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Universal basic income to be tested in Wales

184 points by tmfi 5y ago

intricatedetail 5y ago
That's where my taxes will go. And I have to pay almost a grand a month for private healthcare because of incompetent NHS. Maybe I should move to Wales to get some of my money back.
- growse 5y ago
  > That's where my taxes will go. The welfare state already receives the largest fraction of your taxes. Personally, I'm in favour of things that make the welfare state more cost-effective. > And I have to pay almost a grand a month for private healthcare because of incompetent NHS. Maybe I should move to Wales to get some of my money back. You don't have to, you choose to.
  - jokethrowaway 5y ago
    NHS has been pretty terrible in my experience and thank God I have Bupa now. You don't have to, but if you have something you need serious treatment for you'd better go private. They didn't do any tests when presenting symptoms of a stomach ulcer after queueing for 3 hours (I had to do a private test to find out). Statistically I was unlikely t have it because of my age. The first pregnancy went ok (albeit nowhere close to the level of instrumentation you see in the states), for the second one they delayed epidural until it was too late to administer and my wife gave birth on a sofa without pain relief. My son had teeth problems since birth and they wanted to remove 4 front teeth saying an abscess was inevitable. Luckily we have dentists abroad who advised otherwise and it turned out removing teeth was not needed (and it would have been years of pain, spacers and ruined roots). All in all, considering all the money I paid over the years to the government, it was a pretty shoddy deal.
    - growse 5y ago
      I have extensive experience with the NHS (unfortunately) and have pretty much always been very well looked after. The only exception was probably maternity post-delivery, but that's not anything to do with the fact that it was the NHS. But that's irrelevant. You can prove pretty much anything with personal anecdotes - what matters is the big picture. If you're against the NHS, you should probably put some thought into answering the question of "How do we stop poor people dying from preventable conditions?" (assuming that this is a desired end goal). Also, Bupa aren't going to take you to the hospital at 3am when you have severe kidney stones, or unconscious after having been hit by a drunk driver.
  - hogFeast 5y ago
    No, the welfare state doesn't receive "the largest fraction" of your taxes. Thinking this is a bit of a meme in the UK. The largest category of spending is actually the state pension (which is partly funded by direct revenue), this isn't welfare. The actual amounts that go towards helping people who actually need help in the UK is relatively small. Unemployment benefits vanishingly small. Even when unemployment was high, the total spending barely surpassed a few billion (in real terms, they haven't increased since the 70s or something ludicrous). Disability is a large category, although some of this in-work people, but a big issue over the past ten years has been implementation of UC...this cost £12bn (the implementation of UC i.e. the amount handed out to contractors was 25%+ of what was actually given to claimant...Duncan-Smith had a neuralgia about "scroungers"). Tax credits are a large category but these are semi-universal and made to people in work. How they can be distinguished from a subsidy to companies is unclear. So the actual net effect isn't that clear. The UK has a relatively small welfare state (this is apparent if you actually talk to anyone on benefits...in the pandemic some people realised for the first time that welfare state wasn't actually that generous...and then we got a massive in-work subsidy program, I am guessing that if you had been on UC subject to regular inquiries by the DWP to get a grand total of £80/week or whatever, the state lavishing subsidies on someone making £200/day was...odd). The NHS has pretty poor outcomes for a developed country. It is provided at low-cost (interestingly, about half the size of the public health system in the US) but the results are very poor (politically, doctor's unions have had very strong lobbying, so when spending increases it has typically gone into the back pocket of doctors with output unchanged). Private healthcare is better. Btw, if you are seeing a trend here: the UK's problem is that there is a massive political demand for subsidies, regardless of whether you are in need or not, but 40% of adults pay no income tax. There is a massive disconnect.
    - growse 5y ago
      > No, the welfare state doesn't receive "the largest fraction" of your taxes. Thinking this is a bit of a meme in the UK. The largest category of spending is actually the state pension (which is partly funded by direct revenue), this isn't welfare. The actual amounts that go towards helping people who actually need help in the UK is relatively small. Hmm. On my tax breakdown from HMRC, "Welfare" comes top at ~22%, whereas "State Pensions" comes third at ~12% (Health is second at ~20%). Are you saying HMRC is wrong, or am I misinterpreting this? It does say this is just for income tax and NI, but I'm not aware of income/NI being specifically ringfenced and spent in a different way to, say, VAT. > The NHS has pretty poor outcomes for a developed country. It is provided at low-cost (interestingly, about half the size of the public health system in the US) but the results are very poor (politically, doctor's unions have had very strong lobbying, so when spending increases it has typically gone into the back pocket of doctors with output unchanged). Private healthcare is better. I'm not sure there's a consesus on this. The most charitable interpretation I can gather from skimming the research (e.g. https://www.bmj.com/content/367/bmj.l6326 https://www.bmj.com/content/367/bmj.l6326) is that "It's complex. The NHS does some things badly, and it does some things well, and it generally spends less than its peers". If we accept that, then the next question is naturally "what do we want to change" and "how do we do that". Maybe if the NHS spends less than its peers, we need to fund it more to get better outcomes (I wouldn't be against this)? I also don't disagree necessarily that "Private healthcare is better" for some things, but as I said elsewhere, they're not the ones who have to deal with emergency trauma cases, so it's not a like-for-like comparison.
  - intricatedetail 5y ago
    No, I have to. The treatment is not available on NHS and I would be dead without it.
    - growse 5y ago
      I sympathise. Do you think the reason the treatment isn't available on the NHS is incompetence?
      - intricatedetail 5y ago
        Yes, combined with corruption. The treatment is not available because if more people had access to it, that would eat big pharma profits which some people on advisory panels are shareholders or otherwise have conflict of interest. I am talking about medical cannabis for chronic pain. You can only get it on private prescription.
- robotmay 5y ago
  The NHS isn't incompetent, at least here in Wales. It has however been hobbled by years of cuts and lack of investment by successive conservative governments in England. Here the government continue to invest in it and everyone I know receives great care. In that regard, yes maybe you should move to Wales, it's pretty nice here, and the NHS was a Welsh invention in the first place. In reference to taxes, the English, frankly, owe the Welsh reparation. Hundreds of years of oppression and exploitation of the people and landscape of Wales, and they are repaid by killing entire industries and throwing a nation into poverty. Villages removed to flood valleys for English drinking water. Children beaten when they spoke Welsh. UBI might help repair some of the lasting damage that has been inflicted upon them. Or it might not. But they deserve the right to try.
Proven 5y ago
More UBI nonsense... 1) Nobody wants to pay for it 2) It therefore can't be tested (since it won't be paid for) 3) Everyone knows UBI can't work
tgv 5y ago
The article doesn't give a single detail, so there's nothing to see, except some grandstanding on empty concepts.
LatteLazy 5y ago
It's disappointing to see the tories ("The Conservatives" political party's nickname) knee jerk opposition. It would be nice to see more details on the actual trial (length and amount paid). That said, we basically know UBI works, it's just that no one has the balls to just do it...
- sokoloff 5y ago
  Do we know that it works? Including accounting for sourcing the funds and the amount of demand-driven inflation that might result?
  - notahacker 5y ago
    This. So far we've repeatedly tested that if you give people in an area a small sum of money paid for from central government funds for a couple of years, they won't change their habits much but will be a little better off financially, which should be of absolutely no surprise to anyone. A real pilot would - as a minimum - be making the local tax rises and welfare cuts necessary to make the scheme revenue neutral, which might actually challenge UBI advocates' certainty that it works...
    - LatteLazy 5y ago
      I'm the root commentor but I hope you don't mind me piling on. It's pretty well agreed that the trial in Finland worked: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2242937-universal-basic-income-seems-to-improve-employment-and-well-being/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/2242937-universal-basic... Id welcome a trial that included paying for it. That said, I don't think it would make a big difference. The UK (I'm a brit) spends enough on welfare to just give everyone £5000 pa (including kids) at the same price. We could just start there and make zero changes to tax policy...
      - sokoloff 5y ago
        All topical comments are welcome everywhere IMO. If the average is £5K and many are receiving £0, it must be the case that some are receiving much more than £5K in benefits. If you normalize everyone at £5K, what happens to those who were previously receiving some multiple of that? (I’m presuming that £5K is an insufficient amount to meet what society has previously considered their need for support was.) In essence, you’d be proposing a UBI for ordinary UK citizens to be funded by those who are currently receiving welfare [over £5K]. That would be unpopular with proponents and opponents of UBI I think. (If half or more of that £5K is in staff and overhead and you were willing to dismantle those organizations as soon as it was clear UBI “would work”, this might be workable. I don’t know how much is direct benefits vs overheads [including eligibility and fraud checks, which would be dramatically reduced under UBI].)
janandonly 5y ago
Interesting how political parties are for or against this pilot project before the results are known. What happened to gathering evidence first and then making up one's mind? There have been other projects in Canada, Finland,Kenya and the Netherlands, all with “positive” results. It is useful to ask what you are trying to achieve with an UBI? * lift people out of poverty? * save money on other social schemes, like pensions, disability payments, schooling or housing subsidies? * save money on secondary effects of poverty (like lower average health, or more mental and psychological problems)? * make everyone's life “better” (if so, define better)? * boost the economy? I am going to conduct my own personal UBI experiment starting February 2022. I will be gifted €1.000 per month for 48 months... and I am thinking about maybe blogging or vlogging or instagramming about my experiences.... Any suggestions from the HN crowd?
- nonomaybeyes 5y ago
  The results have been in for a long time now: If you pay people to stay at home and do nothing, people will stay at home and do nothing.
- s3tz 5y ago
  It seems like many politicians have a very emotional reaction to these kinds to experiments, seemingly afraid that the results will contradict their beliefs or that they'll somehow be at a loss. And it's not just one or the other side either, since it looks like UBI could address a lot of issues (ie overall govt waste) the entrenched bureaucracy is by default resistant to it.
- bjackman 5y ago
  Part of the reason for this lack of interest in the actual outcome is that state benefits are one of the main battlegrounds in the UK's culture war. A lot of the Tories' base comes from the ideological position that poorer people don't deserve to receive aid at the expense (via taxes) of richer people. Whether or not UBI achieves any of its stated aims is totally irrelevant once you see things that way. All the arguments about disincentivising work are, IMO just convenient filler. If you categorically disproved them, their proponents would surely just find another macro-economic rationalisation for their beliefs, which are in truth fundamentally moral.
s3tz 5y ago
I'm curious, can we determine from small scale tests like this whether the data we get from them is scale independent?
- jpxw 5y ago
  You can’t. But UBI-supporters don’t let that get in the way.
  - s3tz 5y ago
    I think these experiments should use a better name if that's the case, ie limited basic income.
    - bserge 5y ago
      Universal Credit heh
  - Mordisquitos 5y ago
    That's a good point. We've already carried out enough small-scale tests of UBI to know that it has no obvious drawbacks, and carrying out even more small-scale tests will not provide us with much new information. What we need now are state-wide implementations of UBI, as they are the only way that UBI-sceptics may be forced to accept it if the results are positive.
    - cbmuser 5y ago
      A small scale test doesn’t have any impact on market prices and thus does not reflect reality.
  - Al-Khwarizmi 5y ago
    You speak as if UBI opponents had any evidence whatsoever that it wouldn't work.
- neilwilson 5y ago
  You can't. If you implement income guarantees in one part of a fixed exchange rate area, then the unemployment simply moves to the part that doesn't have the income guarantee. The USA may get away with it because of the number of countries that peg to the US dollar. That is where the unemployment will get exported to. That doesn't apply in the UK. An income guarantee in UK terms is one of two things. It is either equivalent to allowing an individual to obtain their retirement pension at age 18 rather than 68. This is despite the age of that pension increasing from 60/65 to 68 over the last few years because of an unsustainable 'dependency ratio'. Or it is equivalent to removing the age cap on Child Benefit so that it is paid to supposed Adults. Child Benefit is the original 'basic income' and the value of it has been run down over the decades as usual with income guarantees of all types. It has also been curtailed for 'high rate taxpayers'. UBI doesn't work because it doesn't add to the sum total of production. It is a way of transferring real output from workers to those that don't want to work, while trying to hide such people in a crowd of worthy causes. Ordinary people tend to see straight through it.
akyu 5y ago
The 'universal' aspect of UBI is critical, and many of the attempts to test UBI seem to miss this completely. Call it something else in that case.
- smaryjerry 5y ago
  Like the Oakland program which specifically excludes whites. Or basically every other program that only includes extremely low income people. I suppose it gets the results they want though, which is to show it helps the lives of the people, however as we have seen with this last year of unemployment checks, people just won’t go back to work if they can make almost as much for doing nothing. At our business getting people to return when unemployment was an extra $600 a week on top of about 60% of their wages was absolutely impossible. Bow that it’s still $300 it’s a struggle to get people back.
  - falcor84 5y ago
    Well, the whole thing about UBI, as opposed to unemployment payments, is that you'd continue getting it regardless of other sources of income, right? So you should always have some incentive to work, if the conditions are reasonable and they make it worth your time.
  - pietrovismara 5y ago
    Have you ever thought that the problem could be with your wages, rather than with the UBI?
    - smaryjerry 5y ago
      Wages are a market. If everyone wants to be something then the wages will be low. The way around it was to hire many more people but for only 15 hours per week so they can all continue collect unemployment (with an extra $300 per week from the federal government).
      - pietrovismara 5y ago
GordonS 5y ago
I'm going to assume it won't be "for life", but will instead be for some fixed period, such as 1 or 2 years. Scotland has been proposing doing a similar experiment too. But I'm not sure what these very small scale experiments are meant to tell us, especially since several such experiments have already been done. I can't help but be cynical and think this is governments offering platitudes to those in favour of UBI, running experiments designed to produce the outcomes the government wants. Realistically, the behaviour of someone receiving monthly payments for a known fixed term is going to be radically different than that of someone who knows they are going to receive that payment for life, and that it will increase online with inflation or the CPI (Consumer Price Index).
- XorNot 5y ago
  This has always been my problem. If we're going to test UBI, then we really need to run a test over a reasonable time-frame (20 years) or so and commit into it. So we move some people off the existing schemes we have, onto UBI and let that study run. I suspect the ideal candidate group would be older, poorer people (say, in there 40s) who we would otherwise expect to coast onto a pension later. It timeframes it nicely, and if it works starts making the case for trying it with younger cohorts.
  - sonograph 5y ago
    It would also need to be tested in nations that have lots of social programs and nations with low social programs. A wide range of governments here. For example, I could see a UBI test in the US just going to pay for health insurance premiums (or part of them anyway)
  - ghaff 5y ago
    >ideal candidate group would be older, poorer people (say, in there 40s) Perhaps. That helps determine if older people who don't make a lot of money anyway will just decide to stop working. However, perhaps the bigger question is if it's offered to younger people, will a lot of them simply never get a job after school and, by the time they realize they need more than UBI, it's too late.
brink 5y ago
Is it actually going to be universal? Because if it's not, don't call it "universal". I see a lot of articles stating that "universal basic income was tested with massive success" when there was nothing universal about it. There's a big difference.
- jokethrowaway 5y ago
  This. If it were universal, companies could just start charging everyday products much more. Boom, all people getting ubi suddenly need to start working again and they need to pay more in taxes to support all the money going in ubi.
  - growse 5y ago
    > This. If it were universal, companies could just start charging everyday products much more. Boom, all people getting ubi suddenly need to start working again and they need to pay more in taxes to support all the money going in ubi. This is pretty naive. By the same logic, an unemployment rate of 0 would also cause a lot of inflation and still lead to poverty. Everyone's now earning a wage, so prices will just rise, right? UBI creates no money. It just redistributes it a little. It doesn't devalue the currency, and isn't inflationary.
    - tgv 5y ago
      In (some of) the proposals here, UBI is paired to a much lower minimum wage (a form of compensation, as taxes for corporations will rise). But very few people are going to work for €1/hr or €2/hr, when you get €11/hr from UBI. Instead, they'll probably start a little hustle on the side, or work black. So, if a company wants to keep its employees (and shops etc. really need them), they'll need to raise the wage. This will have a effect on prices, and most likely, prices of food will rise, taking away much of advantage the poorest segment would have, while forcing those who didn't/can't work to take a job, until there's a new balance, where many people will be off worse (because the plans require abolishing all personal subsidies and welfare to pay for UBI). So that's paying a lot of money to make life worse.
    - 5y ago
agumonkey 5y ago
Anybody did take part in similar test here ? I'm somehow in a false UBI situation, monthly jobless benefits, and while waiting for answers I volunteer (mentioned it a few times). I found the freedom very .. freeing and motivating (actually the system was slowing me down, politics as you know). So I really wonder how it is to live officially in this condition.
everyone 5y ago
"We need to make an early start on designing the pilot to make sure that we have the best chance of operating a pilot that allows us to draw the conclusions from it that we would all want to see." Not a very scientific attitude (I think this is a great idea btw, just that quote is quite cringe)
sonograph 5y ago
How do they test this for a subset of the population, while actually ensuring the at-scale harmful impacts don't happen when it is scaled up? One of the biggest concerns I've heard is inflation. If you test on a small group, you won't see inflation and you will think your test was a success.
gandalfian 5y ago
In practice the UK already pays the price for a universal basic income. Most poor people get some sort of tax credit and/or housing benefit. What we don't do is allow people to use it to rise out of poverty. A disabled lady thought saving some of her disability was the responsible thing to do, despite further impoverishing herself, once she built up some savings she was prosecuted for fraudently claiming benefits while having savings. There is this tremendous destructive fear that no one should build up any capital with the help of benefits when this is precisely what would lift people out of poverty long term and reduce the costs on society.
- frankbreetz 5y ago
  What you are describing is very different from UBI. With UBI everyone gets a certain amount no matter what. There is nothing universal about what you are describing.
  - wizzwizz4 5y ago
    That's the point of the comment. The UK pays the price of UBI without getting the benefits of UBI.
    - leadingthenet 5y ago
      Well, no. Only a small minority of people are on Universal Credit. I don’t get how this follows, at all.
      - waheoo 5y ago
        What don't you get? They pay the price of it but don't get it, may as well pay the price of it and get the benefits it provides.
        vageli 5y ago
        All things being equal, wouldn't that greatly reduce the benefit amount per person?
janandonly 5y ago
I am going to conduct my own personal experiment starting February 2022. I will be gifted €1.000 per month for 48 months... and I am thinking about maybe blogging or vlogging or instagramming about my experiences.... Any suggestions from the HN crowd?
- nvoid 5y ago
  So to get this straight, you are just going to be getting free money for doing nothing, what from your dad? How is this in any way related to UBI? I can already predict the outcome. You are just going to accumulate next thing and consoom product...
the-dude 5y ago
One can dig up any UBI thread here on HN, and read the same arguments. Over and over again. Doesn't matter one bit it is in Wales this time. Beaten to death I assume is the proper term.
dnndev 5y ago
The root cause in the US being income inequality. Less people want to spread the wealth and more people expect a version of wealth. UBI is not the blanket solution I think most are expecting. It will open a can of worms. Give more people better opportunities. Folks don’t want a hand out. Companies are too big and although do provide some benefits such as lower price in some cases we end up paying for it with lower wages and less opportunities for other entrepreneurs.
- mkoubaa 5y ago
  Asserting that UBI == pity says more about your own biases then the actual policy itself
  - dnndev 5y ago
    Thank you. Your right. Pity is not what I intended. Pity is not a bad thing and I appreciate when others feel pity. *comment edited
- BigJono 5y ago
  Half the problem with politics these days is that people still see welfare as "pity and a hand out". Welfare is one tool in a bag of economic tricks to keep a country prospering. A country without welfare is one that has most of it's smartest minds packing boxes in a factory somewhere because they can't afford to try and fail.
  - jokethrowaway 5y ago
    The problem with politics is that people see welfare as anything but theft.
ItsMonkk 5y ago
Housing can’t be both affordable and a good investment. The price of a home should therefore equal its replacement cost. If the market value of the home with the land is $1 million, but the cost to build the home is $200k, raise taxes on the land until the new market value is $200k. Tada, Land Value Tax. Why am I mentioning LVT in a Universal Basic Income thread? What should we do with the money we earn through a LVT? Give it away through UBI. Win-win. If you want to start with a smaller LVT and work your way up to equalization over a period of 20 years, that's fine.
- nemo44x 5y ago
  No matter what you’ll run into a situation where more people want to live in a place than there is space. So an auction must take place. If you raise the property taxes you aren’t making it more inclusive but really more exclusive. The person hurt by this is the person holding the land when the tax change goes into effect. In most markets the cost of a home is a factor of interest rates, property taxes, and what’s “left over” - meaning what people are willing to pay each month. When interest rates and/or taxes go up then the “left over” part gets smaller. The banks and government get the bigger slice of the pie. But as interest rates have fallen and property taxes staying steady then the “left over” part is larger and this benefits the property owner. This is good. Inflation adjusted the cost of owning a home is the same as it was 30 years ago in most markets. Interest rates have fallen massively in that time. Some markets (like major cities) have become more competitive though.
  - hhjinks 5y ago
    "There isn't enough space anyway" is not an argument for letting housing prices run rampant. With our current trajectory, housing is going to create a new class system, in which people with housing can afford housing, and those without are left with no alternative but to rent for life. Saying "this is good" to such a future is sick.
    - emteycz 5y ago
      New cities should be built, like they do in China.
helsinkiandrew 5y ago
The trouble with these pilot schemes is that they involve too few people and are too short to make any firm conclusions. Elections and different politicians with different viewpoints can be elected half way through and other financial implications arise - like COVID, or in the case of the Finnish pilot a change to the unemployment benefits system that made making comparisons difficult. The true benefits and costs of UBI are probably only evident after decades or even generations.
- kwhitefoot 5y ago
  A journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step. No one would allow a full scale experiment until they see some compelling evidence so we have to do what we can.
  - helsinkiandrew 5y ago
    That’s the point, these small studies never give compelling evidence.
    - kwhitefoot 5y ago
      Do you have a better idea? Please don't suggest a nationwide trial because that would be politically impossible in most countries; unless you can explain why this time it would be possible to get politicians and people to agree to it of course.
      - helsinkiandrew 5y ago
        Perhaps western governments (or some organisation or philanthropists) could do a large scale long term trial in a 'cheaper' country which is close enough to the west so the results are transferable (The 12 year Kenyan trial is costing $13B) But it may be like Communism or Capitalism - you can't do a trial, you just need to persuade enough people and jump in.
alfiedotwtf 5y ago
Nobody has yet to explain the incentive for minimum paid workers to go to work once UBI payments becomes equal to a minimum paid job.
- lexicality 5y ago
  That's a very interesting way of phrasing that question. Do you think the fact that no one would want to do these jobs for minimum wage if they aren't being forced to by threat of poverty might suggest that we need to approach those jobs differently?
  - cbmuser 5y ago
    > Do you think the fact that no one would want to do these jobs for minimum wage if they aren't being forced to by threat of poverty might suggest that we need to approach those jobs differently? So you want to pay your cleaning personnel the same wage as a heart surgeon? Don’t you think that such high wages will eventually just raise prices?
    - lexicality 5y ago
      Surely the point of the market is that you need to pay for things based on how difficult it is to get them? Contrived example. Say you have some toilets you want cleaning and you decide to offer the job for $5 an hour + tips from toilet goers. The only person that agrees to do it is some homeless dude. You're not very happy about this, but no one else showed up so you go with it. Then two weeks later the city offers $5/hr UBI and the homeless guy immediately quits. "But wait, if you were scrubbing the toilets you get $10/hr + tips!" you say to him, and he says "ok cool but I'd rather beg on the street" and walks out This means that $10/hr is actually significantly too low for cleaning toilets and the only reason this guy agreed to do it for $5/hr is he would have literally died otherwise You can say "hey, a guy scrubbing toilets should definitely not make more than me, a big important programmer! My job's way harder" but would you scrub toilets for your current salary? I don't think I'd want to. Equally my company could probably give me a 10% pay cut and I'd complain about it but keep doing my job. I like programming. However, the sad truth is society needs people to clean toilets and sweep the streets significantly more than it needs me to write React code for some website. If every cleaner in the world quit simultaneously, it'd be utter chaos. If every frontend dev in the world quit it'd be annoying but no one would die. So why do we pay cleaners so little?
cutler 5y ago
There's a lot of hypocrisy in the so-called moral objections to UBI. I don't hear of any comparable moral requirement for employers to offer a decent living wage and working conditions because under capitalism labour is merely another commodity to be bought at the lowest price.
klaudius 5y ago
There are already studies on effects of UBI: https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2016/11/30/long-term-effects-of-short-term-free-cash-guaranteed-minimum-income-experiments/
- mattowen_uk 5y ago
  Clickable link: https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2016/11/30/long-term-effects-of-short-term-free-cash-guaranteed-minimum-income-experiments/ https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2016/11/30/long-term-effec...
nmca 5y ago
Can anyone point me to a clear description of what we should expect UBI to do to prices? I definitely worry that it will simply increase rent & other necessities, but I of course don't know.
- benhurmarcel 5y ago
  It is obviously very dependent on how it is funded, through additional taxes or printing money.
feralimal2 5y ago
Coronavirus, UBI, working from home, unbearable traffic, etc are all part of the same technocratic agenda. The world is being re-shaped and most people on this site can't see the wood for the trees. What we are moving into is total governmental control of every facet of our lives - it will be a fascist dictatorship run by google, amazon etc. You may think I am overstating the case, but it is all well planned - take a look at the nice words here: https://sdgs.un.org/2030agenda https://sdgs.un.org/2030agenda The governors are not our friends, we are being lied to in order to agree to give up control of our natural born freedoms (to move, breath, control what we put into our bodies). It is the death of individuality, and the growth of the collective. Sad times.
deleted 5y ago
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re-al 5y ago
UBI is part of the same technocratic agenda. This is all planned - take a look at the nice words here: https://sdgs.un.org/2030agenda https://sdgs.un.org/2030agenda UBI will only foster greater dependence on the government. Most will not be able afford to exercise personal judgement if you stand what becomes essential money to survive on. When we don't do what the governors mandate, we will lose the UBI, the right to travel, etc. These are dangerous times, and I see nothing to cheer about here. And in case anyone is in any doubt, we are moving into a corporate run, fascist dictatorship. Those governing us are not our friends. But we are giving up our natural freedom to move, breathe, control what we put into our bodies.
mbar84 5y ago
The main issue with such a test is that it doesn't test the effect on those who would be footing the higher tax bill.

184 points by tmfi 5y ago

That's where my taxes will go. And I have to pay almost a grand a month for private healthcare because of incompetent NHS. Maybe I should move to Wales to get some of my money back.

growse 5y ago
> That's where my taxes will go. The welfare state already receives the largest fraction of your taxes. Personally, I'm in favour of things that make the welfare state more cost-effective. > And I have to pay almost a grand a month for private healthcare because of incompetent NHS. Maybe I should move to Wales to get some of my money back. You don't have to, you choose to.
- jokethrowaway 5y ago
  NHS has been pretty terrible in my experience and thank God I have Bupa now. You don't have to, but if you have something you need serious treatment for you'd better go private. They didn't do any tests when presenting symptoms of a stomach ulcer after queueing for 3 hours (I had to do a private test to find out). Statistically I was unlikely t have it because of my age. The first pregnancy went ok (albeit nowhere close to the level of instrumentation you see in the states), for the second one they delayed epidural until it was too late to administer and my wife gave birth on a sofa without pain relief. My son had teeth problems since birth and they wanted to remove 4 front teeth saying an abscess was inevitable. Luckily we have dentists abroad who advised otherwise and it turned out removing teeth was not needed (and it would have been years of pain, spacers and ruined roots). All in all, considering all the money I paid over the years to the government, it was a pretty shoddy deal.
  - growse 5y ago
    I have extensive experience with the NHS (unfortunately) and have pretty much always been very well looked after. The only exception was probably maternity post-delivery, but that's not anything to do with the fact that it was the NHS. But that's irrelevant. You can prove pretty much anything with personal anecdotes - what matters is the big picture. If you're against the NHS, you should probably put some thought into answering the question of "How do we stop poor people dying from preventable conditions?" (assuming that this is a desired end goal). Also, Bupa aren't going to take you to the hospital at 3am when you have severe kidney stones, or unconscious after having been hit by a drunk driver.
- hogFeast 5y ago
  No, the welfare state doesn't receive "the largest fraction" of your taxes. Thinking this is a bit of a meme in the UK. The largest category of spending is actually the state pension (which is partly funded by direct revenue), this isn't welfare. The actual amounts that go towards helping people who actually need help in the UK is relatively small. Unemployment benefits vanishingly small. Even when unemployment was high, the total spending barely surpassed a few billion (in real terms, they haven't increased since the 70s or something ludicrous). Disability is a large category, although some of this in-work people, but a big issue over the past ten years has been implementation of UC...this cost £12bn (the implementation of UC i.e. the amount handed out to contractors was 25%+ of what was actually given to claimant...Duncan-Smith had a neuralgia about "scroungers"). Tax credits are a large category but these are semi-universal and made to people in work. How they can be distinguished from a subsidy to companies is unclear. So the actual net effect isn't that clear. The UK has a relatively small welfare state (this is apparent if you actually talk to anyone on benefits...in the pandemic some people realised for the first time that welfare state wasn't actually that generous...and then we got a massive in-work subsidy program, I am guessing that if you had been on UC subject to regular inquiries by the DWP to get a grand total of £80/week or whatever, the state lavishing subsidies on someone making £200/day was...odd). The NHS has pretty poor outcomes for a developed country. It is provided at low-cost (interestingly, about half the size of the public health system in the US) but the results are very poor (politically, doctor's unions have had very strong lobbying, so when spending increases it has typically gone into the back pocket of doctors with output unchanged). Private healthcare is better. Btw, if you are seeing a trend here: the UK's problem is that there is a massive political demand for subsidies, regardless of whether you are in need or not, but 40% of adults pay no income tax. There is a massive disconnect.
  - growse 5y ago
    > No, the welfare state doesn't receive "the largest fraction" of your taxes. Thinking this is a bit of a meme in the UK. The largest category of spending is actually the state pension (which is partly funded by direct revenue), this isn't welfare. The actual amounts that go towards helping people who actually need help in the UK is relatively small. Hmm. On my tax breakdown from HMRC, "Welfare" comes top at ~22%, whereas "State Pensions" comes third at ~12% (Health is second at ~20%). Are you saying HMRC is wrong, or am I misinterpreting this? It does say this is just for income tax and NI, but I'm not aware of income/NI being specifically ringfenced and spent in a different way to, say, VAT. > The NHS has pretty poor outcomes for a developed country. It is provided at low-cost (interestingly, about half the size of the public health system in the US) but the results are very poor (politically, doctor's unions have had very strong lobbying, so when spending increases it has typically gone into the back pocket of doctors with output unchanged). Private healthcare is better. I'm not sure there's a consesus on this. The most charitable interpretation I can gather from skimming the research (e.g. https://www.bmj.com/content/367/bmj.l6326 https://www.bmj.com/content/367/bmj.l6326) is that "It's complex. The NHS does some things badly, and it does some things well, and it generally spends less than its peers". If we accept that, then the next question is naturally "what do we want to change" and "how do we do that". Maybe if the NHS spends less than its peers, we need to fund it more to get better outcomes (I wouldn't be against this)? I also don't disagree necessarily that "Private healthcare is better" for some things, but as I said elsewhere, they're not the ones who have to deal with emergency trauma cases, so it's not a like-for-like comparison.
- intricatedetail 5y ago
  No, I have to. The treatment is not available on NHS and I would be dead without it.
  - growse 5y ago
    I sympathise. Do you think the reason the treatment isn't available on the NHS is incompetence?
    - intricatedetail 5y ago
      Yes, combined with corruption. The treatment is not available because if more people had access to it, that would eat big pharma profits which some people on advisory panels are shareholders or otherwise have conflict of interest. I am talking about medical cannabis for chronic pain. You can only get it on private prescription.
robotmay 5y ago
The NHS isn't incompetent, at least here in Wales. It has however been hobbled by years of cuts and lack of investment by successive conservative governments in England. Here the government continue to invest in it and everyone I know receives great care. In that regard, yes maybe you should move to Wales, it's pretty nice here, and the NHS was a Welsh invention in the first place. In reference to taxes, the English, frankly, owe the Welsh reparation. Hundreds of years of oppression and exploitation of the people and landscape of Wales, and they are repaid by killing entire industries and throwing a nation into poverty. Villages removed to flood valleys for English drinking water. Children beaten when they spoke Welsh. UBI might help repair some of the lasting damage that has been inflicted upon them. Or it might not. But they deserve the right to try.

Proven 5y ago

More UBI nonsense... 1) Nobody wants to pay for it 2) It therefore can't be tested (since it won't be paid for) 3) Everyone knows UBI can't work

tgv 5y ago

The article doesn't give a single detail, so there's nothing to see, except some grandstanding on empty concepts.

LatteLazy 5y ago

It's disappointing to see the tories ("The Conservatives" political party's nickname) knee jerk opposition. It would be nice to see more details on the actual trial (length and amount paid). That said, we basically know UBI works, it's just that no one has the balls to just do it...

sokoloff 5y ago
Do we know that it works? Including accounting for sourcing the funds and the amount of demand-driven inflation that might result?
- notahacker 5y ago
  This. So far we've repeatedly tested that if you give people in an area a small sum of money paid for from central government funds for a couple of years, they won't change their habits much but will be a little better off financially, which should be of absolutely no surprise to anyone. A real pilot would - as a minimum - be making the local tax rises and welfare cuts necessary to make the scheme revenue neutral, which might actually challenge UBI advocates' certainty that it works...
  - LatteLazy 5y ago
    I'm the root commentor but I hope you don't mind me piling on. It's pretty well agreed that the trial in Finland worked: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2242937-universal-basic-income-seems-to-improve-employment-and-well-being/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/2242937-universal-basic... Id welcome a trial that included paying for it. That said, I don't think it would make a big difference. The UK (I'm a brit) spends enough on welfare to just give everyone £5000 pa (including kids) at the same price. We could just start there and make zero changes to tax policy...
    - sokoloff 5y ago
      All topical comments are welcome everywhere IMO. If the average is £5K and many are receiving £0, it must be the case that some are receiving much more than £5K in benefits. If you normalize everyone at £5K, what happens to those who were previously receiving some multiple of that? (I’m presuming that £5K is an insufficient amount to meet what society has previously considered their need for support was.) In essence, you’d be proposing a UBI for ordinary UK citizens to be funded by those who are currently receiving welfare [over £5K]. That would be unpopular with proponents and opponents of UBI I think. (If half or more of that £5K is in staff and overhead and you were willing to dismantle those organizations as soon as it was clear UBI “would work”, this might be workable. I don’t know how much is direct benefits vs overheads [including eligibility and fraud checks, which would be dramatically reduced under UBI].)

janandonly 5y ago

Interesting how political parties are for or against this pilot project before the results are known. What happened to gathering evidence first and then making up one's mind? There have been other projects in Canada, Finland,Kenya and the Netherlands, all with “positive” results. It is useful to ask what you are trying to achieve with an UBI? * lift people out of poverty? * save money on other social schemes, like pensions, disability payments, schooling or housing subsidies? * save money on secondary effects of poverty (like lower average health, or more mental and psychological problems)? * make everyone's life “better” (if so, define better)? * boost the economy? I am going to conduct my own personal UBI experiment starting February 2022. I will be gifted €1.000 per month for 48 months... and I am thinking about maybe blogging or vlogging or instagramming about my experiences.... Any suggestions from the HN crowd?

nonomaybeyes 5y ago
The results have been in for a long time now: If you pay people to stay at home and do nothing, people will stay at home and do nothing.
s3tz 5y ago
It seems like many politicians have a very emotional reaction to these kinds to experiments, seemingly afraid that the results will contradict their beliefs or that they'll somehow be at a loss. And it's not just one or the other side either, since it looks like UBI could address a lot of issues (ie overall govt waste) the entrenched bureaucracy is by default resistant to it.
bjackman 5y ago
Part of the reason for this lack of interest in the actual outcome is that state benefits are one of the main battlegrounds in the UK's culture war. A lot of the Tories' base comes from the ideological position that poorer people don't deserve to receive aid at the expense (via taxes) of richer people. Whether or not UBI achieves any of its stated aims is totally irrelevant once you see things that way. All the arguments about disincentivising work are, IMO just convenient filler. If you categorically disproved them, their proponents would surely just find another macro-economic rationalisation for their beliefs, which are in truth fundamentally moral.

s3tz 5y ago

I'm curious, can we determine from small scale tests like this whether the data we get from them is scale independent?

jpxw 5y ago
You can’t. But UBI-supporters don’t let that get in the way.
- s3tz 5y ago
  I think these experiments should use a better name if that's the case, ie limited basic income.
  - bserge 5y ago
    Universal Credit heh
- Mordisquitos 5y ago
  That's a good point. We've already carried out enough small-scale tests of UBI to know that it has no obvious drawbacks, and carrying out even more small-scale tests will not provide us with much new information. What we need now are state-wide implementations of UBI, as they are the only way that UBI-sceptics may be forced to accept it if the results are positive.
  - cbmuser 5y ago
    A small scale test doesn’t have any impact on market prices and thus does not reflect reality.
- Al-Khwarizmi 5y ago
  You speak as if UBI opponents had any evidence whatsoever that it wouldn't work.
neilwilson 5y ago
You can't. If you implement income guarantees in one part of a fixed exchange rate area, then the unemployment simply moves to the part that doesn't have the income guarantee. The USA may get away with it because of the number of countries that peg to the US dollar. That is where the unemployment will get exported to. That doesn't apply in the UK. An income guarantee in UK terms is one of two things. It is either equivalent to allowing an individual to obtain their retirement pension at age 18 rather than 68. This is despite the age of that pension increasing from 60/65 to 68 over the last few years because of an unsustainable 'dependency ratio'. Or it is equivalent to removing the age cap on Child Benefit so that it is paid to supposed Adults. Child Benefit is the original 'basic income' and the value of it has been run down over the decades as usual with income guarantees of all types. It has also been curtailed for 'high rate taxpayers'. UBI doesn't work because it doesn't add to the sum total of production. It is a way of transferring real output from workers to those that don't want to work, while trying to hide such people in a crowd of worthy causes. Ordinary people tend to see straight through it.

akyu 5y ago

The 'universal' aspect of UBI is critical, and many of the attempts to test UBI seem to miss this completely. Call it something else in that case.

smaryjerry 5y ago
Like the Oakland program which specifically excludes whites. Or basically every other program that only includes extremely low income people. I suppose it gets the results they want though, which is to show it helps the lives of the people, however as we have seen with this last year of unemployment checks, people just won’t go back to work if they can make almost as much for doing nothing. At our business getting people to return when unemployment was an extra $600 a week on top of about 60% of their wages was absolutely impossible. Bow that it’s still $300 it’s a struggle to get people back.
- falcor84 5y ago
  Well, the whole thing about UBI, as opposed to unemployment payments, is that you'd continue getting it regardless of other sources of income, right? So you should always have some incentive to work, if the conditions are reasonable and they make it worth your time.
- pietrovismara 5y ago
  Have you ever thought that the problem could be with your wages, rather than with the UBI?
  - smaryjerry 5y ago
    Wages are a market. If everyone wants to be something then the wages will be low. The way around it was to hire many more people but for only 15 hours per week so they can all continue collect unemployment (with an extra $300 per week from the federal government).
    - pietrovismara 5y ago

GordonS 5y ago

I'm going to assume it won't be "for life", but will instead be for some fixed period, such as 1 or 2 years. Scotland has been proposing doing a similar experiment too. But I'm not sure what these very small scale experiments are meant to tell us, especially since several such experiments have already been done. I can't help but be cynical and think this is governments offering platitudes to those in favour of UBI, running experiments designed to produce the outcomes the government wants. Realistically, the behaviour of someone receiving monthly payments for a known fixed term is going to be radically different than that of someone who knows they are going to receive that payment for life, and that it will increase online with inflation or the CPI (Consumer Price Index).

XorNot 5y ago
This has always been my problem. If we're going to test UBI, then we really need to run a test over a reasonable time-frame (20 years) or so and commit into it. So we move some people off the existing schemes we have, onto UBI and let that study run. I suspect the ideal candidate group would be older, poorer people (say, in there 40s) who we would otherwise expect to coast onto a pension later. It timeframes it nicely, and if it works starts making the case for trying it with younger cohorts.
- sonograph 5y ago
  It would also need to be tested in nations that have lots of social programs and nations with low social programs. A wide range of governments here. For example, I could see a UBI test in the US just going to pay for health insurance premiums (or part of them anyway)
- ghaff 5y ago
  >ideal candidate group would be older, poorer people (say, in there 40s) Perhaps. That helps determine if older people who don't make a lot of money anyway will just decide to stop working. However, perhaps the bigger question is if it's offered to younger people, will a lot of them simply never get a job after school and, by the time they realize they need more than UBI, it's too late.

brink 5y ago

Is it actually going to be universal? Because if it's not, don't call it "universal". I see a lot of articles stating that "universal basic income was tested with massive success" when there was nothing universal about it. There's a big difference.

jokethrowaway 5y ago
This. If it were universal, companies could just start charging everyday products much more. Boom, all people getting ubi suddenly need to start working again and they need to pay more in taxes to support all the money going in ubi.
- growse 5y ago
  > This. If it were universal, companies could just start charging everyday products much more. Boom, all people getting ubi suddenly need to start working again and they need to pay more in taxes to support all the money going in ubi. This is pretty naive. By the same logic, an unemployment rate of 0 would also cause a lot of inflation and still lead to poverty. Everyone's now earning a wage, so prices will just rise, right? UBI creates no money. It just redistributes it a little. It doesn't devalue the currency, and isn't inflationary.
  - tgv 5y ago
    In (some of) the proposals here, UBI is paired to a much lower minimum wage (a form of compensation, as taxes for corporations will rise). But very few people are going to work for €1/hr or €2/hr, when you get €11/hr from UBI. Instead, they'll probably start a little hustle on the side, or work black. So, if a company wants to keep its employees (and shops etc. really need them), they'll need to raise the wage. This will have a effect on prices, and most likely, prices of food will rise, taking away much of advantage the poorest segment would have, while forcing those who didn't/can't work to take a job, until there's a new balance, where many people will be off worse (because the plans require abolishing all personal subsidies and welfare to pay for UBI). So that's paying a lot of money to make life worse.
  - 5y ago

agumonkey 5y ago

Anybody did take part in similar test here ? I'm somehow in a false UBI situation, monthly jobless benefits, and while waiting for answers I volunteer (mentioned it a few times). I found the freedom very .. freeing and motivating (actually the system was slowing me down, politics as you know). So I really wonder how it is to live officially in this condition.

everyone 5y ago

"We need to make an early start on designing the pilot to make sure that we have the best chance of operating a pilot that allows us to draw the conclusions from it that we would all want to see." Not a very scientific attitude (I think this is a great idea btw, just that quote is quite cringe)

sonograph 5y ago

How do they test this for a subset of the population, while actually ensuring the at-scale harmful impacts don't happen when it is scaled up? One of the biggest concerns I've heard is inflation. If you test on a small group, you won't see inflation and you will think your test was a success.

gandalfian 5y ago

In practice the UK already pays the price for a universal basic income. Most poor people get some sort of tax credit and/or housing benefit. What we don't do is allow people to use it to rise out of poverty. A disabled lady thought saving some of her disability was the responsible thing to do, despite further impoverishing herself, once she built up some savings she was prosecuted for fraudently claiming benefits while having savings. There is this tremendous destructive fear that no one should build up any capital with the help of benefits when this is precisely what would lift people out of poverty long term and reduce the costs on society.

frankbreetz 5y ago
What you are describing is very different from UBI. With UBI everyone gets a certain amount no matter what. There is nothing universal about what you are describing.
- wizzwizz4 5y ago
  That's the point of the comment. The UK pays the price of UBI without getting the benefits of UBI.
  - leadingthenet 5y ago
    Well, no. Only a small minority of people are on Universal Credit. I don’t get how this follows, at all.
    - waheoo 5y ago
      What don't you get? They pay the price of it but don't get it, may as well pay the price of it and get the benefits it provides.
      - vageli 5y ago
        All things being equal, wouldn't that greatly reduce the benefit amount per person?

janandonly 5y ago

I am going to conduct my own personal experiment starting February 2022. I will be gifted €1.000 per month for 48 months... and I am thinking about maybe blogging or vlogging or instagramming about my experiences.... Any suggestions from the HN crowd?

nvoid 5y ago
So to get this straight, you are just going to be getting free money for doing nothing, what from your dad? How is this in any way related to UBI? I can already predict the outcome. You are just going to accumulate next thing and consoom product...

the-dude 5y ago

One can dig up any UBI thread here on HN, and read the same arguments. Over and over again. Doesn't matter one bit it is in Wales this time. Beaten to death I assume is the proper term.

dnndev 5y ago

The root cause in the US being income inequality. Less people want to spread the wealth and more people expect a version of wealth. UBI is not the blanket solution I think most are expecting. It will open a can of worms. Give more people better opportunities. Folks don’t want a hand out. Companies are too big and although do provide some benefits such as lower price in some cases we end up paying for it with lower wages and less opportunities for other entrepreneurs.

mkoubaa 5y ago
Asserting that UBI == pity says more about your own biases then the actual policy itself
- dnndev 5y ago
  Thank you. Your right. Pity is not what I intended. Pity is not a bad thing and I appreciate when others feel pity. *comment edited
BigJono 5y ago
Half the problem with politics these days is that people still see welfare as "pity and a hand out". Welfare is one tool in a bag of economic tricks to keep a country prospering. A country without welfare is one that has most of it's smartest minds packing boxes in a factory somewhere because they can't afford to try and fail.
- jokethrowaway 5y ago
  The problem with politics is that people see welfare as anything but theft.

ItsMonkk 5y ago

Housing can’t be both affordable and a good investment. The price of a home should therefore equal its replacement cost. If the market value of the home with the land is $1 million, but the cost to build the home is $200k, raise taxes on the land until the new market value is $200k. Tada, Land Value Tax. Why am I mentioning LVT in a Universal Basic Income thread? What should we do with the money we earn through a LVT? Give it away through UBI. Win-win. If you want to start with a smaller LVT and work your way up to equalization over a period of 20 years, that's fine.

nemo44x 5y ago
No matter what you’ll run into a situation where more people want to live in a place than there is space. So an auction must take place. If you raise the property taxes you aren’t making it more inclusive but really more exclusive. The person hurt by this is the person holding the land when the tax change goes into effect. In most markets the cost of a home is a factor of interest rates, property taxes, and what’s “left over” - meaning what people are willing to pay each month. When interest rates and/or taxes go up then the “left over” part gets smaller. The banks and government get the bigger slice of the pie. But as interest rates have fallen and property taxes staying steady then the “left over” part is larger and this benefits the property owner. This is good. Inflation adjusted the cost of owning a home is the same as it was 30 years ago in most markets. Interest rates have fallen massively in that time. Some markets (like major cities) have become more competitive though.
- hhjinks 5y ago
  "There isn't enough space anyway" is not an argument for letting housing prices run rampant. With our current trajectory, housing is going to create a new class system, in which people with housing can afford housing, and those without are left with no alternative but to rent for life. Saying "this is good" to such a future is sick.
  - emteycz 5y ago
    New cities should be built, like they do in China.

helsinkiandrew 5y ago

The trouble with these pilot schemes is that they involve too few people and are too short to make any firm conclusions. Elections and different politicians with different viewpoints can be elected half way through and other financial implications arise - like COVID, or in the case of the Finnish pilot a change to the unemployment benefits system that made making comparisons difficult. The true benefits and costs of UBI are probably only evident after decades or even generations.

kwhitefoot 5y ago
A journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step. No one would allow a full scale experiment until they see some compelling evidence so we have to do what we can.
- helsinkiandrew 5y ago
  That’s the point, these small studies never give compelling evidence.
  - kwhitefoot 5y ago
    Do you have a better idea? Please don't suggest a nationwide trial because that would be politically impossible in most countries; unless you can explain why this time it would be possible to get politicians and people to agree to it of course.
    - helsinkiandrew 5y ago
      Perhaps western governments (or some organisation or philanthropists) could do a large scale long term trial in a 'cheaper' country which is close enough to the west so the results are transferable (The 12 year Kenyan trial is costing $13B) But it may be like Communism or Capitalism - you can't do a trial, you just need to persuade enough people and jump in.

alfiedotwtf 5y ago

Nobody has yet to explain the incentive for minimum paid workers to go to work once UBI payments becomes equal to a minimum paid job.

lexicality 5y ago
That's a very interesting way of phrasing that question. Do you think the fact that no one would want to do these jobs for minimum wage if they aren't being forced to by threat of poverty might suggest that we need to approach those jobs differently?
- cbmuser 5y ago
  > Do you think the fact that no one would want to do these jobs for minimum wage if they aren't being forced to by threat of poverty might suggest that we need to approach those jobs differently? So you want to pay your cleaning personnel the same wage as a heart surgeon? Don’t you think that such high wages will eventually just raise prices?
  - lexicality 5y ago
    Surely the point of the market is that you need to pay for things based on how difficult it is to get them? Contrived example. Say you have some toilets you want cleaning and you decide to offer the job for $5 an hour + tips from toilet goers. The only person that agrees to do it is some homeless dude. You're not very happy about this, but no one else showed up so you go with it. Then two weeks later the city offers $5/hr UBI and the homeless guy immediately quits. "But wait, if you were scrubbing the toilets you get $10/hr + tips!" you say to him, and he says "ok cool but I'd rather beg on the street" and walks out This means that $10/hr is actually significantly too low for cleaning toilets and the only reason this guy agreed to do it for $5/hr is he would have literally died otherwise You can say "hey, a guy scrubbing toilets should definitely not make more than me, a big important programmer! My job's way harder" but would you scrub toilets for your current salary? I don't think I'd want to. Equally my company could probably give me a 10% pay cut and I'd complain about it but keep doing my job. I like programming. However, the sad truth is society needs people to clean toilets and sweep the streets significantly more than it needs me to write React code for some website. If every cleaner in the world quit simultaneously, it'd be utter chaos. If every frontend dev in the world quit it'd be annoying but no one would die. So why do we pay cleaners so little?

cutler 5y ago

There's a lot of hypocrisy in the so-called moral objections to UBI. I don't hear of any comparable moral requirement for employers to offer a decent living wage and working conditions because under capitalism labour is merely another commodity to be bought at the lowest price.

klaudius 5y ago

There are already studies on effects of UBI: https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2016/11/30/long-term-effects-of-short-term-free-cash-guaranteed-minimum-income-experiments/

mattowen_uk 5y ago
Clickable link: https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2016/11/30/long-term-effects-of-short-term-free-cash-guaranteed-minimum-income-experiments/ https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2016/11/30/long-term-effec...

nmca 5y ago

Can anyone point me to a clear description of what we should expect UBI to do to prices? I definitely worry that it will simply increase rent & other necessities, but I of course don't know.

benhurmarcel 5y ago
It is obviously very dependent on how it is funded, through additional taxes or printing money.

feralimal2 5y ago

Coronavirus, UBI, working from home, unbearable traffic, etc are all part of the same technocratic agenda. The world is being re-shaped and most people on this site can't see the wood for the trees. What we are moving into is total governmental control of every facet of our lives - it will be a fascist dictatorship run by google, amazon etc. You may think I am overstating the case, but it is all well planned - take a look at the nice words here: https://sdgs.un.org/2030agenda https://sdgs.un.org/2030agenda The governors are not our friends, we are being lied to in order to agree to give up control of our natural born freedoms (to move, breath, control what we put into our bodies). It is the death of individuality, and the growth of the collective. Sad times.

deleted 5y ago

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re-al 5y ago

UBI is part of the same technocratic agenda. This is all planned - take a look at the nice words here: https://sdgs.un.org/2030agenda https://sdgs.un.org/2030agenda UBI will only foster greater dependence on the government. Most will not be able afford to exercise personal judgement if you stand what becomes essential money to survive on. When we don't do what the governors mandate, we will lose the UBI, the right to travel, etc. These are dangerous times, and I see nothing to cheer about here. And in case anyone is in any doubt, we are moving into a corporate run, fascist dictatorship. Those governing us are not our friends. But we are giving up our natural freedom to move, breathe, control what we put into our bodies.

mbar84 5y ago

The main issue with such a test is that it doesn't test the effect on those who would be footing the higher tax bill.