7 ms·

These UBI experiments all have a flaw, they are time limited and the participants know it. Just try imagining it. Someone tells you will receive $500 per mont

These UBI experiments all have a flaw, they are time limited and the participants know it. Just try imagining it. Someone tells you will receive $500 per month for a year. So that's a reliable income you can make a year long plan for. Then someone tells you that you will get it for life. Suddenly the difference in behavior is immense. You can move somewhere with cheaper rent. You can go to college. You can start making real plans depending on that income. It's like the difference between a pension or social security and getting a fixed lump sum.

seppin 6y ago
Exactly. So much of the stress of unemployment and other aid is knowing that whatever rhythm you manage to find, it will only be temporary.
guerrilla 6y ago
Is this based on any science or just a priori guessing?
choward 6y ago
Right, it's a fixed sum but split out into arbitrary increments over an arbitrary period of time. If it was $6,000 paid one time, would anyone try to consider that a UBI experiment?
m463 6y ago
If I was getting it for life, I would take out a car loan on a good car or fund a vacation and just spread the payments over .... 10 years. Since my creditors would know I get guaranteed income, I could get the credit for it.
- boomboomsubban 6y ago
  I doubt creditors would offer much against that guaranteed income. If you can't prove extra income on top of it taking your UBI would kill you before you could repay the loan.
  - bawolff 6y ago
    Why not? Payday loans are an entire (abusive) industry built around charging a huge fee to get instant cash right now. Why wouldnt the equivalant for ubi be a thing?
    - boomboomsubban 6y ago
      Payday loans aren't giving you enough to buy a car or fund a good vacation over ten years repayment either, and they require some proof of non-assistance income already. I could see some kind of creditor offering a one or two months payment loan at high interest, but nothing like what is described
      - m463 6y ago
        There's a whole sleazy car sales system similar to payday loans where they do all kinds of stuff like remote car disablers and more. https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/gadgets/remote-kill-switches-disable-cars-missed-payments-n211686 https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/gadgets/remote-kill-switches-di...
        boomboomsubban 6y ago
        There's a difference between offering risky loans to people with poor credit and offering long term loans to someone without a non-assistance source of income.
- lmm 6y ago
  You can always declare bankruptcy, and lenders know this.
scarmig 6y ago
It's a hypothesis that the difference would be immense. You're assuming people's present day decisions are highly impacted by expected incomes at long time horizons. I can see arguments going both ways. But these experiments actually let us test the effects: offer UBIs of varying durations. If effects are broadly similar at 3 years versus 1 year, that gives us confidence that (assuming away highly nonlinear effects) further experiments at 5 years and beyond will also be similar.
- klyrs 6y ago
  Home mortgages are typically measured in decades; 1, 3 and 5-year experiments don't really cut it for what I'd consider long-term planning.
  - princeb 6y ago
    how many actually think of their jobs being decades-long certainties though? in this market, the likelihood of maintaining a salary for 2-years, 5-years, 10-years are so abysmally small compared to all the other lock-ins in life - housing, marriage, citizenship. i have the same angst when my salary was $50k/year as at $500k/year.
    - heavyset_go 6y ago
      > how many actually think of their jobs being decades-long certainties though? People plan for their careers early in their adult life, spend anywhere from close to half a decade to a decade or more studying for that career, and generally have an idea of what the market rate for labor in the role they want to work is. They also expect to, on average, make more money in the future than they did in the past as they advance in their career.
      - jlokier 6y ago
        I assure you quite a lot of people don't plan their careers early in their adult life.
chansiky 6y ago
Psychological side effects aside, the economic math really points towards UBI. Current economic strategies really favor constant consumer spending to keep the wheel turning, and one of the best ways to do so is to make sure the bottom layer is fed. We haven't gotten here by accident either. What about raising the minimum wage? What about lowering interest rates? Its a sign that people including the wealthy and powerful are worried about an economic collapse. I don't think the labor participation rate or psychological ramifications are really on their minds as much as their fear of economic loss.
thu2111 6y ago
But that's an unacceptable position for UBI advocates to take because it makes the experiment unfalsifiable over any reasonable time horizon. UBI advocates claim that an alternative form of welfare system (because that's what it is) would have immense benefits, but they would only become visible if you don't do any experiment to find out what they are. This is completely unscientific and based on enormous assumptions about human nature. I feel the more UBI is debated the less convincing it gets. The claimed benefits evaporate when closely studied. Advocates say there'd be no administration overhead, but there would: you still need to avoid paying UBI to fake identities, dead people, non-citizens, etc. That's a significant proportion of administrative overheads. So advocates then say, well, the savings in administration overheads would be so large that it'd pay for itself. But you can measure and see the overheads of the welfare system today and they aren't that large in percentage terms. Nowhere near enough to pay for a UBI even if you pretend 100% of those costs are for means testing. This claim is supposition, not backed by serious calculations. Advocates get the experiments they lobby for, and then turn around and claim that the null findings should be ignored because it just wasn't tried hard enough. But where have we heard that claim before? That no matter what level of resource redistribution is tried, when it doesn't work it's just not "real UBI"? Right: another social scheme that attempted to guarantee income to everyone, which always has people vigorously campaigning for it and always excusing its failures. In the beginning when UBI was floated, I was interested. It's at least a novel idea. But like many people on this forum, I would be a big loser from UBI. I don't need it and will be paying huge taxes to pay for it. As any realistic implementation would be surely funded by excessive borrowing and inflation, I'd also lose my savings and my children would incur large debts too. For such a catastrophic scenario to gain my support the benefits have to be enormous and utterly convincing. An unfalsifiable claim of the form "UBI doesn't work unless we all UBI harder" will never cut it. Unless the concept evolves significantly, I suspect I will be opposing UBI my whole life.
- jlokier 6y ago
  > you still need to avoid paying UBI to [...] non-citizens Oh is that what the U in Universal basic income stands for. "All people are universal, but some people are more universal than others" -- George Orwell, paraphrased.

seppin 6y ago

Exactly. So much of the stress of unemployment and other aid is knowing that whatever rhythm you manage to find, it will only be temporary.

guerrilla 6y ago

Is this based on any science or just a priori guessing?

choward 6y ago

Right, it's a fixed sum but split out into arbitrary increments over an arbitrary period of time. If it was $6,000 paid one time, would anyone try to consider that a UBI experiment?

m463 6y ago

If I was getting it for life, I would take out a car loan on a good car or fund a vacation and just spread the payments over .... 10 years. Since my creditors would know I get guaranteed income, I could get the credit for it.

boomboomsubban 6y ago
I doubt creditors would offer much against that guaranteed income. If you can't prove extra income on top of it taking your UBI would kill you before you could repay the loan.
- bawolff 6y ago
  Why not? Payday loans are an entire (abusive) industry built around charging a huge fee to get instant cash right now. Why wouldnt the equivalant for ubi be a thing?
  - boomboomsubban 6y ago
    Payday loans aren't giving you enough to buy a car or fund a good vacation over ten years repayment either, and they require some proof of non-assistance income already. I could see some kind of creditor offering a one or two months payment loan at high interest, but nothing like what is described
    - m463 6y ago
      There's a whole sleazy car sales system similar to payday loans where they do all kinds of stuff like remote car disablers and more. https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/gadgets/remote-kill-switches-disable-cars-missed-payments-n211686 https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/gadgets/remote-kill-switches-di...
      - boomboomsubban 6y ago
        There's a difference between offering risky loans to people with poor credit and offering long term loans to someone without a non-assistance source of income.
lmm 6y ago
You can always declare bankruptcy, and lenders know this.

scarmig 6y ago

It's a hypothesis that the difference would be immense. You're assuming people's present day decisions are highly impacted by expected incomes at long time horizons. I can see arguments going both ways. But these experiments actually let us test the effects: offer UBIs of varying durations. If effects are broadly similar at 3 years versus 1 year, that gives us confidence that (assuming away highly nonlinear effects) further experiments at 5 years and beyond will also be similar.

klyrs 6y ago
Home mortgages are typically measured in decades; 1, 3 and 5-year experiments don't really cut it for what I'd consider long-term planning.
- princeb 6y ago
  how many actually think of their jobs being decades-long certainties though? in this market, the likelihood of maintaining a salary for 2-years, 5-years, 10-years are so abysmally small compared to all the other lock-ins in life - housing, marriage, citizenship. i have the same angst when my salary was $50k/year as at $500k/year.
  - heavyset_go 6y ago
    > how many actually think of their jobs being decades-long certainties though? People plan for their careers early in their adult life, spend anywhere from close to half a decade to a decade or more studying for that career, and generally have an idea of what the market rate for labor in the role they want to work is. They also expect to, on average, make more money in the future than they did in the past as they advance in their career.
    - jlokier 6y ago
      I assure you quite a lot of people don't plan their careers early in their adult life.

chansiky 6y ago

Psychological side effects aside, the economic math really points towards UBI. Current economic strategies really favor constant consumer spending to keep the wheel turning, and one of the best ways to do so is to make sure the bottom layer is fed. We haven't gotten here by accident either. What about raising the minimum wage? What about lowering interest rates? Its a sign that people including the wealthy and powerful are worried about an economic collapse. I don't think the labor participation rate or psychological ramifications are really on their minds as much as their fear of economic loss.

thu2111 6y ago

But that's an unacceptable position for UBI advocates to take because it makes the experiment unfalsifiable over any reasonable time horizon. UBI advocates claim that an alternative form of welfare system (because that's what it is) would have immense benefits, but they would only become visible if you don't do any experiment to find out what they are. This is completely unscientific and based on enormous assumptions about human nature. I feel the more UBI is debated the less convincing it gets. The claimed benefits evaporate when closely studied. Advocates say there'd be no administration overhead, but there would: you still need to avoid paying UBI to fake identities, dead people, non-citizens, etc. That's a significant proportion of administrative overheads. So advocates then say, well, the savings in administration overheads would be so large that it'd pay for itself. But you can measure and see the overheads of the welfare system today and they aren't that large in percentage terms. Nowhere near enough to pay for a UBI even if you pretend 100% of those costs are for means testing. This claim is supposition, not backed by serious calculations. Advocates get the experiments they lobby for, and then turn around and claim that the null findings should be ignored because it just wasn't tried hard enough. But where have we heard that claim before? That no matter what level of resource redistribution is tried, when it doesn't work it's just not "real UBI"? Right: another social scheme that attempted to guarantee income to everyone, which always has people vigorously campaigning for it and always excusing its failures. In the beginning when UBI was floated, I was interested. It's at least a novel idea. But like many people on this forum, I would be a big loser from UBI. I don't need it and will be paying huge taxes to pay for it. As any realistic implementation would be surely funded by excessive borrowing and inflation, I'd also lose my savings and my children would incur large debts too. For such a catastrophic scenario to gain my support the benefits have to be enormous and utterly convincing. An unfalsifiable claim of the form "UBI doesn't work unless we all UBI harder" will never cut it. Unless the concept evolves significantly, I suspect I will be opposing UBI my whole life.

jlokier 6y ago
> you still need to avoid paying UBI to [...] non-citizens Oh is that what the U in Universal basic income stands for. "All people are universal, but some people are more universal than others" -- George Orwell, paraphrased.