10 ms·

Mincome: Canada’s 1970s universal basic income experiment

71 points by rmason 6y ago

FreakyT 6y ago
I feel like there is a specific issue with the methodology of this and various other basic income experiments: it was time-limited. If one goes into the experiment knowing that the basic income will end after N years, I suspect that may significantly affect one's behavior. For example, this study found that people typically did not quit their jobs (for 4 years of basic income). Would that result replicate with indefinite basic income? I'd like to see a follow-up study to test that.
- godelski 6y ago
  While I agree with this, is there any long term experiment even in proposal? We'd really need at least 30 years to see how children develop through their dependent years (<25). I see "it was time-limited" often stated in response to UBI criticism (it is a legitimate complaint that these are time limited!) but I have yet to see a proposal that tries to remedy this. Is there one?
skybrian 6y ago
Manitoba again. If you're paying attention to universal basic income, this is more like the experiment they keep reminding us about.
Kednicma 6y ago
How much bigger do UBI experiments need to be before we can be confident that these positive small-scale outcomes will also replicate on the scale of a USA-sized country?
- jvm_ 6y ago
  There's some longer term unanswered/unanswerable questions as well. How do children do if their parents have never worked?
  - greiskul 6y ago
    Which parents that never worked? If unemployment doesn't go up, but remains constant or goes down, and more children complete high school, what kids are you worried about? Right now we have a bunch of kids that don't finish high school and are born in unemployed families, how about we worry about them? We know the effect our current system is causing on them, a cycle of poverty that never goes away. Clearly our current approach is not working.
  - zozbot234 6y ago
    I don't know where this idea is coming from that UBI will incent people to drop out of the labor force. Any reasonable and currently-feasible UBI would do the opposite. And experiments bear this out - those who seemingly leave the workforce are actually doing something quite different: namely, they're temporarily shifting from formal employment to working towards human capital acquisition, or else providing care for others.
    - klmadfejno 6y ago
      > those who seemingly leave the workforce are actually doing something quite different: namely, they're temporarily shifting from formal employment to working towards human capital acquisition, or else providing care for others. Providing care for others is a great use of labor. Working towards human capital acquisition sounds great, but then you realize you still need people working the bottom jobs. Bottom jobs suck. If people have legit UBI, they won't do them. They'd be stupid to do them unless they truly believed they could not do better with self investment. But we need those jobs to be done. So maybe you raise wages. So prices rise a bit, cheap foreign labor becomes even more enticing where available, and the UBI is not Universal-not-quite-Basic-Income. What do you do when your UBI isn't quite livable?
      - zozbot234 6y ago
        The thing is, one you've raised those wages enough, the "bottom jobs" are no longer at the bottom. Especially if people are no longer limited to that single source of income. So some people get actively drawn into that sector, and prices stabilize. The whole notion of some jobs being at the "bottom" while others aren't is quite dysfunctional and not really an inherent part of a functioning economy. BTW, an UBI can be less than "livable" and still be quite useful. Even a baseline subsidy can bring a very welcome increase in flexibility in the seemingly "bottom" sector, which is also often the entry point into the labor market.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- mantas 6y ago
  So far experiments are one-sided with outside money being used. Nobody is testing how a self-sustained society works in UBI. I'd be more interested in seeing a full-fledged test rather than bigger and bigger cherry picked tests.
- arnaudsm 6y ago
  I bet that after this recession, at least one western country will try UBI at large scale within 20 years. We'll learn a lot.
dang 6y ago
If curious see also these other Mincome threads: 2016 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11497021 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11497021 2015 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9004287 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9004287 2014 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8792192 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8792192
alexashka 6y ago
This endless discussion of UBI or other programs in isolation is like trying to find treatment for an itchy toe, ignoring that the rest of your body is also itching.
- nexuist 6y ago
  Last I check itching cream worked on most parts of your body. Like UBI, being given any amount of itching cream can cure many itches at once.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- artsyca 6y ago
  I understand what you're getting at. It's like you're trying to put out a fire in your kitchen when your whole house is on fire. It would work if you could get it all done at once but not when you try to do it piecemeal.
- II2II 6y ago
  That treatment for an itchy toe managed to reduce hospitalization rates by over 8% and increase high school completion rates (to the point where everyone at least started their final year). There were also indications that small businesses started appearing, presumably because people wanted to keep working yet also wanted more autonomy. The article states that was possible because financing was easier to come by. There is a possibility that addressing financial insecurity will give people the freedom to address other social ills on their own accord. Yet we will never find out if people keep coming up with excuses to prevent wider scale trials.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
aszantu 6y ago
without knowing anything about it I'd think that our system would be working better with UBI if it was randomized and switching between citizens, would make sense to exclude everyone who is already a millionaire or something. So if you pull it, you get 4-8 years to build a business with the money, or do whatever u want, and then the money goes to someone else. That way it wouldn't just be hyper inflationary. If you give everybody more money, nobody has more money. Capitalism is built on inequality.
- HighlandSpring 6y ago
  Oh there'll still be inequality, don't worry about it :)
- tenebrisalietum 6y ago
  Things are still unequal with UBI - if you get $2k a month, billionaires are still billionaries. It can make being poor less dangerous; e.g. homelessness, car repossession, lack of basic necessities can stop being a thing. I sometimes think really that a good alternative would be Universal Protected Net Worth. Maybe things would be better if there was some floor of money and assets below which no court or legal proceeding could take from you, including taxes, fines, bail, judgements, seizures, forfeitures, etc. I don't know how that would work in practice.
  - winstonewert 6y ago
    The Mosaic law actually has something kind of like this where you can't lose ownership of your allotted farmland. Thus, at minimum, everyone owns a valuable asset and thus some net worth. (Data is sparse on whether this law was every actually followed or the effects.)
  - fastball 6y ago
    Universal Protected Net Worth sounds unbelievably prone to abuse. One of the best things about UBI is that it is unabusable (except with faking existence of people, which can be used to abuse literally any system).
  - 6y ago
godelski 6y ago
At this point of time I seriously think we only have a few conclusions: (Special note to 4, please address) 1) Recognize that we have sufficient "small" scale studies (note the quotes) that are short term, and providing similar results, which necessitate longer term studies. i.e. studies that are ~30 years, so that children can grow up completely under this environment and live through their dependent years (<25 years old) under these conditions. 2) The experiments provide enough evidence and this warrants attempting this on a much larger scale for the presumed future. i.e. institute a UBI (obviously we need to determine WHICH kind of UBI we would institute). 3) There are major flaws in the studies that need to be addressed and we need to refine them. (Personally with the many variations of these I've seen I do not think this is an accurate conclusion, but I am open to being wrong as I am not an expert studying this topic) 4) While the benefits are real, the cost is too much. This is one I'd particularly like to see addressed. Pretty much every time we see UBI experiments come up we see: 1) little to no earning wage increase (which is difficult to say if it is because the short time periods or not) 2) lower hospitalizations 3) higher sense of self worth 4) more children are finishing education 5) more children are reaching their dietary needs. The issue I see is that these have (unclear) economic values tied to them but are not discussed. I ALWAYS see the economic cost discussed, though understandably this is a much easier thing to calculate. But aren't economists supposed to be estimating these difficult concepts? As a voter I would like to know what the economic benefit is to these programs as well as the cost. This will allow me to make better judgments (e.g. even if UBI costs more economically maybe my personal moral utility value makes up the difference between the numbers). It is a shame that this is not discussed. The issue of UBI and all its variations is complex but I believe that the conversation is frequently being framed in ways that is difficult to make real judgments on. We see the economic costs, but not the economic benefits. But we do see moral benefits, but this isn't enough. Legitimate excuses are given (for and against), but no one is making new experiments that address these concerns. We need a serious conversation with less surjection.
- CuriousSkeptic 6y ago
  I think it could be simpler. Instead for means testing and all the administration that comes with it we could try much simpler schemes. Just give something to everyone, could be a negative tax, but a dividend is even simpler. Since we are in the middle of various economic transitions where we need to introduce taxes to control over consumption the simpler experiment (instead of finding a region and allocating a budget) would be to introduce those taxes together with a public dividend.
abellerose 6y ago
Instead of the idea of universal basic income. I like to toy with the idea of somehow making it so people can work less. Such as a person works every other week and where someone else fills the role for the weeks the other person isn't working. I think it would increase job positions and better mental health. I'm unsure how it financially could work out but I assume money can come from somewhere because UBI is basically proposing income for no work at all.
- oxymoran 6y ago
  It is not for no work at all. You would be free to work and earn more money, so why wouldn’t you? It just guarantees a minimum income not a comfortable income. And it would encourage people to do exactly what you want, work less.
- core-questions 6y ago
  This only really works for jobs doing more menial tasks - it will not work very well for longer term projects. Instead, we should focus those kinds of efforts on reducing the length of the work day, adding more flexibility to scheduling, and pushing hard to keep work out of home life.
refurb 6y ago
I'd love for someone to explain how UBI won't just inflate prices. Obviously it comes down to exact implementation. To me it seems it would be similar to the government intervention into housing - the gov't wanted more people to be able to own homes. So they create 30-year mortgages (for example). This was great because you could spread the payments out over more time, lowering your monthly payment. Oh wait, the 30-year mortgage is open to everyone. So now everyone has more buying power. Prices rise and you end up in the same spot as before - a big chunk of the population can't afford a house. Why wouldn't this happen with UBI? If you have everyone in the US $10,000, no strings attached, I would guess prices would generally rise until $10,000 wasn't enough to survive on.
- danielheath 6y ago
  Prices for scarce resources with high marginal costs (eg: desirable housing) rise. You can’t cheaply make more. Prices for resources with high plant costs and low unit costs do not, to anything like the same degree - medicine, consumer electronics, food.
- sdinsn 6y ago
  > If you have everyone in the US $10,000, no strings attached What you are missing is that UBI is supposed to replace all existing entitlement programs, such as unemployment, disability, food stamps, social security, etc. We already hand out tons of money, UBI is just a different way of handing it out money that is more efficient because there is less bureaucracy involved.
  - refurb 6y ago
    Right, but we don't hand out money to people who don't qualify for it (income > $X), so it's a different situation. But to your point, I've heard a proposed UBI that gives money to everyone, but effectively claws it back in taxes for higher incomes. Actually it would claw 100% back and more in order to fund UBI. In that case, I could see the inflationary pressure not being an issue since net-net, you're just giving cash to a set group of people.
  - tunesmith 6y ago
redis_mlc 6y ago
There is UBI in Canada, but it's called welfare. In order to form the Canada federation, Ontario had to agree to pay residents of Quebec and the Maritime provinces for not working. "Transfer payments" is the only reason Quebec hasn't become an independent country yet. How it's handled in Newfoundland is that fishermen agree to fish for a few months, then they get "income support" for the remaining months of the year. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Confederation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Confederation
- akvadrako 6y ago
  UBI is more like anti-welfare.
- ficklepickle 6y ago
  That is an interesting take. I'm not sure I would agree with the way you described it. This is a more relevant link[0]. Technically, the money comes from the federal government. It is given to the poorer provinces as general revenue and it is used to balance their budgets. It is not specifically used to pay Maritime fishermen not to work. The wealthier provinces essentially subsidize the poorer ones. It is just like society; wealthier people pay more tax and poorer people use more social services. I'm not saying it is a perfect solution. But it does ensure a certain baseline level of services across the country. Quebec is, by far, the largest recipient of equalization payments. [0] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equalization_payments_in_Canada https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equalization_payments_in_Can...
foobar_ 6y ago
Also read negative incometax. Same thing. At this point economics will make more sense if human cost is acually made quantifiable and counted in profit and loss.
- tom_mellior 6y ago
  UBI is not the same thing as a negative income tax. I would be sure to get a UBI this month, and next month, and the month after that independent of what I do. With a negative income tax, I might be employed this month, then lose my job and barely scrape by next month, and starve the month after that. And then sometime next year, after filing tax papers, I would get some money to keep me alive... this year. It's true that in the grand scheme of things, averaged over many years, I would get the same amount from a UBI and a negative income tax. But at critical points in life, where my employment status changes significantly, the delay from the negative income tax would not provide the security that a UBI does.
causality0 6y ago
They wanted to see whether a guaranteed basic income for those below the poverty line could improve quality of life This is what drives me crazy about these experiments. Obviously, using straight donations to keep people above a certain poverty line will improve the lives of those particular people. What's always missing is the other half of the equation: the analysis of whether UBI is the most efficient way to spend that money. Every study seems laser-focused on the outcomes of people who received the benefit while ignoring the projected effect on the society as a whole. It's entirely possible UBI is a great choice but its proponents seem bound and determined not to prove it.
ghufran_syed 6y ago
If say, a liberal state in the US like California wanted to do a useful study on the subject, the way to do it would be to randomly choose a pair of nearby cities/counties with similar composition, then impose both a basic income stipend and the extra taxes needed to pay for it on one of the counties and not on the other, for a minimum period of 10 years. You could even choose the specific city/county pairs from only those that wanted to take part in the experiment and had voted to that effect in a ballot proposition. Then you could answer important questions regarding effects of the increased taxes as well as that of the payments. I'd be particularly interested in 2nd order effects, for example, if the voters can vote to keep increasing the basic income amount, would the increased taxes eventually drive out those who are taxed most heavily? And would that be net negative (reduced tax revenue to fund the program)? Or net positive (e.g. reducing housing prices?)
shitgoose 6y ago
In Canada anyone who is out of job now unconditionally gets 500/week of Covid money. Pretty much same idea as UBI. The immediate effect that I observed was that all Filipino nannies quit. There is no incentive for them to work any more. I am not sure what they do with all the free time though. Maybe the life was different in rural Winnipeg in 70's (btw 11k was a shitload of money back then), but nowadays the UBI will immediately wipe out the low paying jobs. This may disrupt industries that rely on cheap labor. But what is much worse - it will create a class of people who are entitled to free money and have zero incentive to do anything with their lives, like get education, progress their careers, strive for better live. There is a need for a safety net in a society for those who slipped, but UBI is different. It is designed to make people regress, takes away any motivation.
- ulucs 6y ago
  It sucks that you are now unable to take advantage of poor immigrants because they are not in desperate need of money. It is nice that they have temporarily escaped their cycle of poverty. Instead of complaining about how they are wasting their lives by not working (and reciting the poem The Educated Man's Burden), you should instead pay them their actual worth.
  - redis_mlc 6y ago
    > you should instead pay them their actual worth. Your SJW act is not appreciated on a tech forum like this. Typically they're there on a work visa as a nanny, so the amount they're paid is their market value. Also, the Philippines government (OFW) is involved in overseas workers representation and visas, so nobody is being taken advantage of.
  - shitgoose 6y ago
    Oh, I was not complaining:) I do not have a nanny neither want one. I clean my own shit. I was just observing. Nanny's salary is based on supply/demand. Until government interferes with Covid payments. When payments stop, nannies will go back to work. And, you are right, I believe that idling on Covid handouts is a waste of time. Any sort of idling is a waste of time.

71 points by rmason 6y ago

I feel like there is a specific issue with the methodology of this and various other basic income experiments: it was time-limited. If one goes into the experiment knowing that the basic income will end after N years, I suspect that may significantly affect one's behavior. For example, this study found that people typically did not quit their jobs (for 4 years of basic income). Would that result replicate with indefinite basic income? I'd like to see a follow-up study to test that.

godelski 6y ago
While I agree with this, is there any long term experiment even in proposal? We'd really need at least 30 years to see how children develop through their dependent years (<25). I see "it was time-limited" often stated in response to UBI criticism (it is a legitimate complaint that these are time limited!) but I have yet to see a proposal that tries to remedy this. Is there one?

skybrian 6y ago

Manitoba again. If you're paying attention to universal basic income, this is more like the experiment they keep reminding us about.

Kednicma 6y ago

How much bigger do UBI experiments need to be before we can be confident that these positive small-scale outcomes will also replicate on the scale of a USA-sized country?

jvm_ 6y ago
There's some longer term unanswered/unanswerable questions as well. How do children do if their parents have never worked?
- greiskul 6y ago
  Which parents that never worked? If unemployment doesn't go up, but remains constant or goes down, and more children complete high school, what kids are you worried about? Right now we have a bunch of kids that don't finish high school and are born in unemployed families, how about we worry about them? We know the effect our current system is causing on them, a cycle of poverty that never goes away. Clearly our current approach is not working.
- zozbot234 6y ago
  I don't know where this idea is coming from that UBI will incent people to drop out of the labor force. Any reasonable and currently-feasible UBI would do the opposite. And experiments bear this out - those who seemingly leave the workforce are actually doing something quite different: namely, they're temporarily shifting from formal employment to working towards human capital acquisition, or else providing care for others.
  - klmadfejno 6y ago
    > those who seemingly leave the workforce are actually doing something quite different: namely, they're temporarily shifting from formal employment to working towards human capital acquisition, or else providing care for others. Providing care for others is a great use of labor. Working towards human capital acquisition sounds great, but then you realize you still need people working the bottom jobs. Bottom jobs suck. If people have legit UBI, they won't do them. They'd be stupid to do them unless they truly believed they could not do better with self investment. But we need those jobs to be done. So maybe you raise wages. So prices rise a bit, cheap foreign labor becomes even more enticing where available, and the UBI is not Universal-not-quite-Basic-Income. What do you do when your UBI isn't quite livable?
    - zozbot234 6y ago
      The thing is, one you've raised those wages enough, the "bottom jobs" are no longer at the bottom. Especially if people are no longer limited to that single source of income. So some people get actively drawn into that sector, and prices stabilize. The whole notion of some jobs being at the "bottom" while others aren't is quite dysfunctional and not really an inherent part of a functioning economy. BTW, an UBI can be less than "livable" and still be quite useful. Even a baseline subsidy can bring a very welcome increase in flexibility in the seemingly "bottom" sector, which is also often the entry point into the labor market.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
mantas 6y ago
So far experiments are one-sided with outside money being used. Nobody is testing how a self-sustained society works in UBI. I'd be more interested in seeing a full-fledged test rather than bigger and bigger cherry picked tests.
arnaudsm 6y ago
I bet that after this recession, at least one western country will try UBI at large scale within 20 years. We'll learn a lot.

dang 6y ago

If curious see also these other Mincome threads: 2016 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11497021 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11497021 2015 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9004287 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9004287 2014 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8792192 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8792192

alexashka 6y ago

This endless discussion of UBI or other programs in isolation is like trying to find treatment for an itchy toe, ignoring that the rest of your body is also itching.

nexuist 6y ago
Last I check itching cream worked on most parts of your body. Like UBI, being given any amount of itching cream can cure many itches at once.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
artsyca 6y ago
I understand what you're getting at. It's like you're trying to put out a fire in your kitchen when your whole house is on fire. It would work if you could get it all done at once but not when you try to do it piecemeal.
II2II 6y ago
That treatment for an itchy toe managed to reduce hospitalization rates by over 8% and increase high school completion rates (to the point where everyone at least started their final year). There were also indications that small businesses started appearing, presumably because people wanted to keep working yet also wanted more autonomy. The article states that was possible because financing was easier to come by. There is a possibility that addressing financial insecurity will give people the freedom to address other social ills on their own accord. Yet we will never find out if people keep coming up with excuses to prevent wider scale trials.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

aszantu 6y ago

without knowing anything about it I'd think that our system would be working better with UBI if it was randomized and switching between citizens, would make sense to exclude everyone who is already a millionaire or something. So if you pull it, you get 4-8 years to build a business with the money, or do whatever u want, and then the money goes to someone else. That way it wouldn't just be hyper inflationary. If you give everybody more money, nobody has more money. Capitalism is built on inequality.

HighlandSpring 6y ago
Oh there'll still be inequality, don't worry about it :)
tenebrisalietum 6y ago
Things are still unequal with UBI - if you get $2k a month, billionaires are still billionaries. It can make being poor less dangerous; e.g. homelessness, car repossession, lack of basic necessities can stop being a thing. I sometimes think really that a good alternative would be Universal Protected Net Worth. Maybe things would be better if there was some floor of money and assets below which no court or legal proceeding could take from you, including taxes, fines, bail, judgements, seizures, forfeitures, etc. I don't know how that would work in practice.
- winstonewert 6y ago
  The Mosaic law actually has something kind of like this where you can't lose ownership of your allotted farmland. Thus, at minimum, everyone owns a valuable asset and thus some net worth. (Data is sparse on whether this law was every actually followed or the effects.)
- fastball 6y ago
  Universal Protected Net Worth sounds unbelievably prone to abuse. One of the best things about UBI is that it is unabusable (except with faking existence of people, which can be used to abuse literally any system).
- 6y ago

godelski 6y ago

At this point of time I seriously think we only have a few conclusions: (Special note to 4, please address) 1) Recognize that we have sufficient "small" scale studies (note the quotes) that are short term, and providing similar results, which necessitate longer term studies. i.e. studies that are ~30 years, so that children can grow up completely under this environment and live through their dependent years (<25 years old) under these conditions. 2) The experiments provide enough evidence and this warrants attempting this on a much larger scale for the presumed future. i.e. institute a UBI (obviously we need to determine WHICH kind of UBI we would institute). 3) There are major flaws in the studies that need to be addressed and we need to refine them. (Personally with the many variations of these I've seen I do not think this is an accurate conclusion, but I am open to being wrong as I am not an expert studying this topic) 4) While the benefits are real, the cost is too much. This is one I'd particularly like to see addressed. Pretty much every time we see UBI experiments come up we see: 1) little to no earning wage increase (which is difficult to say if it is because the short time periods or not) 2) lower hospitalizations 3) higher sense of self worth 4) more children are finishing education 5) more children are reaching their dietary needs. The issue I see is that these have (unclear) economic values tied to them but are not discussed. I ALWAYS see the economic cost discussed, though understandably this is a much easier thing to calculate. But aren't economists supposed to be estimating these difficult concepts? As a voter I would like to know what the economic benefit is to these programs as well as the cost. This will allow me to make better judgments (e.g. even if UBI costs more economically maybe my personal moral utility value makes up the difference between the numbers). It is a shame that this is not discussed. The issue of UBI and all its variations is complex but I believe that the conversation is frequently being framed in ways that is difficult to make real judgments on. We see the economic costs, but not the economic benefits. But we do see moral benefits, but this isn't enough. Legitimate excuses are given (for and against), but no one is making new experiments that address these concerns. We need a serious conversation with less surjection.

CuriousSkeptic 6y ago
I think it could be simpler. Instead for means testing and all the administration that comes with it we could try much simpler schemes. Just give something to everyone, could be a negative tax, but a dividend is even simpler. Since we are in the middle of various economic transitions where we need to introduce taxes to control over consumption the simpler experiment (instead of finding a region and allocating a budget) would be to introduce those taxes together with a public dividend.

abellerose 6y ago

Instead of the idea of universal basic income. I like to toy with the idea of somehow making it so people can work less. Such as a person works every other week and where someone else fills the role for the weeks the other person isn't working. I think it would increase job positions and better mental health. I'm unsure how it financially could work out but I assume money can come from somewhere because UBI is basically proposing income for no work at all.

oxymoran 6y ago
It is not for no work at all. You would be free to work and earn more money, so why wouldn’t you? It just guarantees a minimum income not a comfortable income. And it would encourage people to do exactly what you want, work less.
core-questions 6y ago
This only really works for jobs doing more menial tasks - it will not work very well for longer term projects. Instead, we should focus those kinds of efforts on reducing the length of the work day, adding more flexibility to scheduling, and pushing hard to keep work out of home life.

refurb 6y ago

I'd love for someone to explain how UBI won't just inflate prices. Obviously it comes down to exact implementation. To me it seems it would be similar to the government intervention into housing - the gov't wanted more people to be able to own homes. So they create 30-year mortgages (for example). This was great because you could spread the payments out over more time, lowering your monthly payment. Oh wait, the 30-year mortgage is open to everyone. So now everyone has more buying power. Prices rise and you end up in the same spot as before - a big chunk of the population can't afford a house. Why wouldn't this happen with UBI? If you have everyone in the US $10,000, no strings attached, I would guess prices would generally rise until $10,000 wasn't enough to survive on.

danielheath 6y ago
Prices for scarce resources with high marginal costs (eg: desirable housing) rise. You can’t cheaply make more. Prices for resources with high plant costs and low unit costs do not, to anything like the same degree - medicine, consumer electronics, food.
sdinsn 6y ago
> If you have everyone in the US $10,000, no strings attached What you are missing is that UBI is supposed to replace all existing entitlement programs, such as unemployment, disability, food stamps, social security, etc. We already hand out tons of money, UBI is just a different way of handing it out money that is more efficient because there is less bureaucracy involved.
- refurb 6y ago
  Right, but we don't hand out money to people who don't qualify for it (income > $X), so it's a different situation. But to your point, I've heard a proposed UBI that gives money to everyone, but effectively claws it back in taxes for higher incomes. Actually it would claw 100% back and more in order to fund UBI. In that case, I could see the inflationary pressure not being an issue since net-net, you're just giving cash to a set group of people.
- tunesmith 6y ago

redis_mlc 6y ago

There is UBI in Canada, but it's called welfare. In order to form the Canada federation, Ontario had to agree to pay residents of Quebec and the Maritime provinces for not working. "Transfer payments" is the only reason Quebec hasn't become an independent country yet. How it's handled in Newfoundland is that fishermen agree to fish for a few months, then they get "income support" for the remaining months of the year. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Confederation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Confederation

akvadrako 6y ago
UBI is more like anti-welfare.
ficklepickle 6y ago
That is an interesting take. I'm not sure I would agree with the way you described it. This is a more relevant link[0]. Technically, the money comes from the federal government. It is given to the poorer provinces as general revenue and it is used to balance their budgets. It is not specifically used to pay Maritime fishermen not to work. The wealthier provinces essentially subsidize the poorer ones. It is just like society; wealthier people pay more tax and poorer people use more social services. I'm not saying it is a perfect solution. But it does ensure a certain baseline level of services across the country. Quebec is, by far, the largest recipient of equalization payments. [0] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equalization_payments_in_Canada https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equalization_payments_in_Can...

foobar_ 6y ago

Also read negative incometax. Same thing. At this point economics will make more sense if human cost is acually made quantifiable and counted in profit and loss.

tom_mellior 6y ago
UBI is not the same thing as a negative income tax. I would be sure to get a UBI this month, and next month, and the month after that independent of what I do. With a negative income tax, I might be employed this month, then lose my job and barely scrape by next month, and starve the month after that. And then sometime next year, after filing tax papers, I would get some money to keep me alive... this year. It's true that in the grand scheme of things, averaged over many years, I would get the same amount from a UBI and a negative income tax. But at critical points in life, where my employment status changes significantly, the delay from the negative income tax would not provide the security that a UBI does.

causality0 6y ago

They wanted to see whether a guaranteed basic income for those below the poverty line could improve quality of life This is what drives me crazy about these experiments. Obviously, using straight donations to keep people above a certain poverty line will improve the lives of those particular people. What's always missing is the other half of the equation: the analysis of whether UBI is the most efficient way to spend that money. Every study seems laser-focused on the outcomes of people who received the benefit while ignoring the projected effect on the society as a whole. It's entirely possible UBI is a great choice but its proponents seem bound and determined not to prove it.

ghufran_syed 6y ago

If say, a liberal state in the US like California wanted to do a useful study on the subject, the way to do it would be to randomly choose a pair of nearby cities/counties with similar composition, then impose both a basic income stipend and the extra taxes needed to pay for it on one of the counties and not on the other, for a minimum period of 10 years. You could even choose the specific city/county pairs from only those that wanted to take part in the experiment and had voted to that effect in a ballot proposition. Then you could answer important questions regarding effects of the increased taxes as well as that of the payments. I'd be particularly interested in 2nd order effects, for example, if the voters can vote to keep increasing the basic income amount, would the increased taxes eventually drive out those who are taxed most heavily? And would that be net negative (reduced tax revenue to fund the program)? Or net positive (e.g. reducing housing prices?)

shitgoose 6y ago

In Canada anyone who is out of job now unconditionally gets 500/week of Covid money. Pretty much same idea as UBI. The immediate effect that I observed was that all Filipino nannies quit. There is no incentive for them to work any more. I am not sure what they do with all the free time though. Maybe the life was different in rural Winnipeg in 70's (btw 11k was a shitload of money back then), but nowadays the UBI will immediately wipe out the low paying jobs. This may disrupt industries that rely on cheap labor. But what is much worse - it will create a class of people who are entitled to free money and have zero incentive to do anything with their lives, like get education, progress their careers, strive for better live. There is a need for a safety net in a society for those who slipped, but UBI is different. It is designed to make people regress, takes away any motivation.

ulucs 6y ago
It sucks that you are now unable to take advantage of poor immigrants because they are not in desperate need of money. It is nice that they have temporarily escaped their cycle of poverty. Instead of complaining about how they are wasting their lives by not working (and reciting the poem The Educated Man's Burden), you should instead pay them their actual worth.
- redis_mlc 6y ago
  > you should instead pay them their actual worth. Your SJW act is not appreciated on a tech forum like this. Typically they're there on a work visa as a nanny, so the amount they're paid is their market value. Also, the Philippines government (OFW) is involved in overseas workers representation and visas, so nobody is being taken advantage of.
- shitgoose 6y ago
  Oh, I was not complaining:) I do not have a nanny neither want one. I clean my own shit. I was just observing. Nanny's salary is based on supply/demand. Until government interferes with Covid payments. When payments stop, nannies will go back to work. And, you are right, I believe that idling on Covid handouts is a waste of time. Any sort of idling is a waste of time.