13 ms·

Basic Income caused crime to drop by 40% and strengthened workforce?

166 points by joeyespo 8y ago

s3r3nity 8y ago
I'm curious to hear how folks, who are more knowledgeable than I and have done more research, reconcile data points like these with the data showing lack of success in places like Finland.[1] [1] https://nypost.com/2018/04/25/finlands-universal-basic-income-experiment-didnt-work-out-well/ https://nypost.com/2018/04/25/finlands-universal-basic-incom...
- edgarvaldes 8y ago
  How long did the experiment last?
- aidos 8y ago
  I don’t know anything about the program but it doesn’t sound like it was really UBI at all from this description in the article. If it was a) only available to unemployed and b) only a pilot with 2,000 people then I guess it’s easy to ignore it as a data point. Though maybe that paragraph is poorly worded and it was actually more extensive? >>> “Finland was considered the first European country to pay a monthly check of $685 to its unemployed between ages 25 and 58. It was considered a pilot program — serving 2,000 randomly selected jobless people — that its founders hoped to expand.” Edit Additionally Googling for Finland UBI experiment yields countless articles claiming it was neither a failure, nor proper UBI
- doubletgl 8y ago
  From a guardian article: "Olli Kangas, an expert involved in the trial, told the Finnish public broadcaster YLE: “Two years is too short a period to be able to draw extensive conclusions from such a big experiment. We should have had extra time and more money to achieve reliable results.”" https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/23/finland-to-end-basic-income-trial-after-two-years https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/23/finland-to-end... Further: "The scheme – ... – is strictly speaking not a universal basic income (UBI) trial, because the payments are made to a restricted group and are not enough to live on." I'm still hopeful. Also, what other plan is there to deal with wealth distribution and automation dissolving jobs?
- influx 8y ago
  Like Communism, the advocates of UBI will always say, well that wasn't TRUE/REAL/ACTUAL UBI.
  - aidos 8y ago
    Well it clearly wasn’t. It was not universal, at all. Nor was it enough to survive on. So it fails in all definitions.
- scarmig 8y ago
  There's really no indication of whether it was a lack of success or not. If it showed worse health and/or employment outcomes for recipients, that'd be a data point. But the fact that a government cancelled it without any explanation really doesn't say much, except that it's subject to politics.
- velcrovan 8y ago
  Finland's experiment was not actually a UBI experiment. I mean, originally it was going to be a really big basic income trial... but by the time they finalized it, they’d chickened out and made it basically a tweak to their existing unemployment benefit for a tiny sample of people who were already on unemployment. Additionally, Finland had to release a response to the article you linked because of misleading reporting by US media: https://www.kela.fi/web/en/news-archive/-/asset_publisher/lN08GY2nIrZo/content/contrary-to-reports-the-basic-income-experiment-in-finland-will-continue-until-the-end-of-2018 https://www.kela.fi/web/en/news-archive/-/asset_publisher/lN... So officially there are no results since the experiment is not over. But whatever the results end up being, they won’t say anything about actual UBI one way or the other.
Fergi 8y ago
Perhaps the most ironic thing I've read in a while: "Suicides would also decrease, as the most of them are result of depression, which is mostly caused by anxiety about survival."
- the-pigeon 8y ago
  "Grand claim because grand claim and other grand claim, evidence not needed."
lbriner 8y ago
"a quora member answered when asked about the UBI" And at that moment, any semblence of legitimacy disappeared... The main question about UBI is who pays for it and how. In the UK, a back-of-a-napkin calculation showed that all current benefits equally divided into a single BI would be around £4K, way below anything that most people would consider enough to live on.
- bryanlarsen 8y ago
  So to get a BI of £12K, average taxes would have to go up by £8K per person. And since about 2/3 of the adult population are taxpayers, that gives £12K per taxpayer, which balances the payout they'd receive from BI. People with above average incomes would pay into BI, and those with below average incomes would net from BI.
  - trothamel 8y ago
    Assuming we're talking about the UK here, that would require £517,000,000,000 - or about 70% of current tax revenues.
    - lvh 8y ago
      Yep; though the usual corollary is also that you'd cancel a bunch of other welfare programs -- that is: you're replacing benefits with UBI, not just tacking UBI on. (Not advocating for it; just saying that 70% of tax revenues makes it sound like you'd nearly double taxes to cover UBI, and that's not quite true.)
    - Retric 8y ago
      Assuming zero other changes to the tax code or spending which as far as I know nobody wants to do. The US example is usually to remove Social Security, food stamps, HUD, unemployment insurance, low income tax breaks, etc which means close to zero net cost but a massive shift in benefits. Overall I think the driver for UBI is more about complexity than welfare. For example without changing revenue you could eliminate the need for tax prep. However H&R block for example really loves their billions per year in waste. So in many way's that's the context UBI should be judged not just it's direct impacts.
devoply 8y ago
Ontario recently cancelled their experiment with universal income. Which points me to the fact that even if UBI becomes reality at some point, it's only one government away at any time from being cancelled or adjusted. So your livelihood at any given time is dependent upon government balancing its books. Considering how bad many modern developed governments are at doing this, it gives me little hope of UBI being any sort of good, substantive thing happening in the near future.
- yasp 8y ago
  As did Finland.
- dragontamer 8y ago
  What's wrong with having UBI for 2 years and then suddenly having it cut off? Jack London, the famous homeless / hobo writer of "Call of the Wild" and "White Fang", was only able to write his first book because of the support of community libraries and random strangers who gave him a bed occasionally. Eventually, he was able to pull himself out of poverty and become one of the most famous writers ever. If you can help those homeless people for a few years, that's all that's needed to permanently change some of their lives for the better. It will suck when the program ends, but some-help is better than none at all. ----------- These programs aren't supposed to be sustainable living forever-and-ever. They are parachutes to help people who are in tough times. They provide a pathway out of poverty.
  - briandear 8y ago
    So Jack London had UBI? What is stopping someone else from doing exactly what Jack did? The government shouldn’t be a charity — that’s what charities are for.
    - dragontamer 8y ago
      Charities are inconsistent across the nation. If Charities can rescue people some of the times, then the US Government can apply those principles and rescue people all of the time. A good idea can be done by a Charity, by your neighbor, or by the US Government. It doesn't matter who does it, as long as it gets done. > What is stopping someone else from doing exactly what Jack did? Well, eventually Jack London ran into Hobo and anti-loitering laws and landed in jail. Jack London then traveled to areas without Hobo laws and anti-loitering laws. Although, the times were different. Jack London was homeless due to the depression of the 1890s, and the number of Hobos were so large that they grouped together and formed "Hobo Code" and kinda their own society. Ideally, we should never have that huge number of homeless people ever again.
jackconnor 8y ago
The English is really bad in this, was this article translated or something?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- Digit-Al 8y ago
  Going by the name of the author (Atha Fromy), I would guess it was written by someone who has English as a second language. This being my assumption I am going to give them a pass on slightly dodgy grammar since I couldn't write an article in any other language.
3pt14159 8y ago
It might be politically unpopular, but maybe we should just raise taxes and index them for measures of inequality. The GDP per capita of most modern economies can easily handle a basic income sufficient for all but the most expensive cities.
- gtCameron 8y ago
  That assumes that GDP would not be impacted negatively by the massive tax increase. I'm sure there are many theories, in both directions, of what would happen to the total tax revenues if you were to raise rates significantly, but it's surely far more complicated that your idea makes it sound.
  - bryanlarsen 8y ago
    Moving money from rich people to people much more likely to spend it rather than hoard it should result in a significant GDP boost.
    - AnimalMuppet 8y ago
      Maybe not. Rich people are more likely to invest it; the economy also needs that.
      - Retric 8y ago
        Owning stock is not investing in economic terms. Companies are going to maximize profits independent on how much individuals pay in capital gains because nothing about capital gains changes the companies costs or profits. Buying existing properties is the same thing. If no assets are created then it's not an economically useful investment. VC money is often thought of as rich people investments, and it is an investment in economic terms. However, Pension funds, endowments, charitable foundations, insurance companies, sovereign wealth funds, and large corporations are more often than not the source of these funds. Generally rich people are rich because they have invested their money they don't simply sit on piles of un-allocated resources.
snarf21 8y ago
I find this mostly click bait. We should expect results like this or frankly better. Results from one small African village are not globally applicable. The issue is where does the money come from and is it truly universal. All the experiments to date have been of the "we gave free money with no restrictions to X thousand people for Y months and it was great". This is necessary but not sufficient research. We could have huge savings in the US with simplified welfare programs but we shouldn't forget that most of those savings come from firing some number of thousands who now also need UBI and have diminished pension benefits. All of these systems are inter-related and we will have to keep trying things as the financial divide grows.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- ghaff 8y ago
  Furthermore, while there is some overhead associated with administration/policing eligibility/etc., a lot of the social safety net people costs are also roles like social workers, etc., the need of which doesn't go away just because you are now just giving everyone a no strings attached check.
- moduspol 8y ago
  I'm still waiting for the UBI trial that includes allowing everyone receiving it to vote for how much the UBI checks are for. That aspect never seems to get included for some reason.
  - allemagne 8y ago
    Any democracy could decide to write a check to its voters now.
    - moduspol 8y ago
      We already do (at least in the US), in the form of entitlement expenditures, the military/industrial complex, federally subsidized student loans, and more. It doesn't happen overnight, but I don't think anyone doubts we're spending and taking on more debt than ever. It'll just undoubtedly accelerate the issue with no feasible exit plan.
curtis 8y ago
There ought to be a name for a minimal UBI that can allow people who are normally just scraping by to bridge short periods of unemployment, unexpected expenses etc. £4K wouldn't be much for the average Hacker News reader, but for people on minimum wage it could make a real difference. You can't really call this "Basic Income" though, because that term comes with the build in assumption that it's enough for a person to live pretty comfortably. I've been thinking of this as a "Really Basic Basic Income" ("RBBI"?), but nobody seems to be talking about such a thing.
- brightball 8y ago
  Survival Income?
- TomMarius 8y ago
  We have that in the Czech Republic, according to English Wikipedia, it's called "living wage".
- dahdum 8y ago
  I've always thought there should be an essential basics program, where you can always receive an adequate amount of flour, rice, beans, corn, and other basic foodstuffs to survive. I'd also add toothpaste, soap, and other sanitary items. We can still have food stamp programs that allow people to spend as they please, but the guaranteed floor ensures literally no one need go hungry. Sticking to basics keeps the costs far lower than trying to subsidize processed foods, and the extent we susbsidize our farmers also subsidizes the program.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - epicureanideal 8y ago
    Unfortunately the largest cost is rent, but I like your idea. I'd even be happy to donate to such a service.
  - magduf 8y ago
    What are you going to do with flour, rice, etc.? You need a way to cook it. That means you need an apartment, with a kitchen, with working electricity or gas. Those are the things that really cost people. Giving a bag of flour to a homeless man isn't going to help him.
pacbard 8y ago
Every time you want to evaluate results from social research, you need to ask yourself two questions: 1. Are the results internally valid? That is, did the authors reasonably control for factors other than the treatment (in this case, UBI) that could affect the observed results? Turn out, that this is actually difficult to do outside of randomized control trials. Quasi-experiments and natural experiments all lack random treatment assignment. This leads to biased estimates and wrong conclusions. 2. Are the results externally valid? That is, to whom do the results apply? Most UBI experiments are done in contexts that are different than the US (if you are interested in what would happened if UBI becomes law in the US). Local factors could impact the way that people react to UBI. Because these factors do not apply to the US, the study results do not readily translate to the US. For example, the article cites this NBER working paper[1] as proof that UBI has positive impacts on unemployment. The article uses a difference-in-differences model with a systemic control group to get to a causal estimate of receiving dividends from the Alaska Permanent Fund. This boils down to compare changes in employment between Alaska and states that had similar employment trends during the pre-treatment period. Their analysis seem to be sound and they conduct multiple robustness checks. As far as external validity, how similar is Alaska to the rest of the US? Would results from that setting translate to California, or Mississippi, or New York? [1]: http://www.nber.org/papers/w24312.pdf http://www.nber.org/papers/w24312.pdf
- aaron-lebo 8y ago
  Yes, this is unfortunately pretty lazy research used to push an agenda. Related to that, the main claim: the 40% reduction in crime (no link, why?) is in Namibia. Is there anything about Namibia which makes it different from a developed economy like the US? I know it comes off as pedantic to complain about such stuff, but there's gotta be higher standards for evidence, otherwise you don't really trust your own argument.
  - xkjkls 8y ago
    I wouldn't necessarily call it "lazy research". It's imperfect, but there aren't exactly that many natural experiments in UBI that provide you great data. Sometimes you have to piece together insights from imperfect data.
twblalock 8y ago
The big problem with UBI, aside from how to pay for it, is that it will not survive as either universal or basic once the voters get their hands on it and decide that, say, UBI benefits should be cut for felons, increased for single mothers, indexed to the cost of rent, etc. In other words, we have a bunch of different welfare standards for people in different situations because that is what succeeds politically, and there is no reason to believe the same impulses that got us our current welfare system won't influence UBI also.
- vorpalhex 8y ago
  To be fair, I'm not entirely convinced that a truly universal system is the best. After all, a single parent has significant additional expenses - and should taxpayers be paying to give violent criminals a work-free existence? (Would you pay a living wage to someone who sexually assaulted your daughter?) In the US, this is especially a problem. The cost of living in Texas is low enough that my salary as an engineer gives me a very high quality of life - but the same salary in NYC would be very different in life results. A federally set UBI then seems... well, to have the same issues that minimum wage do.
  - dota_fanatic 8y ago
    With money comes mobility, so people are free to move somewhere cheaper. Currently, those in the poverty cycle are trapped and chronically stressed, making it quite difficult to execute a plan that involves anything more than what's right in front them—moving out of city or out of state is out of the question. One of the biggest problems facing humanity is sustainability towards the planet. Unbounded population growth eventually breaks everything we all need to survive. If we incentivize having children more than it already is, some people will spawn just to get at that extra money for themselves and do the bare minimum to "raise" their children. And the kind of person that does that does not raise stable, healthy children who will come into their own as productive, healthy members of society...
    - macintux 8y ago
      > With money comes mobility, so people are free to move somewhere cheaper. I'm skeptical that most people who are currently trapped in poverty would receive enough UBI to make that practical. Money doesn't stretch as far in a strange place with no network to fall back on, even if nominally the cost of living is lower.
JorgeGT 8y ago
The part about people not leaving the workforce is based on a non-peer reviewed working paper arguing that the Alaska Permanent Fund, which pays ~$2000 per person, has not decreased employment: https://www.nber.org/papers/w24312.pdf https://www.nber.org/papers/w24312.pdf I doubt any rational person would quit a job for $2000 a year. Or for a temporal UBI that may last a few years, leaving a gap in their career. I'm curious, does anyone know of any UBI test in which the amount was enough to live decently, and was assured for the lifetime of the recipients?
the-pigeon 8y ago
Did anyone up voting this read it? Worst article I've ever seen so high up on Hacker News.
- nobody_nowhere 8y ago
  It's practically incoherent
ndr 8y ago
If you're doubtful on where the money for UBI comes from, for the US Andrew Yang (running for 2020) suggests to increase VAT. He was on SH's show [0] and apparently has a book on it [1] [0] https://samharris.org/podcasts/130-universal-basic-income/ https://samharris.org/podcasts/130-universal-basic-income/ [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36204293-the-war-on-normal-people https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36204293-the-war-on-norm...
alexc05 8y ago
None of those references are primary sources or peer reviewed. I've also personally never heard of "the incomer". I feel like I'd prefer to take those claims with a grain of salt. It feels like a lot of work to try and spend time digging in to whether this is true or not. It might be true - but this doesn't feel like a credible source.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
ProfBernardo 8y ago
Nowhere in this article does the author provide a source for the mentioned 40% drop.
- DonaldFisk 8y ago
  The article isn't very well written. The drop was 36.5% and is reported in http://www.bignam.org/Publications/BIG_Assessment_report_08b.pdf http://www.bignam.org/Publications/BIG_Assessment_report_08b... starting on page 45.
kire2345 8y ago
I am wondering often with UBI: if everybody gets a certain amount of money. Wouldn't prices just adapt and everything gets more expensive, and there would be the same divide as before? Similar to Scandinavia where prices are very high. What mechanism could prevent this from happening?
- 3131s 8y ago
  Why exactly do you think this would happen? It doesn't actually make sense. Let's say Company A charges 2$ for an apple and each apple costs 1$ to procure, and then at some point a UBI is implemented. What changed that suddenly allows company A to raise the price of an apple without being undercut by Company B? The cost to procure an apple might increase somewhat because laborers have more leverage under a UBI, but there's an upper limit to this with automation anyway. A more equal distribution of wealth in itself will not cause any increase in the cost of goods.
  - kire2345 8y ago
    Yeah, i guess you are right in a perfect market. My hypothesis was that increased buying power leads to more demand. In your case for apples it would allow apple producers to increase prices and raise margins, as long as competitors don't undercut them. What is the original cause that drives prices in countries like Switzerland or Norway higher? Is this only due to currency trading and a country's credit rating?
    - s3nnyy 8y ago
      Prices are stable and not really rising in Switzerland, same for salaries. Prices in Germany are rising but salaries are stagnant. Just my observation.
Herodotus38 8y ago
I found the source for those who like me couldn't understand the article (had to click several links). PDF http://www.bignam.org/Publications/BIG_Assessment_report_08b.pdf http://www.bignam.org/Publications/BIG_Assessment_report_08b...
monochromatic 8y ago
Meanwhile, in the real world, UBI is too expensive and unsustainable. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/01/ontarios-new-conservative-government-to-end-basic-income-experiment https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/01/ontarios-new-c...
simonsarris 8y ago
Clickbait from a new website. The "strengthened workforce" if you click through is actually about this paper with the alaska fund: https://www.nber.org/papers/w24312.pdf https://www.nber.org/papers/w24312.pdf Not about basic income per se. 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... (from research on a long BI article I wrote)
RickJWagner 8y ago
A better headline might have been "Basic Income caused crime to drop in Nambia". I think there are a lot of variables that deserve closer study before jumping to conclusions about what might happen in other places.

166 points by joeyespo 8y ago

I'm curious to hear how folks, who are more knowledgeable than I and have done more research, reconcile data points like these with the data showing lack of success in places like Finland.[1] [1] https://nypost.com/2018/04/25/finlands-universal-basic-income-experiment-didnt-work-out-well/ https://nypost.com/2018/04/25/finlands-universal-basic-incom...

edgarvaldes 8y ago
How long did the experiment last?
aidos 8y ago
I don’t know anything about the program but it doesn’t sound like it was really UBI at all from this description in the article. If it was a) only available to unemployed and b) only a pilot with 2,000 people then I guess it’s easy to ignore it as a data point. Though maybe that paragraph is poorly worded and it was actually more extensive? >>> “Finland was considered the first European country to pay a monthly check of $685 to its unemployed between ages 25 and 58. It was considered a pilot program — serving 2,000 randomly selected jobless people — that its founders hoped to expand.” Edit Additionally Googling for Finland UBI experiment yields countless articles claiming it was neither a failure, nor proper UBI
doubletgl 8y ago
From a guardian article: "Olli Kangas, an expert involved in the trial, told the Finnish public broadcaster YLE: “Two years is too short a period to be able to draw extensive conclusions from such a big experiment. We should have had extra time and more money to achieve reliable results.”" https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/23/finland-to-end-basic-income-trial-after-two-years https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/23/finland-to-end... Further: "The scheme – ... – is strictly speaking not a universal basic income (UBI) trial, because the payments are made to a restricted group and are not enough to live on." I'm still hopeful. Also, what other plan is there to deal with wealth distribution and automation dissolving jobs?
influx 8y ago
Like Communism, the advocates of UBI will always say, well that wasn't TRUE/REAL/ACTUAL UBI.
- aidos 8y ago
  Well it clearly wasn’t. It was not universal, at all. Nor was it enough to survive on. So it fails in all definitions.
scarmig 8y ago
There's really no indication of whether it was a lack of success or not. If it showed worse health and/or employment outcomes for recipients, that'd be a data point. But the fact that a government cancelled it without any explanation really doesn't say much, except that it's subject to politics.
velcrovan 8y ago
Finland's experiment was not actually a UBI experiment. I mean, originally it was going to be a really big basic income trial... but by the time they finalized it, they’d chickened out and made it basically a tweak to their existing unemployment benefit for a tiny sample of people who were already on unemployment. Additionally, Finland had to release a response to the article you linked because of misleading reporting by US media: https://www.kela.fi/web/en/news-archive/-/asset_publisher/lN08GY2nIrZo/content/contrary-to-reports-the-basic-income-experiment-in-finland-will-continue-until-the-end-of-2018 https://www.kela.fi/web/en/news-archive/-/asset_publisher/lN... So officially there are no results since the experiment is not over. But whatever the results end up being, they won’t say anything about actual UBI one way or the other.

Fergi 8y ago

Perhaps the most ironic thing I've read in a while: "Suicides would also decrease, as the most of them are result of depression, which is mostly caused by anxiety about survival."

the-pigeon 8y ago
"Grand claim because grand claim and other grand claim, evidence not needed."

lbriner 8y ago

"a quora member answered when asked about the UBI" And at that moment, any semblence of legitimacy disappeared... The main question about UBI is who pays for it and how. In the UK, a back-of-a-napkin calculation showed that all current benefits equally divided into a single BI would be around £4K, way below anything that most people would consider enough to live on.

bryanlarsen 8y ago
So to get a BI of £12K, average taxes would have to go up by £8K per person. And since about 2/3 of the adult population are taxpayers, that gives £12K per taxpayer, which balances the payout they'd receive from BI. People with above average incomes would pay into BI, and those with below average incomes would net from BI.
- trothamel 8y ago
  Assuming we're talking about the UK here, that would require £517,000,000,000 - or about 70% of current tax revenues.
  - lvh 8y ago
    Yep; though the usual corollary is also that you'd cancel a bunch of other welfare programs -- that is: you're replacing benefits with UBI, not just tacking UBI on. (Not advocating for it; just saying that 70% of tax revenues makes it sound like you'd nearly double taxes to cover UBI, and that's not quite true.)
  - Retric 8y ago
    Assuming zero other changes to the tax code or spending which as far as I know nobody wants to do. The US example is usually to remove Social Security, food stamps, HUD, unemployment insurance, low income tax breaks, etc which means close to zero net cost but a massive shift in benefits. Overall I think the driver for UBI is more about complexity than welfare. For example without changing revenue you could eliminate the need for tax prep. However H&R block for example really loves their billions per year in waste. So in many way's that's the context UBI should be judged not just it's direct impacts.

devoply 8y ago

Ontario recently cancelled their experiment with universal income. Which points me to the fact that even if UBI becomes reality at some point, it's only one government away at any time from being cancelled or adjusted. So your livelihood at any given time is dependent upon government balancing its books. Considering how bad many modern developed governments are at doing this, it gives me little hope of UBI being any sort of good, substantive thing happening in the near future.

yasp 8y ago
As did Finland.
dragontamer 8y ago
What's wrong with having UBI for 2 years and then suddenly having it cut off? Jack London, the famous homeless / hobo writer of "Call of the Wild" and "White Fang", was only able to write his first book because of the support of community libraries and random strangers who gave him a bed occasionally. Eventually, he was able to pull himself out of poverty and become one of the most famous writers ever. If you can help those homeless people for a few years, that's all that's needed to permanently change some of their lives for the better. It will suck when the program ends, but some-help is better than none at all. ----------- These programs aren't supposed to be sustainable living forever-and-ever. They are parachutes to help people who are in tough times. They provide a pathway out of poverty.
- briandear 8y ago
  So Jack London had UBI? What is stopping someone else from doing exactly what Jack did? The government shouldn’t be a charity — that’s what charities are for.
  - dragontamer 8y ago
    Charities are inconsistent across the nation. If Charities can rescue people some of the times, then the US Government can apply those principles and rescue people all of the time. A good idea can be done by a Charity, by your neighbor, or by the US Government. It doesn't matter who does it, as long as it gets done. > What is stopping someone else from doing exactly what Jack did? Well, eventually Jack London ran into Hobo and anti-loitering laws and landed in jail. Jack London then traveled to areas without Hobo laws and anti-loitering laws. Although, the times were different. Jack London was homeless due to the depression of the 1890s, and the number of Hobos were so large that they grouped together and formed "Hobo Code" and kinda their own society. Ideally, we should never have that huge number of homeless people ever again.

jackconnor 8y ago

The English is really bad in this, was this article translated or something?

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
Digit-Al 8y ago
Going by the name of the author (Atha Fromy), I would guess it was written by someone who has English as a second language. This being my assumption I am going to give them a pass on slightly dodgy grammar since I couldn't write an article in any other language.

3pt14159 8y ago

It might be politically unpopular, but maybe we should just raise taxes and index them for measures of inequality. The GDP per capita of most modern economies can easily handle a basic income sufficient for all but the most expensive cities.

gtCameron 8y ago
That assumes that GDP would not be impacted negatively by the massive tax increase. I'm sure there are many theories, in both directions, of what would happen to the total tax revenues if you were to raise rates significantly, but it's surely far more complicated that your idea makes it sound.
- bryanlarsen 8y ago
  Moving money from rich people to people much more likely to spend it rather than hoard it should result in a significant GDP boost.
  - AnimalMuppet 8y ago
    Maybe not. Rich people are more likely to invest it; the economy also needs that.
    - Retric 8y ago
      Owning stock is not investing in economic terms. Companies are going to maximize profits independent on how much individuals pay in capital gains because nothing about capital gains changes the companies costs or profits. Buying existing properties is the same thing. If no assets are created then it's not an economically useful investment. VC money is often thought of as rich people investments, and it is an investment in economic terms. However, Pension funds, endowments, charitable foundations, insurance companies, sovereign wealth funds, and large corporations are more often than not the source of these funds. Generally rich people are rich because they have invested their money they don't simply sit on piles of un-allocated resources.

snarf21 8y ago

I find this mostly click bait. We should expect results like this or frankly better. Results from one small African village are not globally applicable. The issue is where does the money come from and is it truly universal. All the experiments to date have been of the "we gave free money with no restrictions to X thousand people for Y months and it was great". This is necessary but not sufficient research. We could have huge savings in the US with simplified welfare programs but we shouldn't forget that most of those savings come from firing some number of thousands who now also need UBI and have diminished pension benefits. All of these systems are inter-related and we will have to keep trying things as the financial divide grows.

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ghaff 8y ago
Furthermore, while there is some overhead associated with administration/policing eligibility/etc., a lot of the social safety net people costs are also roles like social workers, etc., the need of which doesn't go away just because you are now just giving everyone a no strings attached check.
moduspol 8y ago
I'm still waiting for the UBI trial that includes allowing everyone receiving it to vote for how much the UBI checks are for. That aspect never seems to get included for some reason.
- allemagne 8y ago
  Any democracy could decide to write a check to its voters now.
  - moduspol 8y ago
    We already do (at least in the US), in the form of entitlement expenditures, the military/industrial complex, federally subsidized student loans, and more. It doesn't happen overnight, but I don't think anyone doubts we're spending and taking on more debt than ever. It'll just undoubtedly accelerate the issue with no feasible exit plan.

curtis 8y ago

There ought to be a name for a minimal UBI that can allow people who are normally just scraping by to bridge short periods of unemployment, unexpected expenses etc. £4K wouldn't be much for the average Hacker News reader, but for people on minimum wage it could make a real difference. You can't really call this "Basic Income" though, because that term comes with the build in assumption that it's enough for a person to live pretty comfortably. I've been thinking of this as a "Really Basic Basic Income" ("RBBI"?), but nobody seems to be talking about such a thing.

brightball 8y ago
Survival Income?
TomMarius 8y ago
We have that in the Czech Republic, according to English Wikipedia, it's called "living wage".
dahdum 8y ago
I've always thought there should be an essential basics program, where you can always receive an adequate amount of flour, rice, beans, corn, and other basic foodstuffs to survive. I'd also add toothpaste, soap, and other sanitary items. We can still have food stamp programs that allow people to spend as they please, but the guaranteed floor ensures literally no one need go hungry. Sticking to basics keeps the costs far lower than trying to subsidize processed foods, and the extent we susbsidize our farmers also subsidizes the program.
- deleted 8y ago
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- epicureanideal 8y ago
  Unfortunately the largest cost is rent, but I like your idea. I'd even be happy to donate to such a service.
- magduf 8y ago
  What are you going to do with flour, rice, etc.? You need a way to cook it. That means you need an apartment, with a kitchen, with working electricity or gas. Those are the things that really cost people. Giving a bag of flour to a homeless man isn't going to help him.

pacbard 8y ago

Every time you want to evaluate results from social research, you need to ask yourself two questions: 1. Are the results internally valid? That is, did the authors reasonably control for factors other than the treatment (in this case, UBI) that could affect the observed results? Turn out, that this is actually difficult to do outside of randomized control trials. Quasi-experiments and natural experiments all lack random treatment assignment. This leads to biased estimates and wrong conclusions. 2. Are the results externally valid? That is, to whom do the results apply? Most UBI experiments are done in contexts that are different than the US (if you are interested in what would happened if UBI becomes law in the US). Local factors could impact the way that people react to UBI. Because these factors do not apply to the US, the study results do not readily translate to the US. For example, the article cites this NBER working paper[1] as proof that UBI has positive impacts on unemployment. The article uses a difference-in-differences model with a systemic control group to get to a causal estimate of receiving dividends from the Alaska Permanent Fund. This boils down to compare changes in employment between Alaska and states that had similar employment trends during the pre-treatment period. Their analysis seem to be sound and they conduct multiple robustness checks. As far as external validity, how similar is Alaska to the rest of the US? Would results from that setting translate to California, or Mississippi, or New York? [1]: http://www.nber.org/papers/w24312.pdf http://www.nber.org/papers/w24312.pdf

aaron-lebo 8y ago
Yes, this is unfortunately pretty lazy research used to push an agenda. Related to that, the main claim: the 40% reduction in crime (no link, why?) is in Namibia. Is there anything about Namibia which makes it different from a developed economy like the US? I know it comes off as pedantic to complain about such stuff, but there's gotta be higher standards for evidence, otherwise you don't really trust your own argument.
- xkjkls 8y ago
  I wouldn't necessarily call it "lazy research". It's imperfect, but there aren't exactly that many natural experiments in UBI that provide you great data. Sometimes you have to piece together insights from imperfect data.

twblalock 8y ago

The big problem with UBI, aside from how to pay for it, is that it will not survive as either universal or basic once the voters get their hands on it and decide that, say, UBI benefits should be cut for felons, increased for single mothers, indexed to the cost of rent, etc. In other words, we have a bunch of different welfare standards for people in different situations because that is what succeeds politically, and there is no reason to believe the same impulses that got us our current welfare system won't influence UBI also.

vorpalhex 8y ago
To be fair, I'm not entirely convinced that a truly universal system is the best. After all, a single parent has significant additional expenses - and should taxpayers be paying to give violent criminals a work-free existence? (Would you pay a living wage to someone who sexually assaulted your daughter?) In the US, this is especially a problem. The cost of living in Texas is low enough that my salary as an engineer gives me a very high quality of life - but the same salary in NYC would be very different in life results. A federally set UBI then seems... well, to have the same issues that minimum wage do.
- dota_fanatic 8y ago
  With money comes mobility, so people are free to move somewhere cheaper. Currently, those in the poverty cycle are trapped and chronically stressed, making it quite difficult to execute a plan that involves anything more than what's right in front them—moving out of city or out of state is out of the question. One of the biggest problems facing humanity is sustainability towards the planet. Unbounded population growth eventually breaks everything we all need to survive. If we incentivize having children more than it already is, some people will spawn just to get at that extra money for themselves and do the bare minimum to "raise" their children. And the kind of person that does that does not raise stable, healthy children who will come into their own as productive, healthy members of society...
  - macintux 8y ago
    > With money comes mobility, so people are free to move somewhere cheaper. I'm skeptical that most people who are currently trapped in poverty would receive enough UBI to make that practical. Money doesn't stretch as far in a strange place with no network to fall back on, even if nominally the cost of living is lower.

JorgeGT 8y ago

The part about people not leaving the workforce is based on a non-peer reviewed working paper arguing that the Alaska Permanent Fund, which pays ~$2000 per person, has not decreased employment: https://www.nber.org/papers/w24312.pdf https://www.nber.org/papers/w24312.pdf I doubt any rational person would quit a job for $2000 a year. Or for a temporal UBI that may last a few years, leaving a gap in their career. I'm curious, does anyone know of any UBI test in which the amount was enough to live decently, and was assured for the lifetime of the recipients?

the-pigeon 8y ago

Did anyone up voting this read it? Worst article I've ever seen so high up on Hacker News.

nobody_nowhere 8y ago
It's practically incoherent

ndr 8y ago

If you're doubtful on where the money for UBI comes from, for the US Andrew Yang (running for 2020) suggests to increase VAT. He was on SH's show [0] and apparently has a book on it [1] [0] https://samharris.org/podcasts/130-universal-basic-income/ https://samharris.org/podcasts/130-universal-basic-income/ [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36204293-the-war-on-normal-people https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36204293-the-war-on-norm...

alexc05 8y ago

None of those references are primary sources or peer reviewed. I've also personally never heard of "the incomer". I feel like I'd prefer to take those claims with a grain of salt. It feels like a lot of work to try and spend time digging in to whether this is true or not. It might be true - but this doesn't feel like a credible source.

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ProfBernardo 8y ago

Nowhere in this article does the author provide a source for the mentioned 40% drop.

DonaldFisk 8y ago
The article isn't very well written. The drop was 36.5% and is reported in http://www.bignam.org/Publications/BIG_Assessment_report_08b.pdf http://www.bignam.org/Publications/BIG_Assessment_report_08b... starting on page 45.

kire2345 8y ago

I am wondering often with UBI: if everybody gets a certain amount of money. Wouldn't prices just adapt and everything gets more expensive, and there would be the same divide as before? Similar to Scandinavia where prices are very high. What mechanism could prevent this from happening?

3131s 8y ago
Why exactly do you think this would happen? It doesn't actually make sense. Let's say Company A charges 2$ for an apple and each apple costs 1$ to procure, and then at some point a UBI is implemented. What changed that suddenly allows company A to raise the price of an apple without being undercut by Company B? The cost to procure an apple might increase somewhat because laborers have more leverage under a UBI, but there's an upper limit to this with automation anyway. A more equal distribution of wealth in itself will not cause any increase in the cost of goods.
- kire2345 8y ago
  Yeah, i guess you are right in a perfect market. My hypothesis was that increased buying power leads to more demand. In your case for apples it would allow apple producers to increase prices and raise margins, as long as competitors don't undercut them. What is the original cause that drives prices in countries like Switzerland or Norway higher? Is this only due to currency trading and a country's credit rating?
  - s3nnyy 8y ago
    Prices are stable and not really rising in Switzerland, same for salaries. Prices in Germany are rising but salaries are stagnant. Just my observation.

Herodotus38 8y ago

I found the source for those who like me couldn't understand the article (had to click several links). PDF http://www.bignam.org/Publications/BIG_Assessment_report_08b.pdf http://www.bignam.org/Publications/BIG_Assessment_report_08b...

monochromatic 8y ago

Meanwhile, in the real world, UBI is too expensive and unsustainable. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/01/ontarios-new-conservative-government-to-end-basic-income-experiment https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/aug/01/ontarios-new-c...

simonsarris 8y ago

Clickbait from a new website. The "strengthened workforce" if you click through is actually about this paper with the alaska fund: https://www.nber.org/papers/w24312.pdf https://www.nber.org/papers/w24312.pdf Not about basic income per se. 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... (from research on a long BI article I wrote)

RickJWagner 8y ago

A better headline might have been "Basic Income caused crime to drop in Nambia". I think there are a lot of variables that deserve closer study before jumping to conclusions about what might happen in other places.