10 ms·

The “Giving free cash to the poor will make them lazy” theory

55 points by joeyespo 8y ago

ryanmercer 8y ago
I wouldn't call it a myth, I'd call it a theory. This is why basic income experiments like YC Research, the Ontario one, the finished Namibia one etc are all important. We need to see what happens in different cultures, in different communities, in different economies when we give un-earned income to people with no strings attached. We need to see what will happen. You can absolutely bet if you give enough people free money, there will be ones that opt to do nothing but sit around playing their ninplaybox consuming their drug of choice. You can absolutely bet that some will use it to make positive life changes though like improving their diet or health care, seeking training, starting a side-hustle. We need to do these experiments for years and years in many areas in many populations to see though what exactly will happen. I imagine if you took groups from the same state here in the US and gave those in a rural community money they're going to behave differently than someone living in an urban or downtown setting. Different if one group is in an economically depressed community and one is in a community full of healthy local businesses and corporate jobs. I wouldn't call it a myth, I'd call it a theory with inadequate evidence to support or refute it.
- sharemywin 8y ago
  The question is what are the percentages? Also, are they different by income level? or age? does addiction play a role? The problem is UBI is a simple solution to a complex problem.
- matte_black 8y ago
  I would say that while plenty of people in the first generation to receive UBI may continue to work, later generations that are simply born with it have a much higher risk of simply moping around doing nothing of value. Any experiment that doesn’t explore UBI beyond a single generation isn’t rigorous enough IMO.
  - maxxxxx 8y ago
    That's what I am thinking too. It will be interesting to see how people who have only seen UBI their whole life will behave. In a summer job as a teen I worked at a government welfare agency. Some of the clients were third generation welfare recipients and you could definitely see that they had no idea how a job works because they had never seen anybody who held a job for a long time. They would just skip work for a week without telling anybody or be insulted when the boss told them what to do. A UBI experiment will probably need 50 years or more to determine what the long term consequences will be.
    - sol_remmy 8y ago
      How is it possible to be a third generation welfare recipient? Doesn't unemployment run out after 2-3 years?
      - maxxxxx 8y ago
        That was in Germany. They won't let you starve so if you absolutely can't or don't want to work there is a level of assistance to keep you from starving. I think it's the same in the US. You will always get some level of welfare to not starve.
        sharemywin 8y ago
        It's dated but if anything it's gotten worse. https://scholars.org/brief/what-happens-poor-families-when-they-hit-welfare-time-limits-and-cash-benefits-disappear https://scholars.org/brief/what-happens-poor-families-when-t...
    - kijin 8y ago
      We will also need to see how the job market reacts. If people don't feel like they need to work, employers will have a harder time finding good employees and making them stay. So they might start offering much higher wages and fancy benefits, which in turn will make more people want to work so they can enjoy those perks. Positions that still can't be filled will be automated away. Sooner or later the market will reach a new equilibrium. I'd call it a success if about half the adults end up working and the other half stay at home, just like people used to do 100 years ago... except this time, both men and women should be free to choose which side they want to be on.
- CiPHPerCoder 8y ago
  > I wouldn't call it a myth, I'd call it a theory with inadequate evidence to support or refute it. I would call any theory that lacks adequate evidence to support it a myth.
  - throwaway2048 8y ago
    More like any theory without evidence that persistently gets presented as fact.
  - nradov 8y ago
    That's called a hypothesis.
  - babypistol 8y ago
    Calling it a myth implies that there is adequate evidence to refute it. By your reasoning we could also be talking about the Giving-Free-Cash-To-The-Poor-Will-Make-Them-Productive myth.
  - tomp 8y ago
    So dark energy is just a myth?
- dahart 8y ago
  > I wouldn’t call it a myth, I’d call it a theory with inadequate evidence to support or refute it. So, “hypothesis”? The article did present some evidence to support it’s argument. I’m sure you know that when discussing evidence and science, “theory” means something has been more or less proven. Your hypotheses that a significant number people will do nothing good with the money is the unproven “myth” or common hypothesis the article was talking about. The problem with the belief that unearned income is unhealthy and will lead to laziness and drug use in any significant amount is that it prevents people from trying to see what happens, because if true, it’s seen as at best a waste of money, and at worst doing damage to the participants. The hypothesis that unearned income leads to laziness is a real and significant impediment to the testing of that hypothesis. By and large, people who inherit money don’t end up wasting away high and broke. There are a few, but nobody is suggesting seriously that we need to do lots of studies to see if inherited wealth is different in other countries or rural vs urban settings. Why should money given to the poor be thought of so completely different than money given to the rich? We have some strong pervasive ingrained cultural beliefs that money must be worked for and not given, knowledge must be gained by derivation and struggle and not just told, success and stability must be attained through risk and competition and not cooperation or social programs. These beliefs predate most of science, so it may be worth examining our assumptions about what needs to be tested.
  - adwn 8y ago
    > We have some strong pervasive ingrained cultural beliefs that money must be worked for and not given Money that has been earned through work gives the recipient a higher level of satisfaction than money that has been gifted. > knowledge must be gained by derivation and struggle and not just told Knowledge gained through personal experience stays with you longer and more effectively than second-hand knowledge. That's why the traditional, frontal lecture teaching style is falling more and more out of fashion. That's also why you can't just read a book "Learn C++ in 21 days" and expect to be a decent programmer afterwards. > success and stability must be attained through risk and competition and not cooperation or social programs I have no idea why you're mixing success and stability, when those are orthogonal concepts. As for success: A lack of competition leads to stagnation; monopolies lead to rising prices and hinder progress. Look to the Soviet Union and you'll see what coorporation and social programs instead of competition through free markets leads to [1]. As for risk: Risk is what you naturally get once all the lowest hanging fruit are picked and there are still ripe fruits hanging higher up in the tree. [1] Of course, in a competitive environment you'll still need cooperation. Competition on a higher level (i.e., in the market) and cooporation on a lower one (between coworkers) tends to work quite well for companies.
- anotherevan 8y ago
  I think I'd call it an assumption.
another-one-off 8y ago
No problem with UBI as a theory, for all I know it might be strictly better than the status quo. Handing money out seems to have worked out for the banking system, hahaha. :[ The issue is that the economy is outrageously complicated and it isn't obvious that the people who want to bring in a UBI are the same people who will be working to bear the cost of a UBI. If it turns out to be unfair and negative, as any ambitious economic policy can be, it could be politically very costly verging on impossible to unwind.
- maerF0x0 8y ago
  I have yet to see any studies of UBI that focus on the Universal part. It should be going to rich and poor alike across a sufficient region to see how it works when people on UBI commingle. This is important because "fairness" in the system is often just about people being treated "the same". If the rich are receiving the same checks as everyone else its hard for them to complain about it.
  - logfromblammo 8y ago
    Does the Alaska dividend count? As far as I know, everyone domiciled in the state gets the same check.
    - falcolas 8y ago
      That particular check amount depends on how long you've lived there.
      - ceejayoz 8y ago
        Not since SCOTUS struck that down in 1982. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Permanent_Fund https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Permanent_Fund > The first dividend plan would have paid Alaskans $50 for each year of residency up to 20 years, but the U.S. Supreme Court in Zobel v. Williams, 457 U.S. 55 (1982) disapproved the $50 per year formula as an invidious distinction burdening interstate travel. As a result, each qualified resident now receives the same annual amount, regardless of age or years of residency.
skrowl 8y ago
UBI is like socialism, it sounds like it might work on paper, but it's failed every single time it's been tried IRL.
- protonimitate 8y ago
  Sources?
- Balero 8y ago
  If your going to talk about Socialism you're going to have to define it better. You can argue that Socialism works very well in many places. Such as Scandinavia, New Zealand, Canada etc. It just depends on what you think of as Socialism.
- dang 8y ago
  Please do not post generic ideological comments to HN. It leads to generic ideological flamewars, and those are off topic here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
Alex3917 8y ago
Question for conservatives: Do you really think that if your rent was a few hundred bucks cheaper per month you’d start smoking crack?
- xj9 8y ago
  crack? no, but i'd have more money to spend on weed ;)
- YouAreGreat 8y ago
  > Question for conservatives Are you sure UBI would actually be against "conservative" interests? With UBI, it's hard to justify salaries for much of the redistributive bureaucracy. With UBI, it's hard to have open borders as well.
  - Alex3917 8y ago
    > Are you sure UBI would actually be against "conservative" interests? No, but the most common objection I hear to UBI is that people will just spend the money on drugs. But I have yet to actually hear anyone say that they'll start smoking crack or whatever if their rent went down a few hundred bucks a month. So either I should start hearing people admitting that they will, or else this objection should get dropped.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    > Are you sure UBI would actually be against "conservative" interests? Yes, it's a downward redistribution without moral behavioral tests to assure that people who don't adhere to conservative values aren't getting it. > With UBI, it's hard to justify salaries for much of the redistributive bureaucracy. Only because it maintains anti-conservative redistribution while removing the pro-conservative limitations on that redistribution which the bureaucracy exists largely to enforce. > With UBI, it's hard to have open borders as well. It's hard to have the strawmanning position of “open borders” that conservatives pretend any decision from their preferred style of restriction is, but it's not actually harder to have any of the real alternative immigration policy positions that are significant contenders with those preferred by conservatives. In fact, a basic income for citizens and LPRs whose level was tied to a dedicated funding stream that included (as well as the usual suggestions of higher taxes on capital and high-end income) additional per-entrant per-year fees for dual-intent work-allowed visas and supplemental income taxes on all non-citizen, non-LPR income would actually be a potent political lever to increase the number for a policy that, while not actually open borders, would be closer to it than many of the things they conservatives have objected to as “open borders”, with numerically unlimited work-allowed dual-intent visas, perhaps retaining H-1B style restrictions on conditions and sponsorship, but possibly also (with a higher additional fee than the H-1B style ones if those are also retained) a personal, unsponsored one that only requires the applicant not to be personally excluded from entry for criminal record, etc.
candu 8y ago
There's a pernicious assumption here in equating "recreation" with "laziness". All of us deserve to have fun once in a while, regardless of socioeconomic status. Recreation can improve mental and physical health, provide great opportunities for social interaction, and exercise parts of our brain that don't otherwise get exercised.
- Balero 8y ago
  The problem is often people who work, work hard and importantly pay taxes, don't have the time for this recreation. So you can say that " All of us deserve to have fun once in a while, regardless of socioeconomic status." But for someone who is working too hard to take the time to have fun, this rings kinda hollow. And I can bet it stings a bit to have your taxes going towards paying for someone to do the things you don't have time to do yourself. I went through a stint of working in cafe's recently, and one always had a group of people who would turn up after leaving the job centre (you have to go here to qualify for benefit money) in the early afternoon, and would just basically hang out. Frankly I had to fight the jealousy, I wish I could spend every afternoon hanging out with my friends. I had to remind myself how much it sucks to be unemployed, and how nice I have it. I can imagine this could seem unfair to someone in a more stressful position.
  - truckerbill 8y ago
    You'd be getting the UBI too, could always take some time off...
  - jimbofisher1 8y ago
    If you work a job that allows you no free time that is your choice. Whining that other people have leisure time is absurd, if you want leisure get a better job. I am disturbed by people's aversion to taxing the wealthy. After WW2 the top tax rate in the US was over 90% and until the 70s it was over 70% but since then we have been systematically fooled by the wealthy to believe the absurd "Job Creator" story and income inequality has sky rocketed as a result.
    - 8y ago
at-fates-hands 8y ago
It's easy to do some research and say, "Hey, this works! Look at all the places that did it!" Here in the US, we already have a complex network of safety nets to take care of the people who UBI is really targeted for. This begs the question, if you give people a basic income, what social services people already depend on will you get rid of? There's no way you can keep all of the social services AND give people a basic income, it's just not economically feasible.
- awakeasleep 8y ago
  To implement basic income without raising taxes, the USA would have to trim something like 10% from our defense budget. I think you mean politically feasible. And political feasibility is something that changes with the popular will. Not to say we’d want to keep all our current welfare type benefits with UBI
  - opencl 8y ago
    10% of the defense budget would fund a $15 a month UBI. edit: bad math 598 billion per year * 10% / 325 million people / 12 months/year
- brightball 8y ago
  I've always looked at UBI from that angle. In order to fund it you essentially take the first $X from ALL of the other equivalent services. IMO this would gut programs like Social Security enough that they could actually be reformed. Right now if you talk about reforming any of them, scare politics are used because it's a singular threat to a person's livelyhood. If you look at your monthly check and see $800 from UBI and $200 from Social Security, all of a sudden that gets a lot less scary.
- YouAreGreat 8y ago
  > what social services people already depend on will you get rid of? Most of them, that's one of the major reasons you'd want to do it. The means-testing bureaucracy being so expensive all by itself, you might as well give everybody enough to live and get rid of the bureaucrats.
kazinator 8y ago
Giving away cash won't make people lazy; rather, it will motivate them to maximize their take of the action, while minimizing someone else's. Scores of people claiming to be poor will suddenly appear out of nowhere, with outstretched empty hands.
- mathnmusic 8y ago
  It being "Universal" means that people don't have to claim to be poor. Now, because we have progressive taxation, claiming to be poor would indeed be advantageous - but that's true even today.
- YouAreGreat 8y ago
  Same incentive as for tax evasion.
specialist 8y ago
We could also review prior experiments. 1970s MINCOME experiment. Dauphin, Manitoba Canada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincome Briefly: Adults continued to work, excepting mothers with newborns. Public health improved. Higher graduation rates. Welfare related stigma reduced. TL;DR: Many benefits, positive ROI, no discernible downside. Adopting UBI really is a no brainer.
- tarr11 8y ago
  From the article: However, some have argued these drops may be artificially low because participants knew the guaranteed income was temporary.[6] This represents an important limitation to the knowledge of the impact of a guaranteed annual income; little is known about the long term effects on willingness to work.
  - specialist 8y ago
    Your point? We shouldn't try UBI because initial positive results may not prove durable? I'm also struggling to understand how willingness to work, especially with our current labor glut, is more important than public health. --- I forgot to add: The sole concern I have about UBI in the USA (vs Canada) is our lack of universal healthcare. Single payer or otherwise. I can't imagine UBI working without it.
DanielBMarkham 8y ago
I am quite interested in UBI and look forward to seeing more empirical data on the various experiments being conducted. Having said that, the "danger" of UBI is that it's a big, fat slogan that can mean damned-near anything -- and there are a ton of people who both support and oppose it because of the way the idea makes them feel. That makes for a terrible environment for productive public discourse. The only half-ass real world data I know about is the independently wealthy. They get money every month and don't have to work. In general, people who become that way suddenly ruin their lives. And the numbers probably aren't so good for those who earn it and then stop to enjoy it. This example sucks, however, as the goal of UBI (as far as I know) isn't to replace all income. It's to cover the basic needs of people so they can be free to study, improve their lives, and not have to spend all of their energy in the day-to-day struggle of existence. I have no idea how it will play out in that scenario, and I suspect that the long-term effects will be much more pronounced than the short-term ones. This will be, after all, a major culture shift. I like the idea. I just don't know enough about it -- and it doesn't have enough definition -- for me to support the idea.
- ohthehugemanate 8y ago
  No matter which version of a UBI you support, there's one key feature that I just can't imagine happening out here in the real world. A UBI should REPLACE most existing forms of social assistance. Food stamps, unemployment insurance, some kinds of pensions, some kinds of child support, etc etc etc. Each one of those is a massive public sector industry with a lot of political weight behind it. I live in Germany, where every market has some form of social assistance connected to it. The task of dismantling that bureaucracy would be outrageous... And quite a lot to spend on a relatively untested scheme like any UBI.
jeffreyrogers 8y ago
Instead of UBI, which many critics are fearful of, why not switch to a voucher system? The government gives everyone a voucher redeemable for $x for food, $x for healthcare, etc., whatever forms of welfare we decide to provide as a society. Then private companies can register with the government as providers of these services and consumers can spend their vouchers wherever they want. This solution seems like it eliminates bureaucracy by switching to a market based system, provides a safety net for the entire population, and makes it harder to freeload.
- andrewla 8y ago
  > eliminates bureaucracy Okay -- so I register with the government as a "food provider", and I take food vouchers in exchange for non-food (like gasoline or something), and redeem them with the government for cash money. Who is making sure that I can't do that? We could have it strictly be an enforcement solution -- no bureaucracy, but a huge operational burden on the justice system. Or, more reasonably, I would have to submit to being regulated as a food provider, and would have to meet certain standards in order to do so, and would have to file appropriate paperwork to establish that I am doing so. Hell, as long as we're here, we might as well make sure that I only provide healthy food, according to what is currently thought of as healthy. Oh, and the cost of the food I sell has to be regulated; can't have me charging $20 for a hamburger, even if it is a "premium" one. Anyway, long rant, but in the end, the suggested system sounds like a mountain of bureaucracy and would probably cost way more to keep running than just giving the money directly to people.
  - jeffreyrogers 8y ago
    > I take food vouchers in exchange for non-food (like gasoline or something), and redeem them with the government for cash money. Who is making sure that I can't do that? You can't redeem the vouchers for cash, only for the good or service the vouchers are designated for. So a food voucher would let you redeem it for food. A healthcare voucher would allow you to pay a healthcare provider for whatever services you received. Edit: oh, you're saying you pretend to be a food provider. The solution to that seems simple. Lifetime ban from voucher funded industries for anyone caught doing that and forfeiture of 3x damages. That's just an example, but if you make the punishment great enough I doubt you'll have a problem with it. It seems like it's pretty easy to catch someone doing what you described. For one thing, you'd have to be registered as a business to even engage in the practice you describe. > I would have to submit to being regulated as a food provider, and would have to meet certain standards in order to do so, and would have to file appropriate paperwork to establish that I am doing so. Sure, but how do you think the welfare system works currently? You'll always have bureaucracy, but you can have it in greater or lesser degrees. I contend that my proposal would have less bureaucracy than what we currently have. You already have to register with several state agencies if you want to run a grocery store (at least in my state). Whole Foods doesn't find that too onerous. > Oh, and the cost of the food I sell has to be regulated; can't have me charging $20 for a hamburger, even if it is a "premium" one. No, that's the whole point of switching to a voucher/market based system. You as the service provider can charge whatever you want. The population, as recipients of the vouchers, can redeem them anywhere. If you charge $20 per hamburger you'll go out of business or change your prices.
yonatron 8y ago
This is very culture dependent and depends on the values of the recipients. There are cultures of entitlement where none of that money would go to education or entrepreneurship, just to greater levels of indulgence.
holmberd 8y ago
If you are on an island where a third of the population is struggling, e.g. bad crop yield, the whole population on the island will experience the negative effects as a whole. Solutions? 1. Build a wall around the less fortunate and allow some of the more able ones to work for less than you would otherwise pay. 2. Share the resources of the more fortunate with the less fortunate until they are back on their feet and are able to prosper. A persons good fortune isn't made in a vacuum.
fmajid 8y ago
One argument the article forgot is that efforts to help the poor with goods or services rather than cash entail building a bureaucracy, and inevitably the iron law of bureaucracy asserts itself, more and more of the funds are diverted to the bureaucrats rather than the ostensible mission.
Simulacra 8y ago
I feel like UBI in general is a bad idea. If you give me free money, I'm just going to spend it or use it like any other money. If my landlord, mechanic, etc. knows that certain people are getting extra Income, what stops them from just raising the prices? If the landlord knows that a tenet is getting $300 a month and extra income, what's stopping them from raising the rent $300, completely negating the UBI concept?
- antisthenes 8y ago
  Exactly the same thing that's stopping the landlords from raising the rent by $300 right now - supply and demand. If the people receiving UBI are universally spending that money on something other than rent, then the landlords who raise their rent by the UBI amount will become noncompetitive and fail to attract tenants. To presume that 100% of the UBI will simply be absorbed by the landlords is absurd, not only because of the above argument, but because for many people, the UBI will be significant enough to swing them to home ownership instead of renting, putting additional pressure on the landlords not to raise prices.
simonsarris 8y ago
Increased enrollment isn't the same thing as increasing work %. Some of these other studies are testing "cash transfer for specific thing" and find that "specific thing" increased, somewhat. That's not really what people are arguing when they argue broader cash transfers, like Basic Income. The work disincentive of basic-income-like cash transfers, in studies so far, is actually somewhat consistent at around 10%. Some papers referencing this approx figure: https://www.dropbox.com/s/r19npwc30trejb6/Basic_Income_in_a_Small_Town_Understanding_the_Elusive_Effects_on_Work__Calnitsky_Latner_Social_Problems_BI_in_a_small_town.pdf?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/r19npwc30trejb6/Basic_Income_in_a_... https://www.dropbox.com/s/oi0kv3vcya9o0ad/The_Rural_Income_Maintenance_Experiment__sr10.pdf?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/oi0kv3vcya9o0ad/The_Rural_Income_M... https://www.dropbox.com/s/hkd489vcarcrorg/Findings_from_the_Gary_Income_Maintenance_Experiment__Gary%20Income%20Maintenance%20Experiment.pdf?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/hkd489vcarcrorg/Findings_from_the_... https://www.dropbox.com/s/5m2k5qzgv699dfe/THE_TOWN_WITH_NO_POVERTY_Using_Health_Administration_Data_to_Revisit_Outcomes_of_a_Canadian_Guaranteed_Annual_Income_Field_Experiment___forget-cea%2520%282%29.pdf?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/5m2k5qzgv699dfe/THE_TOWN_WITH_NO_P... https://www.dropbox.com/s/dsucn7jone74g65/New_Jersey_Graduated_Work_Incentive_Experiment__ED099531.pdf?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/dsucn7jone74g65/New_Jersey_Graduat... I've had these sources handy since last year when I was doing research on my own UBI-skeptic piece: https://medium.com/@simon.sarris/after-universal-basic-income-the-flood-217db9889c07 https://medium.com/@simon.sarris/after-universal-basic-incom...

55 points by joeyespo 8y ago

I wouldn't call it a myth, I'd call it a theory. This is why basic income experiments like YC Research, the Ontario one, the finished Namibia one etc are all important. We need to see what happens in different cultures, in different communities, in different economies when we give un-earned income to people with no strings attached. We need to see what will happen. You can absolutely bet if you give enough people free money, there will be ones that opt to do nothing but sit around playing their ninplaybox consuming their drug of choice. You can absolutely bet that some will use it to make positive life changes though like improving their diet or health care, seeking training, starting a side-hustle. We need to do these experiments for years and years in many areas in many populations to see though what exactly will happen. I imagine if you took groups from the same state here in the US and gave those in a rural community money they're going to behave differently than someone living in an urban or downtown setting. Different if one group is in an economically depressed community and one is in a community full of healthy local businesses and corporate jobs. I wouldn't call it a myth, I'd call it a theory with inadequate evidence to support or refute it.

sharemywin 8y ago
The question is what are the percentages? Also, are they different by income level? or age? does addiction play a role? The problem is UBI is a simple solution to a complex problem.
matte_black 8y ago
I would say that while plenty of people in the first generation to receive UBI may continue to work, later generations that are simply born with it have a much higher risk of simply moping around doing nothing of value. Any experiment that doesn’t explore UBI beyond a single generation isn’t rigorous enough IMO.
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  That's what I am thinking too. It will be interesting to see how people who have only seen UBI their whole life will behave. In a summer job as a teen I worked at a government welfare agency. Some of the clients were third generation welfare recipients and you could definitely see that they had no idea how a job works because they had never seen anybody who held a job for a long time. They would just skip work for a week without telling anybody or be insulted when the boss told them what to do. A UBI experiment will probably need 50 years or more to determine what the long term consequences will be.
  - sol_remmy 8y ago
    How is it possible to be a third generation welfare recipient? Doesn't unemployment run out after 2-3 years?
    - maxxxxx 8y ago
      That was in Germany. They won't let you starve so if you absolutely can't or don't want to work there is a level of assistance to keep you from starving. I think it's the same in the US. You will always get some level of welfare to not starve.
      - sharemywin 8y ago
        It's dated but if anything it's gotten worse. https://scholars.org/brief/what-happens-poor-families-when-they-hit-welfare-time-limits-and-cash-benefits-disappear https://scholars.org/brief/what-happens-poor-families-when-t...
  - kijin 8y ago
    We will also need to see how the job market reacts. If people don't feel like they need to work, employers will have a harder time finding good employees and making them stay. So they might start offering much higher wages and fancy benefits, which in turn will make more people want to work so they can enjoy those perks. Positions that still can't be filled will be automated away. Sooner or later the market will reach a new equilibrium. I'd call it a success if about half the adults end up working and the other half stay at home, just like people used to do 100 years ago... except this time, both men and women should be free to choose which side they want to be on.
CiPHPerCoder 8y ago
> I wouldn't call it a myth, I'd call it a theory with inadequate evidence to support or refute it. I would call any theory that lacks adequate evidence to support it a myth.
- throwaway2048 8y ago
  More like any theory without evidence that persistently gets presented as fact.
- nradov 8y ago
  That's called a hypothesis.
- babypistol 8y ago
  Calling it a myth implies that there is adequate evidence to refute it. By your reasoning we could also be talking about the Giving-Free-Cash-To-The-Poor-Will-Make-Them-Productive myth.
- tomp 8y ago
  So dark energy is just a myth?
dahart 8y ago
> I wouldn’t call it a myth, I’d call it a theory with inadequate evidence to support or refute it. So, “hypothesis”? The article did present some evidence to support it’s argument. I’m sure you know that when discussing evidence and science, “theory” means something has been more or less proven. Your hypotheses that a significant number people will do nothing good with the money is the unproven “myth” or common hypothesis the article was talking about. The problem with the belief that unearned income is unhealthy and will lead to laziness and drug use in any significant amount is that it prevents people from trying to see what happens, because if true, it’s seen as at best a waste of money, and at worst doing damage to the participants. The hypothesis that unearned income leads to laziness is a real and significant impediment to the testing of that hypothesis. By and large, people who inherit money don’t end up wasting away high and broke. There are a few, but nobody is suggesting seriously that we need to do lots of studies to see if inherited wealth is different in other countries or rural vs urban settings. Why should money given to the poor be thought of so completely different than money given to the rich? We have some strong pervasive ingrained cultural beliefs that money must be worked for and not given, knowledge must be gained by derivation and struggle and not just told, success and stability must be attained through risk and competition and not cooperation or social programs. These beliefs predate most of science, so it may be worth examining our assumptions about what needs to be tested.
- adwn 8y ago
  > We have some strong pervasive ingrained cultural beliefs that money must be worked for and not given Money that has been earned through work gives the recipient a higher level of satisfaction than money that has been gifted. > knowledge must be gained by derivation and struggle and not just told Knowledge gained through personal experience stays with you longer and more effectively than second-hand knowledge. That's why the traditional, frontal lecture teaching style is falling more and more out of fashion. That's also why you can't just read a book "Learn C++ in 21 days" and expect to be a decent programmer afterwards. > success and stability must be attained through risk and competition and not cooperation or social programs I have no idea why you're mixing success and stability, when those are orthogonal concepts. As for success: A lack of competition leads to stagnation; monopolies lead to rising prices and hinder progress. Look to the Soviet Union and you'll see what coorporation and social programs instead of competition through free markets leads to [1]. As for risk: Risk is what you naturally get once all the lowest hanging fruit are picked and there are still ripe fruits hanging higher up in the tree. [1] Of course, in a competitive environment you'll still need cooperation. Competition on a higher level (i.e., in the market) and cooporation on a lower one (between coworkers) tends to work quite well for companies.
anotherevan 8y ago
I think I'd call it an assumption.

another-one-off 8y ago

No problem with UBI as a theory, for all I know it might be strictly better than the status quo. Handing money out seems to have worked out for the banking system, hahaha. :[ The issue is that the economy is outrageously complicated and it isn't obvious that the people who want to bring in a UBI are the same people who will be working to bear the cost of a UBI. If it turns out to be unfair and negative, as any ambitious economic policy can be, it could be politically very costly verging on impossible to unwind.

maerF0x0 8y ago
I have yet to see any studies of UBI that focus on the Universal part. It should be going to rich and poor alike across a sufficient region to see how it works when people on UBI commingle. This is important because "fairness" in the system is often just about people being treated "the same". If the rich are receiving the same checks as everyone else its hard for them to complain about it.
- logfromblammo 8y ago
  Does the Alaska dividend count? As far as I know, everyone domiciled in the state gets the same check.
  - falcolas 8y ago
    That particular check amount depends on how long you've lived there.
    - ceejayoz 8y ago
      Not since SCOTUS struck that down in 1982. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Permanent_Fund https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Permanent_Fund > The first dividend plan would have paid Alaskans $50 for each year of residency up to 20 years, but the U.S. Supreme Court in Zobel v. Williams, 457 U.S. 55 (1982) disapproved the $50 per year formula as an invidious distinction burdening interstate travel. As a result, each qualified resident now receives the same annual amount, regardless of age or years of residency.

skrowl 8y ago

UBI is like socialism, it sounds like it might work on paper, but it's failed every single time it's been tried IRL.

protonimitate 8y ago
Sources?
Balero 8y ago
If your going to talk about Socialism you're going to have to define it better. You can argue that Socialism works very well in many places. Such as Scandinavia, New Zealand, Canada etc. It just depends on what you think of as Socialism.
dang 8y ago
Please do not post generic ideological comments to HN. It leads to generic ideological flamewars, and those are off topic here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

Alex3917 8y ago

Question for conservatives: Do you really think that if your rent was a few hundred bucks cheaper per month you’d start smoking crack?

xj9 8y ago
crack? no, but i'd have more money to spend on weed ;)
YouAreGreat 8y ago
> Question for conservatives Are you sure UBI would actually be against "conservative" interests? With UBI, it's hard to justify salaries for much of the redistributive bureaucracy. With UBI, it's hard to have open borders as well.
- Alex3917 8y ago
  > Are you sure UBI would actually be against "conservative" interests? No, but the most common objection I hear to UBI is that people will just spend the money on drugs. But I have yet to actually hear anyone say that they'll start smoking crack or whatever if their rent went down a few hundred bucks a month. So either I should start hearing people admitting that they will, or else this objection should get dropped.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > Are you sure UBI would actually be against "conservative" interests? Yes, it's a downward redistribution without moral behavioral tests to assure that people who don't adhere to conservative values aren't getting it. > With UBI, it's hard to justify salaries for much of the redistributive bureaucracy. Only because it maintains anti-conservative redistribution while removing the pro-conservative limitations on that redistribution which the bureaucracy exists largely to enforce. > With UBI, it's hard to have open borders as well. It's hard to have the strawmanning position of “open borders” that conservatives pretend any decision from their preferred style of restriction is, but it's not actually harder to have any of the real alternative immigration policy positions that are significant contenders with those preferred by conservatives. In fact, a basic income for citizens and LPRs whose level was tied to a dedicated funding stream that included (as well as the usual suggestions of higher taxes on capital and high-end income) additional per-entrant per-year fees for dual-intent work-allowed visas and supplemental income taxes on all non-citizen, non-LPR income would actually be a potent political lever to increase the number for a policy that, while not actually open borders, would be closer to it than many of the things they conservatives have objected to as “open borders”, with numerically unlimited work-allowed dual-intent visas, perhaps retaining H-1B style restrictions on conditions and sponsorship, but possibly also (with a higher additional fee than the H-1B style ones if those are also retained) a personal, unsponsored one that only requires the applicant not to be personally excluded from entry for criminal record, etc.

candu 8y ago

There's a pernicious assumption here in equating "recreation" with "laziness". All of us deserve to have fun once in a while, regardless of socioeconomic status. Recreation can improve mental and physical health, provide great opportunities for social interaction, and exercise parts of our brain that don't otherwise get exercised.

Balero 8y ago
The problem is often people who work, work hard and importantly pay taxes, don't have the time for this recreation. So you can say that " All of us deserve to have fun once in a while, regardless of socioeconomic status." But for someone who is working too hard to take the time to have fun, this rings kinda hollow. And I can bet it stings a bit to have your taxes going towards paying for someone to do the things you don't have time to do yourself. I went through a stint of working in cafe's recently, and one always had a group of people who would turn up after leaving the job centre (you have to go here to qualify for benefit money) in the early afternoon, and would just basically hang out. Frankly I had to fight the jealousy, I wish I could spend every afternoon hanging out with my friends. I had to remind myself how much it sucks to be unemployed, and how nice I have it. I can imagine this could seem unfair to someone in a more stressful position.
- truckerbill 8y ago
  You'd be getting the UBI too, could always take some time off...
- jimbofisher1 8y ago
  If you work a job that allows you no free time that is your choice. Whining that other people have leisure time is absurd, if you want leisure get a better job. I am disturbed by people's aversion to taxing the wealthy. After WW2 the top tax rate in the US was over 90% and until the 70s it was over 70% but since then we have been systematically fooled by the wealthy to believe the absurd "Job Creator" story and income inequality has sky rocketed as a result.
  - 8y ago

at-fates-hands 8y ago

It's easy to do some research and say, "Hey, this works! Look at all the places that did it!" Here in the US, we already have a complex network of safety nets to take care of the people who UBI is really targeted for. This begs the question, if you give people a basic income, what social services people already depend on will you get rid of? There's no way you can keep all of the social services AND give people a basic income, it's just not economically feasible.

awakeasleep 8y ago
To implement basic income without raising taxes, the USA would have to trim something like 10% from our defense budget. I think you mean politically feasible. And political feasibility is something that changes with the popular will. Not to say we’d want to keep all our current welfare type benefits with UBI
- opencl 8y ago
  10% of the defense budget would fund a $15 a month UBI. edit: bad math 598 billion per year * 10% / 325 million people / 12 months/year
brightball 8y ago
I've always looked at UBI from that angle. In order to fund it you essentially take the first $X from ALL of the other equivalent services. IMO this would gut programs like Social Security enough that they could actually be reformed. Right now if you talk about reforming any of them, scare politics are used because it's a singular threat to a person's livelyhood. If you look at your monthly check and see $800 from UBI and $200 from Social Security, all of a sudden that gets a lot less scary.
YouAreGreat 8y ago
> what social services people already depend on will you get rid of? Most of them, that's one of the major reasons you'd want to do it. The means-testing bureaucracy being so expensive all by itself, you might as well give everybody enough to live and get rid of the bureaucrats.

kazinator 8y ago

Giving away cash won't make people lazy; rather, it will motivate them to maximize their take of the action, while minimizing someone else's. Scores of people claiming to be poor will suddenly appear out of nowhere, with outstretched empty hands.

mathnmusic 8y ago
It being "Universal" means that people don't have to claim to be poor. Now, because we have progressive taxation, claiming to be poor would indeed be advantageous - but that's true even today.
YouAreGreat 8y ago
Same incentive as for tax evasion.

specialist 8y ago

We could also review prior experiments. 1970s MINCOME experiment. Dauphin, Manitoba Canada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincome Briefly: Adults continued to work, excepting mothers with newborns. Public health improved. Higher graduation rates. Welfare related stigma reduced. TL;DR: Many benefits, positive ROI, no discernible downside. Adopting UBI really is a no brainer.

tarr11 8y ago
From the article: However, some have argued these drops may be artificially low because participants knew the guaranteed income was temporary.[6] This represents an important limitation to the knowledge of the impact of a guaranteed annual income; little is known about the long term effects on willingness to work.
- specialist 8y ago
  Your point? We shouldn't try UBI because initial positive results may not prove durable? I'm also struggling to understand how willingness to work, especially with our current labor glut, is more important than public health. --- I forgot to add: The sole concern I have about UBI in the USA (vs Canada) is our lack of universal healthcare. Single payer or otherwise. I can't imagine UBI working without it.

DanielBMarkham 8y ago

I am quite interested in UBI and look forward to seeing more empirical data on the various experiments being conducted. Having said that, the "danger" of UBI is that it's a big, fat slogan that can mean damned-near anything -- and there are a ton of people who both support and oppose it because of the way the idea makes them feel. That makes for a terrible environment for productive public discourse. The only half-ass real world data I know about is the independently wealthy. They get money every month and don't have to work. In general, people who become that way suddenly ruin their lives. And the numbers probably aren't so good for those who earn it and then stop to enjoy it. This example sucks, however, as the goal of UBI (as far as I know) isn't to replace all income. It's to cover the basic needs of people so they can be free to study, improve their lives, and not have to spend all of their energy in the day-to-day struggle of existence. I have no idea how it will play out in that scenario, and I suspect that the long-term effects will be much more pronounced than the short-term ones. This will be, after all, a major culture shift. I like the idea. I just don't know enough about it -- and it doesn't have enough definition -- for me to support the idea.

ohthehugemanate 8y ago
No matter which version of a UBI you support, there's one key feature that I just can't imagine happening out here in the real world. A UBI should REPLACE most existing forms of social assistance. Food stamps, unemployment insurance, some kinds of pensions, some kinds of child support, etc etc etc. Each one of those is a massive public sector industry with a lot of political weight behind it. I live in Germany, where every market has some form of social assistance connected to it. The task of dismantling that bureaucracy would be outrageous... And quite a lot to spend on a relatively untested scheme like any UBI.

jeffreyrogers 8y ago

Instead of UBI, which many critics are fearful of, why not switch to a voucher system? The government gives everyone a voucher redeemable for $x for food, $x for healthcare, etc., whatever forms of welfare we decide to provide as a society. Then private companies can register with the government as providers of these services and consumers can spend their vouchers wherever they want. This solution seems like it eliminates bureaucracy by switching to a market based system, provides a safety net for the entire population, and makes it harder to freeload.

andrewla 8y ago
> eliminates bureaucracy Okay -- so I register with the government as a "food provider", and I take food vouchers in exchange for non-food (like gasoline or something), and redeem them with the government for cash money. Who is making sure that I can't do that? We could have it strictly be an enforcement solution -- no bureaucracy, but a huge operational burden on the justice system. Or, more reasonably, I would have to submit to being regulated as a food provider, and would have to meet certain standards in order to do so, and would have to file appropriate paperwork to establish that I am doing so. Hell, as long as we're here, we might as well make sure that I only provide healthy food, according to what is currently thought of as healthy. Oh, and the cost of the food I sell has to be regulated; can't have me charging $20 for a hamburger, even if it is a "premium" one. Anyway, long rant, but in the end, the suggested system sounds like a mountain of bureaucracy and would probably cost way more to keep running than just giving the money directly to people.
- jeffreyrogers 8y ago
  > I take food vouchers in exchange for non-food (like gasoline or something), and redeem them with the government for cash money. Who is making sure that I can't do that? You can't redeem the vouchers for cash, only for the good or service the vouchers are designated for. So a food voucher would let you redeem it for food. A healthcare voucher would allow you to pay a healthcare provider for whatever services you received. Edit: oh, you're saying you pretend to be a food provider. The solution to that seems simple. Lifetime ban from voucher funded industries for anyone caught doing that and forfeiture of 3x damages. That's just an example, but if you make the punishment great enough I doubt you'll have a problem with it. It seems like it's pretty easy to catch someone doing what you described. For one thing, you'd have to be registered as a business to even engage in the practice you describe. > I would have to submit to being regulated as a food provider, and would have to meet certain standards in order to do so, and would have to file appropriate paperwork to establish that I am doing so. Sure, but how do you think the welfare system works currently? You'll always have bureaucracy, but you can have it in greater or lesser degrees. I contend that my proposal would have less bureaucracy than what we currently have. You already have to register with several state agencies if you want to run a grocery store (at least in my state). Whole Foods doesn't find that too onerous. > Oh, and the cost of the food I sell has to be regulated; can't have me charging $20 for a hamburger, even if it is a "premium" one. No, that's the whole point of switching to a voucher/market based system. You as the service provider can charge whatever you want. The population, as recipients of the vouchers, can redeem them anywhere. If you charge $20 per hamburger you'll go out of business or change your prices.

yonatron 8y ago

This is very culture dependent and depends on the values of the recipients. There are cultures of entitlement where none of that money would go to education or entrepreneurship, just to greater levels of indulgence.

holmberd 8y ago

If you are on an island where a third of the population is struggling, e.g. bad crop yield, the whole population on the island will experience the negative effects as a whole. Solutions? 1. Build a wall around the less fortunate and allow some of the more able ones to work for less than you would otherwise pay. 2. Share the resources of the more fortunate with the less fortunate until they are back on their feet and are able to prosper. A persons good fortune isn't made in a vacuum.

fmajid 8y ago

One argument the article forgot is that efforts to help the poor with goods or services rather than cash entail building a bureaucracy, and inevitably the iron law of bureaucracy asserts itself, more and more of the funds are diverted to the bureaucrats rather than the ostensible mission.

Simulacra 8y ago

I feel like UBI in general is a bad idea. If you give me free money, I'm just going to spend it or use it like any other money. If my landlord, mechanic, etc. knows that certain people are getting extra Income, what stops them from just raising the prices? If the landlord knows that a tenet is getting $300 a month and extra income, what's stopping them from raising the rent $300, completely negating the UBI concept?

antisthenes 8y ago
Exactly the same thing that's stopping the landlords from raising the rent by $300 right now - supply and demand. If the people receiving UBI are universally spending that money on something other than rent, then the landlords who raise their rent by the UBI amount will become noncompetitive and fail to attract tenants. To presume that 100% of the UBI will simply be absorbed by the landlords is absurd, not only because of the above argument, but because for many people, the UBI will be significant enough to swing them to home ownership instead of renting, putting additional pressure on the landlords not to raise prices.

simonsarris 8y ago

Increased enrollment isn't the same thing as increasing work %. Some of these other studies are testing "cash transfer for specific thing" and find that "specific thing" increased, somewhat. That's not really what people are arguing when they argue broader cash transfers, like Basic Income. The work disincentive of basic-income-like cash transfers, in studies so far, is actually somewhat consistent at around 10%. Some papers referencing this approx figure: https://www.dropbox.com/s/r19npwc30trejb6/Basic_Income_in_a_Small_Town_Understanding_the_Elusive_Effects_on_Work__Calnitsky_Latner_Social_Problems_BI_in_a_small_town.pdf?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/r19npwc30trejb6/Basic_Income_in_a_... https://www.dropbox.com/s/oi0kv3vcya9o0ad/The_Rural_Income_Maintenance_Experiment__sr10.pdf?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/oi0kv3vcya9o0ad/The_Rural_Income_M... https://www.dropbox.com/s/hkd489vcarcrorg/Findings_from_the_Gary_Income_Maintenance_Experiment__Gary%20Income%20Maintenance%20Experiment.pdf?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/hkd489vcarcrorg/Findings_from_the_... https://www.dropbox.com/s/5m2k5qzgv699dfe/THE_TOWN_WITH_NO_POVERTY_Using_Health_Administration_Data_to_Revisit_Outcomes_of_a_Canadian_Guaranteed_Annual_Income_Field_Experiment___forget-cea%2520%282%29.pdf?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/5m2k5qzgv699dfe/THE_TOWN_WITH_NO_P... https://www.dropbox.com/s/dsucn7jone74g65/New_Jersey_Graduated_Work_Incentive_Experiment__ED099531.pdf?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/dsucn7jone74g65/New_Jersey_Graduat... I've had these sources handy since last year when I was doing research on my own UBI-skeptic piece: https://medium.com/@simon.sarris/after-universal-basic-income-the-flood-217db9889c07 https://medium.com/@simon.sarris/after-universal-basic-incom...