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I would speculate that any end date on this scenario will invalidate results. What a person does if it is guaranteed a job for life vs 5 years is wildly differe

• 11thEarlOfMar 9y ago
  Since they have a control group, they can at least learn how people's behavior changes when they get free money for 5 years. 5 years is enough for going back to school, getting retrained, moving to a new location for better work prospects, etc. They can't claim to know how people will behave if it is a lifetime, but evaluating some change is better than evaluating none.
• laser 9y ago
  If the government guarantees a basic income, you're really only guaranteed (at best) until the next election cycle. Just recently, seven years after its passing, the ACA was nearly reverted, which would have kicked millions of people off government-subsidized health insurance plans.
  • xienze 9y ago
    In the case of BI, I disagree. Politicians will see this for what it really is -- the most direct way to buy votes (by promising increased BI). It would be quite popular with both parties, I'm sure.
    • bduerst 9y ago
      One party's platform is built on the fear of socialism - they will most definitely oppose this and use it to get votes, but by egging it publicly.
      • xienze 9y ago
        If we're living in a world where BI is a reality, it will be embraced. Once social programs are implemented, they're nearly impossible to remove -- see ObamaCare. Republicans have given up on going back to the old system and have, well, embraced a tweaked ObamaCare under a new name. They'd do the same with BI. "Democrats promising $30K BI? Well we're gonna do $35K!"
        • bduerst 9y ago
          This is circular logic. In order for BI to become a reality, it first must be embraced. In order for BI to be embraced, it must first be a world where BI is a reality. You keep referencing ACA, but there is currently a new bill to repeal it: https://www.lgraham.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/06822f49-b801-4d9f-95f5-d7b5406e9aa9/lyn17709.pdf https://www.lgraham.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/06822f49-...
          • TCM 9y ago
            The argument from the parent posts rely on ACA being repealed already. If the ACA does get repealed then the above arguments hold but this hasn't happened yet.
            • bduerst 9y ago
              My point is that bringing up the ACA repeal is moot, either way, because it's repeal is still active and not finished.
          • xienze 9y ago
            No, in order for BI to become a reality you just need a Democrat majority to pass the legislation.
        • gehwartzen 9y ago
          The irony of course being that all the existing social programs which are "nearly impossible to remove" will have to be removed to fund the BI.
  • josefresco 9y ago
    Also, similar to the ACA, individual states can attempt to block the roll-out.
  • mfoy_ 9y ago
    That's why I have approximately 0 faith in the pension plan my government(s) have in place. I'll save for my own retirement so I'm not high and dry when they mismanage the funds or change policies or whatever.
    • zanny 9y ago
      While it is less likely, nothing is guaranteed. You assume your investments will be around until you cash them out for retirement, and they are all dependant on something not failing: * Direct stock ownership depends on the company growing, not failing, not being bought out, etc. * Mutual funds depend on the fund manager not going under / properly managing assets. * Bonds depend on state institutions honoring them. * You can't really save for retirement in a bank because their rates of return are below inflation. You lose money in banks. * Hoarding fiat is obviously bad. * Any asset you would try to store long term is subject to market volatility at the least and potential obsolescence at the worst. You simply cannot guess what anything will be worth decades from now. The current US administration knows full well that throwing tens of millions of people off insurance will probably cost them the disenfranchised working class that elected them in the first place and lose them their majorities in congress and the presidency. I fully expect them to stab themselves in the foot with this, since a lot of monied interests benefit from the absurdly inefficient default state of healthcare where many people depend on emergency rooms for all problems, but in the same vein repealing social security would destroy their voting base unless they made it a grandfathered in shutdown where the next Democratic administration could just reinstate it and nobody on benefits would lose benefits.
      • ThrustVectoring 9y ago
        >Mutual funds depend on the fund manager not going under / properly managing assets. Err, no. This is not a risk of properly structured mutual funds. The manager does not directly hold assets - they make decisions about what to do with the assets, which the custodian executes. And the fund's management has no recourse to the assets held by the custodian. How the fund goes under is if the assets they hold go to zero value. There's still execution risk, though, which is why passive management is ideal. I'm pretty sure VTSAX can successfully hold a market-cap weighted mix of the 3600 largest US firms pretty much indefinitely. The risk is that the largest US firms stop being generally profitable, like what happened in Japan.
  • staunch 9y ago
    Pensions are a great use-case for smart contracts. I would feel much safer having my retirement assured by a blockchain than a bureaucrat.
    • Falell 9y ago
      How would this work? As I understand it pensions are almost never fully funded when they begin because the costs would be prohibitive. Can a smart contract guarantee that funds that are not available now will be made available at a later date?
      • gnaritas 9y ago
        It wouldn't work, almost nothing people want to do with smart contract can actually work because those people tend not to actually understand what a smart contract is or what it can actually do and what it can't do. Virtually every smart contract proposal is DOA due to a misunderstanding of their nature.
        • staunch 9y ago
          What's missing from your claim is any justification for it all. You're just claiming, on zero authority, that it's not possible. So enlighten us. Why do you think it's impossible to encode the mechanics of a pension in a smart contract-based system?
          • gnaritas 9y ago
            I didn't need to, the comment I replied to already addressed a valid why. Smart contracts can't enforce access to funds without locking the funds up from other use, and that's not how things work in the real world. Pensions aren't savings accounts where funds are locked up ready to be used in a black box. They can't interact with the real world without trusted oracles, but we already have that in the real world and they're only real use is when they can do something deterministic on chain. In short, they're largely hype without a real problem to solve... so far.
  • noobermin 9y ago
    Actually, the fact that it hasn't been unrolled completely yet without backlash is a testament to how angry people are when you try to take their protections away.
• ForRealsies 9y ago
  They'll have to train and prepare to enter the job market again? That's terrible!
  • function_seven 9y ago
    If you’re attempting to study how a Basic Income would affect its recipients, then yes. It is terrible. It completely skews the behavior of the recipient in a way that a lifetime BI would not.
• FreakyT 9y ago
  Absolutely, and this is also the problem with every* other basic income study that's been conducted over the past few decades. If you promise basic income for only 5 years, then I'm probably not going to quit my job and become an artist because I can't be unemployed for 5 years and expect to waltz back into a job. If you promise basic income "forever", then I'm far more likely to retire at 30 and plan to never work again. * I believe this is the case, correct me if there are any I missed
  • Hydraulix989 9y ago
    This is why Patreon still makes a lot more sense for artists.
  • wavefunction 9y ago
    Or you've got five years to work a reduced schedule and see if you can "make it" as an artist. Seems great, as opposed to just trying to make it while working full time.
  • LoSboccacc 9y ago
    Would you not work? Basic income is nearly not enough to access luxuries. Sure you should be able to live off it, but I think most people would likely want more, the difference from forced equality being that you can still work and keep that as luxury money.
    • FreakyT 9y ago
      > I think most people would likely want more Would they, though? That's the key question that I believe this study (and others like it) fail to address. Depending on the basic income amount, I believe it would be possible to live a fulfilling (if somewhat minimalist) life without needing to supplement that income.
      • kowdermeister 9y ago
        I would want more. Currently I don't really care what I buy at supermarkets, I can go on 2 week holidays and potentially buy gadgets I like. However I can't really afford a car or buy a home or fancy synthesizers. With BI I could spend more, but I would still keep on working towards a relaxing financial freedom where money is not a problem at all.
• LoSboccacc 9y ago
  being time limited it gives you an actual hard value, so it becomes negotiable. I wonder if anyone will instead just use that to negotiate some credit at a favorable rate (say, 50k for those 60k) and actually start something greater than the expected subsistence. Generally speaking, this would probably be the most efficient use of UBI: you trade it all away as soon as you exit college and invest it in something. I can see whole branches of financial and life insurance services growing out of this market.
• emiliobumachar 9y ago
  Idea: what if they could hide from the recipients how long the program will take, while guaranteeing they'll get two years advance warning? Then for the first three years we might get something more representative of behavior on indefinite BI. I do realize that by this point this would be hard to hide.
  • pferde 9y ago
    Also, leaks would eventually happen. Someone always knows someone who knows...
• ThomPete 9y ago
  I think you are right but for the wrong reasons. The whole point about Basic Income (at least the unconditionally one) is that there are not going to be any jobs (or very few and only for highly talented people). And even if there are jobs it will always be worthwhile working (as long as it's unconditional) So if you, like me, believe that's the case, the whole discussion about whether people want to take a job or not becomes moot. It doesn't matter if they would have, they can't. A much more important discussion then becomes how we make it work financially.
  • Mz 9y ago
    The whole point about Basic Income (at least the unconditional ly one) is that there are not going to be any jobs (or very few and only for highly talented people). If there are no jobs, it will be because we designed it that way, not because it was inevitable. Tech giants proposing basic income as the solution to their lazy lack of desire to figure out how to better distribute work tell glowing stories of how lovely it will be for low paid workers to get this extra money. They never actually explore the scenario they are actually proposing that all you get is $10k-$20k and you have little or no hope of getting a job at all ever again. That would be a dystopian nightmare and I think it is likely to end in bloody revolution. Lots of hopeless people with nothing but time on their hands who are being completely fucked over by the system with no way out of this black hole but just enough money to keep eating well, even if they are living in a tent, sounds like a recipe for creating a well trained guerrilla army.
    • ThomPete 9y ago
      I wish it was that simple. Technology isn't inevitable but to the extent that we wan't to reap the benefits of it is. In other word, we aren't designing anything other than our own replacements. With regards to how SV tries to paint it thats a different discussion and have nothing to do with whether it will happen or not. It doesn't have to be dystopian (ex. Post scarcity society) but until we get there it's going to be worse not better for a lot of people. But I would challenge you to come up with an alternative that by and large at least compete with the reliance on technology. The problem is that no specific part of the whole system is responsible and everyone in the system is more or less acting rationally. So I fundamentally disagree it's not inevitable (with the above context considered)
• merpnderp 9y ago
  Seems like the most obvious conclusion is that labor for crappy jobs will become a lot more expensive. Basically any sector that relies upon cheaper labor, or is highly undesirable (think working on pipelines, coal mines, agriculture, sanitation, even low level medical care). And if it isn't based on wealth and only income, I can see a lot of professionals dropping out too once they've become comfortable.
• atiffany 9y ago
  I think you're right at least to the extent that this complicates drawing conclusions. Another issue I see is that in this study we're talking about a single household in a likely poor community getting a basic income. This is totally different from a scenario where the recipient knows that everyone else in their community is receiving a basic income too. Imagine this: a woman in a poor community who works a low-paying job starts receiving a basic income. Her boyfriend loses his job, and he starts to rely on her for support. In a world where both parties have a basic income, she'd have an easier time eventually telling him he needs to get out on his own feet, but in this scenario, she's the one with this "extra money."
  • cisanti 9y ago
    And what about border policy? You can't have open border policy + UBI together... I mean why not try to come to America then. I would I come if I had a chance to get UBI and live there, and millions, millions of others. Would the system still work?
    • awjr 9y ago
      I think you mis-understand UBI. UBI enables 'survival' within the country. It will just about pay for a room and basic food. You want to eat steak, you will need to get a job.
      • greedo 9y ago
        Good luck restricting that from future generations who will vote for more largesse...
        • Retric 9y ago
          People regularly vote to cut government entitlements. See healthcare funding in Canada which still does not cover prescription drugs or dental care. UBI is going to be treated just the same as a tax break for the poor and likely to stay at very minimal levels.
• CapsAdmin 9y ago
  This assumes people will enjoy a 5 year vacation though. In Norway if you're chronically disabled you can apply for something that seems very similar to basic income. I'm in that system and in my experience most of the people I know in this system are bored. It could be because all their friends are working so it's difficult to meet new people, there's also that this system is for disabled people and people with mental issues could find it difficult to meet other people, etc. I remember working somewhere where I was being tested before getting into this system and I met plenty who said they were heavily advised not to go back to work by their doctors. They want to do /something/ because being at home watching TV gets boring after half a year. So they were sent to that place in the meantime. I have other friends who are in this system who end up working in charity somewhere. But most of my friends i met in this system ended up finding a job, despite being promised permanent "universal income". In the past if you tried to work somewhere while being in this system, and it worked but you got sick again you'd have to reapply (which is a very long process) but now it's changed so it acts more as a safety net in case working somewhere doesn't work out for your health. I've heard this is to encourage people to work and I've heard (from the people who work in the system) that it's successful so far.
  • jacalata 9y ago
    This doesn't assume they'll take a 5 year vacation at all. It's the difference between deciding to become an artist because you know you'll never worry about money, and deciding to study accounting so you can eventually have an accounting job you don't care about that will support your evening art practice.
    • eanzenberg 9y ago
      Most will take a 5 year vacation.
      • vorotato 9y ago
        They said without any research backing their statement whatsoever...
• amelius 9y ago
  Can't we just have lotteries that have lifelong basic income as prices? It would mean free research data.
  • alphydan 9y ago
    We can and we do, http://edition.cnn.com/2017/07/24/us/florida-teen-wins-top-prize-on-scratch-off-trnd/index.html http://edition.cnn.com/2017/07/24/us/florida-teen-wins-top-p... (following those outcomes would be great research indeed)
• te 9y ago
  > you need to guarantee them that stability forever In that case, you're going to have to be content with a thought experiment, because there is no entity that can credibly make such a guarantee.
• conanbatt 9y ago
  That would be true of a real BI as well, as you dont know if the government will cut it on the next election!
  • Frondo 9y ago
    "I have structured my life not to depend on roads, because you never know if the next government will stop maintaining them." When there's a cultural shift to a UBI, that's not going to vanish overnight just because of an election cycle.
    • conanbatt 9y ago
      You sir, need to spend 2 years in Argentina to truly understand how the road example is absolutely applicable. Its true that its easier to add than to remove. One solution to that would be to tie adding it to removing something else.
• godelski 9y ago
  I think you overestimate how much the average person prepares for the future. Look at the number of people who have emergency funds. 62% of Americans have <$1k and ~20% have no savings [1]. That number is too high to be explained away by necessary expenses. It is clear that people are just bad at saving. We can even look at the old game of "I'll give you a dollar today or five at the end of the week." Most people take the dollar today. So with this time frame I believe initial ideas of "I'm going to put this to savings" will quickly disappear. Five years is a pretty long time, especially when considering at how bad humans are at preparing for the future. What I think will be interesting is to see the different spending trends over time. I would imagine the first and last years are different than the middle three. But that's just a guess. [1]
  • hueving 9y ago
    That's still not the same thing. Failing to save is partially because people think jobs are stable. That's unrelated to knowing you will need to get a job in 5 years after your extended basic income vacation.
    • godelski 9y ago
      Saving $1k has nothing to do with your job being stable or not. That's a safety net for life. It is the basic emergency fund. Cars break down, people get sick, life happens. So to extend your premise, "Failing to save is partially because people think expenses are stable." Which is clearly poor planning. We know humans are bad about estimating risk. I'm not sure why this is such a controversial idea. What I'm saying is that if even those above the 50% income level are bad about saving a basic emergency fund, I don't expect those receiving this kind of grant to be any better at preparing emergencies. I do think they will be able to handle them better, but I do not expect them to plan better.
  • aschampion 9y ago
    The 60 percentile income is < $46k. That people have little emergency funds on incomes less than this is largely explained away by necessary expenses. 20% have no savings -- the 20 percentile income is $17k. Show me a net savings budget on $17k.
• confounded 9y ago
  Most critically, UBI is a two-step system: - A small amount of free money for everyone - Rollback the state, welfare programs, etc. to balance out step 1 It's not realistic to reason about the effectiveness of the UBI proposal without considering the effects of the second step.
• maxxxxx 9y ago
  You also have to look at the effect of UBI over generations. Children growing up with UBI may never see people close to them who do actual work. I once had a summer job at a welfare/employment agency. A lot of the people who received welfare in the second or third generation often had no idea how a job works. They were late all the time or just didn't show up for a week. The social worker had to explain to them how a job works. I don't blame them. They just never had seen what people who have a job do. When I grew up everybody close to me was working so I could observe how a job works. And people who grow up around high-powered people like CEOs know how being a CEO works.
  • nnfy 9y ago
    >A lot of the people who received welfare in the second or third generation often had no idea how a job works. They were late all the time or just didn't show up for a week. I dont understand. You have seen firsthand how entitlements ruin people, and you're arguing that UBI will be good for society? Edit: why the down votes? Are adults who do not understand the concept of a job not a problem? How else could so many of them live without this knowledge if they weren't being handed out the resources to enable them?
    • Karrot_Kream 9y ago
      > You have seen firsthand how entitlements ruin people My grandfather received a very lucrative PhD offer at a very prestigious American university, but he didn't have the money to make the trip himself, and airplanes were much too expensive for him. So he found a ship in the harbor that was taking a passage to the US and volunteered to be a deck-hand. Now his grandkids, those in India and those abroad, drive cars, go to fancy bars and restaurants. I've never been a deck-hand in my life, and I have cousins who have never even seen a boat up close. It's easy for us to think that "entitlements ruin people" because it allows us to legitimatze our individual struggles, but it takes a leap beyond to comprehend whether our struggles should mean anything or are simply an artifact of the technology and logistics we have available to us.
      • nnfy 9y ago
• swlkr 9y ago
  I'm not sure if I or the people here are representative of the people the proposal targets, but if I had a guaranteed basic income for 5 years, I would attempt to start a startup full time.