6 ms·

The biggest problems with such UBI experiments is the limited time of the experiment. If I had a shitty, dead-end job, and someone offered me (eg.) 80% of an a

The biggest problems with such UBI experiments is the limited time of the experiment. If I had a shitty, dead-end job, and someone offered me (eg.) 80% of an average paycheck in my country, FOR 2 YEARS, i'd be happier than before, and use that money to pay off loans, buy a new car, go for a vacation, etc., and keep my curent job. If I had a shitty, dead-end job, and someone offered me (eg.) 80% of an average paycheck in my country, FOREVER(!), i'd probably quit, and live off UBI, and do other stuff (fun for me, but litle of value to to wider society, and with probably zero tax money to feed the UBI system). ...or, probably move somewhere, where I can get more for that amount of money. Most countries have lottery systems made up in a way, that you can opt for a bulk sum or get monthly payouts from the lottery... i'm sure, that we could find people, who get monthly sums somewhere in the interesting rage, to check how they're doing now.... but usually, looking at loterry winners does not show results in favour of giving people "free money".

mercer 7y ago
> If I had a shitty, dead-end job, and someone offered me (eg.) 80% of an average paycheck in my country, FOREVER(!), i'd probably quit, and live off UBI, and do other stuff (fun for me, but litle of value to to wider society, and with probably zero tax money to feed the UBI system). ...or, probably move somewhere, where I can get more for that amount of money. While I do think this might be what some people will do, I think that over time, as we get used to such a thing, this is not at all what most people will do. I've had periods of years in my life where I didn't have to think about money. After a short period of faffing off, I started doing all sorts of stuff. Some of it of direct value to society (volunteering) and some of it perhaps indirectly so (teaching myself new skills, working on 'products' that could be useful). I mean, even just spending time with others who themselves had it in short supply and valued my company could be considered 'useful to society'. What I do know is that all of this time spent was generally more useful than a number of years of inane bullshit I worked on for various companies (getting paid well, but not really feeling satisfied with the result). So many projects that just stopped because of some decision higher up. So much work poured into websites that offer no value to society either. And the stress and depressions that goes with it leading to me being a 'burden' on society by using my health care bux on mental health care. I'm not a rare case. Of course, this is anecdotal. But the assumption that people will just be lazy and offer nothing to society if they can is equally anecdotal, and honestly goes against everything I see in about 99% of the people around me. People want to be useful. People want to be valued and needed. People want to be creative. I consider it quite possible, or at least worth properly exploring, a society that provides in the basic needs regardless of whether you do pointless work for pointless company to allow you to spend your downtime on pointless consumption and entertainment (because no energy for anything else).
- jonkho 7y ago
  Fair enough, but I’m more concerned if UBI turned out to be a bad policy, would it be repealed? Practically speaking, the government has a poor track record of back pedaling on bad policies once they are in place.
  - ajsnigrutin 7y ago
    I'm skeptical about this too.... especialy if the UBI was the 'thing' that got them elected in the first place. And people would be protesting because they'd be losing 'free money'.
  - mercer 7y ago
    Possibly. it's an interesting point. I'd say no, though. My experience so far has been that my government has had no problems repealing (to various degrees) things like health care, education/student loans, or public ownership of various things. From my limited knowledge this has been similar in much of the Western world, at least.
    - ajsnigrutin 7y ago
      Better question is, after they took away/shrunk down the service, did they lower the taxes because of that cost saving? In slovenia, we still have the "financial crisis" (2008) 22% VAT, which we "temporary" increased back then (from 20%).
      - mercer 7y ago
        To a degree I feel discussing this is a distraction of my basic point (we have become productive enough even in just a few decades to indulge in these experiments). But honestly I think it's a great point. Our taxes did not go down, as far as I know. I'll check in one of the coming days, but I'd be shocked to find out it did...
- ajsnigrutin 7y ago
  > I've had periods of years in my life where I didn't have to think about money. After a short period of faffing off, I started doing all sorts of stuff. Some of it of direct value to society (volunteering) and some of it perhaps indirectly so (teaching myself new skills, working on 'products' that could be useful). I mean, even just spending time with others who themselves had it in short supply and valued my company could be considered 'useful to society'. Do those activities generate enough money, so that government collects enough taxes from you, to cover your UBI + all the other costs (roads, schools,...)? If not, you're still a net burden on society. > People want to be useful. People want to be valued and needed. People want to be creative. Of course people want to be useful and creative. But peoples usefullness and creativeness has to create atlest 2xUBI of taxes (one that goes back to the worker and one that goes to someone who get UBI but doesnt work) + all the other costs. If you're capable of doing stuff you like, being creative, liking that work, and creating that much income, why are you not doing it now? > I consider it quite possible, or at least worth properly exploring, a society that provides in the basic needs regardless of whether you do pointless work for pointless company to allow you to spend your downtime on pointless consumption and entertainment (because no energy for anything else). Problem with this society is, that it also requires people who are working, to cover the cost of the poeple who are not working. Curretnly most countries do that for a very small percentage of unemployed (welfare), and most people in those countries are already complaining about the high taxes. If you raise the taxes on the people left working, and let others live relatively normal lives without working, you'll get less and less of the former and more of the later. Yes, non-workers will create music, art, will travel, write blogs, etc., but none of that generates enough income to cover even their own cost.
andarleen 7y ago
You will probably want to spend your time doing fun things, but the moment you need to upgrade your car, your tv or buy that sweet new tool for your hobby you will need to take a job. But the biggest benefit of ubi imo is that if you want to spend your time, say, building a new product or clearing your mind in order to be more productive in the future, you will have that option. Tho I do see a lot of people just sitting around doing nothing, and ubi leading to inflation. Imo the best way to implement ubi is by automating as much as possible, to increase productivity, and to use the extra time and money to reduce the amount of work people need to put in for a living. Thus far automation disproportionately benefited employers and not the society and the workers, money wise. If a robot makes 10 times more shoes, then taxing that bot the equivalent of 5 full time workers is fair.
- jonkho 7y ago
  I imagine for most people, and I’m talking about the ones that would continue keep at their their existing job, if there was an extra $2000/month spare cash coming in or $4000 for a couple, it wouldn’t be a difficult stretch of imagination to say they would spend the money on the two most immediately obvious things: 1) upgrade their car 2) upgrade their shelter. If everyone is now affording a new $1000/month car payment and a $2000/month in extra rent budget, how would this ultimately not lead to people trying to outbid each other and cause inflation, especially rent? Wouldn’t rent or mortgage payments essentially rise to absorb this new quantity of money? Would this be essentially a transfer of wealth to landlords?
  - andarleen 7y ago
    A transfer of wealth would indeed be an issue. But I am wondering, would UBI give more people the option to live outside large cities, given that the scarcity of income is no longer an issue? And as such the demand for rent would go down? Will try and comment less, because debate on HN gets heavily penalised unless it conforms to certain patterns. But yeah UBI and inflation / transfers of wealth are an interesting topic.
    - luckylion 7y ago
econcon 7y ago
UBI would have helped me. I am building plastic recycling machine in my free time and I am also helping communities build their own machine. If there was UBI, I'd have completely focused on developing the machine and helping others around me full time. Here's my project: https://medium.com/endless-filament/make-your-filament-at-home-for-cheap-6c908bb09922 https://medium.com/endless-filament/make-your-filament-at-ho... Now my project is successful, I've given away tons of face shields and also made $4000 by selling filament on on e-commerce websites. It took me a long time to get here, UBI would have definitely made it faster.

mercer 7y ago

> If I had a shitty, dead-end job, and someone offered me (eg.) 80% of an average paycheck in my country, FOREVER(!), i'd probably quit, and live off UBI, and do other stuff (fun for me, but litle of value to to wider society, and with probably zero tax money to feed the UBI system). ...or, probably move somewhere, where I can get more for that amount of money. While I do think this might be what some people will do, I think that over time, as we get used to such a thing, this is not at all what most people will do. I've had periods of years in my life where I didn't have to think about money. After a short period of faffing off, I started doing all sorts of stuff. Some of it of direct value to society (volunteering) and some of it perhaps indirectly so (teaching myself new skills, working on 'products' that could be useful). I mean, even just spending time with others who themselves had it in short supply and valued my company could be considered 'useful to society'. What I do know is that all of this time spent was generally more useful than a number of years of inane bullshit I worked on for various companies (getting paid well, but not really feeling satisfied with the result). So many projects that just stopped because of some decision higher up. So much work poured into websites that offer no value to society either. And the stress and depressions that goes with it leading to me being a 'burden' on society by using my health care bux on mental health care. I'm not a rare case. Of course, this is anecdotal. But the assumption that people will just be lazy and offer nothing to society if they can is equally anecdotal, and honestly goes against everything I see in about 99% of the people around me. People want to be useful. People want to be valued and needed. People want to be creative. I consider it quite possible, or at least worth properly exploring, a society that provides in the basic needs regardless of whether you do pointless work for pointless company to allow you to spend your downtime on pointless consumption and entertainment (because no energy for anything else).

jonkho 7y ago
Fair enough, but I’m more concerned if UBI turned out to be a bad policy, would it be repealed? Practically speaking, the government has a poor track record of back pedaling on bad policies once they are in place.
- ajsnigrutin 7y ago
  I'm skeptical about this too.... especialy if the UBI was the 'thing' that got them elected in the first place. And people would be protesting because they'd be losing 'free money'.
- mercer 7y ago
  Possibly. it's an interesting point. I'd say no, though. My experience so far has been that my government has had no problems repealing (to various degrees) things like health care, education/student loans, or public ownership of various things. From my limited knowledge this has been similar in much of the Western world, at least.
  - ajsnigrutin 7y ago
    Better question is, after they took away/shrunk down the service, did they lower the taxes because of that cost saving? In slovenia, we still have the "financial crisis" (2008) 22% VAT, which we "temporary" increased back then (from 20%).
    - mercer 7y ago
      To a degree I feel discussing this is a distraction of my basic point (we have become productive enough even in just a few decades to indulge in these experiments). But honestly I think it's a great point. Our taxes did not go down, as far as I know. I'll check in one of the coming days, but I'd be shocked to find out it did...
ajsnigrutin 7y ago
> I've had periods of years in my life where I didn't have to think about money. After a short period of faffing off, I started doing all sorts of stuff. Some of it of direct value to society (volunteering) and some of it perhaps indirectly so (teaching myself new skills, working on 'products' that could be useful). I mean, even just spending time with others who themselves had it in short supply and valued my company could be considered 'useful to society'. Do those activities generate enough money, so that government collects enough taxes from you, to cover your UBI + all the other costs (roads, schools,...)? If not, you're still a net burden on society. > People want to be useful. People want to be valued and needed. People want to be creative. Of course people want to be useful and creative. But peoples usefullness and creativeness has to create atlest 2xUBI of taxes (one that goes back to the worker and one that goes to someone who get UBI but doesnt work) + all the other costs. If you're capable of doing stuff you like, being creative, liking that work, and creating that much income, why are you not doing it now? > I consider it quite possible, or at least worth properly exploring, a society that provides in the basic needs regardless of whether you do pointless work for pointless company to allow you to spend your downtime on pointless consumption and entertainment (because no energy for anything else). Problem with this society is, that it also requires people who are working, to cover the cost of the poeple who are not working. Curretnly most countries do that for a very small percentage of unemployed (welfare), and most people in those countries are already complaining about the high taxes. If you raise the taxes on the people left working, and let others live relatively normal lives without working, you'll get less and less of the former and more of the later. Yes, non-workers will create music, art, will travel, write blogs, etc., but none of that generates enough income to cover even their own cost.

andarleen 7y ago

You will probably want to spend your time doing fun things, but the moment you need to upgrade your car, your tv or buy that sweet new tool for your hobby you will need to take a job. But the biggest benefit of ubi imo is that if you want to spend your time, say, building a new product or clearing your mind in order to be more productive in the future, you will have that option. Tho I do see a lot of people just sitting around doing nothing, and ubi leading to inflation. Imo the best way to implement ubi is by automating as much as possible, to increase productivity, and to use the extra time and money to reduce the amount of work people need to put in for a living. Thus far automation disproportionately benefited employers and not the society and the workers, money wise. If a robot makes 10 times more shoes, then taxing that bot the equivalent of 5 full time workers is fair.

jonkho 7y ago
I imagine for most people, and I’m talking about the ones that would continue keep at their their existing job, if there was an extra $2000/month spare cash coming in or $4000 for a couple, it wouldn’t be a difficult stretch of imagination to say they would spend the money on the two most immediately obvious things: 1) upgrade their car 2) upgrade their shelter. If everyone is now affording a new $1000/month car payment and a $2000/month in extra rent budget, how would this ultimately not lead to people trying to outbid each other and cause inflation, especially rent? Wouldn’t rent or mortgage payments essentially rise to absorb this new quantity of money? Would this be essentially a transfer of wealth to landlords?
- andarleen 7y ago
  A transfer of wealth would indeed be an issue. But I am wondering, would UBI give more people the option to live outside large cities, given that the scarcity of income is no longer an issue? And as such the demand for rent would go down? Will try and comment less, because debate on HN gets heavily penalised unless it conforms to certain patterns. But yeah UBI and inflation / transfers of wealth are an interesting topic.
  - luckylion 7y ago

econcon 7y ago

UBI would have helped me. I am building plastic recycling machine in my free time and I am also helping communities build their own machine. If there was UBI, I'd have completely focused on developing the machine and helping others around me full time. Here's my project: https://medium.com/endless-filament/make-your-filament-at-home-for-cheap-6c908bb09922 https://medium.com/endless-filament/make-your-filament-at-ho... Now my project is successful, I've given away tons of face shields and also made $4000 by selling filament on on e-commerce websites. It took me a long time to get here, UBI would have definitely made it faster.