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Keep in mind this article largely restricts itself to considering direct cash transfers to people in low-medium developed countries. I would be careful about tr

Keep in mind this article largely restricts itself to considering direct cash transfers to people in low-medium developed countries. I would be careful about trying to generalise the conclusions to developed countries. It stands to reason that unrestricted welfare would reduce hours worked in developed countries. This would be especially true for young adults with no dependents. Why work overtime at McDonalds when your rent is already paid up for the month and there are so many fun video games to play? I think we just have to accept that UBI would give people that work undesirable/uninteresting jobs an off-ramp from the economy. The problem being that our economy depends on these people performing such jobs. Employers would have increase wages significantly above the UBI level in order to attract workers, but that would either erode the UBI through inflation or cause an inflationary spiral if the UBI were indexed. I haven't heard a satisfactory explanation as to how UBI avoids these pitfalls.

MattGaiser 6y ago
> Employers would have increase wages significantly above the UBI level in order to attract workers It also must be considered that many categories of jobs currently can’t be filled without some form of immigration because the existing social safety net of charities and government benefits never makes picking strawberries or meat cutting preferable to unemployment.
- jdc 6y ago
  It seems to me employers would have to pay higher wages without migrant labour.
  - scoopertrooper 6y ago
    Or leave the ground fallow if it could not be farmed economically.
  - renewiltord 6y ago
    Some things we might never have again. For instance you might not get sufficient utility out of strawberries at $30/kg. The market for people who do might be very small. Then the guy who wants to grow strawberries at cost X, the guy who wants to get strawberries at cost Y, and the guy who wants to be paid to pick strawberries at cost Z all want to indulge in the activity but because one part of the chain falls below a legislated minimum, an economically efficient action does not occur. That doesn't mean it's bad that it doesn't occur. Just that if the equilibrium price has any link of the chain be legally unacceptable you might literally kill a market. There is no new equilibrium. There just isn't product.
    - JumpCrisscross 6y ago
      That just means strawberries become a luxury fruit. That’s fine. Nobody needs strawberries. And it provides an incentive for automation. I’m not sold on expansive UBI. (The EITC seems like a better middle step.) But I don’t buy this argument.
      - MattGaiser 6y ago
        Yes, but then expand the strawberries issue to virtually all vegetables and fruit (except those harvested outside the country). Making fruit and vegetables a luxury doesn't fit onto anyone's list of good public health outcomes.
        JumpCrisscross 6y ago
        > expand the strawberries issue to virtually all vegetables and fruit Lots of produce production is already 90% automated. (Corn, for instance.) Strawberries are a particularly manually-intensive fruit.
    - daddylonglegs 6y ago
      The fruit picker's wages aren't necessarily that large a component of the consumer price for the fruit. This economist argues that in the US: "For a typical household, a 40 percent increase in farm labor costs translates into a 3.6 percent increase in retail prices. If farm wages rose 40 percent, and this wage increase were passed on to consumers, average spending on fresh fruits and vegetables would rise about $15 a year..." https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/08/17/could-farms-survive-without-illegal-labor/the-costs-and-benefits-of-a-raise-for-field-workers https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/08/17/could-farms...
  - MattGaiser 6y ago
    If that even worked. I suspect that a lot of people would just give up fruit and eat more bread rather than pay what it would cost to hire locals to pick strawberries.
    - adrianN 6y ago
      Spending on food as a fraction of income is at historic lows throughout the developed countries. People used to pay more for food, why can't they do it again?
      - renewiltord 6y ago
        Because the money's gone elsewhere.
    - smichel17 6y ago
      Alternatively, we might see a rise in pick your own. I've picked many pounds of strawberries for freezing (smoothies). It's better quality than buying from the store, but not particularly cheaper. If the price of strawberries went up significantly, I'd absolutely do it more often.
  - tonyedgecombe 6y ago
    The obvious solution to that is to import labour intensive goods.
    - enriquto 6y ago
      > The obvious solution to that is to import labour intensive goods. This is known as colonialism. It comes with a set of extremely ugly incentives. For example, keeping the population of the source country as poor as possible, at all costs, so that they accept to work for you for even less money.
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grecy 6y ago
Australia already pays anyone that doesn't have a job $1000/month + more if you have dependants + more for rent. They've been doing this for a long time, and have avoided those pitfalls you hypothesize about. NOTE: It's more than that now with COVID-19, I'm giving the "normal times" number.
tspike 6y ago
> Employers would have increase wages significantly above the UBI level in order to attract workers Couldn't another possibility besides inflation be that this incentivizes automation (which can have deflationary effects)?
iovrthoughtthis 6y ago
Will you accept evidence or do I have construct and argument from first principals? See ”The effects of cash transfers on adult labor market outcomes” https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s40176-018-0131-9 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s40176-018-0131-9
- hhs 6y ago
  Indeed, the blog post cites just this paper when the author writes, “In low and middle income country settings, cash transfers also mostly do not affect whether, or how much, people work.” (But of course, the qualifier is “in low and middle income country settings”.)
t-writescode 6y ago
Perhaps it would also encourage managers to manage rather than dictate and command; and horrible, unruly customers would get a much faster "we're not serving you" response if some shame of a person caused an employee to quit right as they're ordering their meal. There's something very real and very healthy about taking power away from those that shouldn't have that power; and abusive customers and failures of managers are some people that might do well to have their pegs knocked down a notch or two.
option 6y ago
I’d like to see a study on how UBI affects average reproduction rates of the population. Financial pressures associated with raising kids is a big factor which pushes them down.
ntSean 6y ago
You hit the nail on the head, UBI would decrease how much people are locked into undesirable jobs. However, this is a feature, not a failure of the system. Currently, we have under-utilised talent with low economic mobility who have bills to pay. There are more than enough unemployed people to fill any gaps created.
- luckylion 6y ago
  > There are more than enough unemployed people to fill any gaps created. Why would they want to fill gaps when the rent is paid, the fridge is stocked, and there are so many games to play and movies to watch? I can totally see the "gaps" in fun jobs being filled. But the "gaps" in garbage collection, sewer inspection and other dirty jobs? Let's not kid ourselves and pretend that "if only people wouldn't have to worry about rent, they'd gladly take these jobs".
  - ntSean 6y ago
    Is media the only thing worth consuming? We can participate in the economy by travelling, buying gadgets, cars, experiencing good food, etc. I do not believe that ones existence is fulfilled because they haven't finished their Netflix library. If someone wants money to engage with society in a more meaningful way, there are always jobs to allow them to do so- even if they're dirty.
    - luckylion 6y ago
      Yeah, Netflix was just an example. You can replace it with "enjoying nature's beauty", "listening to music" or "thinking about the true nature of existence", it doesn't really matter for the point I was trying to make. You can participate by spending money you were gifted, but you're not contributing. If it was just about participation, let's remove all the clutter, just give everyone a million bucks a month - we can all participate in the economy by spending roughly $30k a day and it'll be an economic wonder. The question is: who will be there to sell us things, to cook food at the fancy restaurant etc, if they also get $30k a day? You'll have to pay them a lot more than today. And that'll just mean that your $30k are worth proportionally less. Money is just a placeholder for value. You need the value being produced to make the money meaningful.
JackFr 6y ago
> I think we just have to accept that UBI would give people that work undesirable/uninteresting jobs an off-ramp from the economy. I think it just sets a floor on the wages of such undesirable jobs. And if the new wage to attract labor is higher than the marginal product of the worker, it’s likely that the job goes away rather than experiencing wage-driven inflation. In the worst case, this would simply lead to reduced output. In a best case the higher wage demanded would make capital investment more attractive, as it would improve the productivity of employees.
sdenton4 6y ago
"Employers would have increase wages significantly above the UBI level in order to attract workers, but that would either erode the UBI through inflation or cause an inflationary spiral if the UBI were indexed." An analogous argument is always trotted out against minimum wage increases, and has been pretty thoroughly debunked. I'm thoroughly convinced that economies do better when cash is distributed among more people. We currently have a situation where wealth is overly concentrated. The wealth looks for investments, and can't find much because the demand side is locked up: people are generally too poor and debt ridden to create new markets. OTOH, if wealth is widely distributed, everyone buys their needs, and there lots of economic growth, as we saw after ww2. Another glass to see this through... In a capitalist society, if you have demands and no money, no one will care to solve your problems... And indeed, lots of people have problems and no money to pay to see them solved. Distribute the wealth and those problems suddenly have money behind them. Businesses pop up to help, employing people, etc.
PudgePacket 6y ago
> It stands to reason that unrestricted welfare would reduce hours worked in developed countries. Firstly, this probably isn't correct, see this recent report from Finland: https://twitter.com/rcbregman/status/1258336749828419584 https://twitter.com/rcbregman/status/1258336749828419584 I'd also point out that the current situation forces an "all or nothing" employment system. In Aus, if you're working part time you don't quality for any benefits, so the incentive to work while on unemployment is lowered. However, with UBI, there _is_ incentive to work. You can double your income by taking up a part time job, instead of getting the same amount from working as you would from unemployment. I'd also challenge you and say why do think reduced working hours is a bad thing? Also, what about all the people with a lot of money who don't work? All your arguments have been made before and discussed in depth. > The problem being that our economy depends on these people performing such jobs. The economy should serve the people. Shareholders may depend on it though :) Your "inflationary spiral" theory is also unfounded, and has been shown previously. > Why work overtime at McDonalds when your rent is already paid up for the month and there are so many fun video games to play? This is a terrible strawman, but also maybe MCD should pay better or offer other incentives? They're not owed employees.
- leereeves 6y ago
  > Firstly, this probably isn't correct, see this recent report from Finland: https://twitter.com/rcbregman/status/1258336749828419584 https://twitter.com/rcbregman/status/1258336749828419584 According to that report, that experiment only paid people 560 euros a month. That's not enough to make staying home and playing video games an option.
  - zozbot234 6y ago
    You may not see this as obvious, but 560 euros per month is a lot as an unrestricted grant to low-income folks. It may not be enough to stay at home and play video games, but it's easy to supplement with even low-intensity, part-time work. That's pretty much what many low-income folks need; a manageable on-ramp towards full participation in the labor market. UBI is a game changer, even and perhaps especially at these "low" levels.
friendlybus 6y ago
If you've ever worked at a mcdonalds in the past ten years, you'll know that all the "work" is done by cooking machines and most of the humans are just packaging and assembling warmed up frozen food. There's a lot of admin, cleaning and customer facing that goes into it too. I honestly believe if you wanted to, it is conceptually easy to fully automate mcdonalds, kfc & dominos (ect).
w-j-w 6y ago
> overtime at McDonald's You're much less likely to be called an ignorant poor hater if you don't say stuff like this. There is no unskilled labor shortage, and the economy isn't stronger when more people have fast food jobs.
hndamien 6y ago
Nobody would want to work these undesirable jobs that are exceptionally important for the economy to run, but not compensated like they are.
taneq 6y ago
> Why work overtime at McDonalds when your rent is already paid up for the month and there are so many fun video games to play? So you can afford more video games? Or a new, locally-made bike? Or any one of the other myriad nice things that we can get in exchange for money? If you're a reasonably engaged software dev (like many on this site) it probably only takes you 10 hours a week to cover basic costs of living in an entry level apartment. Why would you work more than 10 hours?
- allendoerfer 6y ago
  > If you're a reasonably engaged software dev (like many on this site) it probably only takes you 10 hours a week to cover basic costs of living in an entry level apartment. Why would you work more than 10 hours? While I am personally against a UBI, just because I think there are so many innovations right around the corner, which we should achieve first, many of the reasons why you are working over 10 hours a week, would go away with a UBI: - Saving for your own retirement - Saving for your childrens future, giving them a savety net You would also have to check whether a UBI would change some of the motivations to work, due to the culture changing: - If you want to accomplish something as a team, a workplace is a great place to fullfill that need. Less people working fulltime due to other reasons would provide more obvious opportunities here. If you are not really sold by the other reasons and you are here for the team-aspect, you could join the party later, after more groups working together have established themselves. - At least where I live, you could already live relatively comfortable on social benefits. You just don't do it, because it's not accepted socially. So people work, because it is expected of them by society. If society would change it's mind here, e.g. due to an understanding, that not everyone can have a job anymore, that expectation would not force people to work anymore. - (Especially as a male) your job takes a big part in defining your social status. I could imagine additionally to the general trend of women having careers, UBI could chip away another part of that, because now even really conservative, family-oriented women would be less dependent. I am just guessing here, though. It could be that our underlying instincts of what we find attractive are much stronger and a UBI would not change anything here. I personally could imagine for software developers, a UBI would lower the threshold for many to exclusively work on more fullfilling (open source) side projects. I personally have a number in my mind, at which point I might do just that. With UBI that number would certainly be a little bit lower.
0xfaded 6y ago
To play devil's advocate, if the fed is now essentially providing a floor on the value of assets (through QE and purchase of rubbish bonds), wouldn't it also be fair for the government to provide a floor on the value of labor?
thomasfl 6y ago
It still reamins to be seen if universal basic income would make videogames the most common daytime activity among adults. The reason ubi experiments in India shows good results, may be that video games are unavailable in the Indian countryside. It also may be that small villages in India has strong communities. Communities with strong social control, that won’t allow it’s inhabitants that receive ubi to spend it all on alcohol. In the western world, there is much less social control. Still it reamins to be seen if peope receiving ubi, will choose to find meaning in video games, flipping burgers or do something good for themselves or the community.
- bluedino 6y ago
  >> It still reamins to be seen if universal basic income would make videogames the most common daytime activity among adults. It probably would, if recent events are any indication. The current stay-at-home orders have increased video game sales by 65%
  - Kliment 6y ago
    That's just a shift of free-time activity budgets away from things that are no longer available (amusement parks, restaurants, cinemas, bars) to things that are (delivered food, video games, recorded media).
arcticbull 6y ago
> Why work overtime at McDonalds when your rent is already paid up for the month and there are so many fun video games to play? It's funny, people say that. But what would you do, personally? If I offered you just over your rent to stay home... would you... stay home? I know I wouldn't. People derive their sense of self-worth from a combination of intrinsic and extrinsic factors, and derive a lot of their social validation from their coworkers. Personally, I could retire on a beach and do nothing for the next 60 years. That sounds shit though. I mean, it sounds great when I hate my boss, but about five minutes later, it sounds pretty shit.
- ThrowawayR2 6y ago
  > "If I offered you just over your rent to stay home... would you... stay home?" I'll take you up on that; my health is deteriorating.
  - arcticbull 6y ago
    In which case, I'd say more power to you. That'd be a huge plus in favor of the program.
    - ThrowawayR2 6y ago
      That has nothing to do with the question you originally asked. Such a program would be indeed beneficial to me and, if that were my sole concern, I'd be all for it. However, it seems likely sufficiently deleterious to society that I don't support society being required to pay for my subsistence.
      - arcticbull 6y ago
        I don't think they're mutually exclusive, but I also think underpinning my previous post is an un-stated assumption: we have too many people doing jobs that don't matter. IMO we don't need gas station attendants, we don't need grocery store clerks, we don't need manufacturing jobs. We need more robots. When robots inevitably replace these menial jobs, we're gonna have to do something with those folks. Over time the birth rate will decline and the population will even out, and there won't be more people than jobs, and that UBI is an elegant stop-gap measure. Otherwise, keeping people in these jobs is just some sort of Rube Goldberg-esque make work project. Folks like yourself can stop working, folks doing menial work will stop working. Those who want to get ahead and do crazy new things will always be motivated to do so.
abiogenesis 6y ago
> Employers would have increase wages significantly above the UBI level in order to attract workers [...] No, because UBI (being universal) is paid to anyone, working or not.
AnthonyMouse 6y ago
> Employers would have increase wages significantly above the UBI level in order to attract workers, but that would either erode the UBI through inflation or cause an inflationary spiral if the UBI were indexed. Employers would not have to increase wages "significantly above the UBI level" because the UBI is paid in addition to wages. They might have to increase wages somewhat in order to convince people to do undesirable jobs, but isn't that a good thing? It also makes automation of those jobs more profitable, which allows more people to do what they want to do instead of being forced into drudgery out of survival. Meanwhile there is no obvious means for this to cause inflation because no additional money is inherently being created. There would merely be less income inequality because some money is transferred from executives and shareholders to workers when they have to pay higher wages. The only real mechanism for inflation would be if you transferred money from people inclined to save it to people inclined to spend it immediately, but there is no way for that to consume the entire amount unless the supply of all goods and services is completely inelastic. Otherwise some of the money gets spent on things whose prices don't increase significantly with demand and you just get more production. Meanwhile necessities with inelastic supply are evils in themselves, because it's nearly always an artificial barrier. If people had more money and housing supply is constrained then rents might go up, but the problem there isn't that people have more money, it's that housing supply is artificially constrained. A solution to one problem isn't defective just because it fails to solve a completely independent problem. We have to solve the other problem either way.
enriquto 6y ago
> we just have to accept that UBI would give people that work undesirable/uninteresting jobs an off-ramp from the economy. The problem being that our economy depends on these people performing such jobs. I had to read your comment three times; it was unbelievable that somebody could ever hold such a revolting argument. You are saying that it is OK to keep large swaths of the population under the permanent menace of starvation, exposure and death from curable illnesses, lest they wouldn't have an incentive to pick your trash and serve you fast food. Dude, relax.
- therealdrag0 6y ago
  Dude relax. Did you read their next sentence? They are not saying that's bad or good in and of-itself, they are concerned with the consequences of that: inflation. Sometimes a point takes more than one sentence to make. They might be right or wrong, but at least respond to what they're actually saying. Picking and choosing sentences to quote out of context is a big problem in todays discourse.
spyckie2 6y ago
> A 2019 study found "a 14% increase in substance-abuse incidents the day after the [Alaska Permanent Fund] payment and a 10% increase over the following four weeks. This is partially offset by a 8% decrease in property crime, with no changes in violent crimes. This is a legitimate question to ask.
- wastedhours 6y ago
  Yep - UBI is likely to exaggerate elements seen in everyday society. Do you want to spend your day sniffing glue but can't now because you also have to work? Now you can just sniff the glue. Do you want some social mobility through earnings? Great, have the UBI and a job. To tackle this the UBI has to have a required level of education attached to it for proper usage. We need to ensure that public funding in a transition period (whereby taxation might reduce whilst the novelty of not having to work plays out) is protected. And there needs to be some level of societal acceptance of what people should be doing (currently there's a number of communities where there isn't an expectation to have a job, even without UBI).
phekunde 6y ago
> ... and there are so many fun video games to play? This! I use to be a proponent of wholesale UBI. Not any longer after I saw first hand what unfettered welfare system does to people's attitudes. Sex, drugs and video games is what people spend more time on! This is ofcourse from experience living in a developed country in Europe. I think this will apply to developing countries as well because human nature is same everywhere. What people on the left and right of the political spectrum don't take into account is human nature; the left does not take into account "laziness" and the right does not take into account "greed". A system should be designed in such a way that it should not unintentionally promote either laziness or greed.
commandlinefan 6y ago
> I haven't heard a satisfactory explanation as to how UBI avoids these pitfalls. Worse: it might be great, but it might be a horrifying failure. What I have yet to hear is a plan for how to a) recognize that it's gone horribly wrong and b) back out of it without causing civil unrest that leads to open rebellion. Although articles like this are cautiously optimistic, they seem to ignore that once you pull the trigger, it's full speed ahead, damn the torpedoes.
apercu 6y ago
> The problem being that our economy depends on these people performing such jobs. If an economy depends on young people working fast food service jobs then that economy is stupid and needs to be fixed.
- therealdrag0 6y ago
  Why? They're providing value that people want; the jobs aren't arbitrary. And some people WANT these jobs. Some young people are proud of having a job, getting experience, and buying their own stuff.
PenguinCoder 6y ago
> work overtime at McDonalds when your rent is already paid Why should anyone have to work overtime, to make rent payment?

MattGaiser 6y ago

> Employers would have increase wages significantly above the UBI level in order to attract workers It also must be considered that many categories of jobs currently can’t be filled without some form of immigration because the existing social safety net of charities and government benefits never makes picking strawberries or meat cutting preferable to unemployment.

jdc 6y ago
It seems to me employers would have to pay higher wages without migrant labour.
- scoopertrooper 6y ago
  Or leave the ground fallow if it could not be farmed economically.
- renewiltord 6y ago
  Some things we might never have again. For instance you might not get sufficient utility out of strawberries at $30/kg. The market for people who do might be very small. Then the guy who wants to grow strawberries at cost X, the guy who wants to get strawberries at cost Y, and the guy who wants to be paid to pick strawberries at cost Z all want to indulge in the activity but because one part of the chain falls below a legislated minimum, an economically efficient action does not occur. That doesn't mean it's bad that it doesn't occur. Just that if the equilibrium price has any link of the chain be legally unacceptable you might literally kill a market. There is no new equilibrium. There just isn't product.
  - JumpCrisscross 6y ago
    That just means strawberries become a luxury fruit. That’s fine. Nobody needs strawberries. And it provides an incentive for automation. I’m not sold on expansive UBI. (The EITC seems like a better middle step.) But I don’t buy this argument.
    - MattGaiser 6y ago
      Yes, but then expand the strawberries issue to virtually all vegetables and fruit (except those harvested outside the country). Making fruit and vegetables a luxury doesn't fit onto anyone's list of good public health outcomes.
      - JumpCrisscross 6y ago
        > expand the strawberries issue to virtually all vegetables and fruit Lots of produce production is already 90% automated. (Corn, for instance.) Strawberries are a particularly manually-intensive fruit.
  - daddylonglegs 6y ago
    The fruit picker's wages aren't necessarily that large a component of the consumer price for the fruit. This economist argues that in the US: "For a typical household, a 40 percent increase in farm labor costs translates into a 3.6 percent increase in retail prices. If farm wages rose 40 percent, and this wage increase were passed on to consumers, average spending on fresh fruits and vegetables would rise about $15 a year..." https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/08/17/could-farms-survive-without-illegal-labor/the-costs-and-benefits-of-a-raise-for-field-workers https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/08/17/could-farms...
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  If that even worked. I suspect that a lot of people would just give up fruit and eat more bread rather than pay what it would cost to hire locals to pick strawberries.
  - adrianN 6y ago
    Spending on food as a fraction of income is at historic lows throughout the developed countries. People used to pay more for food, why can't they do it again?
    - renewiltord 6y ago
      Because the money's gone elsewhere.
  - smichel17 6y ago
    Alternatively, we might see a rise in pick your own. I've picked many pounds of strawberries for freezing (smoothies). It's better quality than buying from the store, but not particularly cheaper. If the price of strawberries went up significantly, I'd absolutely do it more often.
- tonyedgecombe 6y ago
  The obvious solution to that is to import labour intensive goods.
  - enriquto 6y ago
    > The obvious solution to that is to import labour intensive goods. This is known as colonialism. It comes with a set of extremely ugly incentives. For example, keeping the population of the source country as poor as possible, at all costs, so that they accept to work for you for even less money.

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grecy 6y ago

Australia already pays anyone that doesn't have a job $1000/month + more if you have dependants + more for rent. They've been doing this for a long time, and have avoided those pitfalls you hypothesize about. NOTE: It's more than that now with COVID-19, I'm giving the "normal times" number.

tspike 6y ago

> Employers would have increase wages significantly above the UBI level in order to attract workers Couldn't another possibility besides inflation be that this incentivizes automation (which can have deflationary effects)?

iovrthoughtthis 6y ago

Will you accept evidence or do I have construct and argument from first principals? See ”The effects of cash transfers on adult labor market outcomes” https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s40176-018-0131-9 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s40176-018-0131-9

hhs 6y ago
Indeed, the blog post cites just this paper when the author writes, “In low and middle income country settings, cash transfers also mostly do not affect whether, or how much, people work.” (But of course, the qualifier is “in low and middle income country settings”.)

t-writescode 6y ago

Perhaps it would also encourage managers to manage rather than dictate and command; and horrible, unruly customers would get a much faster "we're not serving you" response if some shame of a person caused an employee to quit right as they're ordering their meal. There's something very real and very healthy about taking power away from those that shouldn't have that power; and abusive customers and failures of managers are some people that might do well to have their pegs knocked down a notch or two.

option 6y ago

I’d like to see a study on how UBI affects average reproduction rates of the population. Financial pressures associated with raising kids is a big factor which pushes them down.

ntSean 6y ago

You hit the nail on the head, UBI would decrease how much people are locked into undesirable jobs. However, this is a feature, not a failure of the system. Currently, we have under-utilised talent with low economic mobility who have bills to pay. There are more than enough unemployed people to fill any gaps created.

luckylion 6y ago
> There are more than enough unemployed people to fill any gaps created. Why would they want to fill gaps when the rent is paid, the fridge is stocked, and there are so many games to play and movies to watch? I can totally see the "gaps" in fun jobs being filled. But the "gaps" in garbage collection, sewer inspection and other dirty jobs? Let's not kid ourselves and pretend that "if only people wouldn't have to worry about rent, they'd gladly take these jobs".
- ntSean 6y ago
  Is media the only thing worth consuming? We can participate in the economy by travelling, buying gadgets, cars, experiencing good food, etc. I do not believe that ones existence is fulfilled because they haven't finished their Netflix library. If someone wants money to engage with society in a more meaningful way, there are always jobs to allow them to do so- even if they're dirty.
  - luckylion 6y ago
    Yeah, Netflix was just an example. You can replace it with "enjoying nature's beauty", "listening to music" or "thinking about the true nature of existence", it doesn't really matter for the point I was trying to make. You can participate by spending money you were gifted, but you're not contributing. If it was just about participation, let's remove all the clutter, just give everyone a million bucks a month - we can all participate in the economy by spending roughly $30k a day and it'll be an economic wonder. The question is: who will be there to sell us things, to cook food at the fancy restaurant etc, if they also get $30k a day? You'll have to pay them a lot more than today. And that'll just mean that your $30k are worth proportionally less. Money is just a placeholder for value. You need the value being produced to make the money meaningful.

JackFr 6y ago

> I think we just have to accept that UBI would give people that work undesirable/uninteresting jobs an off-ramp from the economy. I think it just sets a floor on the wages of such undesirable jobs. And if the new wage to attract labor is higher than the marginal product of the worker, it’s likely that the job goes away rather than experiencing wage-driven inflation. In the worst case, this would simply lead to reduced output. In a best case the higher wage demanded would make capital investment more attractive, as it would improve the productivity of employees.

sdenton4 6y ago

"Employers would have increase wages significantly above the UBI level in order to attract workers, but that would either erode the UBI through inflation or cause an inflationary spiral if the UBI were indexed." An analogous argument is always trotted out against minimum wage increases, and has been pretty thoroughly debunked. I'm thoroughly convinced that economies do better when cash is distributed among more people. We currently have a situation where wealth is overly concentrated. The wealth looks for investments, and can't find much because the demand side is locked up: people are generally too poor and debt ridden to create new markets. OTOH, if wealth is widely distributed, everyone buys their needs, and there lots of economic growth, as we saw after ww2. Another glass to see this through... In a capitalist society, if you have demands and no money, no one will care to solve your problems... And indeed, lots of people have problems and no money to pay to see them solved. Distribute the wealth and those problems suddenly have money behind them. Businesses pop up to help, employing people, etc.

PudgePacket 6y ago

> It stands to reason that unrestricted welfare would reduce hours worked in developed countries. Firstly, this probably isn't correct, see this recent report from Finland: https://twitter.com/rcbregman/status/1258336749828419584 https://twitter.com/rcbregman/status/1258336749828419584 I'd also point out that the current situation forces an "all or nothing" employment system. In Aus, if you're working part time you don't quality for any benefits, so the incentive to work while on unemployment is lowered. However, with UBI, there _is_ incentive to work. You can double your income by taking up a part time job, instead of getting the same amount from working as you would from unemployment. I'd also challenge you and say why do think reduced working hours is a bad thing? Also, what about all the people with a lot of money who don't work? All your arguments have been made before and discussed in depth. > The problem being that our economy depends on these people performing such jobs. The economy should serve the people. Shareholders may depend on it though :) Your "inflationary spiral" theory is also unfounded, and has been shown previously. > Why work overtime at McDonalds when your rent is already paid up for the month and there are so many fun video games to play? This is a terrible strawman, but also maybe MCD should pay better or offer other incentives? They're not owed employees.

leereeves 6y ago
> Firstly, this probably isn't correct, see this recent report from Finland: https://twitter.com/rcbregman/status/1258336749828419584 https://twitter.com/rcbregman/status/1258336749828419584 According to that report, that experiment only paid people 560 euros a month. That's not enough to make staying home and playing video games an option.
- zozbot234 6y ago
  You may not see this as obvious, but 560 euros per month is a lot as an unrestricted grant to low-income folks. It may not be enough to stay at home and play video games, but it's easy to supplement with even low-intensity, part-time work. That's pretty much what many low-income folks need; a manageable on-ramp towards full participation in the labor market. UBI is a game changer, even and perhaps especially at these "low" levels.

friendlybus 6y ago

If you've ever worked at a mcdonalds in the past ten years, you'll know that all the "work" is done by cooking machines and most of the humans are just packaging and assembling warmed up frozen food. There's a lot of admin, cleaning and customer facing that goes into it too. I honestly believe if you wanted to, it is conceptually easy to fully automate mcdonalds, kfc & dominos (ect).

w-j-w 6y ago

> overtime at McDonald's You're much less likely to be called an ignorant poor hater if you don't say stuff like this. There is no unskilled labor shortage, and the economy isn't stronger when more people have fast food jobs.

hndamien 6y ago

Nobody would want to work these undesirable jobs that are exceptionally important for the economy to run, but not compensated like they are.

taneq 6y ago

> Why work overtime at McDonalds when your rent is already paid up for the month and there are so many fun video games to play? So you can afford more video games? Or a new, locally-made bike? Or any one of the other myriad nice things that we can get in exchange for money? If you're a reasonably engaged software dev (like many on this site) it probably only takes you 10 hours a week to cover basic costs of living in an entry level apartment. Why would you work more than 10 hours?

allendoerfer 6y ago
> If you're a reasonably engaged software dev (like many on this site) it probably only takes you 10 hours a week to cover basic costs of living in an entry level apartment. Why would you work more than 10 hours? While I am personally against a UBI, just because I think there are so many innovations right around the corner, which we should achieve first, many of the reasons why you are working over 10 hours a week, would go away with a UBI: - Saving for your own retirement - Saving for your childrens future, giving them a savety net You would also have to check whether a UBI would change some of the motivations to work, due to the culture changing: - If you want to accomplish something as a team, a workplace is a great place to fullfill that need. Less people working fulltime due to other reasons would provide more obvious opportunities here. If you are not really sold by the other reasons and you are here for the team-aspect, you could join the party later, after more groups working together have established themselves. - At least where I live, you could already live relatively comfortable on social benefits. You just don't do it, because it's not accepted socially. So people work, because it is expected of them by society. If society would change it's mind here, e.g. due to an understanding, that not everyone can have a job anymore, that expectation would not force people to work anymore. - (Especially as a male) your job takes a big part in defining your social status. I could imagine additionally to the general trend of women having careers, UBI could chip away another part of that, because now even really conservative, family-oriented women would be less dependent. I am just guessing here, though. It could be that our underlying instincts of what we find attractive are much stronger and a UBI would not change anything here. I personally could imagine for software developers, a UBI would lower the threshold for many to exclusively work on more fullfilling (open source) side projects. I personally have a number in my mind, at which point I might do just that. With UBI that number would certainly be a little bit lower.

0xfaded 6y ago

To play devil's advocate, if the fed is now essentially providing a floor on the value of assets (through QE and purchase of rubbish bonds), wouldn't it also be fair for the government to provide a floor on the value of labor?

thomasfl 6y ago

It still reamins to be seen if universal basic income would make videogames the most common daytime activity among adults. The reason ubi experiments in India shows good results, may be that video games are unavailable in the Indian countryside. It also may be that small villages in India has strong communities. Communities with strong social control, that won’t allow it’s inhabitants that receive ubi to spend it all on alcohol. In the western world, there is much less social control. Still it reamins to be seen if peope receiving ubi, will choose to find meaning in video games, flipping burgers or do something good for themselves or the community.

bluedino 6y ago
>> It still reamins to be seen if universal basic income would make videogames the most common daytime activity among adults. It probably would, if recent events are any indication. The current stay-at-home orders have increased video game sales by 65%
- Kliment 6y ago
  That's just a shift of free-time activity budgets away from things that are no longer available (amusement parks, restaurants, cinemas, bars) to things that are (delivered food, video games, recorded media).

arcticbull 6y ago

> Why work overtime at McDonalds when your rent is already paid up for the month and there are so many fun video games to play? It's funny, people say that. But what would you do, personally? If I offered you just over your rent to stay home... would you... stay home? I know I wouldn't. People derive their sense of self-worth from a combination of intrinsic and extrinsic factors, and derive a lot of their social validation from their coworkers. Personally, I could retire on a beach and do nothing for the next 60 years. That sounds shit though. I mean, it sounds great when I hate my boss, but about five minutes later, it sounds pretty shit.

ThrowawayR2 6y ago
> "If I offered you just over your rent to stay home... would you... stay home?" I'll take you up on that; my health is deteriorating.
- arcticbull 6y ago
  In which case, I'd say more power to you. That'd be a huge plus in favor of the program.
  - ThrowawayR2 6y ago
    That has nothing to do with the question you originally asked. Such a program would be indeed beneficial to me and, if that were my sole concern, I'd be all for it. However, it seems likely sufficiently deleterious to society that I don't support society being required to pay for my subsistence.
    - arcticbull 6y ago
      I don't think they're mutually exclusive, but I also think underpinning my previous post is an un-stated assumption: we have too many people doing jobs that don't matter. IMO we don't need gas station attendants, we don't need grocery store clerks, we don't need manufacturing jobs. We need more robots. When robots inevitably replace these menial jobs, we're gonna have to do something with those folks. Over time the birth rate will decline and the population will even out, and there won't be more people than jobs, and that UBI is an elegant stop-gap measure. Otherwise, keeping people in these jobs is just some sort of Rube Goldberg-esque make work project. Folks like yourself can stop working, folks doing menial work will stop working. Those who want to get ahead and do crazy new things will always be motivated to do so.

abiogenesis 6y ago

> Employers would have increase wages significantly above the UBI level in order to attract workers [...] No, because UBI (being universal) is paid to anyone, working or not.

AnthonyMouse 6y ago

> Employers would have increase wages significantly above the UBI level in order to attract workers, but that would either erode the UBI through inflation or cause an inflationary spiral if the UBI were indexed. Employers would not have to increase wages "significantly above the UBI level" because the UBI is paid in addition to wages. They might have to increase wages somewhat in order to convince people to do undesirable jobs, but isn't that a good thing? It also makes automation of those jobs more profitable, which allows more people to do what they want to do instead of being forced into drudgery out of survival. Meanwhile there is no obvious means for this to cause inflation because no additional money is inherently being created. There would merely be less income inequality because some money is transferred from executives and shareholders to workers when they have to pay higher wages. The only real mechanism for inflation would be if you transferred money from people inclined to save it to people inclined to spend it immediately, but there is no way for that to consume the entire amount unless the supply of all goods and services is completely inelastic. Otherwise some of the money gets spent on things whose prices don't increase significantly with demand and you just get more production. Meanwhile necessities with inelastic supply are evils in themselves, because it's nearly always an artificial barrier. If people had more money and housing supply is constrained then rents might go up, but the problem there isn't that people have more money, it's that housing supply is artificially constrained. A solution to one problem isn't defective just because it fails to solve a completely independent problem. We have to solve the other problem either way.

enriquto 6y ago

> we just have to accept that UBI would give people that work undesirable/uninteresting jobs an off-ramp from the economy. The problem being that our economy depends on these people performing such jobs. I had to read your comment three times; it was unbelievable that somebody could ever hold such a revolting argument. You are saying that it is OK to keep large swaths of the population under the permanent menace of starvation, exposure and death from curable illnesses, lest they wouldn't have an incentive to pick your trash and serve you fast food. Dude, relax.

therealdrag0 6y ago
Dude relax. Did you read their next sentence? They are not saying that's bad or good in and of-itself, they are concerned with the consequences of that: inflation. Sometimes a point takes more than one sentence to make. They might be right or wrong, but at least respond to what they're actually saying. Picking and choosing sentences to quote out of context is a big problem in todays discourse.

spyckie2 6y ago

> A 2019 study found "a 14% increase in substance-abuse incidents the day after the [Alaska Permanent Fund] payment and a 10% increase over the following four weeks. This is partially offset by a 8% decrease in property crime, with no changes in violent crimes. This is a legitimate question to ask.

wastedhours 6y ago
Yep - UBI is likely to exaggerate elements seen in everyday society. Do you want to spend your day sniffing glue but can't now because you also have to work? Now you can just sniff the glue. Do you want some social mobility through earnings? Great, have the UBI and a job. To tackle this the UBI has to have a required level of education attached to it for proper usage. We need to ensure that public funding in a transition period (whereby taxation might reduce whilst the novelty of not having to work plays out) is protected. And there needs to be some level of societal acceptance of what people should be doing (currently there's a number of communities where there isn't an expectation to have a job, even without UBI).

phekunde 6y ago

> ... and there are so many fun video games to play? This! I use to be a proponent of wholesale UBI. Not any longer after I saw first hand what unfettered welfare system does to people's attitudes. Sex, drugs and video games is what people spend more time on! This is ofcourse from experience living in a developed country in Europe. I think this will apply to developing countries as well because human nature is same everywhere. What people on the left and right of the political spectrum don't take into account is human nature; the left does not take into account "laziness" and the right does not take into account "greed". A system should be designed in such a way that it should not unintentionally promote either laziness or greed.

commandlinefan 6y ago

> I haven't heard a satisfactory explanation as to how UBI avoids these pitfalls. Worse: it might be great, but it might be a horrifying failure. What I have yet to hear is a plan for how to a) recognize that it's gone horribly wrong and b) back out of it without causing civil unrest that leads to open rebellion. Although articles like this are cautiously optimistic, they seem to ignore that once you pull the trigger, it's full speed ahead, damn the torpedoes.

apercu 6y ago

> The problem being that our economy depends on these people performing such jobs. If an economy depends on young people working fast food service jobs then that economy is stupid and needs to be fixed.

therealdrag0 6y ago
Why? They're providing value that people want; the jobs aren't arbitrary. And some people WANT these jobs. Some young people are proud of having a job, getting experience, and buying their own stuff.

PenguinCoder 6y ago

> work overtime at McDonalds when your rent is already paid Why should anyone have to work overtime, to make rent payment?