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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

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 6y 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 6y 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 6y 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.
- secondcoming 6y ago
  > All the arguments about disincentivising work are, IMO just convenient filler Not sure, I've read articles online about companies in the US struggling to hire because people are being paid more by the government. The counter to this is that companies should pay more. Undoubtedly some could afford to do this, but others... the mom & pop outfits... may not be able to.
  - sokoloff 6y ago
    In the US, it’s not UBI; it’s unemployment which you lose if you work. If UBI isn’t lost via work (other than via taxes, of course), the same issue does not arise at nearly the same magnitude.
    - ssharp 6y ago
      It's a binary choice right now. You either work or you get the enhanced unemployment benefits. With the extra $300 / week benefit, in my state (Ohio), the total benefit works out to a little under $20 / hour. Note that this is a sliding scale and earning that much would require you have at least that high of a wage previously. What you end up seeing is a lot of margin in terms of how much someone is willing to give up in working wages to just collect unemployment. There has also been a lot of interest, and even competition, of workers seeking voluntary layoffs for companies that need some staff reduction. I've heard a number of arguments using this as evidence that UBI will be a huge economic negative because it will reduce the workforce but I'm not sure how this can really be a valid proxy since the unemployment benefits are completely dependent on you not working. It seems pretty reasonable that if people could collect some basic income and also work for an even higher wage, they would.
      - domino24 6y ago
        There are a few instances of being able to collect both right now. I've heard of some people who manage manual labor type companies (painters, tree trimmers, landscapers, etc) that offer to pay laborers cash (which would be in addition to the unemployment benefits) and they cannot get workers. It's like the unemployment is a high enough amount that they'd rather collect just that and not work to earn more. Perhaps there is a magical amount which would convince people to collect benefits and still work to earn additional money.
QuesnayJr 6y ago
I think that for most people most of the time, economics falls in the category of things that they evaluate using their moral sense, rather than their practical sense. The important question for them is not whether the UBI works to achieve a specific goal, but whether it is moral or immoral.
YetAnotherNick 6y ago
> for or against this pilot project before the results are known > all with “positive” results. Call this lack of self awareness. Do you have any study that looks into the long term effect of this scheme with data. AFAIK, there had been multiple programs of UBI going all the way to 1960s[1] and each time government cancelled it for some reason, so calling it one word positive if got cancelled is bit of overreach. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income_pilots https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income_pilots
- janandonly 6y ago
  Because a rational government would never cancel anything that is positive? Well, by thayt standard this planet has zero rational governments.
Shugarl 6y ago
People usually don't particularly care for the truth, they care for what they think is the truth, and what support their opinions. As for suggestions : It's pretty vague, but how about doing projects in things that you're interested in ? Like maybe creating a prototype for an energy drink, buy a lot of different ingredients to find new recipes, or buy tools for drawing and create a comic... Or read up on a problem your city has, and work on it.
- tnzm 6y ago
  >they care for what they think is the truth, and what support their opinions. I'd take this one step further and say that the majority of people don't have consistent opinions about what the truth is, they only care for receiving the informational stimuli they've been conditioned to perceive as pleasant. UBI is therefore an experiment in nomenclature. The reality of governments giving money over long periods of time to citizens whose labor is not market-competitive is nothing new. What's being tested is how it's branded: "welfare, benefits" is a humanistic, "socialist" way of branding it while "universal, basic, income" are words more in line with the rationalistic, "neoliberal" memeplex.
zajio1am 6y ago
> It is useful to ask what you are trying to achieve with an UBI? Remove poverty trap and improve dignity in social programs. Many social programs already offer equivalent money but they are means-tested. Effort to get more income may lead to not being eligible for these programs, which is essentially equivalent to very high effective marginal tax rate, discouraging people to try.
cm2187 6y ago
I’d argue what is happening in the US is already a country wide test. People are taking the benefits rather than going to work for marginally more. It is not a good outcome for society. And high benefits countries like France know that very well. Lots of harder job openings there are never filled even though the country has a permanent large unemployment. I like the idea of UBI on paper but I feel it is counterproductive in practice.
- toast0 6y ago
  UBI is supposed to be universal. Under UBI the choice would be get the 'free money' and also work or just get the 'free money'. Under unemployment insurance, you generally can't keep getting benefits when you are working, so it's not the same choice. This is a challenge with a lot of benefits programs; the change in income often doesn't seem to justify the change in labor. If you get the same UBI payment regardless of if you're working or not, the disincentive to work, because it ends your benefit isn't there; of course, the disincentive to work, because working is work is still there.
  - cm2187 6y ago
    That’s not the point. The point is that you have a basic revenue doing nothing, and only a marginally higher revenue if you work. How you segment these revenues isn’t the problem.
- swift532 5y ago
  Perhaps those harder jobs should be paid more and people would then apply.
mattlondon 6y ago
> It is useful to ask what you are trying to achieve with an UBI? There is suggestions that paying everyone a UBI is actually cheaper than the current approaches to benefit payments. No more means testing, no more form filling, no more benefits offices or case workers etc, no more physical offices filled with admin staff doing stuff, no more claiming a benefit when you are not entitled to it and having to pay it back again in your tax return to avoid missing out on a state pension (this specifically refers to weird child benefit rules in the UK) Everyone gets the same regardless. That feels like a nice idea to me, but I have no idea if it is actually true or not. I know for me personally I have the nice problem of earning too much for a lot of widely vaunted benefits (e.g. childcare, child benefit as mentioned above, tax free allowance etc). It would be nice personally if a lot of these cut-offs and clauses and caveats and minimum/maximum levels and then reporting it in your tax return just went away and everyone just got £500 a month or whatever. I.e. reduce complexity and the machinery needed to run and police it.
cbmuser 6y ago
> Interesting how political parties are for or against this pilot project before the results are known. Economists know the results, they don’t need to run such experiments. It’s like Socialism or rent control, the basic laws of economics will already tell you the outcome. It just happens that lots of people think that economics is no hard science which doesn’t allow for such predictions.
tomcam 6y ago
My suggestion is to blog or vlog under a pseudonym because almost no one on either side of the political spectrum will be able to approach your situation rationally.
prepend 6y ago
> I am going to conduct my own personal UBI experiment starting February 2022. I will be gifted €1.000 per month for 48 months This is interesting and I’m not sure what you mean. Are you picking a random person and giving them a thousand euros per month? Or are you spending a thousand among multiple people? There are lots of charities with consistent donations from people (eg, effective altruism pledges) so I’m unclear what your experiment is or will show other than other patronages. My employer has been running an experiment for a few years where every month they give me a few thousand.
toast0 6y 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? Would you run a pilot of every idea? At the level of a country? Paying everyone in Wales £ 1 is a big endeavor, let alone a value that's meaningful and on a monthly basis, so it's not as if a pilot comes at no cost. You could certainly form an opinion from experiments in other places, or economic thought expirements or from wherever it is politicians pull most of their thoughts.

nonomaybeyes 6y 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 6y 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 6y 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.

secondcoming 6y ago
> All the arguments about disincentivising work are, IMO just convenient filler Not sure, I've read articles online about companies in the US struggling to hire because people are being paid more by the government. The counter to this is that companies should pay more. Undoubtedly some could afford to do this, but others... the mom & pop outfits... may not be able to.
- sokoloff 6y ago
  In the US, it’s not UBI; it’s unemployment which you lose if you work. If UBI isn’t lost via work (other than via taxes, of course), the same issue does not arise at nearly the same magnitude.
  - ssharp 6y ago
    It's a binary choice right now. You either work or you get the enhanced unemployment benefits. With the extra $300 / week benefit, in my state (Ohio), the total benefit works out to a little under $20 / hour. Note that this is a sliding scale and earning that much would require you have at least that high of a wage previously. What you end up seeing is a lot of margin in terms of how much someone is willing to give up in working wages to just collect unemployment. There has also been a lot of interest, and even competition, of workers seeking voluntary layoffs for companies that need some staff reduction. I've heard a number of arguments using this as evidence that UBI will be a huge economic negative because it will reduce the workforce but I'm not sure how this can really be a valid proxy since the unemployment benefits are completely dependent on you not working. It seems pretty reasonable that if people could collect some basic income and also work for an even higher wage, they would.
    - domino24 6y ago
      There are a few instances of being able to collect both right now. I've heard of some people who manage manual labor type companies (painters, tree trimmers, landscapers, etc) that offer to pay laborers cash (which would be in addition to the unemployment benefits) and they cannot get workers. It's like the unemployment is a high enough amount that they'd rather collect just that and not work to earn more. Perhaps there is a magical amount which would convince people to collect benefits and still work to earn additional money.

QuesnayJr 6y ago

I think that for most people most of the time, economics falls in the category of things that they evaluate using their moral sense, rather than their practical sense. The important question for them is not whether the UBI works to achieve a specific goal, but whether it is moral or immoral.

YetAnotherNick 6y ago

> for or against this pilot project before the results are known > all with “positive” results. Call this lack of self awareness. Do you have any study that looks into the long term effect of this scheme with data. AFAIK, there had been multiple programs of UBI going all the way to 1960s[1] and each time government cancelled it for some reason, so calling it one word positive if got cancelled is bit of overreach. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income_pilots https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income_pilots

janandonly 6y ago
Because a rational government would never cancel anything that is positive? Well, by thayt standard this planet has zero rational governments.

Shugarl 6y ago

People usually don't particularly care for the truth, they care for what they think is the truth, and what support their opinions. As for suggestions : It's pretty vague, but how about doing projects in things that you're interested in ? Like maybe creating a prototype for an energy drink, buy a lot of different ingredients to find new recipes, or buy tools for drawing and create a comic... Or read up on a problem your city has, and work on it.

tnzm 6y ago
>they care for what they think is the truth, and what support their opinions. I'd take this one step further and say that the majority of people don't have consistent opinions about what the truth is, they only care for receiving the informational stimuli they've been conditioned to perceive as pleasant. UBI is therefore an experiment in nomenclature. The reality of governments giving money over long periods of time to citizens whose labor is not market-competitive is nothing new. What's being tested is how it's branded: "welfare, benefits" is a humanistic, "socialist" way of branding it while "universal, basic, income" are words more in line with the rationalistic, "neoliberal" memeplex.

zajio1am 6y ago

> It is useful to ask what you are trying to achieve with an UBI? Remove poverty trap and improve dignity in social programs. Many social programs already offer equivalent money but they are means-tested. Effort to get more income may lead to not being eligible for these programs, which is essentially equivalent to very high effective marginal tax rate, discouraging people to try.

cm2187 6y ago

I’d argue what is happening in the US is already a country wide test. People are taking the benefits rather than going to work for marginally more. It is not a good outcome for society. And high benefits countries like France know that very well. Lots of harder job openings there are never filled even though the country has a permanent large unemployment. I like the idea of UBI on paper but I feel it is counterproductive in practice.

toast0 6y ago
UBI is supposed to be universal. Under UBI the choice would be get the 'free money' and also work or just get the 'free money'. Under unemployment insurance, you generally can't keep getting benefits when you are working, so it's not the same choice. This is a challenge with a lot of benefits programs; the change in income often doesn't seem to justify the change in labor. If you get the same UBI payment regardless of if you're working or not, the disincentive to work, because it ends your benefit isn't there; of course, the disincentive to work, because working is work is still there.
- cm2187 6y ago
  That’s not the point. The point is that you have a basic revenue doing nothing, and only a marginally higher revenue if you work. How you segment these revenues isn’t the problem.
swift532 5y ago
Perhaps those harder jobs should be paid more and people would then apply.

mattlondon 6y ago

> It is useful to ask what you are trying to achieve with an UBI? There is suggestions that paying everyone a UBI is actually cheaper than the current approaches to benefit payments. No more means testing, no more form filling, no more benefits offices or case workers etc, no more physical offices filled with admin staff doing stuff, no more claiming a benefit when you are not entitled to it and having to pay it back again in your tax return to avoid missing out on a state pension (this specifically refers to weird child benefit rules in the UK) Everyone gets the same regardless. That feels like a nice idea to me, but I have no idea if it is actually true or not. I know for me personally I have the nice problem of earning too much for a lot of widely vaunted benefits (e.g. childcare, child benefit as mentioned above, tax free allowance etc). It would be nice personally if a lot of these cut-offs and clauses and caveats and minimum/maximum levels and then reporting it in your tax return just went away and everyone just got £500 a month or whatever. I.e. reduce complexity and the machinery needed to run and police it.

cbmuser 6y ago

> Interesting how political parties are for or against this pilot project before the results are known. Economists know the results, they don’t need to run such experiments. It’s like Socialism or rent control, the basic laws of economics will already tell you the outcome. It just happens that lots of people think that economics is no hard science which doesn’t allow for such predictions.

tomcam 6y ago

My suggestion is to blog or vlog under a pseudonym because almost no one on either side of the political spectrum will be able to approach your situation rationally.

prepend 6y ago

> I am going to conduct my own personal UBI experiment starting February 2022. I will be gifted €1.000 per month for 48 months This is interesting and I’m not sure what you mean. Are you picking a random person and giving them a thousand euros per month? Or are you spending a thousand among multiple people? There are lots of charities with consistent donations from people (eg, effective altruism pledges) so I’m unclear what your experiment is or will show other than other patronages. My employer has been running an experiment for a few years where every month they give me a few thousand.

toast0 6y 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? Would you run a pilot of every idea? At the level of a country? Paying everyone in Wales £ 1 is a big endeavor, let alone a value that's meaningful and on a monthly basis, so it's not as if a pilot comes at no cost. You could certainly form an opinion from experiments in other places, or economic thought expirements or from wherever it is politicians pull most of their thoughts.