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Very heart warming article, glad to hear about empirical evidence that basic income leads to fruitful, productive lives. Personally, I believe that basic incom

Very heart warming article, glad to hear about empirical evidence that basic income leads to fruitful, productive lives. Personally, I believe that basic income would be a net good if 99% of basic income recipients wasted money on booze, as long as there’s a 1% doing interesting things with their lives.

monkeypizza 9y ago
To evaluate that I'd look at the effect on the kids of the 99%. If it enables their parents to drink a bunch more than they would have otherwise, it might not be a net positive, even including the 1% who use the money wisely. I'm slightly suspicious of the self-reported drinking levels. I'd be afraid that the aid recipients might fear having the money taken away from them (no matter how much they're assured otherwise) if they report their true amounts of drinking or other behavior they assume the study organizers don't approve of. Do surveys of people who drink typically reveal true results, when further investigation is done? The incentives here are so painfully slanted. Is there a B Team investigating this adversarially? Ideally this study would be done by researchers who aren't true believers in basic income. If it really works, it works when those carrying it out don't believe in it. Especially considering that if this does get implemented globally, a big percent of those running the show will be bored bureaucrats, not people passionate about the fate of the impoverished.
- d0100 9y ago
  > If it enables their parents to drink a bunch more than they would have otherwise So just add to the "basic income" scheme a "basic mental health" package, and where are good to go.
  - barry-cotter 9y ago
    And that’s why there’s no hope for an actual basic income actually working.
  - DougN7 9y ago
    And you've just taken the first step towards where we are now. There will of course need to be a "basic physical health" package, and a "basic financial health" package, and a "basic housing package"... The whole idea of UBI is to get rid of everything else and expect people to take care of themselves. Personally, I don't see how UBI scales beyond small tests to whole countries/economies.
    - T2_t2 9y ago
      It won't, because the only way UBI can work is to completely redo a countries spending as well as its taxing. A negative income tax/UBI where, say, outreach programs for the homeless are paid for won't work. Maybe even things like public housing. Further afield, even if we can conservatively say it would cost the USA a trillion dollars, that's an amount that seems implausibly high to get through. I do wonder though if it would be possible to fund with a combination of a sell off of public land plus technology. Theoretically, with a UBI, there would be little to no need for the government to provide subsidized housing, and a technological solution where money could be sent directly to landlords rather than via recipients would provide the sort of risk reduction that many landlords need. That could lead to a boom in sub $1,000 a month rentals, where landlords are guaranteed they will be paid. Combine with a sell off of some public housing assets, and it might be possible to fund a UBI for several years, not so much to push the can down the line, but to see if the trillion dollars is recouped with economic growth as the entire amount would be spent by all recipients up to and slightly above the median US income, so there should be some positive economic growth. That's the rub though, this is hard to pass. The left in particular won't like the replacement of programs for direct cash and a public assets sell off is kind of the left's idea of heresy. Conversely, the right won't let it through without MASSIVELY reducing the number of programs that are currently funded. There is virtually no country in the world with a sane and rational enough parliament to be able to perform the sort of radical surgery their budgets need to introduce a UBI.
- scotty79 9y ago
  Why would having more money make people drink more? People drink because it's the cheapest entertainment. When people have more money they try out other forms of entertainment.
  - comicjk 9y ago
    Empirically, wealthy Americans drink more than poor ones. http://news.gallup.com/poll/184358/drinking-highest-among-educated-upper-income-americans.aspx http://news.gallup.com/poll/184358/drinking-highest-among-ed...
    - scotty79 9y ago
      The page you link says that they drink more often, not necessarily more. I imagine rich people use alcohol to spice up other entertainment and poor people more often entertain themselves with alcohol only.
      - comicjk 9y ago
        You may be right about the use of alcohol as a sole source of entertainment. But the evidence shows that rich people (this source is the UK) drink more, not just more often: http://www.ias.org.uk/Alcohol-knowledge-centre/Socioeconomic-groups/Factsheets/Consumption-levels-by-income-earned.aspx http://www.ias.org.uk/Alcohol-knowledge-centre/Socioeconomic... These are the top Google results for "alcohol consumption by income level", by the way. There's no need to speculate about it without sources as people in this thread are doing.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
jimmywanger 9y ago
Before I pass judgement, I would want to see what happened to the CPI price after basic income. The article says that one recipient was able to buy more milk and send his kid to school. Fine, how much does milk cost now and which kid is now unable to go to school because his son is sitting in the seat? You can have as much money as the government wants, but goods are a limited resource (in the short term). Just printing money to give people more money is not a solution. Venezuela just hiked minimum wage up to 797,510 BSF a month. That's 79,751 dollars at the official exchange rate (which is 10 to 1). On the black market it's about 6.50. And nothing is available on shelves.
- digi_owl 9y ago
  That assumes that he BI sum will stay unadjusted across years, a very dumb way to do it if true. As for Venezuela, and similar situations, look towards the exchange rate.
  - jimmywanger 9y ago
    Policies like this always lag economic indicators, whereas exchange rates and prices adjust fairly quickly. From [0], "However, Zimbabwe's peak month of inflation is estimated at 79.6 billion percent in mid-November 2008." Even a private charitable organization cannot deal with that level of inflation by tweaking the minimum wage. Plus, you start running out of money (the physical paper kind) really quickly because you can't afford it anymore. Or you can go further down the rabbit hole and enforce price controls. Which leads to shortages of goods and lack of supply because of zero incentive to work and produce. Seeing your children cold and hungry and fair prices is a huge incentive to be productive. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation_in_Zimbabwe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation_in_Zimbabwe
    - digi_owl 9y ago
      Now you are mixing two very different situations. BI as a concept do not, and will never, fix exchange rate problems. BI is for when on paper the nation has a functioning domestic economy, but one that exclude large parts of the population from taking part in said economy via jobs. Weimar Germany was left with a non-functioning industry after WW1, and saddled with reparations denominated in foreign currency. Even Keynes warned that it would be a mess. Zimbabwe similar ended up with a broken domestic industry, but in this instance it was the leadership that tried to keep up appearance via imports that ran things into the ground. For Venezuela i would say that judge is still out, but the slide started with the bet on oil exports to shore up imports, only or for the oil price to take a dip. but in this instance i can't eliminate the potential for foreign meddling as the leadership had incensed certain world powers...
maxerickson 9y ago
Politically, in the US, the first step to basic income is something like getting people to support free lunch in schools. You know, instead of shaming kids.
- mbrumlow 9y ago
  Most schools have this don't they? The two school districts I am near provide it on request. I am not even sure there is a income requirement.
  - maxerickson 9y ago
    I don't know what the statistics are. It's "news" though. https://www.google.com/search?tbm=nws&q=national+school+lunch+unpaid https://www.google.com/search?tbm=nws&q=national+school+lunc...
    - mbrumlow 9y ago
      Hmm. Looks like it is just a HISD thing. The provide 3 meals a day.
  - stonemetal 9y ago
    Depending on income students can get free or reduced price lunches. No there is no universal free lunch program in the US. Not sure how they do it now but it used to work just like food stamps, kids in the program had membership cards that got punched when they got lunch while everyone else paid money.
    - ams6110 9y ago
      Many schools issue a card or PIN that is used to buy lunches. You can't tell who is getting assistance and who isn't, unlike the old days where the kids on assistance used punch cards and everyone else paid cash.
      - PhineasRex 9y ago
bryanlarsen 9y ago
Anecdata, but every alcoholic I knew was self-medicating, so I suspect that the money itself from BI won't have much direct impact on alcohol consumption. OTOH, unemployment is a huge trigger for depression, so BI could go either way depending on how it's accepted socially. OTOH, I do expect a good majority of basic income recipients to waste their time on stuff that tickles the meaningfulness receptors in the brain: video games, social media, and other easy tribe forming activities such as sports fandom. But I agree with your basic point: you don't need very many geniuses and artists supported by BI to justify a large number of freeloaders IMO.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
pakitan 9y ago
> Very heart warming article, glad to hear about empirical evidence that basic income leads to fruitful, productive lives. But of course it does because there is a Big White Friendly Brother supplying the money. If it was coming from Kenya's budget, these people would have to be taxed at a higher rate just so there is enough money to distribute as basic income.
- kragen 9y ago
  While I think it is important to note the racist tone of your comment, I am not going to respond to it directly, because I do not think I can do so civilly. Factually speaking, the money involved would be about 16% of Kenya's GDP, which would indeed be a very substantial tax hike. If it had to be supplied by the village itself, rather than Kenyawide, it would presumably be a proportionally even larger burden; if it had to be supplied by the EAC or by Kenya and its neighboring countries, it would also be a proportionally even larger burden. (Perhaps a useful point of comparison is that the Kenyan Defense Forces cost 5.3% of GDP.) On the other hand, eliminating poverty entirely in exchange for only 15%–20% of taxation seems like it would be a pretty good deal; it falls far short of the costs of providing a Scandinavian-style welfare state. In the US, Social Security + Medicare + Medicaid adds up to US$1.97B per year, almost 11% of the US GDP. A substantial fraction of the US military budget also needs to be counted as poverty-reducing giveaways — whether to individual people for whom a job as a soldier is a path out of poverty, or to the military-supported industries that employ a substantial fraction of the US population. The US armed forces directly amount to 3.3% of US GDP, US$597B, but there's another half-percent split between DHS and DoE.
  - pakitan 9y ago
    Whoa, eliminating poverty entirely...that's a leap almost equivalent to a hyperspace jump. I've seen actual economists, proponents of UBI, making much more modest assumptions. At the very least rents and house prices in poor neighborhoods will go up, negating the benefit of UBI. > In the US, Social Security + Medicare + Medicaid adds up to US$1.97B per year, almost 11% of the US GDP Yes, and you want to dismantle them and share that sum among everyone in the form of basic income. That would mean you'd be taking money from people who actually need it, to give to people who need it less. To counter that, you'd have to increase everyone's taxes just so the former welfare recipients aren't worse off. Of course, the taxes won't be raised just enough to offset the newly gained income, it will have to be raised more, probably substantially more because there will be people who haven't qualified for welfare before but will receive the UBI. My post has no racist tone, you're seeing something that isn't there.

monkeypizza 9y ago

To evaluate that I'd look at the effect on the kids of the 99%. If it enables their parents to drink a bunch more than they would have otherwise, it might not be a net positive, even including the 1% who use the money wisely. I'm slightly suspicious of the self-reported drinking levels. I'd be afraid that the aid recipients might fear having the money taken away from them (no matter how much they're assured otherwise) if they report their true amounts of drinking or other behavior they assume the study organizers don't approve of. Do surveys of people who drink typically reveal true results, when further investigation is done? The incentives here are so painfully slanted. Is there a B Team investigating this adversarially? Ideally this study would be done by researchers who aren't true believers in basic income. If it really works, it works when those carrying it out don't believe in it. Especially considering that if this does get implemented globally, a big percent of those running the show will be bored bureaucrats, not people passionate about the fate of the impoverished.

d0100 9y ago
> If it enables their parents to drink a bunch more than they would have otherwise So just add to the "basic income" scheme a "basic mental health" package, and where are good to go.
- barry-cotter 9y ago
  And that’s why there’s no hope for an actual basic income actually working.
- DougN7 9y ago
  And you've just taken the first step towards where we are now. There will of course need to be a "basic physical health" package, and a "basic financial health" package, and a "basic housing package"... The whole idea of UBI is to get rid of everything else and expect people to take care of themselves. Personally, I don't see how UBI scales beyond small tests to whole countries/economies.
  - T2_t2 9y ago
    It won't, because the only way UBI can work is to completely redo a countries spending as well as its taxing. A negative income tax/UBI where, say, outreach programs for the homeless are paid for won't work. Maybe even things like public housing. Further afield, even if we can conservatively say it would cost the USA a trillion dollars, that's an amount that seems implausibly high to get through. I do wonder though if it would be possible to fund with a combination of a sell off of public land plus technology. Theoretically, with a UBI, there would be little to no need for the government to provide subsidized housing, and a technological solution where money could be sent directly to landlords rather than via recipients would provide the sort of risk reduction that many landlords need. That could lead to a boom in sub $1,000 a month rentals, where landlords are guaranteed they will be paid. Combine with a sell off of some public housing assets, and it might be possible to fund a UBI for several years, not so much to push the can down the line, but to see if the trillion dollars is recouped with economic growth as the entire amount would be spent by all recipients up to and slightly above the median US income, so there should be some positive economic growth. That's the rub though, this is hard to pass. The left in particular won't like the replacement of programs for direct cash and a public assets sell off is kind of the left's idea of heresy. Conversely, the right won't let it through without MASSIVELY reducing the number of programs that are currently funded. There is virtually no country in the world with a sane and rational enough parliament to be able to perform the sort of radical surgery their budgets need to introduce a UBI.
scotty79 9y ago
Why would having more money make people drink more? People drink because it's the cheapest entertainment. When people have more money they try out other forms of entertainment.
- comicjk 9y ago
  Empirically, wealthy Americans drink more than poor ones. http://news.gallup.com/poll/184358/drinking-highest-among-educated-upper-income-americans.aspx http://news.gallup.com/poll/184358/drinking-highest-among-ed...
  - scotty79 9y ago
    The page you link says that they drink more often, not necessarily more. I imagine rich people use alcohol to spice up other entertainment and poor people more often entertain themselves with alcohol only.
    - comicjk 9y ago
      You may be right about the use of alcohol as a sole source of entertainment. But the evidence shows that rich people (this source is the UK) drink more, not just more often: http://www.ias.org.uk/Alcohol-knowledge-centre/Socioeconomic-groups/Factsheets/Consumption-levels-by-income-earned.aspx http://www.ias.org.uk/Alcohol-knowledge-centre/Socioeconomic... These are the top Google results for "alcohol consumption by income level", by the way. There's no need to speculate about it without sources as people in this thread are doing.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

jimmywanger 9y ago

Before I pass judgement, I would want to see what happened to the CPI price after basic income. The article says that one recipient was able to buy more milk and send his kid to school. Fine, how much does milk cost now and which kid is now unable to go to school because his son is sitting in the seat? You can have as much money as the government wants, but goods are a limited resource (in the short term). Just printing money to give people more money is not a solution. Venezuela just hiked minimum wage up to 797,510 BSF a month. That's 79,751 dollars at the official exchange rate (which is 10 to 1). On the black market it's about 6.50. And nothing is available on shelves.

digi_owl 9y ago
That assumes that he BI sum will stay unadjusted across years, a very dumb way to do it if true. As for Venezuela, and similar situations, look towards the exchange rate.
- jimmywanger 9y ago
  Policies like this always lag economic indicators, whereas exchange rates and prices adjust fairly quickly. From [0], "However, Zimbabwe's peak month of inflation is estimated at 79.6 billion percent in mid-November 2008." Even a private charitable organization cannot deal with that level of inflation by tweaking the minimum wage. Plus, you start running out of money (the physical paper kind) really quickly because you can't afford it anymore. Or you can go further down the rabbit hole and enforce price controls. Which leads to shortages of goods and lack of supply because of zero incentive to work and produce. Seeing your children cold and hungry and fair prices is a huge incentive to be productive. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation_in_Zimbabwe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation_in_Zimbabwe
  - digi_owl 9y ago
    Now you are mixing two very different situations. BI as a concept do not, and will never, fix exchange rate problems. BI is for when on paper the nation has a functioning domestic economy, but one that exclude large parts of the population from taking part in said economy via jobs. Weimar Germany was left with a non-functioning industry after WW1, and saddled with reparations denominated in foreign currency. Even Keynes warned that it would be a mess. Zimbabwe similar ended up with a broken domestic industry, but in this instance it was the leadership that tried to keep up appearance via imports that ran things into the ground. For Venezuela i would say that judge is still out, but the slide started with the bet on oil exports to shore up imports, only or for the oil price to take a dip. but in this instance i can't eliminate the potential for foreign meddling as the leadership had incensed certain world powers...

maxerickson 9y ago

Politically, in the US, the first step to basic income is something like getting people to support free lunch in schools. You know, instead of shaming kids.

mbrumlow 9y ago
Most schools have this don't they? The two school districts I am near provide it on request. I am not even sure there is a income requirement.
- maxerickson 9y ago
  I don't know what the statistics are. It's "news" though. https://www.google.com/search?tbm=nws&q=national+school+lunch+unpaid https://www.google.com/search?tbm=nws&q=national+school+lunc...
  - mbrumlow 9y ago
    Hmm. Looks like it is just a HISD thing. The provide 3 meals a day.
- stonemetal 9y ago
  Depending on income students can get free or reduced price lunches. No there is no universal free lunch program in the US. Not sure how they do it now but it used to work just like food stamps, kids in the program had membership cards that got punched when they got lunch while everyone else paid money.
  - ams6110 9y ago
    Many schools issue a card or PIN that is used to buy lunches. You can't tell who is getting assistance and who isn't, unlike the old days where the kids on assistance used punch cards and everyone else paid cash.
    - PhineasRex 9y ago

bryanlarsen 9y ago

Anecdata, but every alcoholic I knew was self-medicating, so I suspect that the money itself from BI won't have much direct impact on alcohol consumption. OTOH, unemployment is a huge trigger for depression, so BI could go either way depending on how it's accepted socially. OTOH, I do expect a good majority of basic income recipients to waste their time on stuff that tickles the meaningfulness receptors in the brain: video games, social media, and other easy tribe forming activities such as sports fandom. But I agree with your basic point: you don't need very many geniuses and artists supported by BI to justify a large number of freeloaders IMO.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

pakitan 9y ago

> Very heart warming article, glad to hear about empirical evidence that basic income leads to fruitful, productive lives. But of course it does because there is a Big White Friendly Brother supplying the money. If it was coming from Kenya's budget, these people would have to be taxed at a higher rate just so there is enough money to distribute as basic income.

kragen 9y ago
While I think it is important to note the racist tone of your comment, I am not going to respond to it directly, because I do not think I can do so civilly. Factually speaking, the money involved would be about 16% of Kenya's GDP, which would indeed be a very substantial tax hike. If it had to be supplied by the village itself, rather than Kenyawide, it would presumably be a proportionally even larger burden; if it had to be supplied by the EAC or by Kenya and its neighboring countries, it would also be a proportionally even larger burden. (Perhaps a useful point of comparison is that the Kenyan Defense Forces cost 5.3% of GDP.) On the other hand, eliminating poverty entirely in exchange for only 15%–20% of taxation seems like it would be a pretty good deal; it falls far short of the costs of providing a Scandinavian-style welfare state. In the US, Social Security + Medicare + Medicaid adds up to US$1.97B per year, almost 11% of the US GDP. A substantial fraction of the US military budget also needs to be counted as poverty-reducing giveaways — whether to individual people for whom a job as a soldier is a path out of poverty, or to the military-supported industries that employ a substantial fraction of the US population. The US armed forces directly amount to 3.3% of US GDP, US$597B, but there's another half-percent split between DHS and DoE.
- pakitan 9y ago
  Whoa, eliminating poverty entirely...that's a leap almost equivalent to a hyperspace jump. I've seen actual economists, proponents of UBI, making much more modest assumptions. At the very least rents and house prices in poor neighborhoods will go up, negating the benefit of UBI. > In the US, Social Security + Medicare + Medicaid adds up to US$1.97B per year, almost 11% of the US GDP Yes, and you want to dismantle them and share that sum among everyone in the form of basic income. That would mean you'd be taking money from people who actually need it, to give to people who need it less. To counter that, you'd have to increase everyone's taxes just so the former welfare recipients aren't worse off. Of course, the taxes won't be raised just enough to offset the newly gained income, it will have to be raised more, probably substantially more because there will be people who haven't qualified for welfare before but will receive the UBI. My post has no racist tone, you're seeing something that isn't there.