4 ms·

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 hori

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.
      - scarmig 6y ago
        I'm pretty sure most people reading this have spreadsheets that carefully plot expected lifetime earnings, carefully modeling different assumptions about general and healthcare inflation rates, anticipating likely tax code changes, etc., and don't know anyone who doesn't. But it would floor most HN readers to realize that probably around half of Americans have zero particular plans for the medium and long term, with a meaningful minority not having a clue about how to pay their bills next month.
  - vl 6y ago
    > how many actually think of their jobs being decades-long certainties though? Anyone with unionized job, or even better, government/public sector unionized job.
  - klyrs 6y ago
    > how many actually think of their jobs being decades-long certainties though? Folks can generally aim for a growth trajectory, irrespective of their specific employer, until their industry collapses. Which is kinda the point of UBI. This was true of my mom, grandma, and great grandma. Which is kinda the point of UBI: to restore the stability that once buoyed our society.
- scarmig 6y ago
  Yes. After establishing 5 year experiments have decent results, it makes the most sense to move to lifelong experiments. 1000 people at $1000/month for life could probably be funded with around $1B. A lot, but not an insane amount. Even a motivated billionaire could swing that without much trouble, and that would give us pretty good answers for the microeconomic effects of a UBI.
  - nybble41 6y ago
    > 1000 people at $1000/month for life could probably be funded with around $1B. You wouldn't need quite that much. An initial investment of $300k would be sufficient to pay out $12k per year indefinitely one individual, assuming a modest 4% annual growth. So for 1000 individuals you would only need about $300M, not $1B.
    - scarmig 6y ago
      4% is very optimistic; early retirees usually aim for 3%, and even models with that withdrawal rate fail over long enough time periods. You'd want it to be well-funded enough that there's no question it could commit to the payouts indefinitely (so that people don't act more conservatively than they would knowing it might fail). On top of that are costs of administration and study. The number I ended up with was actually around $600M, and I figured might as well round up.
yardstick 6y ago
If you want people to go to university or other higher education for instance, then any UBI pilot would really need to be a minimum of 4-5 years to give people assurance they will be supported through the entire period of unemployment.

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.
    - scarmig 6y ago
      I'm pretty sure most people reading this have spreadsheets that carefully plot expected lifetime earnings, carefully modeling different assumptions about general and healthcare inflation rates, anticipating likely tax code changes, etc., and don't know anyone who doesn't. But it would floor most HN readers to realize that probably around half of Americans have zero particular plans for the medium and long term, with a meaningful minority not having a clue about how to pay their bills next month.
- vl 6y ago
  > how many actually think of their jobs being decades-long certainties though? Anyone with unionized job, or even better, government/public sector unionized job.
- klyrs 6y ago
  > how many actually think of their jobs being decades-long certainties though? Folks can generally aim for a growth trajectory, irrespective of their specific employer, until their industry collapses. Which is kinda the point of UBI. This was true of my mom, grandma, and great grandma. Which is kinda the point of UBI: to restore the stability that once buoyed our society.
scarmig 6y ago
Yes. After establishing 5 year experiments have decent results, it makes the most sense to move to lifelong experiments. 1000 people at $1000/month for life could probably be funded with around $1B. A lot, but not an insane amount. Even a motivated billionaire could swing that without much trouble, and that would give us pretty good answers for the microeconomic effects of a UBI.
- nybble41 6y ago
  > 1000 people at $1000/month for life could probably be funded with around $1B. You wouldn't need quite that much. An initial investment of $300k would be sufficient to pay out $12k per year indefinitely one individual, assuming a modest 4% annual growth. So for 1000 individuals you would only need about $300M, not $1B.
  - scarmig 6y ago
    4% is very optimistic; early retirees usually aim for 3%, and even models with that withdrawal rate fail over long enough time periods. You'd want it to be well-funded enough that there's no question it could commit to the payouts indefinitely (so that people don't act more conservatively than they would knowing it might fail). On top of that are costs of administration and study. The number I ended up with was actually around $600M, and I figured might as well round up.

yardstick 6y ago

If you want people to go to university or other higher education for instance, then any UBI pilot would really need to be a minimum of 4-5 years to give people assurance they will be supported through the entire period of unemployment.