eg, artists and other culturally important activities? Or family care? Is that a bad thing? It makes /society/ better, even if it makes /the economy/ slightly worse
The effect on children who see their parents get up and go to work regularly is immense. Similarly, the effect on children whose parents encourage them to complete their education or go on to higher education is huge. Breaking the cycles of poverty rely upon these factors.
That is a pretty misleading assessment of the study:
> Overall, there was a slight reduction in the number employed during the pilot compared to the number employed prior to the pilot. Ten respondents moved from unemployment to employment while 32 moved from employment to unemployment. Of the participants who moved from employment to unemployment, 13 (40.6%) enrolled in full-time education during the pilot with the intention of re-entering the labour market later as more qualified workers.
The work disincentive seems well below 10%.
> If you consider multi-generational entrenchments of poverty as its own problem, worth serious merit, then the work disincentive could be a disaster.
The meta study you linked to shows a marked difference in the effect across genders. It seems pretty likely that a reduction in the labor force would caused by a significant factor by families where both parents work, and one has the ability to stay home with the kids. I don't see any data here talking about an increase in household where neither parent works. I suspect that any decrease that does exist, applies to single-parent households.
When you take this into account alongside the number of these the "work disincentived" that are people moving into full-time education programs, it doesn't seem obvious at all that here will be a negative effect on multi-generational poverty.
Finally, that article seems to lack a basic understanding of economics. A reduction in employment due to reductions in the job supply (such as during a recession) is in no way equivalent to a reduction in employment due to reductions in the labor supply. When you reduce the job supply, you reduce consumer income due to job loss / wage reductions, this compounds to further lower economic activity and thus leads to more reduction in the job supply. When you reduce labor supply through UBI, you don't see the same drop in consumer income, and wages should actually go up.
That’s what I always come back to with UBI. It needs to be survival level but not desirable long term, so that the goal is for it to supplement a job and not to replace it.
Why not require those who go on UBI and not work to give up the ability to reproduce while doing so? It’s not a perfect system but it would reduce the amount of population stuck in the entrenchment.
As long as our government doesn't have a public service with an unlimited supply of entry-level jobs, it is disingenuous to talk about poverty as only endable by work. Poverty can be ended by money as well, and given that poverty is defined by (lack of) money, it doesn't seem right to focus on work.
The issue I see with basic income is that most money is spent on housing and health care. These two things are supply constrained so it's more of an auction for who can afford them.
With basic income, we may just raise the cost of those things.
This problem wouldn't appear in a study that distributed to only some individuals.
We need to solve the regulatory or otherwise organizational problems of these things to provide real relief. Throwing money at the problem will just move money to a few hands.
> With basic income, we may just raise the cost of those things.
The problem with this argument is that it proves too much. It's true of anything that causes the poor to have more money. Lower unemployment, higher wages, anything. Heck, it's true of lower healthcare costs, because people would have more money for housing, or vice versa.
Housing costs and healthcare costs are problems, but they're independent problems.
On top of that, you're assuming the UBI actually results in the poor getting more assistance rather than merely different assistance. Right now there are explicit subsidies for housing and healthcare. If they get replaced with a UBI in the same amount, maybe people just use it to buy housing and healthcare anyway -- but maybe some of them don't, and that causes those prices to go down.
Problem is the lack of colloquial objective definition of "poor".
The US "poverty line" is at 80th percentile of world incomes. The US's vast welfare/entitlement system ensures few indeed net less than that line, shoring up their shortfall with trillions of $.
What constitutes "poor" keeps shifting. There will always be a bottom 10%. There is ongoing increase to the standard of living, instilling a sense of "nobody should go without X" (when X didn't exist not long before, broadband internet being the latest). Affordable housing gets overrun by population growth & attracting mobile opportunity-seekers, living space naturally going to the highest bidder; property taxes being a thing, there is no recognized natural right to real estate. Health care relentlessly advances, new lifesaving care objectively costing a great deal ... vs a public sentiment of a right thereto.
We need an objective redefinition of "poor", predicated on a baseline of nutrition, housing floorspace, basic tools (stove, disposal, etc), care (minimum optimistic odds of longevity), information access, etc and an understanding that the baseline cannot be shifted - that those doing better are not poor, that accessibility thereto is largely attainable (whatever the sociopolitical system), and acknowledgement that when/if all are above that line, poverty services are officially out of a job.
As it stands, "poor" is a moving target for which a great number of people have a vested interest in covering a consistent, if not growing, population.
> As it stands, "poor" is a moving target for which a great number of people have a vested interest in covering a consistent, if not growing, population.
Nearly all Kings and Emperors were 'poorer' than most Westerners under the poverty line of today. They had no refrigeration, antibiotics, electricity, etc. But we still agree that there are 'poor' people today, and I think we're correct to say so. Yes, it is a moving target, and thank God that it is such. If 'progress' means that we have to drag the least lucky of us up to levels of decadence that Cesar could never have though of, I'm more than on board for that. Quibbling about the exact definition of poor for all of time is useless. Charge ahead, have the 'poor' of our grandchildren's time be the wealthy of today.
IMO, the big factor that explains why a minimum-wage worker with a smartphone is impoverished but a 16th century king is not, comes down the psychological burden of poverty.
If you're poor in America you live with constant fear of minor financial catastrophes because they will further constrain your opportunity, perpetuating a downwards spiral. Integrated over time this background anxiety drastically reduces one's subjective quality of life, and also leads to physical health issues down the road.
By contrast, if you're a monarch of a medieval European kingdom, you might be dying of syphilis at 43 but with the knowledge that everything possible is being done to save you, and you can call for a roast pheasant or the execution of your meddling cousin on your deathbed.
It's completely subjective, and thus very easy to dismiss, but it contributes the "missing term" for me in thinking about this question.
I find this trope of Kings/Emperors being "poorer" than most people today, to be an extremely annoying trope. This trope is purely a rhetorical device used to justify inequalities, because "look you have a cell phone and infinite McDonald's deliveries on Seamless, you're richer than a King of old!" Meanwhile you're shackled to your job, shackled to your location, shackled to your apartment/mortgage, shackled to your debt, etc.
I find the annoyance annoying, overlooking how "poor" has been lifted to heights unthinkable not long ago - and prompting my earlier comment. Those who have had cellphones for all adulthood don't grasp how limited much was not long ago; methinks many need a reality check on what basic living entails (I grew up with wood heat, no A/C, significant homegrown food, walk 2 miles in a blizzard for help when car slid into a ditch, hand-typed individual copies of resume, etc). Most "shackling" is for want of imagination to do, not resources/opportunities. I'm deeply concerned that so many think they're "poor" when they do in fact have far more resources & opportunities than "rich" (or at least "middle class") did not long ago.
Why would we not want the baseline to improve over time? I genuinely do not understand the attitude that we should establish some extremely low bar like “is not currently at risk of starvation” and then never move the bar, but merely congratulating ourselves when more people pass that bar.
Because humans need an objective minimum to survive. Below that they face slow death. There's a difference between social norm vs existential need, and many people have a vested interest in conflating the two.
There has to be a baseline standard, amounting to triage, above which "your core needs are met, and you have a path to thrive on - up to you to do you now."
Maybe there's another moving standard of minimum standard of living, whereby people don't existentially need X but society at large agrees everyone should have X (or opportunity thereto).
The definition of "not poor" is not supposed to amount to "barely surviving" but to "living and being productive members of society".
> many people have a vested interest in conflating the two.
Just like you are conflating being poor and being a bad person:
> your core needs are met, and you have a path to thrive on - up to you to do you now.
This implicitly suggests that you are only poor because you were too lazy/stupid/<insult> to follow that path. Maybe there are people like that, but many people are poor because being poor is expensive.
At some point it's up to a competent adult to do with their lives what they see fit under the circumstances dealt them by life. They are not automatically the charge of others just because they don't achieve some nebulous whim of strangers. Each has their own dependents to prioritize.
So now they are poor either because they are "incompetent" or because they "saw fit" to be poor. Okay, there is nothing implicit or suggesting about this, you are explicit about it.
No. I'm saying: if they meet an objective baseline of essentials, they're not poor.
And that's the core problem: everyone is tossing around the word "poor" to fit their ulterior motives (yours currently being to demean me for no apparent reason) without any agreed-on definition thereof. You're beating me up for suggesting there be an objective common definition, which happens to not be what you want it to mean (which, apparently, is whatever implication you see fit to win an unprompted argument with a stranger).
> Because humans need an objective minimum to survive.
I don’t even agree with this. Even for starvation there’s no clean dividing line. Malnutrition leads to reduced lifespans and health problems. I think that quality of life both can and should increase as society improves its technology and wealth.
You're bolstering my case. "Malnutrition" is, obviously, below the line I'm trying to draw. Meet the line, and you fundamentally want for nothing, no "reduced lifespan and health problems". Humans have a natural lifespan; what is the minimum necessary to support that (aside from externalities brought on by personal choice or random $#!^)?
I’m not being clear. I mean that as your nutrition gets worse, your expected lifespan decreases and you are at greater risk of health problems. Again there is no clean dividing line between malnutrition and good nutrition. In fact, in the future we might know so much more about nutrition that many common human diets in 2020 will seem like malnutrition.
Then let's err in favor of what we can deem "good nutrition" now, and objectively adjust it later if appropriate. "You'll never meet my whimsical specification of sufficient, so your earnest objective suggestion is wrong" doesn't work.
The simpler solution is to just impose a tax of a given rate and pay out all the money it generates as a UBI. As economic productivity increases over time, more revenue is generated and we can pay out a bigger UBI, which satisfies the intuition that minimum standard of living should increase as overall productivity improves.
If that amount is below some standard of living we wouldn't wish on our worst enemies then we can worry about it (i.e. raise the tax rate). If it's somewhat more than that but nonetheless we have a reasonable tax rate, so what? If the economy is doing better in ten years and that allows someone living on a UBI to be able to afford broadband when they couldn't before, is that supposed to be a problem?
The problem is UBI simply becomes the new $0 per supply-and-demand. If you didn't have to work for $UBI, and everybody has $UBI it has no value. Yes, the math is more complicated than that; upshot is a limited supply of essentials will be priced to take into account that EVERYBODY has $UBI. If I'm poor, limited housing means rent goes to $rent+UBI. If I'm sufficiently above poor, $UBI goes to $0 because I paid for $UBI (xN) in the first place, getting back some of what I paid in taxes.
Someone who couldn't afford broadband before UBI wouldn't be able to afford broadband after (beyond a brief blip where the market sorts pricing out) because rent & broadband just increased price according to everyone now having UBI. If anything, more won't afford essentials and near-essentials precisely because overall prices will rise.
It's the same reason why minimum wage really doesn't work: prices increased to match a baseline income for low productivity, coupled with an increased population unable to earn at all because they simply don't produce $minwage value (and are now marked "poor" and routed to get their needs provided by a bureaucracy).
That would only be true in a world where supply of necessities is immutable. In practice when there is more demand for stuff we can generally make more stuff. It is possible to build additional housing rather than forcing everyone into a zero-sum auction over the existing supply.
Hence "Yes, the math is more complicated than that". The practical tweet-sized outcome is about the same though.
The other thing missed by UBI advocates: money is merely a representation of value, it is not value itself. Someone living on $UBI (and I expect a great many would) has all their basic needs met without their effort ... except that those basic needs are not provided without effort. This badly distorts supply-and-demand. $1 costing a UBI recipient nothing, prices rise by $1 - knowing that the $1 cost nothing to obtain; to wit "easy come, easy go".
> Hence "Yes, the math is more complicated than that". The practical tweet-sized outcome is about the same though.
Only if we do nothing about housing supply constraints and nobody decides they'd rather move to areas without those constraints given a UBI. But we should do something about housing supply constraints, and people would move away from high housing cost areas either way, but moreso if we do nothing about housing costs. Either one invalidates your premise.
> Someone living on $UBI (and I expect a great many would) has all their basic needs met without their effort ... except that those basic needs are not provided without effort.
We already do this for people with disabilities etc. It's not a problem unless the number of such people is large.
Meanwhile most people are not satisfied to live in a studio apartment and eat nothing but rice and beans forever. Anyone with more ambition than not starving to death would still have plenty of incentive to go out and do productive work, so the majority of people would continue to do so.
This is also another reason to fix the amount of the tax. If hypothetically too many people started to live off the UBI and not work, the tax would generate less revenue, the UBI amount would decrease and fewer people would be inclined to live off it.
> This badly distorts supply-and-demand. $1 costing a UBI recipient nothing, prices rise by $1 - knowing that the $1 cost nothing to obtain; to wit "easy come, easy go".
Giving everyone $1 doesn't cause prices to rise by $1. Some people would buy things with elastic supply whose quantity rather than price increases with increasing demand, some people simply wouldn't spend all of the money. (The second is more commonly done by corporations, but it's still very common, and the economic effect of the money being removed from circulation after being spent one time isn't that much different than zero.)
Also, that still only happens if you print the money. If it comes from someone then it doesn't cause price changes unless the two people would have bought different stuff -- which is not the case if they were both buying housing.
> “A linen shirt is, strictly speaking, not a necessary of life. The Greeks and Romans lived, I suppose, very comfortably though they had no linen. But in the present times, through the greater part of Europe, a creditable day-labourer would be ashamed to appear in public without a linen shirt, the want of which would be supposed to denote that disgraceful degree of poverty which, it is presumed, nobody can well fall into without extreme bad conduct.”
Interesting (I'll study further), but still fixated on "inequality". I don't care that Elon Musk has billion$ and I don't, I care that I have a "tiny house" bare minimum of nutrition, environment (heat/cool/humidity), waste disposal, energy, mundane medical care, and living space - with which I can be reasonably expected to live an optimal lifespan (within a standard deviation), processing raw resources at minimal cost.
>The problem with this argument is that it proves too much. It's true of anything that causes the poor to have more money.
Lower unemployment would be associated with a greater availability of goods and services, so that would get it out of the trap. Higher wages would also be associated with a supply increase if they came with increased productivity, but if you raised the minimum wage then prices of low-end products might actually go up. Of course, the typical supply and demand picture predicts both an increase in price and an increase in volume if the demand curve gets "richer," so you are not entirely off the mark, although your argument is not valid.
> Lower unemployment would be associated with a greater availability of goods and services, so that would get it out of the trap.
That's assuming the goods and services are locally consumed, which in a global economy they're commonly not.
A jet engine factory that moves in and hires a bunch of people reduces local unemployment, but that doesn't mean any of the local workers are in the market for jet engines.
> Higher wages would also be associated with a supply increase if they came with increased productivity, but if you raised the minimum wage then prices of low-end products might actually go up.
Same problem again. If a jet engine factory opens up in a place with already-low unemployment and pays better wages, people quit their lower paying jobs to take the higher paying ones, but that doesn't mean any of the productivity increase is relevant to local housing markets. The workers still aren't in the market for jet engines, but they'll bid up the local housing stock if zoning constrains any more from being built.
The premise that a UBI would increase housing costs is also basically assuming that the money comes from nowhere. If the money was printed that would be the case -- but that's an instance of "printing money causes inflation" rather than "UBI causes inflation." If it comes from collecting taxes then the people who receive it have more money, but the people who pay the tax have less, which more or less cancels out. (Especially when, as with the people in the middle, they're actually the same people and the UBI and the tax directly cancel out.)
>That's assuming the goods and services are locally consumed, which in a global economy they're commonly not.
But in a global economy that's irrelevant: the greater availability of jet engines where they are used will cascade eventually into a greater availability of bowling balls in the town where they make jet engines.
But in this case "bowling balls" is really "whatever the workers buy with their money" -- if local housing is supply constrained so they have to spend it bidding up housing prices, they don't get so many bowling balls.
This is still a "constraining the housing supply is bad" problem, not a "higher wages are bad" problem.
> If [UBI] comes from collecting taxes then the people who receive it have more money, but the people who pay the tax have less, which more or less cancels out.
It doesn't cancel out because the people receiving the UBI tend to buy different goods than the people paying the tax. Fewer people bidding up prices on yachts and capital, more people bidding up basic goods and services.
Employment cannot solve poverty problems for the disabled, the sick, the people taking care of their children/parents/siblings/etc, or the people who are better served spending the time in getting a degree.
Employment cannot solve poverty problems for the disabled
Of course it can. Why, in the US, almost a million of disabled people stopped being disabled and entered employment in recent few years, because of good economy:
The truth is that millions of people on disability in the US aren't actually so disabled that they cannot work: as the above shows, they will work if they consider the employment conditions good enough. Yes, there are plenty of disabled people who really cannot work, but majority of disability in the US is created, not alleviated by Social Security. One needs to remember that by creating programs to help poor and disabled, along with helping poor and disabled, one also creates more poor and disabled.
The only thing I would want to add is a minimum wage increase would cause employment to decrease holding all else equal, so an increase in supply would not be observed unless something else were at play.
Oh, of course, I was talking about the two separate cases of wage increases due to productivity increases (the guy maintaining the widget machine makes more than the guy who used to hand-stamp widgets) and wage increases due to minimum wage increases (all factories must now pay workers $15/hour for making one $8 widget every two hours).
> The problem with this argument is that it proves too much. It's true of anything that causes the poor to have more money.
"The conclusion of this argument is deeply inconvenient, therefore the argument is wrong."
It's actually true that rising wages result in higher rents. It's plainly obvious that this is the case - otherwise why would anyone care about rent explosion wherever Amazon decides to put HQ2?
> It's actually true that rising wages result in higher rents.
It's true in places with a constrained housing supply, i.e. restrictive zoning. Which is common in urban areas. But what you have there is a zoning problem, not a UBI problem -- evidence being that it's also true of higher wages and lower unemployment etc.
In unconstrained areas higher demand for housing causes more housing to be built, which prevents housing costs from absorbing anywhere near 100% of the new money.
Those less restrictive areas are not always where people want to live. The people advocating for UBI are often not the same people that are OK with poor people being priced out of an area and moving into lower-cost areas.
I think it's more likely we'll see UBI proponents want to factor in a cost of living adjustment based on the place one lives, which will be a nightmare of political administration and unintended consequences.
> Those less restrictive areas are not always where people want to live.
Then remove the restrictions in the places people do want to live.
> I think it's more likely we'll see UBI proponents want to factor in a cost of living adjustment based on the place one lives, which will be a nightmare of political administration and unintended consequences.
Agreed that there's additional margin we can get with less restrictive zoning, but land is ultimately supply constrained. More importantly, high-quality (previously defined as arable, now defined as "close to good jobs/services") is certainly constrained as a matter of physical distance.
Land is supply constrained, which causes housing to cost more in urban areas because constructing taller buildings costs more. But the limit on housing supply even in urban areas, absent restrictive zoning, would be that construction cost at any plausible level of demand.
We know how to build 100 story buildings but there is no place on earth where you can find a hundred square miles of nothing but 100 story buildings.
I don't follow that. HQ2 was about creation of new jobs and immigration of more people into the area.
For a fixed supply, higher rents are caused by a larger number of people demanding housing at the current prices. Higher wages only affect that by (a) causing immigration into the area, or (b) raising people out of poverty so that they can afford housing when they couldn't before.
Hypothetical landlord: “All my tenants are now earning an additional $1k per month and nothing prevents me from raising prices. But I won’t raise rents because... reasons.”
Even where there are housing supply constraints, they still can't raise rents by the full $1000/month because that would give tenants $1000/month more incentive to move to a different city without housing supply constraints.
By how much absolutely does rent go up vs how much the wage has risen? Are the people better off or not? Don't just say rising rents as a catch all. This is all the more case for UBI vs rising minimum wage because in UBI there aren't the unemployed falling through the cracks.
> I empirically analyze the causal impact of the minimum
wage increase on housing rents in the United States and Japan. In both countries, minimum wages hikes increase housing rents in urban areas: 10% minimum wage increase induces 1%-2% increase in the United States and 2.5%-5% increase in Japan.
> 10% minimum wage increase induces 1%-2% increase in the United States
This shows that absolute rent is going up. Relative rent, the proportion of income going to rent, is going down. This frees up folks' money for other things and improves living conditions.
> Now imagine a 10% raise for every earner.
If everybody made the same exact amount, that would be relevant. With a $25k UBI, you'd see folks who previously earned $50k getting a 50% raise and those making $500k getting a 5% raise. Right now, people in poverty are often spending 40-60% of their income on rent. Not so of people making $500k.
>Right now there are explicit subsidies for housing and healthcare. If they get replaced with a UBI in the same amount
Good luck with that. UBI is barely tolerated by the left and progressives but only under the constraint that it doesn't replace any existing social welfare programs. The minute UBI advocates start pushing it as a replacement is the minute that progressives will squash it.
As an exercise, try and advocate for getting rid of Medicare for Seniors in return for increasing the pension payout rate (to whatever reasonable number of you choose). How do you think that will go ... and that's just one program. If you think you can get rid of food stamps and 10,000 other programs, you're dreaming.
Honestly I think public health is so well ingrained into the Australian psyche that it's not really considered to be welfare - it's just a state service like roads or parks. UBI in Australia wouldn't change our healthcare system.
UBI is barely tolerated by the left and progressives but only under the constraint that it doesn't replace any existing social welfare programs.
Where can I read some of these articulated positions for myself? Any particular articles or writers that made a substantial impression on you with these positions that you'd recommend I read?
>Where can I read some of these articulated positions for myself?
Imagine if you were to come up with a policy where you increase senior pension rates by $3000/mo but you get rid of Medicare - do you think Bernie Sanders would go for that deal? I'll tell you right now: ZERO chance he would support it. And that doesn't even take into account that there are hundreds of thousands (millions?) of jobs that support the current entitlement programs. Do you think those employees will just let you lay them off without a fight?
I don't have any links, but I have gone out of my way to find out what different groups think of UBI when I was excited about UBI a few years ago. My excitement has since deflated and I now think UBI isn't a solution to any actual issues with automation. Specially it doesn't solve the following:
- It doesn't get rid of existing entitlement programs.
- It doesn't solve automation issues for the developing world which can't afford to pay its citizens and will be hit especially hit hard by automation.
- It doesn't solve automation issues for the developed world since people derive meaning and self-worth from work (there's a difference between working and supporting yourself and being supported by government handouts). To reinforce this point: communities that are supported by government welfare programs tend to have issues with drug and alcohol abuse and crime. Furthermore, the social welfare programs in the developed world are already extensive enough that healthcare, food, and shelter will always be available regardless of the state of automation.
I imagine he's talking about the response to the Yang campaign, where liberals quite rightly derided his plan to replace all "entitlement" programs with the dramatically smaller $1000/mo UBI. If someone who has been a life-long libertarian looks like he's trying to drive a wedge into social welfare programs, that's probably what is happening.
Was this just general derision in the form of "people on twitter" or had an economist somewhere made a cogent economic rebuttal? It's the latter I was interested and hoping someone could point me in the direction of. Not particularly interested in hearing what twitter person thinks about UBI-I'm rather ignorant to certain economic arguments about UBI myself, and am trying to address this, if that makes sense.
I doubt any serious economist could corral up enough spare tike to waste on a rebuttal of this idea. Not every idea rises to the level of serious discourse. The Yang UBI amount was much smaller than the amount paid by social welfare programs to the people who receive them. That's just arithmetic.
That is because it was proposed with cuts to everything else. That leaves people to fall through the cracks in the meantime. If you transition to UBI without those issues, progressives like the idea.
Right. But this is the unbridgeable gap between Libertarian-types, who see UBI as a way to cut entitlements and progressives who (at best) see it as a supplement to ALL existing programs. What's the compromise here?
Agreed. The momentum of welfare service providers alone would see to that, with somewhere around a million US workers having a vested interest in keeping their jobs as gatekeepers/facilitators, vs "everyone gets a check" covering what they control access to. Should UBI be enacted, the very same system would agitate to provide specialty services on top of UBI for special cases, building pretty much the same bureaucratic structure as exists now.
UBI simply redefines $0 income to a higher number functionally equal to $0.
You're right about the housing. If we have government policy that restrains supply (as we clearly do) and at the same time a government policy that stimulates demand (UBI) rents are guaranteed to increase. That doesn't mean UBI is bad, it means the government needs to adopt a radical supply program for housing. Every landlord in America should be put out of business.
If you are guaranteed income, you aren't bound to specific regions or locations. You can move to places with cheaper land and healthcare systems with less overcrowding. You can work less lucrative jobs in those locations and find customers for your work because everyone including the local residents of those rural areas, will have new money to spend. Local regions would see an influx in cash, allowing for small businesses to be reborn in rural areas and spreading the economy out and away from coastal metro areas.
A lot of people rely on friends as non-monetary resources. If I get locked out of my car right now I'll call a family member to bring me a spare key. If my car is acting up I have a friend that will look at it for me. I do a lot of tech support in return, not necessarily in exchange for other services in a direct way. It's just being part of a community. At least in my world (midwest US) I cannot imagine moving to an unfamiliar area as a form of resource management. I think this probably gets more extreme the more your financial resources are strained.
Having close family nearby is worth a hell of a lot of money by non-FAANG-wage standards. Hundreds to thousands of dollars a year in saved vehicle and equipment rentals or purchases, Ubers (car breaks down, need a ride to work), and so on. If you've got kids and have some nearby family happy to provide child care, we're talking hundreds a year in babysitters on the low end to many thousands if they can replace daycare, before/afterschool care, that kind of thing. That's a lot of money to most people.
But with UBI, maybe larger networks of people could move together. For example, a single mom can't move to a new city to take a job because she relies on her parents for childcare, and her father can't leave his job. But with UBI they could all move together if it made sense for them. Her extended family could move with her and pay for expenses with UBI until they all found new jobs.
I agree, I'm sure there are cases where UBI would enable people to move, I just don't think it's going to be a big paradigm shift/massive migration/stir the melting pot kind of thing.
That's definitely true for those that have networks with some amount of wealth. For instance, if your family member doesn't have a vehicle, or works a job with inflexible hours, they might not be available to bring you a spare key.
My wife and I are friends with a young single mother who, until recently, didn't have such a network (my wife met her through a mentoring program). She grew up in the foster system, suffered abuse, and went to an alternative high school. Her network consisted of family members who were themselves barely scraping by, as well as school friends who were in similar straits. If your network doesn't have the resources to support you, it's not nearly as valuable.
All that being said, I have a similar feeling on moving away from our community; but our network has a lot of people (family, friends, and acquaintances) with money and connections.
This might be a bug rather than a feature for a lot of people. Many people want humanity to concentrate in urban areas because it is better for the environment. Others complain about urbanites' tax dollars paying for rural roads (which is effectively the scenario you're describing, even if those tax dollars are labeled "UBI" and routed through rural citizens' bank accounts first). Still others see rural Americans as their political adversaries.
(Note that this is just an observation; not a value judgment)
> Many people want humanity to concentrate in urban areas because it is better for the environment.
I'm interested in learning more about this. I've never heard of it, are there any sources proving that this is the case? If people spread out more, is that actually more harmful? I can imagine this is an extremely complicated topic
I can't provide numbers for this, but many things are more efficient for dense settlements: transportation, any last-mile distribution (food, water, electricity) and collection (sewage, garbage).
This is the line of reasoning I was referring to. Also urban areas emit (cause?) less carbon per capita than rural areas and both do better than suburban areas.
So provide a basic income, but also shift some (or all) of the costs of those externalities onto the individual. Your basic income stretches farther if you choose a lifestyle that makes more efficient use of it.
This is already true. You make less money but it stretches farther in many areas outside of major cities. Most people live in these cities because they want to, even with all of the drawbacks. Not because they have to.
In the current case, politicians are deciding to route dollars to rural roads because people live there. In the UBI case, tax dollars are given to people who live in rural areas who then pay tax to fix their own roads (or maybe we don't change how rural roads are funded and we just add on UBI?). Seems like you're making a distinction without a (meaningful) difference.
>If you are guaranteed income, you aren't bound to specific regions or locations.
Not disputing this, but there are some caveats that would need to be true for this hypothesis to hold. The main one being that people's reluctance to move comes down largely to career opportunities and moving expenses rather than access to amenities or proximity to family/community.
The primary reason people leave rural areas and move to large metropolitan areas is work. Most people in rural areas are already near their families, that's why they are there to begin with.
I disagree on the housing point. With basic income, people who can’t afford housing in expensive areas would move to towns with cheap housing/land but less lucrative/efficient work. There’s no housing shortage in rural areas.
I have lived in areas that were gentrifying. Everyone knew that rents were going up and would continue to go up, but few were willing to leave. People with small nest eggs preferred to blow it on higher rents than invest it in relocation. The general attitude I saw was 'I have a right to live here so I will, even if I can no longer afford it.'
Not only that but people have an emotional investment; "This is my home", "All my family lives here", "It's all I've ever known", etc. Moving to someplace cheaper may not be an improvement overall. Financially maybe, but what's that worth if all your friends live across the state, or you can't just hop into a nearby pub (if that's your thing) like you used to, or you have to drive for an hour to get to work instead of a 15 minute bike ride?
Because moving to places with lower cost of living, to speak extremely broadly of course, means less income compared to cost of living, meaning a lower standard of living. But with a guaranteed income, a lower cost of living would always mean a benefit to standard of living.
This is true in theory but not in practice in my experience. I presently live in one of the bottom 5 states in terms of population density and there are multiple manufacturing plants that require no experience, are paying 60k+ for new hires, and are in extremely low COL areas. By the way, they can't find enough people to apply and are having to aggressively advertise to fill entry-level spots. I think the issue is more information asymmetry. If people knew the jobs existed and knew what they paid I'm sure at least some % would be willing to move, but no one discloses that out of that gate, unfortunately.
People are not exclusively driven by economics, nor are they immune to economics. For a lot of people, moving to a place with lower COL would mean giving up community and family in their high COL areas. Those networks provide a lot of security that doesn't appear on the books.
These are quality of life trade-offs that are different for everyone.
Of course, the younger or more flexible you are, areas like yours might be a good opportunity, but it's not a obvious win for every entry level job aspirant.
I think the other problem is what happens next. Without the nexus of a city you are stuck at that place or the 4 or 5 similiar places. Good or bad variety can offer more.
Because moving itself is expensive, and you can't just move and automatically have a new job. With basic income, you can afford to move, and don't have to worry too much about the time you'll spend looking for a new job.
If they like their current house they'll work hard to pay for it.
If they can't find a job or don't like their current home that much they can use their UBI to move and make room for a more productive citizen to move into the city. This makes the allocation of housing more efficient.
Because relocating requires a tremendous effort: new housing, job, occupation, acquaintances, etc.
Because a lot of that cheap land is cheap for a reason: low/no data service, harsh weather, insufficient community.
Because "basic income" is free: the whole point of UBI is a basic income which one can get by on - non-zero effort to work at all withers against the prospect of being comfortable doing nothing; there is no imperative incentive to work.
Rural areas are expensive, but heavily subsidized, from roads to Telecom and other utilities. This is only reasonable now because we need people out there growing food. It's crazy to spend money on moving people to the prairie instead of just building more housing in cities where people want to be.
Here in Finland the UBI discussion is completely different from what is in the US. Here UBI hast to come in addition to housing allowance, free healthcare and education.
Realistic UBI would be roughly the size of minimum guaranteed pension.
The cost: Microsimulation models have shown that it can be cost neutral.
In current systems effective marginal tax rates are higher for poor people than they are for the middle class or the rich in both US, Finland and probably most other developed countries. UBI or negative income tax or something similar is needed to solve this problem.
Would not an increase in demand for such things lead to a corresponding increase in supply? Or is there something I don't know about supply restrictions in Canada?
Coming from Germany (not Canada, but maybe closer to Canada than the US in terms of spending): Housing absolutely, health care probably not for most people.
But yeah, if you live on full time minimum wage here that's ~1200€ per month, of which probably 500-800 depending on where you live will go to rent. And if it's 800, it would probably be 1800 if everyone got 1000€ per month. So in that sense, he might be right.
On the other hand some people just might actually quit their job with 1000€ per month and live somewhere further away from cities, since they don't have to live there to work. And maybe that would incentivize employers to try to create more work outside cities. Seems almost impossible to really predict the large scale effects here.
At the bare minimum, if the monthly income from rental properties doubled, I suspect that would have a major impact on housing development.
It all depends on why development isn't happening, but I have a really hard time imagining that supply would not increase even if the major restrictions are due to other factors than development costs.
Well, the thing in Germany is that (1) there is actually a decent amount of new housing being built in cities but (2) there are often strict limits around where you're allowed to build, what you're allowed to demolish, and how high you're allowed to build. And during the past 5 years, demand has vastly outpaced supply. Property prices and rents in cities are absolutely insane, and there is no indication that that is going to stop.
And the reaction to it from people is quite... shortsighted? From my perspective. Often the exact people who would benefit from a better housing market vote for parties who are more restrictive in terms of new buildings. There's this perception that new buildings are only being built for "rich" people, which is true, but it also means the rich people aren't competing for your shitty apartment anymore. But somehow, people don't really think about that.
Yes. Everytime someone says the price will just go up to match it's like some imaginary world where the one thing you can't apply supply/demand is the welfare of people. Housing is not fixed and healthcare is a function of prevention which is best served by proactive measures instead of reactive which are generally more expensive. We can actually save money by not being so inefficient with the capital in the first place.
Canadian here, the supply of housing depends on which part of the country you're talking about. As far as I've heard/seen the supply of housing is generally increasing with demand in most parts of the country - some of my relatives who live in a small town a couple of hours from Toronto were saying the town is getting its first block of apartments.
However, the moment you start looking at Toronto, Vancouver, and to some extent Montreal and Ottawa, the trend no longer holds. The populations of Torcouver are going up far faster than supply is able to increase, for a variety of reasons including the cost of building, regulations, NIMBYism, etc. The problem is further exacerbated by demand-side issues driving it up, such as speculation leading to housing sitting empty and illegal AirBNBs keeping units from being rented.
Health care yes, housing, no. It's possible to build more housing to meet demand, or for people to move to balance supply/demand vs. prevailing wages. Or to have a smaller home or more room mates.
Housing is often constrained because of real estate owners controlling the political process and eliminating new construction to keep the value of their property high. Not due to economics.
>Health care yes, housing, no. It's possible to build more housing to meet demand, or for people to move to balance supply/demand vs. prevailing wages. Or to have a smaller home or more room mates.
Why do you think healthcare is constrained? The same way housing supply is constrained by zoning regulations and stuff, healthcare supply is constrained by slow diffusion of IP, restrictive immigration policies, inadequate numbers of medical school and residency slots, and restrictive occupational licensing for day-to-day medical care.
It is possible to expand access to care to meet demand, but in the USA we have a system that prioritizes high fees for doctors and hospitals, high returns to student loan providers (medical school debt), and high returns to health insurance providers above access and supply.
You are right, this is under-discussed. Look at what happened to higher education with all the "free" money. We don't want slumlords just raising prices to capture this money. It could be that if you if you are in a program like this that the rent have to be regulated based on size and location. In my opinion, UBI can never really work, but there is no reason we can't reduce/eliminate taxes on the poor to increase their standard of living.
Land value tax would be the way to go. Regulating the rent would be about as useful and effective as existing rent control schemes..
With a land value tax, the rent would still go up, but the increase would mostly be recycled back into tax take. (And you can use that tax take to eg finance (part of) the UBI.)
Yes, that's a big part of why rent control doesn't work well.
A land value tax is levied on the value of the unimproved land in a specific plot. Whether you leave the land fallow or build 30 storeys of luxury condominiums on it, the amount of dollars you have to pay in taxes doesn't change.
So the (additional) housing supply is completely untaxed.
What is taxed however is the following:
If the town gets a new highway or airport, and that raises land prices, that gets taxed. Same for a UBI.
(To pre-empt the next discussion: it's not completely trivial to separate the value of the building from the value of the land. But it can be done. Insurance companies do it routinely. And there are a variety of strategies to make the assessment that are hard to game or cheat.)
Wouldn't reducing/eliminating taxes have the same exact effect as an UBI? More money in people's pockets. By following your logic no form of welfare can work.
Tax settlement is done once per year. Monthly UBI both feels different and is practically different in terms of helping people have money throughout the year.
universal more-or-less free _access_ to basic (generally good in my opinion) care. But that doesn't include dental or prescriptions (with some exceptions/subsidies), for most people. It's surprising to see them list it as a significant part of someone's budget though. Perhaps I'm not old and sick enough (yet!) to relate :).
Some do, most are very basic outside of Quebec, and even then, I can't remember the last time a tenant sued an operator because they illegally increased the rent in Quebec (the new tenant would need the old tenants lease, plus proof that the increase wasn't justified).
This isn’t true. Numerous countries have public healthcare systems that service the public successfully, like Singapore.
Sure, you can pay to access the private system, which is a nominal amount compared to what we pay in the US.
The US ranks among the worst of the first world nations in terms of access to and quality of healthcare[0]. Just look at our hospital borne MRSA infection rates.
The idea that the US delivers consistent, quality care across the nation is laughably false.
It seems Americans often believe that, but virtually nobody in Western Europe would even think of going to the US for healthcare. I would assume the same for Canadians.
I have no idea if that's actually true, but the widespread opinion is that the ~free (it depends a lot between countries, it's usually simply affordable, rather than free) healthcare here is much better than what a normal person can afford in the US.
I'm Canadian, it's not nearly as good as paid healthcare in the US (especially high end paid healthcare). Giant wait times for things you can pay to do in the US.
> It seems Americans often believe that, but virtually nobody in Western Europe would even think of going to the US for healthcare. I would assume the same for Canadians.
This is not true. It's just ignored because people would rather believe that universal healthcare is infallible. We moved from Canada to the US precisely because of healthcare for our children. In Canada, care was non-existant and the private services were expensive. In the US, it was the complete opposite.
universal health care has never meant that every possible heath care need is met without cost. It means that access to the covered services is universally available. Which of course isn't true in an absolute sense (residency requirements etc), but is true in most practical senses.
Do your children have special needs? It never even crossed my mind to move to the United States. I imagine given my profession I could get a job with decent benefits, but I can't imagine wanting to move to the states for the health care, unless I had a special requirement.
That doesn't mean what you think it means. There are many things not covered or not covered practically that you would want to pay for private healthcare. e.g. You can wait years for services, or you can pay a few thousand a month and get it sooner. This is critical for things that necessitate early intervention. Wait too long, and when the government does finally come around to being able to provide services, it's already too late, and because the patient is too old, they are no longer eligible for the services they should have received in the first place. I speak from personal experience.
I doubt your experience is the norm. The system isn't perfect - there's definitely gaps or things I think should be covered (eg dental), and I know everyone's experience is different, but as a counter example I've never felt the need or desire to pay for private healthcare either (aside from not-covered dental) on demand or with private insurance, and I don't know any of my family that do either. (BC resident) The system has been there when we've needed it, including access to preventative care like cancer screening programs.
Bennett was referred for surgery on her right hip in November of 2013 and said she’s been told she won’t get in until early in 2016. She said her joint has deteriorated so much she is unable to work or even function without strong narcotic painkillers.
I haven't heard a compelling reason as to why the basic reality you point out wouldn't be true with UBI. It applies more to housing than to healthcare (we'd be delighted to build more hospitals and hire more nurses, but we can't make Manhattan bigger).
Georgism at work.
Places with lower building regulations and higher property taxes would likely fare better with UBI than places with locked housing supply and extreme building regulation, such as San Francisco.
If it was possible to build more housing, then I'd expect more housing to get built with UBI and rents to not go crazy. Otherwise, we're just pumping more steam into a turbine...
So the problem is in a highly unequal society, "what the market will bare" can leave these things out of reach of most people. With basic income, yes some things can cost more, but also yes the spread of what people can pay is less.
Basically, income goes up, and prices go up, but income goes up more, and eventually one reaches a fixed point. For basic goods, this should happen sooner; e.g. the rich aren't going to just buy more flour.
Housing is interesting in that currently being in a decent job market makes the housing luxurious. This is absurd. Basic income doesn't address the cost disease of luxury good, but by breaking "employed <==> surviving", it will make the other housing more attractive. Combine that with carbon tax so we don't just get endless sprawl, and then we should be set.
This is a concern I have as well; if everyone has the same income, nobody has? I'm afraid it would just bump inflation by an X amount. If everyone's base income goes up by 10% due to basic income, wouldn't that just be offset by prices going up 10% because everyone can afford that 10% anyway?
Plus, housing prices are already ridiculous and still climbing; it's at a point now where people need an income in addition to their normal wages to be able to get a house.
It depends if the market is demand-side or supply-side constrained. If everyone had more money and wanted a new TV, TV manufacturers would just spin up production to meet demand over time. If everyone needs a house and housing is restricted by zoning then the price will go up.
One reason basic income might sidestep the housing issue is that unlike city jobs, if a basic income is portable then it makes it easier to avoid living in the city, reducing competition for housing. That's also a good reason against making the basic income dependent on location (e.g. you get paid more in NYC than Reno), since that would just incentivize people to flock to cities.
Also if that seems hand wave-y to you, consider that in Alaska when the oil money goes out, stores usually have sales, lowering their prices to compete for customers.
If people have the money to get care when they need it, it may actually reduce demand for care since we can catch problems and solve them before they end up so critical that people go to the ER.
With basic income you make $4000 + $1000, which removes the discontinuities associated with means testing.
Whether increased taxes used to pay for the UBI end up eating up your UBI depends on the plan and how much you make/spend. Some UBI proposals are paid for with a wealth tax, others with a consumption tax, others by cutting most of the existing programs). They usually end up being redistributive in the grand scheme.
> With basic income you make $4000 + $1000, which removes the discontinuities associated with means testing.
No, you don't. It is completely unrealistic to assume that UBI won't effect salaries in any way. Of course this is hard to test in a small scale study, but "you introduce UBI and everything else stays exactly the same" make no sense.
It's equally unrealistic to assume that UBI will exactly affect salaries by canceling them out. You're right that there will be effects, and they're likely to be dependent on job as well.
For instance basic income may mean salaries go up for the jobs nobody wants to do as people are given an alternative, while salaries go down for jobs that are intrinsically motivating.
I can't say for certainty though. My best guess is that it's going to be better than the hodgepodge of social welfare (and its complex effects) we have today.
From my personal point of view, basic income SHOULD disincentivise work; it's a boost for society, health, well-being, children, etc.
Because in the current economy, a lot of people have to work unreasonable hours, multiple jobs, and have all people in a family work to make ends meet, at the cost of personal health and well-being, personal time, having children at all or having more children, getting married and buying a house, etc.
Right now I'm stressed because I'm earning less than I spend, my girlfriend is stressed because she doesn't have a job yet and due to personal reasons may find it hard to get, keep, and work enough hours at a job, etc. If she earned a basic income we'd be out of the woods already. If I then also earned one on top of my job we'd be VERY comfortable.
(And keep in mind I would already pay for both of our basic incomes through the income taxes I'm paying at the moment. I'm happily paying taxes because other people paying taxes put me through college and into my current job)
I agree. Letting workers leave abusive employment situations is a benefit of UBI. UBI might even totally reorient the idea of work in that now an employer has the incentive to keep workers happy that must be balanced with the profit incentive.
Yea, I think many in the tech circles forget how predatory a lot of industries are. My first "real" job was a state job (good benefits, good hours, etc), and eventually I migrated to tech. After years of that I met my wife, who worked retail.
At basically every aspect of her job it felt like her employer did not respect her as a person. Her work hours weren't steady, her pay wasn't good, she was constantly at risk of losing her "full time" status and if she did lose that she could drop down to random ~5h/week slots. Her employer wouldn't even fire you, they would just drop you down to basically no hours until you had to quit and miss out on unemployment.
Most of the staff she worked with in fact, most of which I'd argue were full time employees were withheld hours just so they wouldn't get full time benefits. Looking around for jobs was also difficult as most other employers did not want full time employees either.
Employers in lesser skilled fields get away with murder because employees have very little ground to stand on. They don't have the income to build financial independence, nor does the government help them out in many cases. Even unemployment is gamed and withheld.
I don't know if UBI is the answer, but something needs to be done.
UBI would reorient the idea of work in the sense that new generations won't think about work the way we do, for them it will be something that you can do, not something you have to do. Similarly how sport is today, you can do sports but you don't have to.
Also with UBI you are guaranteed a certain amount of income for the duration of your life. You can go to a bank and take a loan against your UBI. A big portion of the UBI will end up at the banks because basically the loans are guaranteed by the government.
That's not necessarily true. Work ethic is not derived only from the notion that people need to work. It is derived from an ethical imperative and from a sense of achievement people get from work. Also, any UBI would likely be well under the amount of money necessary to live a middle class life. I myself was on SSI and could have found a way to subsist on it but really did not want to live that way. I got to know a lot of other people on SSI as well and they mostly felt the same. Most were looking for a way to make enough money to get off government assistance. This was substantially affected by the fact that the government takes 50 cents for every dollar you make. For me, living in Montana, this meant I could go to work for $5.15/hour minimum wage. I could earn $40 a day and lose $20 from my benefit. If you want to talk about a benefit system designed to disincentive work you'd have a hard time inventimg a better one than we have now.
The proposed monthly amount was €2,300 in Switzerland when they had a referendum on the issue in 2016. That is enough to have a more than decent living.
Work ethic might be engrained into our culture, but someone who is brought up in a society where UBI is normal and they are just a few years away from becoming "rich", I think not-working-ever is a very enticing idea and many teens will fall into that trap.
#1 You're citing the highest possible individual example I know of. Most tests I've seen range from $300-$1,200 per month in wealthy countries.
#2 Switzerland has a very high cost of living so I'm not sure 2,300 Swiss Francs is that high.
#3 Your second paragraph is 100% begging the question. I'm open to the idea that UBI might be good or bad for work ethic but there simply is not enough data for you to have the confidence you do in your conclusion.
If you default on the payments after spending the loan, how will they collect? There's no collateral to sell to recoup the principal, and the government isn't obligated to back up the loan you took, only to keep paying you UBI going forward.
Therefore, the loan would have to be dismissable in bankruptcy. So a UBI loan basically reduces down to nothing more than an unsecured "personal loan", which is something you can get today, albeit at very high interest rates:
The average life expectancy of the population would determine together with inflation and interest the maximum amount you'd be able to borrow. A rough calculation at $1,000 UBI a month would give you around $500K available to borrow at 18 and you'd pay back around 750k till you die at 82.
This is especially true where the trial was run. Those places are in a bad spot and three isn't much to lift them up.
> I'm happily paying taxes because other people paying taxes put me through college and into my current job
Me too. I came up very poor, but access to a good education allowed me to learn how to code at 16... We need to raise these people up. We are paying the taxes to support it, we just need a government who doesn't misappropriate funds.
Exactly. Too many people think about the relationship between employment, productivity, and prosperity way too linearly.
The biggest problem is that we don't really have a good way to measure the value of free time or well-being. While someone could spend every penny of a minimum wage job on daycare services and it would boost productivity figures, it would be a pretty silly decision for someone to make in terms of actual prosperity.
Society has decided for a long time to continue working the same or more hours as productivity rises, but at what point does it make more sense in terms of prosperity to cash out some of that productivity in the form of free-time rather than dollars?
We currently have intense income inequality in the world - pretty sure we can shave some off the top and the middle to help everyone live a healthier life.
Wealth isn’t fungible like that. A lot of recent wealth inequality was stocks rising.
That doesn’t mean that food production went up, or that more houses get built cheaper, or that new doctors are cloned, or anything of the sort.
It just means stocks went up.
Most of the economy is people providing stuff to other people, or working to import stuff. If people don’t work, you don’t get the stuff they provide.
To a certain extent you can sell off assets abroad and import stuff using a trade deficit. But that doesn’t work forever, and you can’t import haircuts or clean floors or construction labour or nurse shifts. At a certain point work is needed.
Oh, so maybe we should fund UBI by just stripping out the capital gains exemptions that allow insanely rich people to get insanely richer.
Some people have more money than they need, it can be removed from them - the intricacies of how they got that money should be very carefully considered when it comes to structuring how UBI would be funded - but they clearly have more money in absolute terms. And that wealth is transferable.
Also, in the western world, we have enough of everything. No one starves in America because there isn't enough corn, they starve because they don't have enough money to afford it - no one is homeless because no homes could be built, they're homeless because nobody wants to pay for the home to be built.
I think the point is you cannot go infinitely far with that concept. Wealth allows you to get a share of the productive capacity of the world. Giving everyone a billion dollars does not automatically mean we have enough production capacity and land to have everyone live in a mansion.
Now we can certainly say that "hey maybe if these guys all didn't have such a big mansion or as many cars everyone else would be better off", but you have to be explicit about that. It's about taking away things people like and to put that effort elsewhere.
How do you transfer it though? If some businessman has all his wealth tied up in stock in his business, how do you convert that to money? Some other person has to buy the stock. All this does is move the wealth around.
Wealth taxes have been discussed in the modern political stage - but I'm a bit :shrug: about them - I think it'd be fine to continue to only tax capital gains when they're realized - so as long as that businessman can't effectively use any of his wealth he doesn't pay taxes on it - as soon as he benefits from his wealth he pays taxes on the accrued gains.
It doesn't matter. You bleed them through inflation, VAT, whatever. The finance may be abstract, but at the end of the day money is claims for (future) economic output and you can dilute that as needed.
Some ways are better than other, but this idea that the powerful can hide their power through accounting tricks alone is a failure to think at multiple layers of abstraction.
Getting this done may be quite a challenge, but it's a good thing to get done.
It's why this article is from the CBC, since Canada (while not perfect) is much better than the US in pursuing good things even if it hurts the powerful.
UBI is like any other government service: if you're spending more on [Service aimed at me] than I actually need to become a productive member of society (or at least not a drain on it), you're not spending your money right.
You can spend that government money on any number of services: Prisons, Childcare, Libraries, Transportation, etc. UBI is different in one major detail:
UBI assumes that people are, at this stage of human technology and society, smarter about how to spend that money the government is ALREADY going to spend on them than the government itself is.
Furthermore, to differentiate itself from mere "welfare", any attempt at means-testing to try and ensure that only "worthy" clients get UBI is just going to add further cost to the system. Specifically, it will cost more than simply distributing the money involved. After all, drug tests cost money. Paperwork costs money. Employing enforcers costs money AND office space AND equipment for them to do their job.
It's a radical notion -- after all, doesn't figuring out if giving out "free money" actually saves money still itself cost money? Still, we're not comparing UBI to a mythical "perfect system"; we're trying to compare it to the imperfect system we have right now, where the cost of NOT doing it gets reflected in things like crime, mental illness, drug abuse, preventable deaths, etc.
There is already a cost associated to continuing to do things "the way we've always done them". UBI is that same cost spent in a different way.
One of Andrew Yang's proposal was to pay for a UBI with a 10% VAT, especially on services gained from automation, AI etc. Things that give companies a productivity boost, while also avoid taxes. So this would be a way to get the money back.
For example - currently a trucker driver will pay state tax, federal tax, pay taxes on the things they eat/buy. When a self driving truck comes...all of that above won't occur anymore. And the company saves money.
>Things that give companies a productivity boost, while also avoid taxes.
Shovels, cars, tractors, computers, pens, paper etc? A truck driver can do the job of many cart drivers! And a cart driver can do the job of people who carry things with their own body.
Sure, all of those things created large economic gains for their respective economies. It's a question of how much of that economic gain can we capture with taxation.
It will lead to a new equilibrium for sure. Whether that equilibrium is more wealth than currently exists (due to the additional buying power in consumers' hands) or less wealth (due to increasing cost of labor), I don't claim to know. But in the latter case, this decrease in total wealth would be a result of a collective decision that we value our time more than unnecessary material shit. A leaner workforce would have the incentive of higher wages. So in either case (an increase or decrease in total wealth), I'd argue that we're better off for it.
With increasing automation less people can do more work and therefore earn more money, this is already causing some of the unemployment issues we see today.
Yes! If you all aren't destitute and your parents never worked, your family has time to accrue lots of social capital, which incidentally is extremely economically valuable in this weird age.
This is simply not true. Giving every person the oft-quoted $1k/month would cost over $4T/year, which is more than the entire current tax revenue of the United States. So we'd need to more than double tax revenue to continue doing everything we are now plus pay the UBI.
It removes a shit load of misc. other benefits and all the bureaucracy needed to maintain them. That might not cancel out but it's not purely extra costs.
Those other benefits combined don't come remotely close to $4T. I'd be curious to see which benefits you think could be eliminated or cut back and how much that would save.
Canada has a tax rate that tops out at 50% (mostly), the US caps out at 37%[1]. I think we'd all be better off if the tax brackets went a lot higher. Rich folks tend to have a lot of inactive money that's just sitting around doing nothing - we can put it to more productive uses.
1. Please note, these numbers are off of raw income tax - both Canada and the US have other employment related taxes that I'm not counting here (like payroll) since their proportional contribution is pretty minimal.
I am for the Canadian ones - where I can easily count the provinces. I am indeed too lazy to do the math on how much each of the fifty states leverage in taxes but it looks like they tend to come out well below 50% (except for CA, which is fair). Specifically, CT caps out at 43%, NY is at 45%, CA is at 49% and TX is 37% - since there are 0% state income states I find it reasonable to assume that rich people concerned with income taxes will chose to live in one of those 0% income tax states.
I don't think we've seen a serious UBI proposal that can actually replace social benefits - but it'd be nice to see it replace the more targeted benefits (like food stamps and housing benefits) there are some social services (like health insurance) that really are more efficient to just have the government directly funding - as evidenced by the crazy rates Americans tend to pay for what is, elsewhere, a rather modest societal expense.
Perhaps instead of “many existing social programs” I should’ve said “some”. I agree food stamps and housing are good candidates to be replaced at least partially by UBI.
There are two versions of the proposal. UBI as a replacement for social programs is fantasy. The UBI cheque would have to be insanely fat to replace the welfare/medicare/housing/food all the other forms of assistance that disadvantaged people need.
I know a lot of libertarians support it because it is essentially a round about way of cutting social benefits.
And hypothetically speaking, say the government is spending $10k/year on assistance to a disabled individual. If you instead give $10k/year to that individual in cash he would not be able to buy the same level of care for the same price on the private market. He'd get massively short changed. Welfare is far more efficient, financially speaking, than handing out cash to people and letting them fend for themselves.
> If you instead give $10k/year to that individual in cash he would not be able to buy the same level of care for the same price on the private market
How do you know that? Countries with much worse welfare than the US often have much better prices than the US when it comes to healthcare.
Maybe healthcare prices were allowed to grow so much only because insurance pays for most of it anyway. If that changes, healthcare providers would have to charge more realistic amounts, especially for common procedures like dental checkups and medications like insulin.
Why would anyone sane want to live in NYC anyway, if UBI was a thing?
People move to big cities with expensive housing because that's where the well paying jobs are.
It would be insane for her family to not take her into their home and take care of her, which unfortunately the US doesn’t do as much as other cultures.
She is not really independent right now. There is no way a grandma can live comfortably in one of the biggest cities in the world without massive subsidies in the form of rent control, for example.
The combined disposable income of an entire family should be enough to afford housing for one great grandmother. UBI probably won't help or hurt her at all.
Not necessarily if you account for the fact that people's expenses increase as soon as their income increase. Before UBI, they might want certain type of hobbies, a certain type of house, etc, and after UBI the same people might want more expensive hobbies, a bigger house, and so on.
Even without UBI, many could choose less demanding jobs with more free time, lower salaries, and in less expensive cities, but they don't.
> basic income SHOULD disincentivise work; it's a boost for society, health, well-being, children, etc
Less work means less is produced, so society as a whole becomes poorer. There's simply less goods.
Less produced also shrinks the tax base, so tax rates must be raised to continue to pay for the basic income. Higher taxes would then dissuade more people from working, or leading them also to work less. Now there's more people wanting basic income, so more needs raised......
Sure free money gives some people nicer lives, but in this case it is not free - it is taken from other people. Maybe instead of calling it basic income, call it "larger tax transfers for those not needing it as much as current tax transfer systems."
Number of hours worked is not equal to production or richness of a society.
Productivity equals production.
A small team of engineers who design and create a machine to build brick walls en masse, could have the same productivity as hundreds of thousands of bricklayers working 16 hours a day.
A good example of this are Silicon valley, Singapore or New York, which are small social groups that have more economic and social output than most countries with a much larger population.
To be more productive and have a richer and better quality of life (richer is not necessarily more quality of life), it's generally more efficient and sustainable to have better education and social conditions for workers, than to exploit them.
What makes the people in Singapore New York and silicone valley more productive? The fact that they work in successful businesses and earn lots of money? So what? Tobacco is a successful business.
How can you even define more economic output? You can't, you just use a very flawed proxy for economic value, money exchange.
I believe a good teacher is 100 times more productive than a software engineer. But that guy that wrote some tracking code earns a boat load more money. So you consider him more productive.
That's just a huge fallacy. Value cannot be fully quantified, we use proxies for that reason, but we should always remember that.
It's funny because the post you responded to would be better as a refutation of this post rather than the other way around
OP just explained why people (or rather, the upper middle class tech workers) of these two cities for out produce potentially thousands of people. A team of software engineers who can nail software for flipped classrooms will replace thousands of teachers AND improve educational outcomes
Yep, and when significant numbers of people simply stop working, as has been demonstrated in every experiment on basic income, production drops similarly. 0 work * any finite rate of production = 0 output.
Recessions/depressions are caused by smaller drops in production than those seen in basic income. Production includes food, medicine, services, and things that make life better for all.
>A small team of engineers who design and create a machine to build brick walls en masse, could have the same productivity as hundreds of thousands of bricklayers working 16 hours a day.
Then let them do it. That they have not done so thus far is not because we didn't have basic income. Postulating this mythical event as a counter to the empirical evidence that production did drop significantly during actual basic income is not compelling.
>generally more efficient and sustainable to have better education and social conditions for workers, than to exploit them
Then start such a company, and your better, happier, more efficient workers should beat out those other inefficient companies.
Again, this hasn't happened, despite many people trying to make such companies, only to realize that things don't work this way for valid reasons.
And this is exactly why we have a 7 day work week with 20 hour work days and never retire, because the only measure of us as a people is how much money we produce. /s
Society doesn't become poorer, in fact UBI will probably lower stress and allow more creative thinking and longer life spans with lower medical costs. Even if it doesn't I'd just be happy to know that the people struggling at the bottom have to struggle a little less because, as a person in the middle, I'm happy to give a little bit of my income to someone who needs it more.
If we were all just moving rocks around, that statement might be true. But human productivity is a much richer equation than time work in == value produced.
Where would we be if we took that to its logical conclusion and put kids to work rather than send them to school? If we all worked 16 hour days?
Your model doesn't consider productivity/unit time, nor the case of win-lose bargaining in the case where the 'lose' party is at a disadvantage and bargaining to lose less rather than for gain.
Disincentivizing work (in the near term) can be a net positive over time if the person that turns away from that trade uses their unsold time to increase their overall productivity/unit time or if they use their enhanced alternative to a negotiated agreement to turn a negotiation that would have otherwise been a 'lose but lose a bit less' or 'tread water' situation into a gain for themselves.
My only question is whether the productivity and value gains from enhanced productivity/unit time and employee/employer negotiations where the employee always has a workable alternative to employment will be more than what is lost in the reallocation through taxes?
Considering how much the top has and how little it would take to move those still in desperate poverty to merely being poor, I'd be willing to bet the overall value creation would far outstrip the losses in taxes. But it's a fair question.
> Less produced also shrinks the tax base, so tax rates must be raised to continue to pay for the basic income. Higher taxes would then dissuade more people from working, or leading them also to work less. Now there's more people wanting basic income, so more needs raised......
This works the opposite of that. Everyone always gets the basic income, so there is no "more people wanting", but if the tax base was hypothetically reduced then less revenue would be generated to fund the UBI. At a lower UBI amount, more people would work. It's self-balancing.
>This works the opposite of that. Everyone always gets the basic income, so there is no "more people wanting"
?????
Less time worked correlates with less things made. Less things made means less sales. Less sales means less sales tax. Less people working means less income. Less income means less income tax....
Sure this doesn't shrink the tax base? After all, when a few percent of people are put out of work during a recession, there are severe tax revenue issues. Basic income experiments so far show that 10% of people simply drop out of the workforce.....
>if the tax base was hypothetically reduced then less revenue would be generated to fund the UBI. At a lower UBI amount, more people would work. It's self-balancing.
So your UBI pays people a fixed percent of the tax base, not a dollar amount? So during a recession, those UBI people will get really screwed....
Everyone gets the UBI, not just people who don't work. If hypothetically fewer people were to work, more people wouldn't start receiving it because everybody gets it either way.
> Less time worked correlates with less things made.
In general this goes the other way. The history of progress is to make more stuff in less time. If people had more "disincentive to work" then companies would have to pay them more -- which increases the incentive for automation, which creates more stuff with less people working, which solves the problem.
This is also why your "disincentive to work" calculations are off. If you pay <1% of people a UBI, it's not going to affect wages. If you pay it to everyone and there is a "disincentive to work" then to get people to work, companies will have to pay more. Which creates a countervailing incentive to work that keeps people working. It also increases wages (and correspondingly spending), which increases the tax base, so there goes that too.
> So your UBI pays people a fixed percent of the tax base, not a dollar amount? So during a recession, those UBI people will get really screwed....
Taxes are (approximately) a percent of GDP, not a percent of the stock market. Have a look at the GDP graph:
Difference from the height of the housing boom to the bottom of the crash was ~3%. Not a huge difference. And it was back to where it was at the height after one year. (Compare to ~50% drop for the Dow. The stock market is not the economy.)
>If hypothetically fewer people were to work, more people wouldn't start receiving it because everybody gets it either way.
That money comes from taxpayers. If less people work, less pay into it.
>In general this goes the other way.
If less people work today, less will get made today. When a few percent of people suddenly don't have work, we have a recession, tax revenues fall drastically, raising deficits. The last recession makes this perfectly clear.
The UBI experiments so far have around 10% of people stopping work. That would be devastating to any modern economy.
>Taxes are (approximately) a percent of GDP
Because people are working. Drop 10% of workers, you lose a massive amount of tax base. Expenses are still fixed for many items, which is why when less people work deficit spending increases.
>And it was back to where it was at the height after one year
Because people were getting back to work.
I also never mentioned the stock market as the indicator to measure - that is a strawman you brought up.
> That money comes from taxpayers. If less people work, less pay into it.
But none more receive it.
> If less people work today, less will get made today.
What do you expect companies to do if some of their employees quit? Give up? No. Either they'll pay higher wages to get employees again or they'll automate the job.
There are millions of jobs that could be automated right now, this year, except that the automation equipment costs slightly more than paying current wages, so they pay the wages instead. If it becomes somewhat more attractive to not work and employers have to pay higher wages, some of them will get automated instead. The same work gets done with fewer people.
> When a few percent of people suddenly don't have work, we have a recession, tax revenues fall drastically, raising deficits. The last recession makes this perfectly clear.
Tax revenues fell and deficits rose because they cut taxes and increased spending. The reduction in GDP (i.e. the tax base) was, again, only ~3% and only for one year.
> The UBI experiments so far have around 10% of people stopping work. That would be devastating to any modern economy.
I have already explained this. If you give one person a UBI and not everyone, they don't need work as much, but everybody else still does, so employers don't have to pay higher wages since they can still hire any of the other >99% of people who didn't get the UBI and pay them the existing wages.
If you give everyone a UBI, employers do have to pay higher wages to retain employees, so they do, and then more people stay working.
Someone else also pointed out that your 10% also mostly "stopped working" so they could go to school. Which is obviously not a permanent condition and generally precedes taking a better job, which pays more and generates more tax revenue.
> Because people were getting back to work.
The unemployment rate went from 5% in 2007 to 9.9% in 2009. It was still at 9.3% in 2010 when GDP had fully recovered. Apparently the economy did just as well without the other 4.3%.
> From my personal point of view, basic income SHOULD disincentivise work; it's a boost for society, health, well-being, children, etc.
Somebody has to do the work though, until robots do everything (and then declare war on us), you need somebody to take away the garbage, pick the fruits and unclog the toilets. Disincentivizing work doesn't make that go away, it just means you'll put that load on fewer shoulders.
A lot of work today is pretty much bullshit/meaningless; I mean look at 85% of the US insurance / medical billing professions are useless and only exist because there is manufactured bureaucracy. Bullshit Jobs is a great book looking into to this. Also UBI shouldn't be disincentivizing work, it should be allowing people to explore more fulfilling pursuits.
I don’t understand many jobs, but many I thought were bullshit, I changed my mind after learning more about them.
I do know that asking people if their job is bullshit is not a good way to truly understand. It’s natural to hate many jobs, that’s why I’m paid to do them.
I once shoveled horse stalls. I hated it. It was. Horseshit job. But if the job stopped existing, it would have negative impact.
I think it will be cool when we have the luxury of working only fun, happiness creating jobs. But someone has to shovel out the stalls.
David Graeber talks about this in his book Bullshit Jobs, which has been discussed here previously. He makes the distinction that a bullshit job is one where both the employer and the employed must both pretend that the job is useful even though both of them know that it is not.
Under this definition, a lot of dirty or otherwise maligned jobs are still essential to society (including stall cleaning, depending on your perspective of how essential having horses is) and are thus not bullshit jobs, but a lot of others (rubber stampers, make workers, flunkies) are bullshit jobs.
I think a better framework to think about this is 'Bullshit Businesses', not bullshit jobs. A lot of companies only exist to make the owners/investors rich, provide little to no value to the world, and/or rely on dirt cheap labor for the economics to work. Think spammy call centers, Walmart, amazon warehouses, etc...
If people were not in desperate need of a paycheck and were able to negotiate/hold out for better jobs, or spend more time on career training, then a lot of the business would not exist, or would be forced to treat their employees better.
I don’t think I’ve said all jobs will be rockstar you’re the boss type of jobs, but there are certainly a huge amount of inefficiencies in lots of business. I think asking people if they feel like their work is needed or could be automated away is probably the only gauge one might have until actually removing them or trying to automate it. I agree it’s not a perfect metric but it’s got to be correct within some boundary, right? I think that’s the bigger question here, as well if people are qualified to judge (which I would hope since it’s their job). I actually think we need more “horseshit jobs” (great phrase and pun btw I’m going to steal this) in America where in the last 20 years we’ve pushed a lot of them to China and others, such as recycling.
I think the problem with asking people this question is that most don’t understand automation, almost all are biased toward themselves, and employees frequently think their job is stupid given their imperfect information.
I remember years ago I was talking with a friend of a friend who worked for a small 3-4 person software company. In the same conversation ve said ver job was bullshit because the software was written years ago by the two owners, who did nothing now, leaving all customer service to the friend of friend. So the argument was that ve should be paid more since ve creates all the value. So the argument was that the owners had bullshit jobs. There was a counter argument that small bugs had to be fixed, not by owners, but by the friend of friend who thought vis job was bullshit because the owner should fix it since the owner knows the software well.
I think it’s hard to get a straight answer because of this limited perspective as well as the natural falseness in responses to “is your job bullshit and we’ll pay you UBI so you can do something cool?” Or “is your job bullshit and we’ll fire you?”
I agree, but think it’s not a very important distinction. Certainly the owner could muck the stall and perform that job. But most owners of horses don’t like to do that and pay someone.
So I think a job is just a task that involves payment. It doesn’t change the argument. Someone has to do the task. If you give the horse owner UBI to free up more time, it’s unlikely to be spent shoveling horse manure.
I'm sure if you closely examine the bullshit jobs, you'll find they usually exist for a reason. You can't get rid of them unless you tear everything down and rebuild it. If it was so easy, companies would have already laid them off.
Lots of bullshit jobs exist for a reason other than those jobs being useful. Politicians want to create bullshit jobs because it helps them get votes. And sometimes bullshit jobs exist to enrich corporate owners for government contracts - just look at almost any military contract where literally billions of dollars go unaccounted for. Or look at most construction jobs in the US that are regularly overbudget, late, and oftentimes not even up to the original requirements. And yet - those people still get paid and the people who created those contracts make lots of money. In fact, they usually make more money by being more incompetent, because they have to ask for more money to finish the job.
The question is always: who is benefiting from this?
Yes it wouldn’t eliminate them. The processes that create them would have to be changed or reformed in some way. The bullshit jobs/UBI argument is more about filling in if/when these jobs are eliminated, that be via automation or process reformation.
One of the major sources of bullshit jobs are self-annihilating professions, like lawyers or advertising. Monsanto sues Exxon for a billion dollars, Exxon countersues, they spend ten years in court and then settle for 10% of what they each spent on lawyers. Coke and Pepsi each spend a billion dollars on advertising to cancel each other out.
If people had more "disincentive to work" then getting people to work would require paying them more money. Jobs that self-cancel their own profession could then hire fewer people industry-wide and result in a net productivity boost, since whatever they do in the alternative can't be more useless than what they were doing.
Graeber himself acknowledged that most of those job roles were actually well paying and high status. UBI ain't going to disrupt that too much. Also, having read his book, I am highly sceptical of the claims made in it. I believe that there is a certain portion of many jobs that are bullshit but the proportion of fully bullshit jobs is much less than as claimed in the book.
I hear people say this, but I'm never clear on the mechanism by which we A) have bullshit jobs now and B) we will stop having them once UBI is implemented. It seems to me like capitalists pocketing more money is already a compelling reason to labor used efficiently.
And bumped wages means higher costs which are passed on to customers. The higher prices means having to raise UBI, and the only way to afford that is by increasing taxes, and so effective take home pay from those bumped wages isn't as high as everyone thought and now we're back to square one.
The first half of your statement is perfectly true, through implementing UBI we're raising the floor on income inequality so that the relative gap between the richest and poorest shrinks. But, we don't end up back at square one, we just haven't given as effective a UBI as we originally intended.
Maybe. These kinds of system-level effects are extremely hard to forecast with any kind of certainty. At best, the evidence we have is from studying the effects of things like raising minimum wage or giving away money to more niche groups such as families with children (eg Canada's CCTB), or people living in specific areas (Alaska Permanent Fund).
As far as I can tell, none of these lesser programmes has had any effect above and beyond inflation on cost of living. Wasn't the sky supposed to fall when Washington State passed that ballot measure for a graduated minimum wage increase back in 2016?
Meanwhile, there are plenty of examples of awfully expensive large scale "back to square one" experiments that have been undertaken by other political ideologies with little to no opposition—where is the economic growth that was supposed to have happened as a consequence of the Ryan/Trump tax cuts in 2017?
Why do business deserve a level of welfare we're not affording to human beings. Let's feed, house, cloth, educate and provide health care for everyone - then we can start looking at saving unprofitable business.
The truth is, a lot of business ventures simply aren't profitable. It isn't profitable for me to start a business where I deliver whitecastle to remote areas by flying couriers there with the food - but it could be profitable if enough market changes occurred.
As these bloat businesses die off we'll see a shift in the market - either there will be a surplus of employees (that will drive down the cost of employment and enable more bloat businesses) or those employees will find other businesses to work at that can survive in the margins that exist.
And maybe if those jobs are as unattractive as you imply they should come with higher pay checks. I work in software and love the work that I'm doing - if I was a janitor I'd be miserable and be paid less, so where is the incentive for anyone who can do something else to be a janitor... and the answer is, it isn't there.
Sure, so ... who do we force to do the janitorial work once nobody has to work anymore? Or does the need for it magically vanish? If the answer is "we pay them more", great. We're paying more to janitors, janitorial work gets more expensive, we need to make more to afford it, we need more UBI, janitorial work becomes unattractive.
You'll have to give up a significant part of your (real, not nominal) income to make a difference there. You might be happy to do that, my guess is that most of your peers are not.
If I give you 1k, you get some amount of spending power x, if I give everyone 1k and you're on the lower end of the income scale then you've got an additional spending power y. 0 < y < x - getting UBI offers an absolute and definite increase in spending power to those in need, it doesn't give them that spending power at 100% efficiency though, it just shifts some spending power from the richest to the poorest.
The reimbursement of janitors might go up with UBI, that's fine, if it's going up then it means that something in the current market situation was artificially holding back their reimbursement. The market can correct pretty easily for UBI and make sure that the jobs that need to be done are indeed done (or else they aren't jobs that need to be done) and maybe janitor, as a profession, is scaled back to just waxing the floors and we discover that people working in an office should, once a week, empty their own trash cans - it's a very plausible outcome from UBI and one that will happen naturally if it'll happen at all.
If you let the market respond, it will just price in the UBI, and you'll end up with pretty much the situation we have today, only with prices increased by some amount and some added bureaucracy.
> maybe [...] we discover that people working in an office should, once a week, empty their own trash cans
They can do that today, it's just more efficient to pay somebody else to do it than to have you, a highly-paid software developer, do it. It's more efficient to have you do complicated software things than mopping floors and emptying the trash can.
I'm all with you that there's a disconnect in today's wages where high-skill knowledge workers get out-of-proportion amounts of money while low-skill manual labor is basically priced at the minimum amount you need to survive.
I don't believe that UBI will solve that if you keep everything else (that is: markets) the same. And I don't see any compelling argument that some (new or old) alternative system that you or I or some people that are way smarter than us could come up with would work more efficiently than our largely-self-optimizing market system. So I'm not a fan of "well, out with the markets if they are what's holding us back", because the risk of it failing catastrophically are just too high to go "well, maybe it'll work this time".
I'm happy to be wrong, and I'm far from an expert on any of this, but there's too much hand-waving in UBI suggestions for my taste. Some proponents seriously claim that "doing away with be bureaucratic overhead" would be enough to finance UBI, and I'm dumbfounded that they haven't even done any rough guesstimates of the numbers to realize that they are wrong by orders of magnitude.
Controlling inflation will be a massive issue, and I don't haven't heard any convincing answers.
If you find a way to convince the super majority that "more more more for me me me" isn't going to make them happy in the long run, that more cooperation etc will benefit everyone (including themselves), the chances are certainly better, but let's find a way to convince them first and then change the system and not change the system and pray to any and all gods that they will become convinced to avert a catastrophic failure.
That's the part of automation that no one wants to discuss. What happens when we're like 90% automated and there simply isn't enough jobs for everyone.
I don't know who we can force to do the work for us, but if my toilet's backing up, the garbage is overflowing, and my back yard is filled with rotting fruit I guess I'd do those jobs.
"Pay more" is meaningless when most of what you want is provided for you. What are you going to use that money for?
For some godawful reason people think near to full automation is going to look exactly like today, but without driving or something.
It's not. It's going to look radically different. It will be unprecedented. It's very naive to believe the current methods of incentives will work for a society that doesn't need them.
> you need somebody to take away the garbage, pick the fruits and unclog the toilets
So your plan is to make sure some people will die of starvation unless they accept to do these jobs?
If no one is willing to do these critical jobs voluntarily, perhaps we should either pay them large amounts of money to convince someone to do them, or spread the work between more people - perhaps on a rotational basis.
If jobs are critical and unappealing, then we should pay large amounts of money for them to be done... Right now those critical and unappealing jobs are quite undervalued.
The examples specifically used above (garbage removal, plumbing) pay very well. I'd say they're valued appropriately for how little training they require.
Having worked with them in the past, there are plenty that are one Meals on Wheels delivery away from being hungry and unable to buy food. Hunger rate in the US is 12%.
Having said that, while I am supportive of UBI, I share your concerns over its impact on society. We do not understand the all what the knock on effects of such a program are. How it would be used/misused and how it would reshape incentives. We definitely need to dip our toe in the water before considering jumping in.
No person who was born rich has to learn skills to avoid destitution. And poverty isn't the natural condition for humans any more than it is for cats, or any other animal.
And I think the hope with UBI is that people in general will find enough reasons that they continue to learn skills, and not just live off society as purposeful freeloaders.
I used to think that there are some types of people that would freeload whenever they possibly could.
Then a young family member proved that they will basically do whatever they can to avoid even finishing school, let alone getting a job and keeping it.
I would like to think that people would learn hobbies and create art and science for the sheer joy of it if they didn't have to put food on the table... But the truth seems to be that there are many people who would just consume the massive amount of entertainment that we now produce and no contribute anything of their own, ever.
> No person who was born rich has to learn skills to avoid destitution.
I can only speak for the Western tradition, but for most of history, the wealthy took great pride in making sure their male children were at least trained in soldiering, knew the family business, and were well-educated. It was the bare minimum to be considered a gentleman.
And, if that child flubbed all those skills, then they'd skill live a comfortable and rich life, there just might not be much left for the next generation.
Also, how is learning how to fence a good skill to avoid destitution? The rich had leisure time and invested that time in cultural skills, this isn't actually a bad thing either - it's my hope that everyone can afford to develop a hobby and be creative in their life... but that has nothing to do with avoiding destitution.
Books are filled with once great families with a name, and nothing else, struggling to survive. It is common for someone to be born rich, gamble it all away and leave nothing (other than maybe an education) to the kids.
There are rich who live their children much, but most children of the rich who remain rich have to work to stay rich. Yes there is a big advantage that being born to wealth gives to keeping it - but that advantage isn't any guarantee.
I have in my lifetime seen plenty of starving cats - we took pity on them and took them in. I've seen evidence of mass freezing to death in wild animals after the herd eats all the food.
I’m guessing you don’t know many people who were born into wealth.
The skill that they must learn is how not to lose the money.
This skill is difficult to sustain over more than a generation or two — grandparent earns it, parent might keep it, child usually ends up destitute both in terms of financial capital and social capital.
If the “child” in this scenario is lucky, they have some social capital that will save them, and their branch of the family tree is at an inflection point.
Seeing a family self-destruct like this is tough to watch and surprisingly common within that class of people.
That skill is so trivial to learn compared with the skill of surviving and building up income from nothing.
Rich people literally just need to not be complete idiots - if you've got 300 million in the bank put it in some low interest stable investment and you'd be able to live off the investment earnings alone. There, I just explained all the life skills you need as a rich person - there is no equivalence between the road the rich and the poor need to walk to survive.
I am guessing that you do not know many people who were born into wealth.
There are existential questions that gnaw at some of these people that hinder them from taking the seemingly simple path that you have presented.
I would also argue that it is not as easy as you would think to park millions in some "low interest stable investment" that also does not have substantial (for generational wealth) counter-party risk.
> there is no equivalence between the road the rich and the poor need to walk to survive
I agree with this, but I think you are being overly dismissive of the skills that someone born into a wealthy family needs to keep that wealth.
It requires a healthy amount of self-awareness among other things.
Being a human being isn't easy, many people rich and poor struggle with deep philosophical questions, some people get devoured by questions of relative wealth even when they have very little just because they're among so many people poorer off than them.
That doesn't change the fact that being rich is easy mode for life. Yes, it isn't just a stroll in the continuous orgy park of happiness and funtimes, but there are a lot of difficulties in life that arise out of not having enough money, rich people essentially get a pass on all of these problems.
So, while I'm not saying that rich people never struggle with being a human being and all the existential doubt that can accompany that. I am saying that they never struggle to eat. I think everyone has their own struggles through life and really don't want to minimize problems that can arise in dealing with human issues like poor mental health - but seriously, everything is on easy mode for the rich, and if you don't think that's the case then you should really reach out to other communities and see what low income people have to deal with on a daily basis.
I have seen too many people who were born into wealthy families, "have it made", and yet totally self-destruct in ways that I am not sure I would wish on my worst enemy.
I think another perspective on this issue is worth making.
I grew up working class and have seen lots of people fail. Those without the wherewithal to get on social benefits generally moved on with their lives toward success. I also have know several to get on social benefits find that acceptable and live what seemed to me unfulfilling lives on a type of pseudo adult hood. It could be they were happy and who am I to judge. I have always known if I fail I will be destitute and I think it has helped me build a decent life. But what works for me may not work for others.
> People should fear being destitute its the natural human condition.
People should die of diseases, its the natural human condition. Women should die in childbirth, its the natural human condition. Men should die in wars, its the natural human condition. People should be hunted by sabre-tooth tigers, its the natural human condition.
Fear of failure is a useful social motivator. In rich societies that does't have to mean biological poverty.
When I lived in a urban poor neighborhood I had one neighbor who drove a asphalt truck while the other was on benefits and drank on the porch all day. As an external observer there was little material difference in their standard of living.
Sorry, can you clarify what lesson people who never were given a chance at an education should be learning?
Maybe, instead of getting all social darwinist, we could actually take stock in the fact that we have enough that we can afford to share with those less well off than ourselves.
That's a common argument to justify inequality.
If learning is the key, then why is there such a huge income disparity between men and women? Are women lazy and don't learn?
What you're arguing for is equity, not equality. We already have equal opportunity. As for the gender wage gap, if women are so disadvantaged - exactly how do they make up 85% of consumer spending?
Dude, we are faaaaaaaaar from equal opportunity. One of the largest predictors of one's ability to accumulate wealth is still the wealth of their own parents. The U.S. is one of the countries with the highest link between parents' and a child's wealth.
I recommend „Capital in the 21st Century“ by Thomas Pikkety, an economist who has deeply studied wealth and income equality using historical data spanning three centuries. This book has all the evidence you need.
Spoiler alert: income from wealth is on its way of becoming close to being as concentrated as it was in the 19th century (especially in the US), and the share of income from work in total national income is decreasing almost anywhere. So yes, increasingly you can only accrue significant wealth by already having significant wealth.
How do we have equal opportunity? Can you point me towards evidence of this?
I guess you're not arguing about the gender wage gap, as it's a well documented fact. What is the point you're trying to make?
And yet not everyone can agree on what the cause of said gender wage gap truly is. Is it because women take time off to raise children, thus setting back their wage advancement? Is it because women are less likely to be more vigorous in asking for wage increases than men? Or is just because men are keeping women down?
As an example... for my wife, her salary was depressed because her boss thought that I make good enough money that she doesn't really need it. I think a lot of women still receive extremely slanted peer reviews due to gender biases (she's really catty, while he tends to raise good arguments), relationship drama (I mean, she's a good worker, but she turned down a drink with me... I don't know how good her judgement is), straight up appearance judgements (Oh, don't give the raise to nancy, she'll have a cushy life with looks like that, barbara could use it more), and harassment (I don't know about that raise - hey what are you doing friday?).
I think that everyone feels like we've totally solved gender discrimination forever while it's still really deeply seated in our culture.
What is the point, _you're_ trying to make? If you're trying to show women are financially burdened you can cherry-pick wage gap data to show that, sure, or you can take a more holistic view of society and what do you see? You see women with significantly more purchasing power than men. So are women disadvantaged or is there no incentive to be high earners? For me it's fairly obvious. There will be men and women who become high earners. There will be men and women who are overlooked based on gender. What I see with the wage gap can be fully explained by lack of necessity to earn for women. Think about that for a minute - they earn less than men, but they spend vastly more money than men. Exactly where is the incentive to earn more for women? Should they continue to work and earn more until they make up 90% of consumer spending? 95%?
It's beyond me how anyone can claim a group that represents 85% of consumer spending is somehow financially burdened and suffers from inequality. It's almost unfathomable, but here we are.
So as a gender, women choose lower paid jobs and work less?
If this is true and it is a choice, that would mean that women as a gender are either lazy or less qualified.
If this is not true then it is evidence of inequality in the selection of employees.
I don't see either of the above making your point.
No one is saying that, it's more of a strawman you want to use to, I'm not sure, maybe accuse people who disagree with you of sexism. Or could you explain why you use those words rather than assume we think it's, let's suppose, just a choice based on differences in average values men and women have?
And as a society we need to understand that men are facing tons of difficulties women don't face too? Why are men killing themselves at a rate 4-5 times higher than women in the western world? Why is the life expectancy of a male always less than a female?
My argument is that -as a society- we don't really accept that women are facing tons of difficulties that men don't experience, because of their sex.
For example, sometimes it's because they might choose to have a baby in the future and a lot of employers don't want to have that risk, so they avoid hiring women after say 25.
I'm not saying that you're sexist, I'm saying that as a society we're comfortable saying that people who have less deserve it for some reason and we have more for just reasons.
If we accept that the society is unfair, and part of why we're better off than others is either luck of because the game is rigged (ie rich parents), we'll be more generous and fair.
Apologies if I insulted people, I was trying to make a point for generosity and I got carried away.
So you're writing on HN instead of working more because you're lazy and less qualified? Or do you voluntarily choose to spend part of your life not working and doing other things that you find enjoyable?
There are countless socially beneficial personal activities that aren't centric around wealth. Start with a list of things people volunteer to do.
Then add jobs like teaching, nursing, health care aides, and social work that positively impact the lives of many but in many places pay extremely little. People are called to these jobs for reasons outside of wealth. UBI allows these people to continue to serve the rest of society in a sustainable way.
I think a true meritocracy is only possible using some type of agoge system, but that also violates human rights. When I say destitution I guess I mean to the acceptable minimum which that most people would find unacceptable.
You can't confiscate social capital or favours someone's parent did to someone as "young adult" then that young adult did it to these parents kid and barter continues.
Three year. Would you quit your job, and move somewhere cheaper if you knew the money will run out after three years, and you'll have a three year gap in your CV?
Are there really no lottery winners winning lifetime monthly payouts to study?
Because, if you gave me 5x average earnings for three years, I wouldn't quit my job. But if you guaranteed the money for the rest of my life, i'd pursue different activities (fun, good for me, but non-productive for society).
> Are there really no lottery winners winning lifetime monthly payouts to study?
There are a bunch, but that’s complicated and notoriously politicized because people with agendas spin the results. For example, there’s a famous and widely cited study of 35,000 lottery winners in Florida where the headlines say almost everyone spent all their winnings after 5 years, and that bankruptcy rates went up after 2 years. It’s misleading because the winners were $150k or less, you’d expect that to be gone after 5 years, and because backruptcy rates went down for the first two years, and then returned to normal.
Googling it right now, I’m actually seeing a lot of headlines like “85% of lottery winners kept their jobs” and “study finds lottery winners are happier”.
> if you gave me 5x average earnings for three years, I wouldn’t quit my job. But if you guaranteed the money for the rest of my life, I’d pursue different activities
I’m not sure why... 5x for me would be life-changing. That’s 15 years’ salary, or 12 years’ savings, without making lifestyle changes. I would absolutely use that money to re-evaluate and try some new things.
I'd use 3 years to unapologetically recover from the daily grind that is working daily, and figure out what I really wanted to do. It would make for a great opportunity to figure out and build skills for what I want to do in the next phase of my life.
A 3 year gap (call it a sabbatical and get all kinds of kudos for being so brave) isn't that hard to overcome, if you have the required skills.
Well Paid Salary: No, I probably wouldn't do much different and would still be concerned about my CV.
At or near Poverty: Yes, I would use this opportunity to focus on education/training that I might not have had the chance/maturity to focus on earlier in life.
Your income level will play a significant role. Being able to escape a violent neighborhood would be more than worth it for some people.
Why? I feel like a lot of people want to do things that are productive for society, that we have too little of right now. Things like producing art of all forms, building things, increasing their level of communication with those around them, participating in community events and activities, etc. Sure, these things aren't economically productive, but they're still productive for society, which is the gap that I'd like to see filled, whether by UBI or other forms of providing more security for the general population.
>Why? I feel like a lot of people want to do things that are productive for society
Most of the things that are productive for society require study and practice of skills that aren't particularly interesting to the vast majority of people.
>Sure, these things aren't economically productive
The vast majority of things that are productive for society are economically productive. That's why people pay for things.
We don't need UBI to go toward funding artists and musicians. That's a waste of resources. Particularly considering that far too many people are likely to choose the easy way out, pursuing "what they love", i.e. soft skills like art and music. You also drastically underestimate the number people who are perfectly content with doing drugs and watching TV/playing video games all day.
Unfortunately while resources are scarce, human nature is such that people require incentives to do the things that need to be done.
IMO, UBI can actually encourage innovation and productive work, on "hard problems" that are not economically viable in a short-enough time-frame or lucrative enough for VCs, but for which society would certainly benefit from.
What about guaranteed 1/4 average earnings for life? Would you still quit your job then? It's a rhetorical question the answer is obviously no, most people would still keep working just now have better negotiating power and flexibility.
Assuming if you made more money, you would then spend that money, there would be someone who would create opportunities for people like you to spend your money. And that just sounds like business to me.
> Three year. Would you quit your job, and move somewhere cheaper if you knew the money will run out after three years, and you'll have a three year gap in your CV?
I want UBI and a 30-32 hour work week, so I guess I’m proposing a 20% “disincentivization”.
Would fewer people in the workforce really be so bad? What’s the carbon and water footprint of all of these goods we really don’t need but we bust our humps for anyway? At this point, more robots don’t mean more of the stuff we need. they mean more stuff we don't need.
To use different phrasing, what you're saying is that you want people to be poorer. Please understand that I don't mean this as a personal attack on you, your beliefs or philosophy. But from a different perspective, that really is what you're saying. Do you really want to say that?
Perhaps a better alternative is: a good goal would be to allow people to have more while using less natural resources and polluting the environment less. While certainly difficult, I'd hope that advances in efficiency (such as more automation) could theoretically allow this!
Likely, their lives will be greatly enriched by an extra day off of work per week.
Bank accounts, the GDP, and other similar metrics fail to capture enormous amounts of value and meaning in our lives. Even the progress of scientific understanding
is poorly measured in this way.
I don't find this style of discourse productive. Why do you insist on putting words in their mouth in an attempt to lead them down the discussion you want to have instead of what's being presented? Asking for clarification on why you don't understand their statement could be more productive, but I don't think you're interested in that anyways.
It's worth noting that more automation should also lead to shorter work weeks (or alternatively more unemployment). So the effect stays pretty much the same, the question is only if people keep the same compensation for fewer hours or if compensation per hour stays about the same.
> Would fewer people in the workforce really be so bad?
Yes. Someone needs to work to produce the goods and services they use, as well as fund their UBI. The more people who opt out of working, the harder everyone else must work to compensate.
> What’s the carbon and water footprint of all of these goods we really don’t need but we bust our humps for anyway?
People dropping out of the workforce doesn't reduce the demand for those goods and services. In fact, giving people free income might increase the demands for goods and services as those people would have extra disposable income.
So it may very well be that the exact opposite of what you think is true and that you currently have to compensate for people working badly with long hours.
> In fact, giving people free income might increase the demands for goods and services as those people would have extra disposable income.
Thus far UBI tended to be about the same amount of income just from different sources.
I think some people imagine that people like me calling for 32 hour work weeks are part of some slippery slope to everyone working an hour a day.
I trust the research that suggests that humans may only be built for ~30 hours of detail oriented work per week. That's also a nice number where I have time to work on other things, rather than just loafing about. If my boss offered me 30hrs/w plus insurance, I'd spend an extra 5+ hours a week working on my side projects and volunteer work.
Competition still exerts a downward force on prices, and as the cost of labor increases the cost of developing automation will become more and more attractive to replace it.
You don't need UBI then, prices will just go down towards 0 because of competition, resulting in free food / housing / clothing / mobile phones for everyone.
> For which the market should correct by increasing their compensation, thus incentivising people to return to working, no?
Partially, but some of those increased compensation costs will translate to increased prices for everyone. That reduces the real value of a fixed UBI amount.
It's a given that a significant amount of UBI will be absorbed by inflation, particularly in housing prices in competitive cities. If everyone in a city is already competing for a limited housing supply and suddenly everyone has an extra $1000 per month, I wouldn't be surprised if the cheapest housing costs suddenly increased by nearly $1000 per month.
==If everyone in a city is already competing for a limited housing supply and suddenly everyone has an extra $1000 per month, I wouldn't be surprised if the cheapest housing costs suddenly increased by nearly $1000 per month.==
If we accept this logic as true, wouldn't it incentivize builders to increase housing supply? They would want to capture those higher rents and prices, right?
How so? The compensation is increased because less people are working, so the cost of labour is fixed (which is neglible in any case in a post-scarcity society as envisioned in the future)
If labor remains fixed then people as a whole have more money. Prices go up due to inflation and increased demand, no? I realize that's simplistic, but is it not generally true?
> the harder everyone else must work to compensate
I really don't want to get into this argument but supposedly productivity gains from automation/AI should make those who keep working work proportionally less to compensate non-workers.
Why I don't want to get into this argument: there's no conclusive view about UBI + automation yet, so it's all speculation
"The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy."
Or adapting to productivity gains, the productivity required is increasing to meet the needs of increasingly productive people.
So taking into account human nature might mean that productivity gains enable us to do more advanced work, not to work less. But like you said, we're all just speculating.
Since we already have the productivity to grow and make all the necessities of life, why are we worried about maximizing degree to which we work for more luxury goods?
> Yes. Someone needs to work to produce the goods and services they use, as well as fund their UBI. The more people who opt out of working, the harder everyone else must work to compensate.
Workers are more productive now than they ever have been.[0] Productivity was up 253% since 1948 seven years ago. For decades they’ve been promising us the 20 hour work week, and it’s here. In fact it’s only 15 hours comparatively.
The point is: you don’t need everyone to work full time everyday for a society to maintain a healthy standard of living.
> The point is: you don’t need everyone to work full time everyday for a society to maintain a healthy standard of living.
Maintaining isn't what people are aiming for though, they want improvement. People are not satisfied by objectively living much better lives than some king or pope 500 years ago.
First, peoples’ satisfaction is primarily influenced by the visibility of the inequities immediately around them.
Second, who said anything about the rate of change going to zero? Even if productivity suddenly dropped to 1948 levels, it’s not like we’d be living in 1948. It’s not a time machine.
> First, peoples’ satisfaction is primarily influenced by the visibility of the inequities immediately around them.
I agree. What follows from that? Do we let some people live in the 21st century but hide their life style from the rest so we can keep them happy at a level that we can more easily automate?
And sure, it's not going to reverse necessarily (though it will to some degree, because we can't "automate" the 2020 economy). My point is that people aren't satisfied with no progress. Wanting to change things for the better seems to be a very natural part of humanity, making plans that don't account for that drive doesn't seem wise.
I would give up some of my income to finance UBI without thinking twice. I probably would work a bit less, but I am planning that nevertheless with or without UBI.
What I am skeptical about is work that is real hard, not some silly office stuff. Care and nursing for example. There might be few people who would do that under current working conditions with UBI in sight. Not that I think the current situation is in any way sustainable. It is already completely broken before the large demographic bombs hit some countries.
On the other hand, maybe family members had more time to offer care themselves.
So why don't managers and administrators work to produce things? They seem capable of labor, and they're paid extra, but they work less. Why?
Edit: You downvoted me within a minute of my posting. I asked two questions. If you can't answer them, then it is because you fear their answers.
So let's answer them! Managers and administrators don't produce things because they claim that their positions allow them to optimize labor. Specifically, their bonus pay is based upon the idea that management and administration increases output proportional to their efficacy. It follows that we should measure the output of management practices, and compensate managers according to their actual impact.
>So why don't managers and administrators work to produce things? They seem capable of labor, and they're paid extra, but they work less. Why?
Management and administration is a skill that not everyone possesses. There are such things as good and bad managers. Just because the work they do doesn't directly output a tangible product doesn't mean it's not valuable. Additionally, it's typically a position with more responsibility as well as accountability which tends to reflect in higher pay. That's not to say it's a perfect system but this is generally how it works.
As for working less, unless you mean they do less physical labour than the people they manage, they often work more. It's unfair to say managers work less because they do management tasks rather than the work their subordinates do. In virtually every job I've had, the more senior the manager, the more hours they worked. Retail especially.
>So let's answer them! Managers and administrators don't produce things because they claim that their positions allow them to optimize labor. Specifically, their bonus pay is based upon the idea that management and administration increases output proportional to their efficacy. It follows that we should measure the output of management practices, and compensate managers according to their actual impact.
They don't just claim their positions optimize labour, it actually does optimize it. I don't understand where this idea that managers are merely irrelevant middlemen who have no impact on the people they manage comes from. Companies seek profit and have no desire to pay people simply for existing, especially if they do not meaningfully contribute to the bottom line. Managers are hired exactly because they do affect the bottom line in a sufficiently meaningful way to justify their presence. And, as with almost any other job, a manager that fails to contribute will be replaced much like any other underperforming employee.
That isn't to say there isn't a thing as too many managers or levels of management or even bad managers that do not get fired, but to sweep them all aside as irrelevant is simply not a realistic interpretation.
> Additionally, it's typically a position with more responsibility as well as accountability which tends to reflect in higher pay.
Who has more responsibility for cooking your burger correctly, the cook or the manager? Who has more responsibility for measuring before cutting, the carpenter or the architect? Who has more responsibility for not leaving PII all over service logs, you or your team leader? I would politely suggest that there are different responsibilities for managers, but not that this somehow removes responsibilities from laborers.
> It's unfair to say managers work less because they do management tasks rather than the work their subordinates do. In virtually every job I've had, the more senior the manager, the more hours they worked. Retail especially.
My former CEOs have had enough spare time to show up in the tabloids because they can't stop having sex with their employees or making questionable business decisions with authoritarian governments. I don't have time for sex with my coworkers. Perhaps team leaders or low-level managers have to put in hours, but administrative management definitely does not.
> They don't just claim their positions optimize labour, it actually does optimize it.
In my lifetime, Linux was born and became not just a serious competitor to proprietary kernels, but supplanted them. Thus, the FLOSS model of a massive global commune of public-domain information and tools is a viable contender, able to compete with any corporation.
When I contributed to Linux, I reported to one of the subsystem lieutenants, and my code was reviewed by them and other contributors to the subsystem. For no money whatsoever, they advised me on which parts of the subsystem were worth contributing to, which outstanding tasks were too hard to tackle, and which documentation to read.
Also in my lifetime, Wikipedia was born, supplanting many proprietary encyclopedias within only a few years, and today it is another shining example of the triumph of the FLOSS model.
When I contributed to Wikipedia, I just did whatever I wanted. Whenever something looked like it could be improved, and I had the time and energy to improve it, I did what had to be done to make things better. If people disagreed, they could undo what I did; if I disagreed with them, then there were community arbiters who could negotiate a solution.
So, like, do managers actually optimize labor to the point where they earn their keep? I can't tell, and I think that we ought to measure.
> I don't understand where this idea that managers are merely irrelevant middlemen who have no impact on the people they manage comes from.
Oh, it's worse than that; the typical manager has a net negative impact on their direct reports, from what I've seen.
> And, as with almost any other job, a manager that fails to contribute will be replaced much like any other underperforming employee.
I no longer believe that you have been gainfully employed in a corporate hierarchy. This line gave you away.
But we need the counterfactual. When the labor they "optimized" would have done the same or better without their interference, we cannot tell. We just take the estimates from the manager themselves as the baseline. And of course, they would lie about that.
And the less well paid jobs (eg Veterinary Assistant - not technician or McDonald's employee) have individuals working near constantly. There is a class divide under the 1% which is also quite stark, with regard to work demands.
Very few workplaces have 20% management. A few businesses have experimented with radically flattening the organization and cutting out management layers; this has generally not improved productivity or financial results.
So radically flattening the organization and cutting out management layers has generally not improved productivity, but are you then saying it had little impact, or negative impact?
True, but I think the question should be if the company is worse off without the baggage management, not if they are more productive or have better financial results.
The problem is that there is no scalable, reliable way to distinguish between "baggage" management and productive management in any large organization. Many have tried to solve that problem and no one has really succeeded. So cutting out management layers tends to indiscriminately eliminate the good with the bad. If you can figure out a better solution then you'll make a fortune as a management consultant.
Lower level employees often think they know which managers are baggage, and sometimes they're right, but often they're not seeing the whole picture. A manager who appears to be baggage from one perspective is sometimes performing crucial activities that are only visible from other perspectives. Management value added often can't be objectively measured but yet it exists all the same.
You can already have a 30 hour work week if you want to do contract or part-time work, but for a full-time position you’d be competing with companies who still work 40-50 hour weeks so I don’t think there’s much practical opportunity here.
Anecdote incoming. I work double full time and have done so for approaching a decade. It's definitely proven to be a significant competitive advantage in my case. I don't know too many folks who could have comfortably retired in their 20s (that didn't grow up with generational wealth).
Still, I've seen many folks in esports do crazy workloads and get nowhere fast. So there's more to the formula than just pouring in more effort.
Most of American management cannot tell the difference between motion and progress.
While I don't want to dismiss your extra effort as improving your results, I suspect that the value placed on your behavior by management may have been out of proportion with objective truth.
I'm also concerned with whether you were Defecting, in a Prisoner's Dilemma sense. Management always sets unreasonable deadlines as long as anybody agrees with them. Only when people are unanimous that this is crazy do they ever seem to back off.
Typical examples would be a client says "Oh no, our campaign that was supposed to start next Monday just fell through - we need a solution ASAP!"
or
"Our project is six months past deadline with no end in sight..."
For some, this is an unreasonable situation to find themself in. For me, I look at such situations as opportunities. The client's management is under a ton of pressure to fix things immediately and a lot of the internal friction that exists for the employees doesn't exist for me as an outsider. I'm allowed to stick my finger in the wound.
Still, you're absolutely right that management (and it's not in any way limited to the US - I've helped clients across North America, Europe, and Asia who all had the exact same problems) can be unreasonable. I wish I knew a good solution for that, but the truth is that there's a fairly small percentage of people that are actually good managers and there's an enormous amount of political nonsense where managers try to justify their own existence by carving out little kingdoms for themselves.
I mean, congrats, but if you retired comfortably in your 20s you got crazy lucky - that kind of rapid wealth acquisition isn't skill based. I used to work in the game industry getting peanuts for the same hours, we made amazing things in crunch that I am proud of, but when we started to scale back hours our product got even better because we lowered the stress and increased the healthiness of our workplace.
> that kind of rapid wealth acquisition isn't skill based.
This is just nonsense and reflects a desire to dismiss the capabilities and accomplishments of others because they don't reflect your self-pitying worldview.
Chances are that the above poster did something you're unable or unwilling to do -- and the difference in outcomes is reflective of that.
The unfortunate truth of our modern economy is that skills are neither necessary nor sufficient for the outcome described. They may have been the deciding factor in this case, as may the hours worked, but calling that shot in advance is not trivial.
If you could have worked twice as many hours and made twice as much money - would you? That was the position I found myself in, and that's how I got where I am. I never claimed to have a secret skill.
1. It would have been physically impossible for me to do so since I was already working 10-12 hour days pretty often and without sleep I'd be worthless.
2. Double income isn't necessarily that much income, if you're making 35k giving up sleeping to get 70k seems like a pretty poor trade.
Also, no, never. I would never work twice as many hours (assuming we're taking a base number of hours between 6 and 8) for twice the pay. You effectively earn less money (due to graduated taxes) and you have to give up all the creature comforts of life. Going from working 8 hours a day to 16 hours a day would drastically lower the enjoyment I got from life and probably end up killing me from stress.
I suppose everyone's situation is different. I was self-employed and had the opportunity to just work more and earn more at the time. The luck part of that equation is that I wasn't earning 35k, but I'm sure there are people on this forum earning more than I was at peak regardless.
I personally really enjoy working, and never felt that working 80+ hours was a burden. To be honest I actually look forward to getting up and getting to it most days.
With all that said, the growth I had just wouldn't have been possible on 40 hours a week of work. So I credit the long hours with the creation of a lot of the luck and opportunity I experienced in my life.
> You effectively earn less money (due to graduated taxes)
A personal bugbear of mine: your point is directionally correct but expressed incorrectly. Under marginal tax rates you do not earn less money. You take home less per hour past a certain point, but are still earning more overall.
I'd be a lot less bothered about people getting this wrong if it hadn't been turned into a political football in recent memory.
You're describing my dad perfectly. He worked as much as I do (plus he was doing hard physical labor...) until he died of cancer in 2009. He's the reason I dedicated myself to work as much as I could as early as I could, so I could get myself to a point of financial independence. He never got to enjoy his retirement because he sacrificed his life to adopt me, so I feel a sense of urgency to enjoy life as much as I can in his honor.
I agree that we all have so much stuff that we don't need, but in such an incredibly consumerist society we can't really seperate what we want from what we need without a massive cultural revolution. On top of that our current capitalist society only works because people buy lots of things that they don't need.
I don't think this fits the definition of basic income.
> Whatever income participants earned was deducted from their basic income at 50 per cent
That is equivalent to a massive 50% tax rate on every dollar earned. It seems to me the whole point of UBI is that its universal and not conditional on how much you earn otherwise.
Yup, this combined with the difference in income for couples vs. individuals mentioned by another commented smells to me like the program had a lot of means testing built in. I wouldn't be surprised if this skewed the results of the experiment in ways that reflect badly on it.
But the funding mechanism isn't at issue here. The point is that for every dollar earned the participants lost 50 cents due to a decrease in support from the basic income. That's a massive disincentive to work.
Any practical UBI will require a large increase in taxes. If this isn't an income tax, it will be a payroll or sales tax, which both have a similar effect. A UBI pilot needs to model that tax just as much as the actual money transfer. If a practical UBI system contains a "massive disincentive to work", a model of such a system should contain this as well.
You make a good point, a good UBI pilot would incorporate the necessary tax increases.
But that's not what this study did. Crucially, the disincentive to create only applies to low income earners. Under, UBI everyone pays the taxes and thus everyone gets that disincentive to work. If we want to see what UBI would do, we should actually do UBI.
> The project worked by recruiting low-income people and couples, offering them a fixed payment with no strings attached that worked out to approximately $17,000 for individuals and $24,000 for couples.
Why discriminate so heavily against couples?
It creates every incentive to lie about your relationship status. Or to avoid sharing a household altogether, creating greater economic inefficiencies and less built in social support of having a partner.
You've hit the nail on the head - means testing is the killer of any social program. Means testing makes social programs challenging to access and frustrating to use, leading to them being unpopular and unsuccessful.
Maybe those setting the rates believe most of the money will be spent on housing. Two people each living in their own one bedroom apartment will pay more in total than two people living in a two bedroom apartment. The gap is even larger if the couple lives together in a one bedroom apartment. Healthcare, food, and many other expenses will tend to double but not all will. If UBI is meant to cover the basics rather than everything, and housing is most people's largest expense, the amount can be lower for couples and achieve the same result. The problem, as you noted, is many will choose to game the system.
> Two people each living in their own one bedroom apartment will pay more in total than two people living in a two bedroom apartment. The gap is even larger if the couple lives together in a one bedroom apartment. Healthcare, food, and many other expenses will tend to double but not all will.
Exactly, so you are incentivizing people to be less frugal in order to get a bigger check.
It's because if you're in a relationship, you're considered a more valuable member of the society. Because it signals that someone has selected you to be around for a prolonged amount of time. Being single is more expensive in a big city.
It is punishing couples, not rewarding them. The amount given to two single people is $34,000. The amount given to two people in a relationship is $24,000.
My issue, and I only have one, with these pilot projects for basic income is that its not realistic. The people in the project know that it will end at a fixed time, so their actions are different compared to what would happen in a BI/UBI system.
This is very true. Honestly asking: Is it working? I haven't seen lots of data on the topic. I also know the climate and endless day/night issues weigh into this too. I'm curious if academia sees this as a success or not.
If people wanted to save, why wouldn't they do so privately? (And if they don't want to save, why should the government force them? Isn't a democracy supposed to reflect what the people want?)
> If people wanted to save, why wouldn't they do so privately?
The "why" is complicated, but the "they generally don't" is not.
> Isn't a democracy supposed to reflect what the people want?
People wanted slavery, segregation, Jim Crow, etc. There aren't many pure democracies out there as pure mob rule isn't super awesome in the long run.
Alaska's dividend is particularly odd given they were proposing 40% budget cuts to the state university system recently in order to keep the fund payouts up.
> Dunleavy, who took office in December and is an outspoken supporter of U.S. President Donald Trump, has called for major cuts in higher education, health care and other social programs as he pushes to sharply raise the annual oil revenue dividend that Alaska pays to nearly every state resident.
In general, just giving people money should be the null hypothesis for how to spend, and any government spending programme should be measured against this 'placebo'. Instead of against the weaker standard of 'does the spending do any good at all?'
I have no clue whether those programs he wants to slash are any good or bad.
Higher education is mostly a signalling game. So very useful for individuals to spend on; but a zero sum game at the level of society.
> People wanted slavery, segregation, Jim Crow, etc. There aren't many pure democracies out there as pure mob rule isn't super awesome in the long run.
I'm not a fan of democracy either. But lots of people are. And it beats some of the alternatives.
The dividend is not particularly large as far as basic income goes, but it's an inflation-proof setup. The principal is currently somewhere around $67b. With about 700k residents in AK, that's about $90k per citizen.
Now that the annual oil revenue has declined, there's debate every year about what to do with that principal. AK has been cutting services the last few years, even though we have almost $70b in the bank.
A fixed time before renewal is fairly common for legislation though; For instance, many of the tax cuts expire in 2025; Or the Bush capital gains cuts had to be renewed for 10 years.
One question about expiration dates; are study participants more likely to take caution them than general populace.
Absolutely true, but they also tend to work in jobs where they have essentially full control over how much they work, when they work, etc.
And in some cases, that might still end up being much more lucrative than a "normal job". But I'm sure that in many cases, it doesn't - we just don't hear about it, because they're still rich, and nobody really knows what they're really doing anyway.
Do they tend to work in those jobs? There are people with trust funds working at McKinsey, Google, Harper Collins, Cravath, and Goldman Sachs right now. They all pay well but they aren't places where one has "essentially full control over how much they work, when they work, etc."
You don't need to work to stay rich when you have a $25M trust fund.
There are plenty of people who were born rich who nonetheless go to work everyday. They are engineers, doctors, lawyers, consultants, bankers, inventors, teachers, professors, and business owners.
Having money doesn't discourage people from working. We won't run into a shortage of astronauts, teachers, or even police officers. But we may find it difficult to find people willing to work as a janitor for $8.00 an hour.
As self reported by many truly rich folks, money is not a motivating factor in their daily lives. If they want a good burger, they'll get one and not care if it's $1 or $1,000.
Such an attitude would certainly apply to their reasons for working.
Well, the rich almost always make most of their day-to-day income from investments. The opportunity cost calculations change pretty dramatically when a person's labor provides little to no monetary value (especially given the context of going out for a burger).
After all, there's a practical limit on the value of a person's labor - let's postulate that it's around $7,000 a day - there's no such limit on what investments can return in a day.
* $7,000 is Elon Musks's $2.2M salary from 2019 divided into 340 working days.
I don't think you can figure out the practical limit like that.
First: musicians and athletes in their prime can make more, and that's definitely labour income. Second: if a bus were to hit Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos or Warren Buffett, their companies would lose lots of value. So even though their day-to-day income looks like it's coming from investments, a big part of it is actually labour income.
(I'm taking 'hit by a bus' here as an exogenous event that would make the CEOs unable to work, but wouldn't touch the companies at all and crucially wouldn't imply to investors any other information about the companies.)
Similar for running a hedge fund: as far as the tax man is concerned, a lot of the income they generate for the people running the fund is some kind of capital returns. But in an economic sense, it's mostly labour income: if you want to estimate the capital side, just see how well the hedge fund's customers are doing out of their investment; any returns insiders make above that are labour income.
People are already complaining about taxes too high and lazy welfare recipients. With UBI this would get even worse and I agree that most likely it would get voted out very quickly. If we can’t even get universal health care, robust social safety net or secure retirement going without political fights, forget UBI.
The argument for UBI in place of those other things is that it's extremely simple. Legislatively, bureaucratically, etc. Just give people more money to offset all of these systems that are too expensive. Simpler also means cheaper to implement.
It does avoid dealing with the root problems in some sense, but it's certainly elegant.
I'm tentatively a UBI fan, but just switching to single-payer healthcare would do a lot of that. So much damn bureaucracy, public and private, for that. I think the public side's under-accounted-for, actually—so many government agencies end up having to deal with health insurance crap for one reason or another.
Some would remain for private supplemental plans or whatever, but 90+% of that work would just go away. Plus all those uncompensated hours individuals spend fucking with insurance and medical provider billing departments.
Yep. People who oppose universal healthcare because "have you been to the DMV?" don't consider the fact that in this case private industry already has dramatically more bureaucracy than the government equivalent would. My health insurer is already the DMV, just without any legal obligation to help me.
Of course, it would still take tons of legwork to make the actual transition. But the end result would be a net win for simplicity.
Universal healthcare is a prerequisite for UBI. How could you ever rely on it if you have the threat of a six figure hospital bill whenever you get sick or have an accident? Affordable housing is also a prerequisite or the UBI money will go straight into the pockets of landlords (I often suspect this is the secret plan of billionaires who propose UBI).
A lot of the poor that qualify for benefits can already get equivalents through family or friends if the program were not offered. If we just give cash, they're likely to spend it on other things and combine expenses where possible.
It's popular because everybody gets a check each fall that's been around $1500. One year the dividend was higher, just over $2k. There was also an "energy rebate" of $1200 that year, so every qualifying person in the state got $3200 that year. In a family of four, that's over $12k. Large families, for example 8 people, got $24k that year!
Some people use it well, putting some in the bank for their kids, paying off loans, etc. But many people just splurge every fall. There's an increase in alcohol and substance abuse-related incidents.
It has impacted politics significantly. We are no longer getting large influxes of cash every year, so there's an open question about how to fund our state's services. We could implement an income tax, but that's a hard sell. We could start tapping into the permanent fund principal, but anyone who proposes that gets trounced by politicians willing to "protect" people's pfd by slashing services. We could offer so much as a state, but people won't have it because they want their $1500 each fall.
I appreciate your posts on the Permanent Fund here.
I have a friend who moved to Alaska last year for work last year and will probably be there for a few more years. We had discussions about the fund recently because this is the first year he qualifies for it. He will very much be in that camp of using the check in the fall to splurge and will do so until he is able to move in a few years.
As an outsider, it seems frustrating to me that the funds aren't used to improve the state (schools, utilities, infrastructure). I've expressed this to my friend and kind of derided him a bit for being what I see as part of the problem. In reality I guess I can't really blame him for taking the money and (eventually) running, but it just feels wrong to me.
I feel vaguely similar, having moved to Texas a year ago. No income tax, also money needed for services, when I point this out people just kinda go "oh you crazy new york folks."
The property tax burden (if you own) is fairly high, especially if one is not getting a high tech salary. The sort of permanent fund equivalent in Texas is dedicated to the state university system - they make a pretty big deal of this in civics classes in Texas.
Also, there is a delayed reckoning in the public school system in Texas - they keep on cutting state funding to systems to avoid having to increase state taxes so local school systems have to try to make this up, and the state for a long time fraudulently worked to deny children with special education needs the correct diagnosis - since special education (for whatever reason/cause) children cost a lot more to educate. https://www.chron.com/politics/texas/article/Delayed-or-deni...
The Alaska thing is different. It's a) not enough money to be considered b) a reasonable response to the direct revenues from an Oil windfall.
Now, it might be a good example of how a nation should distribute revenues from natural resources, i.e. right into the hands of the people. But it's not a UBI substitute.
Well yeah, if someone says, "would ending this program cause you to change or cancel current plans?", I would say yes in the hopes that it would encourage the program to continue. Free money is nice.
There is a lot of misunderstanding in this thread, and a lot of strong opinions.
"UBI" is mentioned repeatedly, but this wasn't a UBI program.
The intention of the program was looking to replace our existing welfare and many Ontario works programs.
Instead, the incoming government (after campaigning on completing the pilot) canceled the program unilaterally, and is looking to outsource our welfare payment programs to foreign companies.
The basic income experiment improved motivation to find a higher paying job for both employed and unemployed members but
> almost three-quarters of the respondents who were employed six months before receiving basic income were still working while receiving basic income. Nearly 80 percent of the respondents who were previously unemployed remained without work during the pilot. About 20 percent found employment.
So the majority of unemployed people stayed unemployed. Of the people employed prior to the pilot, about 23% became unemployed although in some cases it may have been to pursue more education.
> The unemployed group were three times more likely to report their general health had declined during the pilot as compared to the employed group.
The majority of the unemployed group reported improved general health but a significant portion of the unemployed group became worse off during the pilot.
The majority of participants did report improved well-being through a survey. The survey asked questions about general health, mental health, and financial well-being among others.
If the cost was $150,000,000 for 4,000 people for 3 years, the cost per year should be approx $50,000,000.
The articles states there are 2,000,000 people in poverty in the Ontario province so this program, if scaled up to all those in poverty, would be expected to cost $25,000,000,000 per year from simply scaling up the cost 500x.
These studies feel like "free energy machines" that totally work as long as they are plugged into a wall socket, that is: as long as the budget doesn't come from the system itself, you're not testing under anything close to real world conditions.
Otherwise, the results aren't surprising to me. I know very few people that wouldn't keep/be working if they had a UBI (and the ones that wouldn't aren't really working now), but I also know very few people that would keep their current job. UBI, if sustained and sustainable, should work similar to a roaring economy with full employment in that regard: if you want somebody to work in the sewers or garbage collection, you'll have to pay them well.
I really, really like the idea of UBI. However, some napkin math:
In the US, with ~250 million people being eligible, a $1000 UBI would cost ~$3 trillion. That's almost the entire budget of the US. How is this even remotely realistic right now? Even if you can cut other spending in half due to it, you'd need an additional $1.5 trillion in "income" essentially. Is that something that would even be possible? How many rich people are there to tax?
Different proposals use different amounts, $1k a month happens to be in the Yang proposal (Freedom Dividend) which was funded largely from a consumption tax: https://freedom-dividend.com/
Well I think it needs to at least be high enough that other social spending can largely be cut (except for healthcare maybe), and that seemed like a reasonable value.
Unfortunately I can't read the link you posted since I don't have an account there.
You can usually google articles and it goes around paywalls, otherwise you can just google for Charles Murray's UBI plan.
There are a bunch of UBI plans, which all vary across the political spectrum. Some are financed entirely with progressive wealth taxes, others nearly entirely with cuts to existing programs. The math usually works out decently through some trick or another, like limiting recipients to only {kids, adults} or phasing out by income.
Under 200million working age people Seniors already get BI via SS.
People with good paying jobs would pay additional tax that cancels out UBI.
So only the half earning below median would actually take cash out. That's 100M, or $0.5T net expense, a substantial but not order of magnitude tax increase.
Even median is above living wage, so you could reasonably cut even further.
We could let the government build factories, mines, and services. Then profits could be directed towards the program. The government services could also have a mandate for automation and job-destruction, in order to maximize the effectiveness of the people's capital.
You're forgetting about growth. Is UBI possible today? Probably not.
Quick googling (so take my numbers with a grain of salt but my point is to illustrate not be exact) says US economic growth the last 10 years has been ~45%. If that trend continues today's $3 trillion budget could be $4.5 trillion in 2030 - UBI starting to look much more possible. Another decade of 50% growth and the budget is $6.75 trillion in 2040 -- UBI seems absolutely possible. Sure there's population growth to consider as well, but you get my point where at some point the math works pretty well.
Briefly, the state of Alaska owns the oilfields in Alaska and makes money from selling the oil. That money is then partially disbursed to people living in the state.
The actual payment has varied over time (with oil prices, mostly), peaking at $3269/person/year in 2008 but was only $878/person/year in 2012.
That’s way it’s funded just Norway funds their social programs from oil revenues and tosses the extra in their sovereign wealth fund like Saudi Arabia. Alaska is listed on the wiki page for basic income.
> The ... program was scrapped by Ontario's ... government in July. ... minister Lisa MacLeod, said the decision was made because the program was failing to help people become "independent contributors to the economy."
Basic income is supposed to help people cover their basic needs, not to make them "independent contributors to the economy".
This is doubly the case when we remember that doing volunteer work, social/community organizing, (non-commercialized) art - is not even counted as part of "the economy".
Also, if you're an employee - becoming an employee or continuing to be one - you're not an "independent contributor to the economy". But the vast majority of"contributors to the economy" are wage workers, not independent tradespeople.
"nearly three-quarters of respondents who were working when the pilot project began kept at it despite receiving basic income."
So can we infer that 25% of those working chose to actually quit full time? I think it's safe to say this much reduction in labor availability is not the result the government was hoping for.
The state is right, maybe not to call it off prematurely but if these figures would have been the same after the trial the conclusion would have been: they need to look for another policy. A good 'normal' social security policy would result in 0 people quitting and a lot of people getting employed. That's the kind of result the government should want to see before even considering a change.
I really don't like using employment as the only valid measure of success. See also David Graeber's "Bullshit Jobs" essay.
Government could always create jobs, directly or indirectly, and force the unemployed into them, producing something for which there isn't really a demand.
Why were those people quitting their jobs? What were they doing instead? Were they better off? How much did it cost to get those improvements, compared to other ways to get them?
People quitting their jobs means a not-quite corresponding economic decline because labor productivity can't change in the short term (not quite because these are lower-productivity jobs). Which means less taxes and thus less money to fund programs like this. But more importantly in an import-free economy, less stuff gets produced so everyone would have to make do with less. That's why it's generally considered important.
I wish the report broke out the family health benefits based on if the participant gained/lost work did/didn't go to school. (edit: Also provide a category for those that were too ill to work to begin with.) From the conclusion:
>As for the labour market participation of survey respondents, over half indicated working before and during the pilot (54%) while less than a quarter were unemployed before and during the pilot (24%). Slightly less than one-fifth were employed before but unemployed during the pilot (17%) and a smaller number reported not working before but finding work during the pilot (5%). Just under half of those who stopped working during the pilot returned to school to improve their future employability (40.6%).
>Those who were working both before and during the pilot reported improvements in their rate of pay (37%), working conditions (31%) and job security (27%). The entire survey sample reported other work-related improvements such as searching more easily for a job (61%),staying motivated to find better employment (79%) and starting school or an educational training program (26%).
I'm not optimistic about basic income for the average person.
That said, I know that if I had basic income, I would spend my time building things for the world. There are lots of side projects that I have worked on or want to work on, but simply haven't been able to get them off the ground because I don't have the time to dedicate enough mental energy. There's too much at stake for me to compromise my current job to work on something that may or may not succeed. I could work on projects after hours or during the weekend, but I've found this to be too spiritually exhausting and simply impractical; I have a hard time maintaining momentum if I can't dedicate more than half my time to something.
If I could get by with the basics and not have to be employed, I could actually get something done that not only might help the world but employ others.
I would think that thousands of people like you trying to build something innovative and new would be well worth the investment in those who try and fail or those who are content to "waste it away" (spending their UBI and doing nothing else is still creating economic activity).
As others have said this study doesn't have enough data to be conclusive. So most people, including me, comment based on which of the following we believe in:
1. People are inherently lazy. UBI will encourage them to do less.
2. People are inherently interested in maximizing their potential. UBI will enable them to do more.
I couldn't find any social science research on which of the above is more true. But if we could tell maybe that can help us guess at how many UBI recipients will abuse the system as that seems to be the main concern around UBI.
Couldn't you consider older people living on Social Security to be somewhat of a UBI microclimate? I'd imagine you could learn a lot by sending the same questionnaire to them. A lot of the mental factors are the same: desire vs. ability to work, the changes in routine pre and post income, etc.
Also, I wonder if we had UBI there would be facilities that would take care of you if you turned over your income check to them in the same way that some nursing homes do. One wonders how different this would be than a minimum security prison....
That seems to address many of the concerns that people are raising in this thread. Namely, it doesn’t require you to work, but ensures that you never have a disincentive to work either.
Although I'd be inclined to agree that negative income tax might be the better model, as it gives the most direct control over the net-income vs gross-income curve, and it's the properties of that curve that drives people's behaviour.
For instance the steepness of the curve indicates how much someone is incentivized to earn more (ideally you'd want this to decrease strictly monotonically as people earn more, but somehow this is rather controversial). And its curvature dictates whether a stable or unstable income incurs more tax (this property doesn't seem to be used much but it's still interesting).
One of the problems with income dependent welfare is that it messes up the lower end of the curve, making its slope smaller or even negative. In the worst case it provides a financial barrier to people on welfare to re-enter the work force.
I think UBI has advantages in its universality, where it's not perceived as a rich to poor transfer (even though it really is) and everyone feels they benefit from the program (even though some people don't).
Money is fungible. UBI + progressive income tax is the same as negative income tax plus UBI to cover people with 0 income.
The parameters matter not the name of the model.
Also we already have EITC negative income tax in US.
So negative income tax is either irrelevant rewording or cruel to people who can't work.
The problem is not the productivity of those on UBI, the elephant in the room is the ideology of humans on this planet who are forced into labor for survival vs those who are percieved as having a free ride.
That schism will exist for any set of parameters and methods of rolling it out. It will not solve class imbalances, it will make them painfully clear.
E.G. for those of us who have wealth, own houses, etc, UBI will make having a job seem like an optional folly to a person with debt and rent to pay. We really don't want a society like that.
The problem I have with all of these studies is that they only look at the receiving side of the equation. In other words, their experiment is not a closed system where their subjects have to also provide the free money to each other, which is what UBI proposes.
The results therefor are completely uninteresting -- do people's quality of life go up when you just give them free money, no strings attached? I would certainly expect so! I don't think this is news to anybody. But what about the people paying for the UBI? If their taxes have to go up 3%.. 5%.. 10%.. whatever it is, then any respectable study of the affects of UBI has to at the very least take into account the negative affects on the paying population, if there are any. Otherwise, the conclusions we draw are probably going to be disastrously wrong.
An other way of thinking about it is with a thought experiment. If scientists didn't consider the full affects of their experiments on the entire system as a whole, then they could easily show that entropy decreases over time, or that momentum or energy or mass are not conserved.
So, I'd like to see a study where participants are divided into payers and recipients. Perhaps, 90% are payers and 10% are recipients, and we track not only the benefits in lifestyle that the receiving 10% enjoy, but also look for any drops in quality of life suffered by the 90%.
People actually enjoy being useful. We actually enjoy work which preserves dignity and has visible benefit.
This idea that people only do work because they must is flawed. Most citizens are happy when they are doing a reasonable amount of work.
Basic Income is crucial because not all useful work is fairly paid. From parenting to housekeeping, (early) innovating to art - so many beneficial activities suffer because the stress of financial security grinds them out of existence.
None of these empirical studies are useful for broad policy decisions. This is a bit like linear regression, there are to many dimensions each matters differently and the same classifier will not hold true if you add more dimensions randomly or remove few.
There is no "core human trend" to all this that will get revealed only by empirical studies but not by logic. (Empirical studies are useful to judge say whether vaping actually makes us more healthy on average. Smoking is so irrational at some level that no amount of logic can help us predict how people behave.)
The economics logic is pretty clear. People will react to incentives. But there is no hard formula that we can apply. Raising minimum wage by few cents will not cause job loss but increasing it by few dollars will. But if you make minimum wage around $100 then whole industry might go underground and no effective jobless but for in government record keeping.
I think effectiveness of UBI will be useful only if we perform far too many experience under far too variable circumstances and then understand the broader trends.
People interested in this UBI should look at the Canada Child Benefit (CCB).
It has been described in many ways, but it is essentially a basic income for children (or the parents of children).
It is means tested, which allows for the program to be really generous to low income single parents with young children.
The effect has been a dramatic reduction in poverty -- especially child poverty-- in a couple of years. This is an example of a modest government intervention that will have massive positive impacts in the lives of these families.
I’m glad there are experiments like this actually happening for any amount of time. It would be great to see the experiment run it’s full course, but it’s maybe more surprising to me that it got funded, rather than that it got cancelled. Thinking about how contentious and political funding can be for things we know we need, like schools, it’s not very surprising that something expensive and not 100% required ends up on the chopping block.
What do you think it would realistically take to be able to fund UBI (or other experiments) without running the risk of being cancelled? How could it be set up so that next year’s political opponent doesn’t have the ability to axe a project to make themselves look good?
If you raise the bar by $x across the board then doesn't $x gradually becomes the new bottom? If we give everyone $50k / year tax-free, would that just make $50k the new $0 relative to cost of living? The effect being the same as a progressive tax (those who make far more are far less impacted).
If it is basically the same as a progressive tax, then it does strike me as a much simpler way to implement it (instead of complicated varying brackets). However adding it on top of an existing progressive tax scheme is adding another point of complexity right?
Maybe replacing progressive taxes with a flat tax and then adding UBI would be a better / simpler approach.
Seems like it would be more clear and fair all around to have flat tax + UBI so we aren't mixing solutions to different problems.
Rich and poor probably utilize public services around the same amount (roads, police, hospitals, fire departments, etc.). (I'm sure there are counter arguments to this, but if public services we're good enough, can we assume this?). So a flat tax would be fair. It potentially disincentives better public services in more wealthy regions if everyone pays the same (again, sure there are some counter arguments, but it would be better right?).
Then adding UBI is clearly for the purpose of distributing some of the wealth that our society has allowed to be created back to the people in a non-prejudiced way. UBI would have to keep pace with inflation of course. A fixed "thank you for making our rich country work and for buying crap even if don't need it" that everyone gets doesn't seem too controversial.
Other than accountants, tax lawyers, and offshore havens, who gets hurt?
I think it's important to study the details of different implementations before making any conclusions, positive or negative, about basic income. Yeah, one of the challenges with a test like this is knowing there's a finite end date.
Another aspect that is often ignored in these discussions is the question of whether recipients continue to be eligible for basic social safety net type of services. I've heard the libertarian approach to basic income is essentially a replacement for the services we consider "welfare", and that's what we're seeing out of the proposal in California where recipients receiving other assistance would be ineligible for this kind of income. Medicaid, for one, is a strike against eligibility.
I haven't looked into Ontario's test in detail, but I doubt the recipients gave up their single-payer healthcare to receive basic income. Also makes me think that BI is only so popular because we rarely dive into the details of what happens to existing social programs, a question that will surely turn the UI/BI discussion more divisive.
One argument I never see in UBI discussions is that some people are just bad with money. If you give more money to someone who doesn't budget, save, live within their means, etc, it won't help. There are people who spend beyond their means and then get payday loans. So while it would help some people who would spend wisely, many would not.
You would have payday loans 2.0 where people would borrow against future UBI payments, spend on non necessities, and then be in an probably worse situation compared to the people still receiving UBI.
I think a good iterative solution is to keep pay the same but change all laws to pivot around a 32-hour work week instead of 40. This will force employers to hire more people or pay more over time for any work past 32 hours. I think UBI is an extreme solution to the problems that globalization and automation presents. It's better to spread the existing labor. After a certain point we could move down to 24 hour work week finally down to a UBI model when no labor is required.
I'd be interested to see what would happen in the tech world if there was a UBI. How many more startups would there be if people could survive on a UBI.... it's essentially like having an unlimited runway to get startups off the ground. Not the "we are going to disrupt entire industries and make billions" type of startups most likely, but still, worthy startups creating chunks of software for smaller markets that take longer to monetize
Everyone is talking about "receiving money with no-strings attached" however there is a huge string attached, and everyone knows it very well, especially the researchers, and that is the experiment will end.
This means that the experiment is temporary whereas real UBI would be permanent. A temporary experiment where everyone is aware that it will end cannot simulate the same changes that a permanent experiment would do. But I guess that wouldn't be an experiement anymore.
Very promising to read this. Feels like many more studies needed and more data to be collected in order to figure out what is indeed effective and what's not.
Just like the early hype with microfinance decades ago - there was an initial hype cycle, then broader cynicism in the academic community, and ultimately, a data-driven informed understanding of what in fact works (on a more nuanced level - by country, income levels, program design, etc.)
2 thoughts:
* Only ~200 people out of 1000 completed the survey. Many of these people were found by the researchers, so there's likely bias (given the nature of the report)
* Basic income's benefits will eventually go away in a society with easy access to credit. Similar to comments by throwaway13337.
Shouldn't it be obvious that the people receiving money would become healthier and happier? The question is whether they become healthier and happier enough to offset the cost of making them that way. Are they the best use of that tax money? What's the lifetime return on investment?
If you want to make UBI a reality, instead of just talking about it for 50 years, we have to do it from the bottom up.
I supported Yang, my company Qbix even built https://yang2020.app for him. But he didn’t get anywhere.
We have a project to build UBI from the bottom up, using cryptocurrencies for communities - including local townships and cities like Stockton. Local currencies already exist, including casino chips, disney dollars, berkshares, bristol pounds etc. This just puts them on a blockchain (actually, a new architecture we designed that’s far faster than blockchain).
If you are really interested, or want to get involved in some way to make it a reality, I suggest to do the following:
I think that's the point for most UBI proposals. The most cash-like welfare programs are TANF and SNAP, they pay out on the order of $250 (depending on state), are temporary, hard to obtain, always under danger of being cut, etc.
UBI is an appealing replacement that's universal (more resistant to cuts because it's more popular), pays out more, has no discontinuities which result in welfare traps, etc.
The goal should not be to increase welfare recipients but to increase quality of life and social outcomes. For instance a jobs program like the Green New Deal would probably "eat into welfare checks" as people become ineligible through earnings.
Like the brilliant social engineer Jacque Fresco said, we should just give everyone what they need to live for free in what he called a Resource Based Economy. That is even better than giving them money. I highly recommend his book "The best that money can't buy".
I'm not sure anything was proven about people continuing to work during a temporary basic income study. If the basic income provided is temporary as part of a study, why would I leave my job when I know I'm going to need the income from my job after the study is over?
Why is there a focus on people working at all? I thought one of the reasons UBI was so interesting is that people who are stupid, lazy, incompetent or just too obnoxious to work in customer service can stay at home and out of my way.
More than universal basic income, I would love to also see universal basic services. A guarantee of some sort that the basic income will cover a bundle of basic things such as housing, transport, food, healthcare, utilities.
Well I for one voted for Andrew Yang. #CouldhavehadYang.
Still, we need more of these pilots, but unfortunately pilots limited in geography, time, and universality cannot capture the knock on effects of a universal UBI.
This misses the point entirely. UBI is the democratic socialist version of The Great Leap Forward. Its an attempt to better human existence via direct government intervention, something which rarely works as intended (assuming you're counting net gains). I'm pretty pragmatic, (and libertarian) so if we're going to start down this path let's skip the faux capitalism and get straight to the bread and games part. The government already has a near limitless amount of power to effect changes in the economic structure of the country, and this is where they've gotten us. Going further down that path seems a bit daft.
I realize part of this problem is that we've moved into being a post-frontier world, where there are few, if any, places left where people can go to govern themselves, but I don't see why the lack of empty unclaimed space should lead to the government taking money from some citizens to buy the loyalty of other citizens.
The end does not justify the means. Forcibly removing someone's money and transferring it to another person can never be justified. Tax-funded UBI is theft, slavery, and extortion.
However, if a billionaire wishes to privately sponsor UBI, this is a completely different story in charity and example that should be regarded. It's important to differentiate between the two, but unfortunately most UBI schemes refer to extortion, not charity.
> Forcibly removing someone's money and transferring it to another person can never be justified
Except that almost everything government does involves removing someone's money - through taxes - and transferring it to another person - through social programs (including public school, building infrastructure), social programs, paying government employees, etc.
> If a billionaire wishes to privately sponsor UBI...
Extending this to include the social programs listed above: gee I can't wait to lick a billionaire's boots and do the hokey-pokey to be allowed to drive on their roads, have my burning house saved by their private firefighters, and send my kids to the schools they own.
> The end does not justify the means. Forcibly removing someone's money and transferring it to another person can never be justified.
I agree. For that reason we should redistribute wealth from lazy rent-seeking shareholders and landlords. Billionaires and shareholders are legalized slave owners and should be treated as such.
> Tax-funded UBI is theft, slavery, and extortion.
Our law creates both property rights and taxes. Taxes aren't theft because, by law, that money is actually the government's property. If you want individualistically overrule our law to make taxes theft, I might as well do the same to make your property mine.
The notion of property rights is not created by the law, but a law of nature, a concept intuitively understood by human beings. The same goes for theft. The law only adopted these concepts, but it created taxes. It is not intuitively obvious that some entity is entitled to a percentage of the money you're earning.
You can change the law any way you want, but you're not changing the underlying laws of nature, and they allow you to make a case that taxes are theft. Whether that's actually true is then of course debatable and depends on a lot of variables, but saying that someone else's property should arbitrarily be yours immediately contradicts those fundamental laws.
> The notion of property rights is not created by the law, but a law of nature, a concept intuitively understood by human beings. The same goes for theft. The law only adopted these concepts, but it created taxes. It is not intuitively obvious that some entity is entitled to a percentage of the money you're earning.
Nope, sorry. You might be on to something if you limited yourself to the "foreign relations" of a community, but we're talking about intracommunity relations here. If you're looking for laws of nature, socially obligatory sharing is far more fundamental and important than any primal notions of exclusivist private property and theft.
Concepts like private property, theft, and taxation do have primitive antecedents, but you're guilty of anachronism if you think those antecedents make some modern ideological notion a kind of fundamental law.
> The end does not justify the means. Forcibly removing someone's money and transferring it to another person can never be justified. Tax-funded UBI is theft, slavery, and extortion.
Unrelatedly, I have also proven beyond a doubt that Ray Charles is God.
So most people 'kept working' but 25% quit, I think that kind of validates that a lot of people will quit, which is the concern. 25% is a lot. It'd be interesting to see numbers from those who were not employed, i.e. how many gained employment.
The bits about 'having to drop future plans' isn't fair. Of course, people will have to adjust after losing a major source of income.
That popped out at me as well. I'd like to see the actual report because 25% of people stopping work is a big deal. However, it appears the response rate of the survey was only 217 of 4000 (5%) which isn't good. Typically when you have large population level studies like this, you have staff embedded in the town and would conduct telephone interviews with all participants. I wonder if the cancellation of the project meant they could only afford an online survey.
The program was fully designed and budgeted. The new government scrapped it unilaterally after campaigning on keeping it saying "it's not showing good results"—but the study had barely begun!
Any issues with reporting are unfounded since the program wasn't able to run as designed.
It might very well be that they quit low pay jobs they took only because they had no alternative. It's obvious that the job market would need to adjust with an UBI in place. Most wage-slavery level jobs would have no justification to exist anymore.
to be fair, a lot of people are stuck in jobs that don't give them the benefits they want, don't pay them enough, or just don't suit them very well but they can't quit and get a new job because they aren't paid enough for that. UBI gives people a chance to quit and not immediately be on the streets. This also creates more competition for employers to win over employees instead of creating wage-slaves. I doubt that's what everybody who quit here did, but it is part of the idea of UBI.
Yea the basic income in the study seems to be means tested so it might incentivize people to quit.
Just want to point out that a universal income would be constant regardless of job held, so there's no incentive to quit. If the UBI amount is tuned correctly, then those who don't have a job can subsist long enough to find a better job, which I'd posit is a net boon for our economy.
Not even a year! It was scheduled, funded, planned and then cancelled by the newly elected provincial government after they campaigned on keeping the program to its completion.
It was designed to run 3 years, and people had barely begun implementing the plans they wanted over that time.
IIRC some had taken the money and used it to improve their current lives, others left jobs to pursue schooling or start businesses. Those plans didn't get to come to fruition because of the drastic about-face by the gov.
No one seems to address the idea that coercion is necessary to force people to pay for this, something i do not wish to do, and many people feel the same. It has already been shown this disincentives work, Those of us that do work and are taxed to pay for the already massively wasteful welfare state resent being enslaved even further to pay for the errors of socialist re-distributive schemes.
You're already being coerced to pay for social services, I wouldn't compare UBI to an anarcho-capitalist paradise, but the current situation, and many UBI proposals are much better than the status quo.
> Slightly less than one-fifth were employed before but unemployed during the pilot (17%)
So even worse than what we've seen so far. 17% dropping out of the labor market when its a short-term study is huge.
For the ~10% figure, Chris Stucchio has a fairly succinct roundup of the work disincentive of other studies so far: https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2019/basic_income_reduces...
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Personal opinion: If you consider multi-generational entrenchments of poverty as its own problem, worth serious merit, then the work disincentive could be a disaster. In UBI long run, the children of parents who have never worked are probably going to be at a large disadvantage. I think its already a problem today for children of SSI recipient parents (even compared to children of SSDI parents), but its not easy to prove.