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People kept working, became healthier while on basic income: report

• throwaway13337 7y ago
  The issue I see with basic income is that most money is spent on housing and health care. These two things are supply constrained so it's more of an auction for who can afford them. With basic income, we may just raise the cost of those things. This problem wouldn't appear in a study that distributed to only some individuals. We need to solve the regulatory or otherwise organizational problems of these things to provide real relief. Throwing money at the problem will just move money to a few hands.
  • virgilp 7y ago
    But this is from Canada, don't they have universal healthcare?
    • rogerkirkness 7y ago
      Nowhere has universal healthcare. The basic healthcare is bad, so you can pay more to get better access, or go to the US for actual good care.
      • save_ferris 7y ago
        This isn’t true. Numerous countries have public healthcare systems that service the public successfully, like Singapore. Sure, you can pay to access the private system, which is a nominal amount compared to what we pay in the US. The US ranks among the worst of the first world nations in terms of access to and quality of healthcare[0]. Just look at our hospital borne MRSA infection rates. The idea that the US delivers consistent, quality care across the nation is laughably false. 0: https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/quality/among-11-countries-us-ranks-last-for-health-outcomes-equity-and-quality.html https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/quality/among-11-count...
      • seszett 7y ago
        It seems Americans often believe that, but virtually nobody in Western Europe would even think of going to the US for healthcare. I would assume the same for Canadians. I have no idea if that's actually true, but the widespread opinion is that the ~free (it depends a lot between countries, it's usually simply affordable, rather than free) healthcare here is much better than what a normal person can afford in the US.
        • jasonlotito 7y ago
          > It seems Americans often believe that, but virtually nobody in Western Europe would even think of going to the US for healthcare. I would assume the same for Canadians. This is not true. It's just ignored because people would rather believe that universal healthcare is infallible. We moved from Canada to the US precisely because of healthcare for our children. In Canada, care was non-existant and the private services were expensive. In the US, it was the complete opposite.
          • SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
            Do your children have special needs? It never even crossed my mind to move to the United States. I imagine given my profession I could get a job with decent benefits, but I can't imagine wanting to move to the states for the health care, unless I had a special requirement.
            • jasonlotito 7y ago
              > Do your children have special needs? Autism. The "care" provided in Canada is horrid. > I imagine given my profession I could get a job with decent benefits, This is not needed. The services we benefit from our state run, not based on my job.
          • allannienhuis 7y ago
            universal health care has never meant that every possible heath care need is met without cost. It means that access to the covered services is universally available. Which of course isn't true in an absolute sense (residency requirements etc), but is true in most practical senses.
    • 33degrees 7y ago
      Yes, and many municipalities have rent regulations
      • ToFundorNot 7y ago
        Some do, most are very basic outside of Quebec, and even then, I can't remember the last time a tenant sued an operator because they illegally increased the rent in Quebec (the new tenant would need the old tenants lease, plus proof that the increase wasn't justified).
      • thisisnico 7y ago
        Gov' of ontario has rent control.
    • jasonlotito 7y ago
      > universal healthcare That doesn't mean what you think it means. There are many things not covered or not covered practically that you would want to pay for private healthcare. e.g. You can wait years for services, or you can pay a few thousand a month and get it sooner. This is critical for things that necessitate early intervention. Wait too long, and when the government does finally come around to being able to provide services, it's already too late, and because the patient is too old, they are no longer eligible for the services they should have received in the first place. I speak from personal experience.
      • allannienhuis 7y ago
        I doubt your experience is the norm. The system isn't perfect - there's definitely gaps or things I think should be covered (eg dental), and I know everyone's experience is different, but as a counter example I've never felt the need or desire to pay for private healthcare either (aside from not-covered dental) on demand or with private insurance, and I don't know any of my family that do either. (BC resident) The system has been there when we've needed it, including access to preventative care like cancer screening programs.
        • jasonlotito 7y ago
          > I doubt your experience is the norm For children with autism it is the norm. Sorry, but what they did to my children was shameful.
      • frandroid 7y ago
        > You can wait years for services *in some rare cases
        • jasonlotito 7y ago
          No, these aren't rare cases. If you have certain not-uncommon conditions, you can wait years for services. Please don't presume to put words in my mouth again.
    • allannienhuis 7y ago
      universal more-or-less free _access_ to basic (generally good in my opinion) care. But that doesn't include dental or prescriptions (with some exceptions/subsidies), for most people. It's surprising to see them list it as a significant part of someone's budget though. Perhaps I'm not old and sick enough (yet!) to relate :).
  • pkilgore 7y ago
    > most money is spent on housing and health care In Canada? Would not an increase in demand for such things lead to a corresponding increase in supply? Or is there something I don't know about supply restrictions in Canada?
    • angstrom 7y ago
      Yes. Everytime someone says the price will just go up to match it's like some imaginary world where the one thing you can't apply supply/demand is the welfare of people. Housing is not fixed and healthcare is a function of prevention which is best served by proactive measures instead of reactive which are generally more expensive. We can actually save money by not being so inefficient with the capital in the first place.
    • pingyong 7y ago
      Coming from Germany (not Canada, but maybe closer to Canada than the US in terms of spending): Housing absolutely, health care probably not for most people. But yeah, if you live on full time minimum wage here that's ~1200€ per month, of which probably 500-800 depending on where you live will go to rent. And if it's 800, it would probably be 1800 if everyone got 1000€ per month. So in that sense, he might be right. On the other hand some people just might actually quit their job with 1000€ per month and live somewhere further away from cities, since they don't have to live there to work. And maybe that would incentivize employers to try to create more work outside cities. Seems almost impossible to really predict the large scale effects here.
      • shkkmo 7y ago
        At the bare minimum, if the monthly income from rental properties doubled, I suspect that would have a major impact on housing development. It all depends on why development isn't happening, but I have a really hard time imagining that supply would not increase even if the major restrictions are due to other factors than development costs.
        • pingyong 7y ago
  • immawizard 7y ago
    I disagree on the housing point. With basic income, people who can’t afford housing in expensive areas would move to towns with cheap housing/land but less lucrative/efficient work. There’s no housing shortage in rural areas.
    • new_realist 7y ago
      Why doesn’t that happen today?
      • mrkurt 7y ago
        Moving is expensive and disruptive.
      • burkaman 7y ago
        Because moving itself is expensive, and you can't just move and automatically have a new job. With basic income, you can afford to move, and don't have to worry too much about the time you'll spend looking for a new job.
      • dx87 7y ago
        Because there isn't much work if you live there. If you had UBI though, that wouldn't matter, so you could just live in a rural area for cheap.
        • BurningFrog 7y ago
          This of course directly contradicts the claim that people will keep working with UBI.
          • deleted 7y ago
            [deleted]
          • saint_fiasco 7y ago
            If they like their current house they'll work hard to pay for it. If they can't find a job or don't like their current home that much they can use their UBI to move and make room for a more productive citizen to move into the city. This makes the allocation of housing more efficient.
  • snarf21 7y ago
    You are right, this is under-discussed. Look at what happened to higher education with all the "free" money. We don't want slumlords just raising prices to capture this money. It could be that if you if you are in a program like this that the rent have to be regulated based on size and location. In my opinion, UBI can never really work, but there is no reason we can't reduce/eliminate taxes on the poor to increase their standard of living.
    • eru 7y ago
      Land value tax would be the way to go. Regulating the rent would be about as useful and effective as existing rent control schemes.. With a land value tax, the rent would still go up, but the increase would mostly be recycled back into tax take. (And you can use that tax take to eg finance (part of) the UBI.)
      • sokoloff 7y ago
        If you intend to tax away all the advantages of providing additional housing supply, I’d expect smart landlords to not increase housing supply.
        • eru 7y ago
          Yes, that's a big part of why rent control doesn't work well. A land value tax is levied on the value of the unimproved land in a specific plot. Whether you leave the land fallow or build 30 storeys of luxury condominiums on it, the amount of dollars you have to pay in taxes doesn't change. So the (additional) housing supply is completely untaxed. What is taxed however is the following: If the town gets a new highway or airport, and that raises land prices, that gets taxed. Same for a UBI. (To pre-empt the next discussion: it's not completely trivial to separate the value of the building from the value of the land. But it can be done. Insurance companies do it routinely. And there are a variety of strategies to make the assessment that are hard to game or cheat.)
    • pietrovismara 7y ago
      Wouldn't reducing/eliminating taxes have the same exact effect as an UBI? More money in people's pockets. By following your logic no form of welfare can work.
  • eru 7y ago
    Yes. And that's why any basic income would need to come with a land value tax.
  • camelNotation 7y ago
    If you are guaranteed income, you aren't bound to specific regions or locations. You can move to places with cheaper land and healthcare systems with less overcrowding. You can work less lucrative jobs in those locations and find customers for your work because everyone including the local residents of those rural areas, will have new money to spend. Local regions would see an influx in cash, allowing for small businesses to be reborn in rural areas and spreading the economy out and away from coastal metro areas.
    • naravara 7y ago
      >If you are guaranteed income, you aren't bound to specific regions or locations. Not disputing this, but there are some caveats that would need to be true for this hypothesis to hold. The main one being that people's reluctance to move comes down largely to career opportunities and moving expenses rather than access to amenities or proximity to family/community.
      • camelNotation 7y ago
        The primary reason people leave rural areas and move to large metropolitan areas is work. Most people in rural areas are already near their families, that's why they are there to begin with.
    • throwaway894345 7y ago
      This might be a bug rather than a feature for a lot of people. Many people want humanity to concentrate in urban areas because it is better for the environment. Others complain about urbanites' tax dollars paying for rural roads (which is effectively the scenario you're describing, even if those tax dollars are labeled "UBI" and routed through rural citizens' bank accounts first). Still others see rural Americans as their political adversaries. (Note that this is just an observation; not a value judgment)
      • dtech 7y ago
        More "tax dollars" going to rural roads because more people live there is incomparable with a policy maker deciding that more budget should go there.
  • AnthonyMouse 7y ago
    > With basic income, we may just raise the cost of those things. The problem with this argument is that it proves too much. It's true of anything that causes the poor to have more money. Lower unemployment, higher wages, anything. Heck, it's true of lower healthcare costs, because people would have more money for housing, or vice versa. Housing costs and healthcare costs are problems, but they're independent problems. On top of that, you're assuming the UBI actually results in the poor getting more assistance rather than merely different assistance. Right now there are explicit subsidies for housing and healthcare. If they get replaced with a UBI in the same amount, maybe people just use it to buy housing and healthcare anyway -- but maybe some of them don't, and that causes those prices to go down.
    • whatshisface 7y ago
      >The problem with this argument is that it proves too much. It's true of anything that causes the poor to have more money. Lower unemployment would be associated with a greater availability of goods and services, so that would get it out of the trap. Higher wages would also be associated with a supply increase if they came with increased productivity, but if you raised the minimum wage then prices of low-end products might actually go up. Of course, the typical supply and demand picture predicts both an increase in price and an increase in volume if the demand curve gets "richer," so you are not entirely off the mark, although your argument is not valid.
      • SolaceQuantum 7y ago
        Employment cannot solve poverty problems for the disabled, the sick, the people taking care of their children/parents/siblings/etc, or the people who are better served spending the time in getting a degree.
        • xyzzyz 7y ago
          Employment cannot solve poverty problems for the disabled Of course it can. Why, in the US, almost a million of disabled people stopped being disabled and entered employment in recent few years, because of good economy: https://twitter.com/ernietedeschi/status/1230489362883678210 https://twitter.com/ernietedeschi/status/1230489362883678210 The truth is that millions of people on disability in the US aren't actually so disabled that they cannot work: as the above shows, they will work if they consider the employment conditions good enough. Yes, there are plenty of disabled people who really cannot work, but majority of disability in the US is created, not alleviated by Social Security. One needs to remember that by creating programs to help poor and disabled, along with helping poor and disabled, one also creates more poor and disabled.
  • laughingman2 7y ago
    Wouldn't Land Value Tax solve the housing problem?
  • jimbokun 7y ago
    > These two things are supply constrained Health care yes, housing, no. It's possible to build more housing to meet demand, or for people to move to balance supply/demand vs. prevailing wages. Or to have a smaller home or more room mates. Housing is often constrained because of real estate owners controlling the political process and eliminating new construction to keep the value of their property high. Not due to economics.
    • rayvd 7y ago
      Hence GP's comment about solving at the regulatory level. Housing is artificially supply constrained.
      • 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 7y ago
        Especially in places where cost of living is high.
    • naravara 7y ago
      >Health care yes, housing, no. It's possible to build more housing to meet demand, or for people to move to balance supply/demand vs. prevailing wages. Or to have a smaller home or more room mates. Why do you think healthcare is constrained? The same way housing supply is constrained by zoning regulations and stuff, healthcare supply is constrained by slow diffusion of IP, restrictive immigration policies, inadequate numbers of medical school and residency slots, and restrictive occupational licensing for day-to-day medical care. It is possible to expand access to care to meet demand, but in the USA we have a system that prioritizes high fees for doctors and hospitals, high returns to student loan providers (medical school debt), and high returns to health insurance providers above access and supply.
  • nabla9 7y ago
    Here in Finland the UBI discussion is completely different from what is in the US. Here UBI hast to come in addition to housing allowance, free healthcare and education. Realistic UBI would be roughly the size of minimum guaranteed pension. The cost: Microsimulation models have shown that it can be cost neutral. In current systems effective marginal tax rates are higher for poor people than they are for the middle class or the rich in both US, Finland and probably most other developed countries. UBI or negative income tax or something similar is needed to solve this problem.
  • mc32 7y ago
    Would need-based public housing + reduced UBI work better then?
  • shkkmo 7y ago
    If people have the money to get care when they need it, it may actually reduce demand for care since we can catch problems and solve them before they end up so critical that people go to the ER.
  • samstave 7y ago
    The issue i see with basic taxes is that most of that money is spent on the military.
  • Cthulhu_ 7y ago
    This is a concern I have as well; if everyone has the same income, nobody has? I'm afraid it would just bump inflation by an X amount. If everyone's base income goes up by 10% due to basic income, wouldn't that just be offset by prices going up 10% because everyone can afford that 10% anyway? Plus, housing prices are already ridiculous and still climbing; it's at a point now where people need an income in addition to their normal wages to be able to get a house.
    • chillacy 7y ago
      It depends if the market is demand-side or supply-side constrained. If everyone had more money and wanted a new TV, TV manufacturers would just spin up production to meet demand over time. If everyone needs a house and housing is restricted by zoning then the price will go up. One reason basic income might sidestep the housing issue is that unlike city jobs, if a basic income is portable then it makes it easier to avoid living in the city, reducing competition for housing. That's also a good reason against making the basic income dependent on location (e.g. you get paid more in NYC than Reno), since that would just incentivize people to flock to cities. Also if that seems hand wave-y to you, consider that in Alaska when the oil money goes out, stores usually have sales, lowering their prices to compete for customers.
  • loa_in_ 7y ago
    People providing those things wouldn't need as much as they do now.
  • secondbreakfast 7y ago
    I haven't heard a compelling reason as to why the basic reality you point out wouldn't be true with UBI. It applies more to housing than to healthcare (we'd be delighted to build more hospitals and hire more nurses, but we can't make Manhattan bigger). Georgism at work. Places with lower building regulations and higher property taxes would likely fare better with UBI than places with locked housing supply and extreme building regulation, such as San Francisco. If it was possible to build more housing, then I'd expect more housing to get built with UBI and rents to not go crazy. Otherwise, we're just pumping more steam into a turbine...
  • diffeomorphism 7y ago
    > With basic income, we may just raise the cost of those things. Why? Basic income does not just magically generate money out of thin air. Right now you earn $4000(salary) per month. With UBI you earn $3000(salary) + $1000 (UBI) per month. Why should any cost increase? "But then I would work less, since I can comfortably live on $1000 per month". Yeah, and why are you not doing that right now?
    • chillacy 7y ago
      With basic income you make $4000 + $1000, which removes the discontinuities associated with means testing. Whether increased taxes used to pay for the UBI end up eating up your UBI depends on the plan and how much you make/spend. Some UBI proposals are paid for with a wealth tax, others with a consumption tax, others by cutting most of the existing programs). They usually end up being redistributive in the grand scheme.
      • diffeomorphism 7y ago
        > With basic income you make $4000 + $1000, which removes the discontinuities associated with means testing. No, you don't. It is completely unrealistic to assume that UBI won't effect salaries in any way. Of course this is hard to test in a small scale study, but "you introduce UBI and everything else stays exactly the same" make no sense.
        • chillacy 7y ago
          It's equally unrealistic to assume that UBI will exactly affect salaries by canceling them out. You're right that there will be effects, and they're likely to be dependent on job as well. For instance basic income may mean salaries go up for the jobs nobody wants to do as people are given an alternative, while salaries go down for jobs that are intrinsically motivating. I can't say for certainty though. My best guess is that it's going to be better than the hodgepodge of social welfare (and its complex effects) we have today.
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  • Ericson2314 7y ago
    So the problem is in a highly unequal society, "what the market will bare" can leave these things out of reach of most people. With basic income, yes some things can cost more, but also yes the spread of what people can pay is less. Basically, income goes up, and prices go up, but income goes up more, and eventually one reaches a fixed point. For basic goods, this should happen sooner; e.g. the rich aren't going to just buy more flour. Housing is interesting in that currently being in a decent job market makes the housing luxurious. This is absurd. Basic income doesn't address the cost disease of luxury good, but by breaking "employed <==> surviving", it will make the other housing more attractive. Combine that with carbon tax so we don't just get endless sprawl, and then we should be set.
• RegnisGnaw 7y ago
  My issue, and I only have one, with these pilot projects for basic income is that its not realistic. The people in the project know that it will end at a fixed time, so their actions are different compared to what would happen in a BI/UBI system.
  • smileysteve 7y ago
    A fixed time before renewal is fairly common for legislation though; For instance, many of the tax cuts expire in 2025; Or the Bush capital gains cuts had to be renewed for 10 years. One question about expiration dates; are study participants more likely to take caution them than general populace.
  • kaffeemitsahne 7y ago
    Yes, this is the glaring flaw in all of them as far as I've seen. On the other hand, who knows how long UBI would stay in place in a democratic country? It might get voted out in the next election, too.
    • Ididntdothis 7y ago
      People are already complaining about taxes too high and lazy welfare recipients. With UBI this would get even worse and I agree that most likely it would get voted out very quickly. If we can’t even get universal health care, robust social safety net or secure retirement going without political fights, forget UBI.
      • _bxg1 7y ago
        The argument for UBI in place of those other things is that it's extremely simple. Legislatively, bureaucratically, etc. Just give people more money to offset all of these systems that are too expensive. Simpler also means cheaper to implement. It does avoid dealing with the root problems in some sense, but it's certainly elegant.
        • Ididntdothis 7y ago
• luckylion 7y ago
  These studies feel like "free energy machines" that totally work as long as they are plugged into a wall socket, that is: as long as the budget doesn't come from the system itself, you're not testing under anything close to real world conditions. Otherwise, the results aren't surprising to me. I know very few people that wouldn't keep/be working if they had a UBI (and the ones that wouldn't aren't really working now), but I also know very few people that would keep their current job. UBI, if sustained and sustainable, should work similar to a roaring economy with full employment in that regard: if you want somebody to work in the sewers or garbage collection, you'll have to pay them well.
• ilikehurdles 7y ago
  I think it's important to study the details of different implementations before making any conclusions, positive or negative, about basic income. Yeah, one of the challenges with a test like this is knowing there's a finite end date. Another aspect that is often ignored in these discussions is the question of whether recipients continue to be eligible for basic social safety net type of services. I've heard the libertarian approach to basic income is essentially a replacement for the services we consider "welfare", and that's what we're seeing out of the proposal in California where recipients receiving other assistance would be ineligible for this kind of income. Medicaid, for one, is a strike against eligibility. I haven't looked into Ontario's test in detail, but I doubt the recipients gave up their single-payer healthcare to receive basic income. Also makes me think that BI is only so popular because we rarely dive into the details of what happens to existing social programs, a question that will surely turn the UI/BI discussion more divisive.
• ajsnigrutin 7y ago
  > The three-year, $150-million program Three year. Would you quit your job, and move somewhere cheaper if you knew the money will run out after three years, and you'll have a three year gap in your CV? Are there really no lottery winners winning lifetime monthly payouts to study? Because, if you gave me 5x average earnings for three years, I wouldn't quit my job. But if you guaranteed the money for the rest of my life, i'd pursue different activities (fun, good for me, but non-productive for society).
  • falcolas 7y ago
    I'd use 3 years to unapologetically recover from the daily grind that is working daily, and figure out what I really wanted to do. It would make for a great opportunity to figure out and build skills for what I want to do in the next phase of my life. A 3 year gap (call it a sabbatical and get all kinds of kudos for being so brave) isn't that hard to overcome, if you have the required skills.
  • dahart 7y ago
    > Are there really no lottery winners winning lifetime monthly payouts to study? There are a bunch, but that’s complicated and notoriously politicized because people with agendas spin the results. For example, there’s a famous and widely cited study of 35,000 lottery winners in Florida where the headlines say almost everyone spent all their winnings after 5 years, and that bankruptcy rates went up after 2 years. It’s misleading because the winners were $150k or less, you’d expect that to be gone after 5 years, and because backruptcy rates went down for the first two years, and then returned to normal. Googling it right now, I’m actually seeing a lot of headlines like “85% of lottery winners kept their jobs” and “study finds lottery winners are happier”. > if you gave me 5x average earnings for three years, I wouldn’t quit my job. But if you guaranteed the money for the rest of my life, I’d pursue different activities I’m not sure why... 5x for me would be life-changing. That’s 15 years’ salary, or 12 years’ savings, without making lifestyle changes. I would absolutely use that money to re-evaluate and try some new things.
  • KaoruAoiShiho 7y ago
    What about guaranteed 1/4 average earnings for life? Would you still quit your job then? It's a rhetorical question the answer is obviously no, most people would still keep working just now have better negotiating power and flexibility.
• jariel 7y ago
  So most people 'kept working' but 25% quit, I think that kind of validates that a lot of people will quit, which is the concern. 25% is a lot. It'd be interesting to see numbers from those who were not employed, i.e. how many gained employment. The bits about 'having to drop future plans' isn't fair. Of course, people will have to adjust after losing a major source of income.
  • giarc 7y ago
    That popped out at me as well. I'd like to see the actual report because 25% of people stopping work is a big deal. However, it appears the response rate of the survey was only 217 of 4000 (5%) which isn't good. Typically when you have large population level studies like this, you have staff embedded in the town and would conduct telephone interviews with all participants. I wonder if the cancellation of the project meant they could only afford an online survey.
    • 52-6F-62 7y ago
      The program was fully designed and budgeted. The new government scrapped it unilaterally after campaigning on keeping it saying "it's not showing good results"—but the study had barely begun! Any issues with reporting are unfounded since the program wasn't able to run as designed.
  • winstonewert 7y ago
    wow, that's just dishonest reporting.
  • SirLotsaLocks 7y ago
    to be fair, a lot of people are stuck in jobs that don't give them the benefits they want, don't pay them enough, or just don't suit them very well but they can't quit and get a new job because they aren't paid enough for that. UBI gives people a chance to quit and not immediately be on the streets. This also creates more competition for employers to win over employees instead of creating wage-slaves. I doubt that's what everybody who quit here did, but it is part of the idea of UBI.
• williesleg 7y ago
  Bring it on, I can't wait for my first check! Who's gonna pay for it? You are, not me!
• jimbokun 7y ago
  > The project worked by recruiting low-income people and couples, offering them a fixed payment with no strings attached that worked out to approximately $17,000 for individuals and $24,000 for couples. Why discriminate so heavily against couples? It creates every incentive to lie about your relationship status. Or to avoid sharing a household altogether, creating greater economic inefficiencies and less built in social support of having a partner.
  • pjc50 7y ago
    Yeah, that's a means test and breahes the "universal" principle.
    • vzidex 7y ago
      You've hit the nail on the head - means testing is the killer of any social program. Means testing makes social programs challenging to access and frustrating to use, leading to them being unpopular and unsuccessful.
    • 52-6F-62 7y ago
      The program was never a universal basic income, just a basic income pilot. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontario_Basic_Income_Pilot_Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontario_Basic_Income_Pilot_Pro...
  • hadiz 7y ago
    It's because if you're in a relationship, you're considered a more valuable member of the society. Because it signals that someone has selected you to be around for a prolonged amount of time. Being single is more expensive in a big city.
    • swebs 7y ago
      It is punishing couples, not rewarding them. The amount given to two single people is $34,000. The amount given to two people in a relationship is $24,000.
• EGreg 7y ago
  If you want to make UBI a reality, instead of just talking about it for 50 years, we have to do it from the bottom up. I supported Yang, my company Qbix even built https://yang2020.app https://yang2020.app for him. But he didn’t get anywhere. We have a project to build UBI from the bottom up, using cryptocurrencies for communities - including local townships and cities like Stockton. Local currencies already exist, including casino chips, disney dollars, berkshares, bristol pounds etc. This just puts them on a blockchain (actually, a new architecture we designed that’s far faster than blockchain). If you are really interested, or want to get involved in some way to make it a reality, I suggest to do the following: 1. Visit https://intercoin.org/feature/ubi https://intercoin.org/feature/ubi and fill out the form 2. Visit https://community.intercoin.org https://community.intercoin.org and participate Or if you are a Javascript developer, contact me. My email is “greg” at that domain, intercoin.org
  • WilliamEdward 7y ago
    What's to stop UBI from eating into other welfare checks? Or what's stopping renters from simply raising rent 1000 dollars?
    • chillacy 7y ago
      > from eating into other welfare checks I think that's the point for most UBI proposals. The most cash-like welfare programs are TANF and SNAP, they pay out on the order of $250 (depending on state), are temporary, hard to obtain, always under danger of being cut, etc. UBI is an appealing replacement that's universal (more resistant to cuts because it's more popular), pays out more, has no discontinuities which result in welfare traps, etc. The goal should not be to increase welfare recipients but to increase quality of life and social outcomes. For instance a jobs program like the Green New Deal would probably "eat into welfare checks" as people become ineligible through earnings.
• dahart 7y ago
  I’m glad there are experiments like this actually happening for any amount of time. It would be great to see the experiment run it’s full course, but it’s maybe more surprising to me that it got funded, rather than that it got cancelled. Thinking about how contentious and political funding can be for things we know we need, like schools, it’s not very surprising that something expensive and not 100% required ends up on the chopping block. What do you think it would realistically take to be able to fund UBI (or other experiments) without running the risk of being cancelled? How could it be set up so that next year’s political opponent doesn’t have the ability to axe a project to make themselves look good?
• simonsarris 7y ago
  This is very misleading reporting. First: All studies so far show a pretty consistent ~10% work disincentive. This is what all the detractors say when they say it disincentivizes work. So how about this one? From actually reading the study's conclusion: > Slightly less than one-fifth were employed before but unemployed during the pilot (17%) So even worse than what we've seen so far. 17% dropping out of the labor market when its a short-term study is huge. For the ~10% figure, Chris Stucchio has a fairly succinct roundup of the work disincentive of other studies so far: https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2019/basic_income_reduces_employment.html https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2019/basic_income_reduces... ~~~ Personal opinion: If you consider multi-generational entrenchments of poverty as its own problem, worth serious merit, then the work disincentive could be a disaster. In UBI long run, the children of parents who have never worked are probably going to be at a large disadvantage. I think its already a problem today for children of SSI recipient parents (even compared to children of SSDI parents), but its not easy to prove.
  • daemonk 7y ago
    What are the demographics of those that dropped out of the work force? Didn't some UBI studies observe that while there are people that dropped out of the workforce, these people consisted of mothers that can now go back to child rearing or younger people that can now pursue an education?
    • simonsarris 7y ago
      It is extremely unfortunate but studies like this are almost always done by people with somewhat close-ended goals. This research in this one is mostly self reports, and then, mostly "did free money make you feel better?" They are not recording, or interested in recording, the nature of who dropped out of the workforce and why, even though that seems like far more important, and somewhat more empirical, information.
      • 52-6F-62 7y ago
        In your criticism you are missing some crucial details surrounding this report. This is essentially scrounging to make the most out of what was a single, but fully budgeted, study on BI with the intention of running more studies. The study was cancelled by the incoming government out of spite. All people who set up plans, knowing the full length of the study beforehand were suddenly tossed out of the program and it was just down, including any study occurring. They're trying to gather what and any information they can from the program that wasn't even given the chance to run to completion. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/basic-income-pilot-project-ford-cancel-1.4771343 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/basic-income-pilot-project-fo...
• winstonewert 7y ago
  I don't think this fits the definition of basic income. > Whatever income participants earned was deducted from their basic income at 50 per cent That is equivalent to a massive 50% tax rate on every dollar earned. It seems to me the whole point of UBI is that its universal and not conditional on how much you earn otherwise.
  • vzidex 7y ago
    Yup, this combined with the difference in income for couples vs. individuals mentioned by another commented smells to me like the program had a lot of means testing built in. I wouldn't be surprised if this skewed the results of the experiment in ways that reflect badly on it.
  • jonny_eh 7y ago
    This would further disincentivize work.
    • fenwick67 7y ago
      UBI proponents would say that having welfare taper is bad for work incentive, since you get less welfare money if you work.
  • 52-6F-62 7y ago
    I don't believe the pilot program was ever deigned to be a universal basic income.
  • syrrim 7y ago
    How do you expect UBI to be funded? Either taxes or wars, and we haven't invested very much in our army.
    • winstonewert 7y ago
      UBI would be funded by taxes, duh. But the funding mechanism isn't at issue here. The point is that for every dollar earned the participants lost 50 cents due to a decrease in support from the basic income. That's a massive disincentive to work.
• pingyong 7y ago
  I really, really like the idea of UBI. However, some napkin math: In the US, with ~250 million people being eligible, a $1000 UBI would cost ~$3 trillion. That's almost the entire budget of the US. How is this even remotely realistic right now? Even if you can cut other spending in half due to it, you'd need an additional $1.5 trillion in "income" essentially. Is that something that would even be possible? How many rich people are there to tax?
  • adrr 7y ago
    Doesn’t Alaska have basic income? How do they afford it?
    • lonelappde 7y ago
      Small population and they sell oil.
    • mcv 7y ago
      Oil revenue. It's not enough to live on, though.
    • stronglikedan 7y ago
      Possibly a simplified answer, but the way I understand it is that the citizens own the oil rights, and get a cut.
      • adrr 7y ago
        That’s way it’s funded just Norway funds their social programs from oil revenues and tosses the extra in their sovereign wealth fund like Saudi Arabia. Alaska is listed on the wiki page for basic income.
    • variaga 7y ago
      Briefly, the state of Alaska owns the oilfields in Alaska and makes money from selling the oil. That money is then partially disbursed to people living in the state. The actual payment has varied over time (with oil prices, mostly), peaking at $3269/person/year in 2008 but was only $878/person/year in 2012. https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/alaska-model-citizens-income-in-practice/ https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/alaska-mode... [former Alaska resident]
• timwaagh 7y ago
  "nearly three-quarters of respondents who were working when the pilot project began kept at it despite receiving basic income." So can we infer that 25% of those working chose to actually quit full time? I think it's safe to say this much reduction in labor availability is not the result the government was hoping for. The state is right, maybe not to call it off prematurely but if these figures would have been the same after the trial the conclusion would have been: they need to look for another policy. A good 'normal' social security policy would result in 0 people quitting and a lot of people getting employed. That's the kind of result the government should want to see before even considering a change.
  • Matumio 7y ago
    I really don't like using employment as the only valid measure of success. See also David Graeber's "Bullshit Jobs" essay. Government could always create jobs, directly or indirectly, and force the unemployed into them, producing something for which there isn't really a demand. Why were those people quitting their jobs? What were they doing instead? Were they better off? How much did it cost to get those improvements, compared to other ways to get them?
    • timwaagh 7y ago
      People quitting their jobs means a not-quite corresponding economic decline because labor productivity can't change in the short term (not quite because these are lower-productivity jobs). Which means less taxes and thus less money to fund programs like this. But more importantly in an import-free economy, less stuff gets produced so everyone would have to make do with less. That's why it's generally considered important.
• burlesona 7y ago
  Basic income makes sense to me as a more effective implementation of welfare, but I personally strongly prefer the negative income tax implementation: https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/negative-income-tax-explained https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/negative-incom... That seems to address many of the concerns that people are raising in this thread. Namely, it doesn’t require you to work, but ensures that you never have a disincentive to work either.
  • lonelappde 7y ago
    Money is fungible. UBI + progressive income tax is the same as negative income tax plus UBI to cover people with 0 income. The parameters matter not the name of the model. Also we already have EITC negative income tax in US. So negative income tax is either irrelevant rewording or cruel to people who can't work.
  • contravariant 7y ago
    Mathematically they're entirely equivalent. Although I'd be inclined to agree that negative income tax might be the better model, as it gives the most direct control over the net-income vs gross-income curve, and it's the properties of that curve that drives people's behaviour. For instance the steepness of the curve indicates how much someone is incentivized to earn more (ideally you'd want this to decrease strictly monotonically as people earn more, but somehow this is rather controversial). And its curvature dictates whether a stable or unstable income incurs more tax (this property doesn't seem to be used much but it's still interesting). One of the problems with income dependent welfare is that it messes up the lower end of the curve, making its slope smaller or even negative. In the worst case it provides a financial barrier to people on welfare to re-enter the work force.
  • chillacy 7y ago
    They can be made the same: https://taxfoundation.org/universal-basic-income-ubi-means-tested-transfers/ https://taxfoundation.org/universal-basic-income-ubi-means-t... I think UBI has advantages in its universality, where it's not perceived as a rich to poor transfer (even though it really is) and everyone feels they benefit from the program (even though some people don't).
• onetimeusename 7y ago
  The basic income experiment improved motivation to find a higher paying job for both employed and unemployed members but > almost three-quarters of the respondents who were employed six months before receiving basic income were still working while receiving basic income. Nearly 80 percent of the respondents who were previously unemployed remained without work during the pilot. About 20 percent found employment. So the majority of unemployed people stayed unemployed. Of the people employed prior to the pilot, about 23% became unemployed although in some cases it may have been to pursue more education. > The unemployed group were three times more likely to report their general health had declined during the pilot as compared to the employed group. The majority of the unemployed group reported improved general health but a significant portion of the unemployed group became worse off during the pilot. The majority of participants did report improved well-being through a survey. The survey asked questions about general health, mental health, and financial well-being among others. If the cost was $150,000,000 for 4,000 people for 3 years, the cost per year should be approx $50,000,000. The articles states there are 2,000,000 people in poverty in the Ontario province so this program, if scaled up to all those in poverty, would be expected to cost $25,000,000,000 per year from simply scaling up the cost 500x.
• jl6 7y ago
  Are trust fund kids an example of what happens when people are given an unconditional income?
  • lonelappde 7y ago
    No because their income it not Basic.
• hinkley 7y ago
  I want UBI and a 30-32 hour work week, so I guess I’m proposing a 20% “disincentivization”. Would fewer people in the workforce really be so bad? What’s the carbon and water footprint of all of these goods we really don’t need but we bust our humps for anyway? At this point, more robots don’t mean more of the stuff we need. they mean more stuff we don't need.
  • luxuryballs 7y ago
    You can already have a 30 hour work week if you want to do contract or part-time work, but for a full-time position you’d be competing with companies who still work 40-50 hour weeks so I don’t think there’s much practical opportunity here.
    • regularfry 7y ago
      You're assuming the additional 10-20 hours is a meaningful competitive advantage. That's not a given.
      • Proziam 7y ago
        Anecdote incoming. I work double full time and have done so for approaching a decade. It's definitely proven to be a significant competitive advantage in my case. I don't know too many folks who could have comfortably retired in their 20s (that didn't grow up with generational wealth). Still, I've seen many folks in esports do crazy workloads and get nowhere fast. So there's more to the formula than just pouring in more effort.
        • munk-a 7y ago
          I mean, congrats, but if you retired comfortably in your 20s you got crazy lucky - that kind of rapid wealth acquisition isn't skill based. I used to work in the game industry getting peanuts for the same hours, we made amazing things in crunch that I am proud of, but when we started to scale back hours our product got even better because we lowered the stress and increased the healthiness of our workplace.
• exabrial 7y ago
  The end does not justify the means. Forcibly removing someone's money and transferring it to another person can never be justified. Tax-funded UBI is theft, slavery, and extortion. However, if a billionaire wishes to privately sponsor UBI, this is a completely different story in charity and example that should be regarded. It's important to differentiate between the two, but unfortunately most UBI schemes refer to extortion, not charity.
  • vzidex 7y ago
    > Forcibly removing someone's money and transferring it to another person can never be justified Except that almost everything government does involves removing someone's money - through taxes - and transferring it to another person - through social programs (including public school, building infrastructure), social programs, paying government employees, etc. > If a billionaire wishes to privately sponsor UBI... Extending this to include the social programs listed above: gee I can't wait to lick a billionaire's boots and do the hokey-pokey to be allowed to drive on their roads, have my burning house saved by their private firefighters, and send my kids to the schools they own.
  • Seenso 7y ago
    > Tax-funded UBI is theft, slavery, and extortion. Our law creates both property rights and taxes. Taxes aren't theft because, by law, that money is actually the government's property. If you want individualistically overrule our law to make taxes theft, I might as well do the same to make your property mine.
    • read_if_gay_ 7y ago
      The notion of property rights is not created by the law, but a law of nature, a concept intuitively understood by human beings. The same goes for theft. The law only adopted these concepts, but it created taxes. It is not intuitively obvious that some entity is entitled to a percentage of the money you're earning. You can change the law any way you want, but you're not changing the underlying laws of nature, and they allow you to make a case that taxes are theft. Whether that's actually true is then of course debatable and depends on a lot of variables, but saying that someone else's property should arbitrarily be yours immediately contradicts those fundamental laws.
• Cthulhu_ 7y ago
  From my personal point of view, basic income SHOULD disincentivise work; it's a boost for society, health, well-being, children, etc. Because in the current economy, a lot of people have to work unreasonable hours, multiple jobs, and have all people in a family work to make ends meet, at the cost of personal health and well-being, personal time, having children at all or having more children, getting married and buying a house, etc. Right now I'm stressed because I'm earning less than I spend, my girlfriend is stressed because she doesn't have a job yet and due to personal reasons may find it hard to get, keep, and work enough hours at a job, etc. If she earned a basic income we'd be out of the woods already. If I then also earned one on top of my job we'd be VERY comfortable. (And keep in mind I would already pay for both of our basic incomes through the income taxes I'm paying at the moment. I'm happily paying taxes because other people paying taxes put me through college and into my current job)
  • sabarn01 7y ago
    People should fear being destitute its the natural human condition. Learning skills is the only way to make wealth.
    • nennes 7y ago
      That's a common argument to justify inequality. If learning is the key, then why is there such a huge income disparity between men and women? Are women lazy and don't learn?
      • toolz 7y ago
        What you're arguing for is equity, not equality. We already have equal opportunity. As for the gender wage gap, if women are so disadvantaged - exactly how do they make up 85% of consumer spending?
        • nennes 7y ago
          How do we have equal opportunity? Can you point me towards evidence of this? I guess you're not arguing about the gender wage gap, as it's a well documented fact. What is the point you're trying to make?
• Proven 7y ago
  Complete nonsense.
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• swebs 7y ago
  >The report shows nearly three-quarters of respondents who were working when the pilot project began kept at it despite receiving basic income. In other words, over 25% of them stopped working. This is a pretty big contradiction to the title.
• charlus 7y ago
  As a side point - whatever happened to the YC research basic income study? After great fanfare 4 years ago, it's been very quiet the past year.
• rapind 7y ago
  If you raise the bar by $x across the board then doesn't $x gradually becomes the new bottom? If we give everyone $50k / year tax-free, would that just make $50k the new $0 relative to cost of living? The effect being the same as a progressive tax (those who make far more are far less impacted). If it is basically the same as a progressive tax, then it does strike me as a much simpler way to implement it (instead of complicated varying brackets). However adding it on top of an existing progressive tax scheme is adding another point of complexity right? Maybe replacing progressive taxes with a flat tax and then adding UBI would be a better / simpler approach.
  • chillacy 7y ago
    The Harvard economist Greg Mankiew has a talk where he shows how a UBI + flat tax could behave the same as a progressive tax + phased out UBI: https://taxfoundation.org/universal-basic-income-ubi-means-tested-transfers/ https://taxfoundation.org/universal-basic-income-ubi-means-t...
    • rapind 7y ago
      Seems like it would be more clear and fair all around to have flat tax + UBI so we aren't mixing solutions to different problems. Rich and poor probably utilize public services around the same amount (roads, police, hospitals, fire departments, etc.). (I'm sure there are counter arguments to this, but if public services we're good enough, can we assume this?). So a flat tax would be fair. It potentially disincentives better public services in more wealthy regions if everyone pays the same (again, sure there are some counter arguments, but it would be better right?). Then adding UBI is clearly for the purpose of distributing some of the wealth that our society has allowed to be created back to the people in a non-prejudiced way. UBI would have to keep pace with inflation of course. A fixed "thank you for making our rich country work and for buying crap even if don't need it" that everyone gets doesn't seem too controversial. Other than accountants, tax lawyers, and offshore havens, who gets hurt?
• rhn_mk1 7y ago
  How long did this run?
  • 52-6F-62 7y ago
    Not even a year! It was scheduled, funded, planned and then cancelled by the newly elected provincial government after they campaigned on keeping the program to its completion. It was designed to run 3 years, and people had barely begun implementing the plans they wanted over that time. IIRC some had taken the money and used it to improve their current lives, others left jobs to pursue schooling or start businesses. Those plans didn't get to come to fruition because of the drastic about-face by the gov. A summary on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontario_Basic_Income_Pilot_Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontario_Basic_Income_Pilot_Pro...
• glennvtx 7y ago
  No one seems to address the idea that coercion is necessary to force people to pay for this, something i do not wish to do, and many people feel the same. It has already been shown this disincentives work, Those of us that do work and are taxed to pay for the already massively wasteful welfare state resent being enslaved even further to pay for the errors of socialist re-distributive schemes.
  • chillacy 7y ago
    You're already being coerced to pay for social services, I wouldn't compare UBI to an anarcho-capitalist paradise, but the current situation, and many UBI proposals are much better than the status quo.
• 52-6F-62 7y ago
  There is a lot of misunderstanding in this thread, and a lot of strong opinions. "UBI" is mentioned repeatedly, but this wasn't a UBI program. The intention of the program was looking to replace our existing welfare and many Ontario works programs. Instead, the incoming government (after campaigning on completing the pilot) canceled the program unilaterally, and is looking to outsource our welfare payment programs to foreign companies. Please read a summary on the program: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontario_Basic_Income_Pilot_Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontario_Basic_Income_Pilot_Pro...
• russellendicott 7y ago
  Couldn't you consider older people living on Social Security to be somewhat of a UBI microclimate? I'd imagine you could learn a lot by sending the same questionnaire to them. A lot of the mental factors are the same: desire vs. ability to work, the changes in routine pre and post income, etc. Also, I wonder if we had UBI there would be facilities that would take care of you if you turned over your income check to them in the same way that some nursing homes do. One wonders how different this would be than a minimum security prison....
  • chillacy 7y ago
    We already know that social security greatly reduces poverty https://www.cbpp.org/research/social-security/social-security-lifts-more-americans-above-poverty-than-any-other-program https://www.cbpp.org/research/social-security/social-securit... It's just hard to maintain from a balanced budget perspective. > One wonders how different this would be than a minimum security prison.... The difference is that hopefully you could leave anytime and go to the facility across the street if it has better perks.
• bparsons 7y ago
  People interested in this UBI should look at the Canada Child Benefit (CCB). It has been described in many ways, but it is essentially a basic income for children (or the parents of children). It is means tested, which allows for the program to be really generous to low income single parents with young children. The effect has been a dramatic reduction in poverty -- especially child poverty-- in a couple of years. This is an example of a modest government intervention that will have massive positive impacts in the lives of these families. More info: https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/trudeau-s-child-benefit-is-helping-drive-poverty-to-new-lows-1.1220332 https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/trudeau-s-child-benefit-is-helpi... CCB Calculator: https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/child-family-benefits/child-family-benefits-calculator.html https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/child-famil...
• ravenstine 7y ago
  I'm not optimistic about basic income for the average person. That said, I know that if I had basic income, I would spend my time building things for the world. There are lots of side projects that I have worked on or want to work on, but simply haven't been able to get them off the ground because I don't have the time to dedicate enough mental energy. There's too much at stake for me to compromise my current job to work on something that may or may not succeed. I could work on projects after hours or during the weekend, but I've found this to be too spiritually exhausting and simply impractical; I have a hard time maintaining momentum if I can't dedicate more than half my time to something. If I could get by with the basics and not have to be employed, I could actually get something done that not only might help the world but employ others.
  • chillacy 7y ago
    I would think that thousands of people like you trying to build something innovative and new would be well worth the investment in those who try and fail or those who are content to "waste it away" (spending their UBI and doing nothing else is still creating economic activity).
• einpoklum 7y ago
  > The ... program was scrapped by Ontario's ... government in July. ... minister Lisa MacLeod, said the decision was made because the program was failing to help people become "independent contributors to the economy." Basic income is supposed to help people cover their basic needs, not to make them "independent contributors to the economy". This is doubly the case when we remember that doing volunteer work, social/community organizing, (non-commercialized) art - is not even counted as part of "the economy". Also, if you're an employee - becoming an employee or continuing to be one - you're not an "independent contributor to the economy". But the vast majority of"contributors to the economy" are wage workers, not independent tradespeople.
• Causality1 7y ago
  Shouldn't it be obvious that the people receiving money would become healthier and happier? The question is whether they become healthier and happier enough to offset the cost of making them that way. Are they the best use of that tax money? What's the lifetime return on investment?
• SubiculumCode 7y ago
  Well I for one voted for Andrew Yang. #CouldhavehadYang. Still, we need more of these pilots, but unfortunately pilots limited in geography, time, and universality cannot capture the knock on effects of a universal UBI.
• theuri 7y ago
  Very promising to read this. Feels like many more studies needed and more data to be collected in order to figure out what is indeed effective and what's not. Just like the early hype with microfinance decades ago - there was an initial hype cycle, then broader cynicism in the academic community, and ultimately, a data-driven informed understanding of what in fact works (on a more nuanced level - by country, income levels, program design, etc.)
• RegBarclay 7y ago
  I'm not sure anything was proven about people continuing to work during a temporary basic income study. If the basic income provided is temporary as part of a study, why would I leave my job when I know I'm going to need the income from my job after the study is over?
• thedogeye 7y ago
  Alternative headline: 25% of people receiving free government money quit their jobs
• joshlemer 7y ago
  The problem I have with all of these studies is that they only look at the receiving side of the equation. In other words, their experiment is not a closed system where their subjects have to also provide the free money to each other, which is what UBI proposes. The results therefor are completely uninteresting -- do people's quality of life go up when you just give them free money, no strings attached? I would certainly expect so! I don't think this is news to anybody. But what about the people paying for the UBI? If their taxes have to go up 3%.. 5%.. 10%.. whatever it is, then any respectable study of the affects of UBI has to at the very least take into account the negative affects on the paying population, if there are any. Otherwise, the conclusions we draw are probably going to be disastrously wrong. An other way of thinking about it is with a thought experiment. If scientists didn't consider the full affects of their experiments on the entire system as a whole, then they could easily show that entropy decreases over time, or that momentum or energy or mass are not conserved. So, I'd like to see a study where participants are divided into payers and recipients. Perhaps, 90% are payers and 10% are recipients, and we track not only the benefits in lifestyle that the receiving 10% enjoy, but also look for any drops in quality of life suffered by the 90%.
• thedogeye 7y ago
  alternative headline: 25% of workers quit their job after receiving free government handouts
• drummer 7y ago
  Like the brilliant social engineer Jacque Fresco said, we should just give everyone what they need to live for free in what he called a Resource Based Economy. That is even better than giving them money. I highly recommend his book "The best that money can't buy".
• johnchristopher 7y ago
  Totally off-topic so totally relevant: this is the kind of topic for which I wish each comment had its author's age, location and income displayed.
• zazaalaza 7y ago
  Everyone is talking about "receiving money with no-strings attached" however there is a huge string attached, and everyone knows it very well, especially the researchers, and that is the experiment will end. This means that the experiment is temporary whereas real UBI would be permanent. A temporary experiment where everyone is aware that it will end cannot simulate the same changes that a permanent experiment would do. But I guess that wouldn't be an experiement anymore.
• AcerbicZero 7y ago
  This misses the point entirely. UBI is the democratic socialist version of The Great Leap Forward. Its an attempt to better human existence via direct government intervention, something which rarely works as intended (assuming you're counting net gains). I'm pretty pragmatic, (and libertarian) so if we're going to start down this path let's skip the faux capitalism and get straight to the bread and games part. The government already has a near limitless amount of power to effect changes in the economic structure of the country, and this is where they've gotten us. Going further down that path seems a bit daft. I realize part of this problem is that we've moved into being a post-frontier world, where there are few, if any, places left where people can go to govern themselves, but I don't see why the lack of empty unclaimed space should lead to the government taking money from some citizens to buy the loyalty of other citizens.
• elif 7y ago
  The problem is not the productivity of those on UBI, the elephant in the room is the ideology of humans on this planet who are forced into labor for survival vs those who are percieved as having a free ride. That schism will exist for any set of parameters and methods of rolling it out. It will not solve class imbalances, it will make them painfully clear. E.G. for those of us who have wealth, own houses, etc, UBI will make having a job seem like an optional folly to a person with debt and rent to pay. We really don't want a society like that.
• zeta0x10 7y ago
  Things like Kubernetes probably exist to employ engineers to have to do something and to contra basic income.
• peterashford 7y ago
  relevant: https://www.ted.com/talks/rutger_bregman_poverty_isn_t_a_lack_of_character_it_s_a_lack_of_cash?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/rutger_bregman_poverty_isn_t_a_lac...
• gridspy 7y ago
  People actually enjoy being useful. We actually enjoy work which preserves dignity and has visible benefit. This idea that people only do work because they must is flawed. Most citizens are happy when they are doing a reasonable amount of work. Basic Income is crucial because not all useful work is fairly paid. From parenting to housekeeping, (early) innovating to art - so many beneficial activities suffer because the stress of financial security grinds them out of existence.
• jeffy 7y ago
  One argument I never see in UBI discussions is that some people are just bad with money. If you give more money to someone who doesn't budget, save, live within their means, etc, it won't help. There are people who spend beyond their means and then get payday loans. So while it would help some people who would spend wisely, many would not. You would have payday loans 2.0 where people would borrow against future UBI payments, spend on non necessities, and then be in an probably worse situation compared to the people still receiving UBI.
• mzs 7y ago
  I wish the report broke out the family health benefits based on if the participant gained/lost work did/didn't go to school. (edit: Also provide a category for those that were too ill to work to begin with.) From the conclusion: >As for the labour market participation of survey respondents, over half indicated working before and during the pilot (54%) while less than a quarter were unemployed before and during the pilot (24%). Slightly less than one-fifth were employed before but unemployed during the pilot (17%) and a smaller number reported not working before but finding work during the pilot (5%). Just under half of those who stopped working during the pilot returned to school to improve their future employability (40.6%). >Those who were working both before and during the pilot reported improvements in their rate of pay (37%), working conditions (31%) and job security (27%). The entire survey sample reported other work-related improvements such as searching more easily for a job (61%),staying motivated to find better employment (79%) and starting school or an educational training program (26%). https://labourstudies.mcmaster.ca/documents/southern-ontarios-basic-income-experience.pdf https://labourstudies.mcmaster.ca/documents/southern-ontario...
• amoorthy 7y ago
  As others have said this study doesn't have enough data to be conclusive. So most people, including me, comment based on which of the following we believe in: 1. People are inherently lazy. UBI will encourage them to do less. 2. People are inherently interested in maximizing their potential. UBI will enable them to do more. I couldn't find any social science research on which of the above is more true. But if we could tell maybe that can help us guess at how many UBI recipients will abuse the system as that seems to be the main concern around UBI.
• omot 7y ago
  I think a good iterative solution is to keep pay the same but change all laws to pivot around a 32-hour work week instead of 40. This will force employers to hire more people or pay more over time for any work past 32 hours. I think UBI is an extreme solution to the problems that globalization and automation presents. It's better to spread the existing labor. After a certain point we could move down to 24 hour work week finally down to a UBI model when no labor is required.
• KorematsuFred 7y ago
  None of these empirical studies are useful for broad policy decisions. This is a bit like linear regression, there are to many dimensions each matters differently and the same classifier will not hold true if you add more dimensions randomly or remove few. There is no "core human trend" to all this that will get revealed only by empirical studies but not by logic. (Empirical studies are useful to judge say whether vaping actually makes us more healthy on average. Smoking is so irrational at some level that no amount of logic can help us predict how people behave.) The economics logic is pretty clear. People will react to incentives. But there is no hard formula that we can apply. Raising minimum wage by few cents will not cause job loss but increasing it by few dollars will. But if you make minimum wage around $100 then whole industry might go underground and no effective jobless but for in government record keeping. I think effectiveness of UBI will be useful only if we perform far too many experience under far too variable circumstances and then understand the broader trends.
• keithnz 7y ago
  I'd be interested to see what would happen in the tech world if there was a UBI. How many more startups would there be if people could survive on a UBI.... it's essentially like having an unlimited runway to get startups off the ground. Not the "we are going to disrupt entire industries and make billions" type of startups most likely, but still, worthy startups creating chunks of software for smaller markets that take longer to monetize
• ryanyde 7y ago
  2 thoughts: * Only ~200 people out of 1000 completed the survey. Many of these people were found by the researchers, so there's likely bias (given the nature of the report) * Basic income's benefits will eventually go away in a society with easy access to credit. Similar to comments by throwaway13337.
• nojvek 7y ago
  More than universal basic income, I would love to also see universal basic services. A guarantee of some sort that the basic income will cover a bundle of basic things such as housing, transport, food, healthcare, utilities.
• hkai 7y ago
  Thanks, please give me my money, I will settle in Thailand and will never work again. I'd rather learn Chinese or violin or read books.
• thret 7y ago
  Why is there a focus on people working at all? I thought one of the reasons UBI was so interesting is that people who are stupid, lazy, incompetent or just too obnoxious to work in customer service can stay at home and out of my way.
• skocznymroczny 7y ago
  I wouldn't keep working on basic income. I'd stay home and play videogames.