3 ms·

The experiment was probably staked with an agenda to show that UBI doesn't work, given the parties in the government and the massive bias in selecting the parti

by yason 8y ago

The experiment was probably staked with an agenda to show that UBI doesn't work, given the parties in the government and the massive bias in selecting the participants. The sample of 2000 people were chosen from a group of unemployed people. I think the criteria for being randomly chosen was having been paid unemployment benefits during some range of dates. So it's not representative of a real UBI at all: the point of UBI isn't to necessarily make things better for the unemployed but, rather, the large group of people who make very little money and barely get along. Cashiers, cleaners, etc who can't live on their earnings, at least in big cities. Or self-employed one-person shops whose income stream is very choppy and who don't make much anyway. Real UBI would be universal so those who are working would get it too -- of course the UBI would increase your income and likely your tax percentage so it would mostly be taxed away from those who do earn a living. The point of UBI is to cut down on bureucracy by removing various individual case-by-case subsidies (but bureaucrats would never vote for that) and make some base level of income predictable and reliable, mostly for people who make less than the lower middle class.

freedomben 8y ago
I agree, but I do think it's important to specify that this is only one UBI proposal (it's the UBI proposal that I favor, that Milton Friedman supported as an alternative to bureaucracy heavy welfare programs). There are plenty of UBI proposals out there that are not universal (you don't get it once you hit a certain income threshold) and that don't replace other welfare programs. These are nontrivial differences that I don't think should be obscured.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > There are plenty of UBI proposals out there that are not universal (you don't get it once you hit a certain income threshold) Means-tested programs like that are, by definition, not unconditional basic income. So there are no UBI proposals that do that, since a proposal that does that is not UBI. > and that don't replace other welfare programs. It's unusual for a UBI proposal not to replace other means-tested benefit programs (though it may not do so immediately absolutely; my preferred implementation would, e.g., merely count as income against other programs qualifications and only shutter each of them completely when the UBI floor had reached above the point where it was possible to qualify for the one of the other programs.)
lusmd 8y ago
> most likely taxed away Yes, most UBI proposals (as designed by economists) tax earnings with little to know exemption. That is, we give you $15k per year, but start taxing you the very first dollar you earn rather than only taxing income about , say, $20k.
- lazyasciiart 8y ago
  But what a waste of effort. Why do they suggest this instead of starting at UBI+$1, at least?
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    UBI itself isn't usually considered taxable income in the proposals, so effectively that's what happens. Personally, I wouldn't increase pre-UBI marginal tax rates for taxable incomes below (pre-UBI median minus UBI), but I'm not a right-wing UBI proponent, and I favor focusing first on taxing capital income equally to labor income as a revenue source.
- zozbot123 8y ago
  > That is, we give you $15k per year, but start taxing you the very first dollar you earn rather than only taxing income about , say, $20k. Yup; even in formal models of "utility-maximizing non-linear taxation", it's actually very common for optimal clawback rates to be fairly high for lowish incomes, because (1) this allows you to have a decent UBI for people who literally don't have any other income, while at the same time (2) any money you claw back early is money you won't have to pay out or claw back higher up in the income distribution, and this allows you to lower marginal tax rates a lot for the bulk of income earners, which is good for incentives - especially long-run incentives on skill acquisition and the like. Think of the break-even point where you're getting nothing on net and have to start paying into the system - you don't want that income level to be too high, or else the whole thing would become both unfair and infeasible to fund! In the real world, UBI is mostly about slashing complex paperwork, and preventing marginal clawback rates as high as 100% or perhaps more(!). But a clawback rate of even 60% or perhaps a bit more, is in fact quite appropriate.
notahacker 8y ago
If the experiment was committed by people with an agenda to show UBI doesn't work (or even by people who were neutral on the idea and genuinely interested in its net impact) they'd have picked a random sample of people to pay $8K per year to whilst increasing their personal taxes by a substantially larger amount, in order to make transfer payments across the whole programme net to zero. Suspect that cohort's impressions of the programme would have been less positive...
Svoka 8y ago
I think experiment totally fine, just “journalists” decided to put smear into title. I would say that this experiment is successful: UBI did not prevent people from finding jobs, just made them less stressed about it. Current title is little clickbaity

by yason 8y ago

freedomben 8y ago

I agree, but I do think it's important to specify that this is only one UBI proposal (it's the UBI proposal that I favor, that Milton Friedman supported as an alternative to bureaucracy heavy welfare programs). There are plenty of UBI proposals out there that are not universal (you don't get it once you hit a certain income threshold) and that don't replace other welfare programs. These are nontrivial differences that I don't think should be obscured.

dragonwriter 8y ago
> There are plenty of UBI proposals out there that are not universal (you don't get it once you hit a certain income threshold) Means-tested programs like that are, by definition, not unconditional basic income. So there are no UBI proposals that do that, since a proposal that does that is not UBI. > and that don't replace other welfare programs. It's unusual for a UBI proposal not to replace other means-tested benefit programs (though it may not do so immediately absolutely; my preferred implementation would, e.g., merely count as income against other programs qualifications and only shutter each of them completely when the UBI floor had reached above the point where it was possible to qualify for the one of the other programs.)

lusmd 8y ago

> most likely taxed away Yes, most UBI proposals (as designed by economists) tax earnings with little to know exemption. That is, we give you $15k per year, but start taxing you the very first dollar you earn rather than only taxing income about , say, $20k.

lazyasciiart 8y ago
But what a waste of effort. Why do they suggest this instead of starting at UBI+$1, at least?
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  UBI itself isn't usually considered taxable income in the proposals, so effectively that's what happens. Personally, I wouldn't increase pre-UBI marginal tax rates for taxable incomes below (pre-UBI median minus UBI), but I'm not a right-wing UBI proponent, and I favor focusing first on taxing capital income equally to labor income as a revenue source.
zozbot123 8y ago
> That is, we give you $15k per year, but start taxing you the very first dollar you earn rather than only taxing income about , say, $20k. Yup; even in formal models of "utility-maximizing non-linear taxation", it's actually very common for optimal clawback rates to be fairly high for lowish incomes, because (1) this allows you to have a decent UBI for people who literally don't have any other income, while at the same time (2) any money you claw back early is money you won't have to pay out or claw back higher up in the income distribution, and this allows you to lower marginal tax rates a lot for the bulk of income earners, which is good for incentives - especially long-run incentives on skill acquisition and the like. Think of the break-even point where you're getting nothing on net and have to start paying into the system - you don't want that income level to be too high, or else the whole thing would become both unfair and infeasible to fund! In the real world, UBI is mostly about slashing complex paperwork, and preventing marginal clawback rates as high as 100% or perhaps more(!). But a clawback rate of even 60% or perhaps a bit more, is in fact quite appropriate.

notahacker 8y ago

If the experiment was committed by people with an agenda to show UBI doesn't work (or even by people who were neutral on the idea and genuinely interested in its net impact) they'd have picked a random sample of people to pay $8K per year to whilst increasing their personal taxes by a substantially larger amount, in order to make transfer payments across the whole programme net to zero. Suspect that cohort's impressions of the programme would have been less positive...

Svoka 8y ago

I think experiment totally fine, just “journalists” decided to put smear into title. I would say that this experiment is successful: UBI did not prevent people from finding jobs, just made them less stressed about it. Current title is little clickbaity