4 ms·

Surprising that paying people to not work didn't lead to more people working!

• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• zozbot123 8y ago
  That's not what's surprising: if anyone was "paid not to work" in this experiment, it was the control group who stayed on traditional unemployment benefits - and yet they found jobs just as much as the UBI group did!
• notStoicEnough 8y ago
  Er - I'm not a proponent of UBI, but there's an important, but subtle distinction here. UBI is not "paying people not to work." That's more like typical unemployment - when people find jobs, the benefit goes away, creating a disincentive. With UBI, the benefit remains, (theoretically) encouraging risk taking.
• cromulent 8y ago
  It's different to the normal dole in that you can take on part time work without losing the benefit. This is not "paying people not to work" - that is a bad characterization of this trial, but maybe an accurate characterization of the dole. It's saying: Here's your minimum money, go and see what you can do. For a local business owner, it's a big deal to take on a full time employee. If they have UBI, it is not. This makes it attractive and less risky for employers to give a few hours here and there.
• 52-6F-62 8y ago
  It would have been nice if Ontario was permitted to finish our Basic Income pilot project. It would have been a valuable other data point. Sadly it was killed off before we could see any results. The project in progress, however, saw people leave their existing jobs to, get this: go back to school full time so they could improve their lot, have children, or start businesses. [Instead they got the rug pulled out from under them ~1 year into the program by the new government after being told they could rely on the program for 3 years] I know it's a bit of snark, but your take is a bit simplistic and hand-wavy.