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Basic income would not reduce people’s willingness to work

• cbreynoldson 5y ago
  It may increase their willingness to invest and day-trade so they don't have to work.
• deleted 5y ago
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• baggy_trough 5y ago
  Article does not say how big the basic income in question was.
• deleted 5y ago
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• ozzythecat 5y ago
  A link to the actual research paper would be helpful. In this experiment, what amount was given to the treatment group that received basic income? How often? How does that amount compare to the cost of living in their city? > ‘It’s sometimes said that people will sit around doing nothing if you give them free money.’ I’m not an academic, so take this with a grain of salt. If my job requires menial labor or involves getting berated by customers (many retail jobs), personally I would absolutely not work. My spouse worked for the state government as part of a benefits/disbursement program. She took phone calls from benefits recipients. Some who are disabled, on unemployment, or generally within the states bar to qualify for tax payer aid. The pay was slightly above minimum wage. My spouse quit after about a year, during which my souse constantly suffered from verbal abuse and even callers who didn’t qualify threatening to murder my spouse unless they received cash from the state. My point is - there are plenty of jobs where you absolutely will quit and not work if the basic income can provide a sufficient substitute. I’m not making an argument against basic income. I suppose it’s sad that we as a society treat a significant number of people, even in developed countries, without a shred of dignity.
  • truculent 5y ago
    So wouldn’t we expect the market to make those jobs more attractive, either through better pay or better conditions?
  • osrec 5y ago
    Avoiding a particular job is not the same as sitting around doing nothing. It's quite possible for you to get basic income, yet channel your energy to other productive things.
    • otherme123 5y ago
      Or other improductive things. The more hardcore UBI defenders talk about paying Malibu surfers to surf all day, or to write haikus. That's pretty much doing nothing at a productive level. One of the problems of those studies are that they are temporal, and everyone involved know it. If I enrole you for two years in an UBI experiment, you'll probably not leave your job, even if you hate it. But if I guarantee you the same income for the rest of your life... well, lets take a look at how many people keep their jobs, and specially their boring/shitty jobs, when they win a huge lottery price. Usually they don't do other productive things, or even other improductive things: they tend to destroy their own lifes. Another problem is that you have to take into account how slowly people internalize the new situations. E.g. when central banks started to use inflation as a source of government income, in the first decades it was "free". But people adapted and started to track inflation and price indexes to peg the salaries to them, "learning" how to live with the new situation.
      • glofish 5y ago
        this is a really good point enrolling in a study is not at all representative of how people would behave if the same were a permanent
      • Orou 5y ago
        > The more hardcore UBI defenders talk about paying Malibu surfers to surf all day, or to write haikus I've been following the UBI space for a long time and I've never seen anyone use this as an example - that's just a strawman. What people discuss is the work that is valuable to society but is unpaid such as raising children, caretaking for the elderly, community support, and so on. A few hundred dollars a month isn't enough to live on, but it moves the needle for those most at-risk for going hungry or becoming homeless. And for everyone else, it gives extra breathing room and negotiating power in the workplace.
• the_real_me 5y ago
  I strongly suspect that the lion's share of UBI would go directly to landlords or existing property owners.
  • srcreigh 5y ago
    Would they get any more than the status quo? I suspect the extra support may translate to decreased profits for landowners. Tenants would have more time and money to file maintenance issues and represent themselves in the legal system, which would cost landowners. In Ontario it costs $50 and takes a lot of time and energy to file a complaint to the LTB. Tenants would also have more ability to change their situation in response to abuse, shop around for a better deal on housing, etc.
    • jeffbee 5y ago
      In many U.S. states you need not even bother going to court, because of robust "implied warranty of habitability" statutes and precedents. A person who experiences real habitability issues such as no heat, no cooking fuel, doors or windows that don't close and lock, etc after notifying landlords and waiting a reasonable time (which is as short as 24 hours in the case of no heat) can simply hire someone to fix it and deduct the actual cost from rent. It would be on the landlord to initiate legal action, if they disagreed with the outcome. The tenant has no obligation to go through courts.
      • deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      • srcreigh 5y ago
        In Ontario,Canada you can pre pay for repairs, but you aren't allowed to deduct those amounts from rent. Here, you would need to front $500+ or whatever to have the work done, and then pay $50 for a Landlord and Tenant Board hearing booking (which have been delayed months). Then you need to show up, prove the work was needed, that the landlord had enough time to do it and didn't, and that you minimized the costs. (A joint tenant advice, contracting and paralegal brokerage might be a good business in this area. But do I really want to make myself a major enemy of all the scummy landowners? Noooope.) Municipal offices will intervene on their own to ensure things like heating are taken care of. In Waterloo the minimum allowed temp is 21C or 70F. In my experience with this city's offices, they will take care of this almost immediately (immediately respond to form on website via email asking for evidence of sub 21C settings, then call the landlord and request the temp be increased etc.)
• greatpostman 5y ago
  Pay me enough to live without working and I will quit my job and work on a moonshot startup/interesting tech all day. Most likely nothing will come of it, but I won’t be working
  • kevingadd 5y ago
    Is that a typo? You just said you'll be working, then said you won't be working
    • goldenkey 5y ago
      He'd be in what capitalists like to call a "quantitative supercommission."
    • nightski 5y ago
      It's pretty clear to me he meant working on someone else's payroll.
    • european321 5y ago
      No, I think they said that they think that "working" towards an idea, a moonshot, wouldn't feel like working
  • MarkLowenstein 5y ago
    I'm with you. If I got basic income I would absolutely quit work and not go back. The burden is now on these researchers to find at least two people who would go to work only if basic income were instituted, to balance us out.
  • travisb 5y ago
    I'd also stop working, though instead of working on a moonshot I'd go camping, work on my garden, and spend long days playing games with friends and family. There is a qualitative difference between needing to spend 40+ hours a week to sustain yourself versus spending 0 hours. If one need to spend those hours anyways it makes sense to maximize the income from doing so. It may take a generation, but I think most people would eventually come to the conclusion that the rat race isn't worth it when zero hours is an option.
• quotemstr 5y ago
  Yes it would. Look: we just went through a massive worker shortage caused by overly generous stimulus benefits and rent subsidies. Have we forgotten already? What am I supposed to believe? A microfoundations paper from a field with infamous replication problems on one hand, or, on the other hand, common sense and my own lying eyes? Of course UBI would reduce propensity to work. Only people with an axe to grind can seriously believe otherwise.
  • sschueller 5y ago
    So poor people are lazy and the rich aren't? Maybe all these people don't want to work these kinda of jobs and are moving into other sectors. Maybe working conditions and pay need to be drastically improved in those jobs.
    • quotemstr 5y ago
      > So poor people are lazy and the rich aren't? Honestly, yes --- not always, but frequently. I am sick and tired of the mentality embedded in the sentence I quoted. Do you think the rich are rich for no reason at all? That their rewards are unfair? Success is not the universe sprinkling good fortune on mankind at random: success comes from hard work and the courage to take advantage of the opportunities that time presents to everyone from time to time. Let's be honest with ourselves for one and acknowledge the connection between teachable personal qualities and desirable outcomes.
      • hhmc 5y ago
        > Do you think the rich are rich for no reason at all? No, social immobility and generational wealth transfer. > That their rewards are unfair? Often, yes.
        • Dig1t 5y ago
          I think it's sort of unfair to reduce the whole argument to a one-liner like that. Sure, many people do take advantage of generational wealth, setting your children up for success is a basic human impulse. There are also a ton of data supporting the case that actually a huge percentage of successful/wealthy people did not get that way through generational wealth but in fact, just worked hard (also luck plays a factor). Also, yes the rewards are unfair, life is extremely unfair pretty much all of the time.
• sschueller 5y ago
  Just look at the billionaires. They are all still working even after reaching retirement age.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • orasis 5y ago
    You’re mixing cause and effect. They became billionaires in large part because of their work ethic.
    • brailsafe 5y ago
      That's what they'd certainly like you to believe. The success of ycombinator depends on it!
    • throwhauser 5y ago
      They're billionaires because of the work ethic, not necessarily their work ethic. Bezos isn't optimizing his own productivity, he optimizes his employees productivity and spends his time as he pleases. He keeps the gains from the productivity regardless. EDIT: Actually I don't know if Bezos optimizes his own productivity or not. Nevertheless, his own productivity is a drop in the bucket compared to the thousands who work for his companies.
    • log4shelled 5y ago
    • DoingIsLearning 5y ago
      > They became billionaires in large part because of their work ethic. Tell me you're an American without telling me you're an American. :) Thomas Piketty wrote a book on this topic (which I highly recommend) called "Capital in the Twenty-First Century".
  • Grustaf 5y ago
    Few of them work the checkout at walmart, or in a cement factory.
• gruez 5y ago
  >They simulated the reward structure of different forms of social security in an experiment. ‘We got people to do a task on a computer,’ says De Kwaadsteniet. ‘In multiple rounds, which represented the months they had to work, they did a boring task in which they had to put points on a bar. The more of these they did, the more money they earned.’ "short term experiments done in a lab" seems to be psychology's equivalent of "in vitro" (aka. in a test tube). I'm not really sure how you can draw any conclusions about someone's lifetime behavior, using a experiment that looks at the behavior of people sitting at a few hours at a computer.
  • kevingadd 5y ago
    There have already been real world basic income experiments with similar outcomes
    • HPsquared 5y ago
      They have the same problem: the participants know it's only an experiment. They know it's temporary.
      • alkonaut 5y ago
        If someone seriously wanted to run an experiment/trial it would need to be on the scale of a medium sized city and a decade before I’d be willing to draw any conclusions at all.
    • pc86 5y ago
      The fact that properly done experiments have the same outcome doesn't mean that these "let's go to the psych department from 1-4 this afternoon to get a $50 gift card" pseudo-experiments hold any real value.
    • CaptainNegative 5y ago
      If you're referring to longer-term experiments, do they show actual statistical significance? One of the two I've read through, the UBC experiment, showed a similar outcome but was only significant at the p≈0.13 or p≈0.24 level, depending on the precise statement of the null hypothesis, which is not particularly enthralling. The Stockton one I recall showing something similar but don't have the precise numbers for.
• ChrisLomont 5y ago
  Multiple studies of where basic income was tried in the real world found it to reduce work. For example, "Manitoba, Canada experimented with Mincome, a basic guaranteed income, in the 1970s. In the town of Dauphin, Manitoba, labor only decreased by 13%, much less than expected" [1]. There are plenty of others. I expect a targeted need use of scarce resources (tax money) is a much better use for helping those who need it, instead of ham handedly giving it regardless of need, thereby shorting those who need it at the benefit of many who do not. And the current inflation (and previous events where govts gave out decent sums of cash to help short term other econ issues) shows what happens when people get money for free - prices rise to absorb it. The reason being if person X is willing to put in pain Y for product Z, this does not change if you rescale the meaning of money. Product Z simply rises to cause person to put in the same pain to obtain it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_basic_income https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_basic_income
  • rcMgD2BwE72F 5y ago
    Bullshit work?
  • pc86 5y ago
    UBI without the U is just welfare, which is fine, but it's kind of odd to say that UBI would be better if we just did "thing that makes it by definition no longer UBI." I totally agree with you on re: inflation, though. Some organization, presumably government, will need to manage any UBI implementation, and government is nothing if not an inefficient allocator of its resources. I worry any broad national UBI system will just raise inflation to absorb the prices, while increases tax on the entire population, and losing a non-trivial percentage of that increase in the transfer.
    • rottencupcakes 5y ago
      Assuming we don’t want to MMT / money printer this, to keep a balanced budget, any UBI system would have to be accompanied by an increase in taxes. These taxes would presumably be very progressive. This effectively would end up more than negating the effect of UBI on the richer people, thus turning it into a directed welfare program. UBI and directed welfare are essentially same same.
• nine_zeros 5y ago
  It will not reduce the willingness to work but certainly will reduce the willingness of workers to suck it up for low pay, shoddy benefits, lack of holidays, no job security and importantly, the lack of dignity. The most recent American cash handout is the closest we have come to a large scale UBI and it does exactly what we expect humans to do - follow Maslow's pyramid.
• fullshark 5y ago
  This article doesn't have details on the experiment and how much money "social security" was, also it's incredibly easy to generate an experiment which shows no effect if it's underpowered or the effect is minor. I used to believe this, based on the last 2 years I no longer do. I hope we get to a basic income state so that we change what motivates people to work (from push to pull) but I still maintain a large number of people will choose not to work if they can achieve their personal level of comfort with a basic income.
• seibelj 5y ago
  We did a type of UBI experiment in the United States with the universal Covid payments. Low income workers got 80% of the salary. Many chose not to work. Why work 40 hours to make 20% more money than the dole? I’m acquaintances with two local business owners, a roofer and a general contractor, and they told me plainly that they were understaffed because their workers were taking a vacation until the Covid payments ended. Seems like a more valid experiment to me.
  • kevingadd 5y ago
    You're ignoring the fact that they chose not to work during a pandemic, at jobs that almost universally had very poor protection for employees - little to no PPE, in some cases not even hand sanitizer and/or soap (i.e. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/mar/18/amazon-whole-foods-workers-stores-warehouses-coronavirus https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/mar/18/amazon-wh..., though I can't remember which warehouse had no soap). That is not applicable to UBI. Also keep in mind that during this time period many schools were closed, so some of these people were staying home to monitor their children, not just "deciding not to work". Parenting is labor.
    • tengbretson 5y ago
      > You're ignoring the fact that they chose not to work during a pandemic, at jobs that almost universally had very poor protection for employees - little to no PPE, in some cases not even hand sanitizer and/or soap Are you friends with any roofers?
    • seibelj 5y ago
      We need roofs fixed and structures to be made safe to live in. We are still in a pandemic - should we keep paying people not to work? Eventually nature ruins our structures and people are homeless. I just don’t see how your logic is sound.
      • kevingadd 5y ago
        If you're saying you think rooftops are more important than lives, I don't know what to tell you. If roofers are refusing to show up to work because they'd rather accept fairly small checks from the government, maybe you need to offer them better pay or better health safeguards? We've had lots of people die during all this. One reason the pandemic has lasted so long is that we've refused to take difficult measures, so instead we drag it out and people keep getting exposed. There are countries on this planet that have gone back to normal without these issues, because they took more difficult measures early on.
• daenz 5y ago
  The key question is: would it reduce people's willingness to work on things that provide objective monetary value?
• charcircuit 5y ago
  Anecdotally it reduced my willingness to work. I just watch youtube, use blender, program random things, play video games, etc with all of my free time. There are plenty of fun ways I can spend my time.
• dwighttk 5y ago
  > We got people to do a task on a computer,’ says De Kwaadsteniet. ‘In multiple rounds, which represented the months they had to work, they did a boring task in which they had to put points on a bar. The more of these they did, the more money they earned. I find it hilarious that they think they can reach the conclusion they did based on that description of the experiment.
  • notahacker 5y ago
    It's advocacy, not experimentation. That applies to most of the more in depth studies too, which tend to spend a lot of time and money concluding if you give a cohort extra money for a year or two, they're a bit better off as a result but haven't been able to afford to retire, something the study designers knew from the outset. We have another much larger and long running experiment in guaranteeing people livable incomes for the rest of their life called the pension system, which designers of UBI studies would like you to ignore because it only works by restricting when you're allowed to claim it.
• lbj 5y ago
  Well, in Denmark we have the equivalent of Basic income and I'd say we have a major problem with peoples willingness to work. Some families are on welfare for generations now.
  • kube-system 5y ago
    We don't have UBI in the US and many people here would say the same. I think many are quick to conclude motivation is the cause without considering any less visible underlying reasons that cause people to be in those situations.
    • pizza234 5y ago
      Could you elaborate on how would one sustain themselves without UBI in the US (according who those here who would say the same)? Things that I typically read: - the lower class struggle even to sustain themselves for days/weeks in between jobs - in the middle class there is people who fear not having health insurance in between jobs How can one survive in US without any job at all? US's welfare is radically different from Denmark's.
      • kube-system 5y ago
        The US has many fragmented welfare systems, rather than a single universal system. Many people do live on a combination of these benefit programs. This does not mean they do not struggle. People who are out of work for short periods of time may not be familiar with all of the various programs and how to sign up for them, and it may take some time to do so. They may also have budgeted their expenses with their employment income in mind. This is why things are particularly difficult for people who intermittently lose their jobs. But in general, anyone who finds their income unexpectedly unstable or close to the minimum amount necessary to meet their expenses will have a tough time, no matter where that income is coming from, or what value it is.
  • throwawayffffas 5y ago
    One could argue that welfare is the symptom not the cause.
• oxymoran 5y ago
  My anecdote: It would reduce my willingness to work for others but it certainly would not reduce my willingness to work for myself. And it would allow me to take on entrepreneurial risks that I other wise can’t afford at this place in my life.
• swalsh 5y ago
  Something not talked about often, but I wonder if basic income might lower the "applicability" of what people spend their time on. I know if money were not an issue I'd spend my time working on projects that sound fun, but might not have a path to profitability. Money, besides being a motivator is also a signal to markets on what people want.
  • asdff 5y ago
    I've had a few landlords that just don't have any job at all and just ride off their cash flow. Boomer landlords of mine especially who got in on the property early before the market swelled in the last few decades just live like freespirited hippies. No other job, engaging in art or creative things, eating and drinking around town with their partner, and smoking a lot of weed. Even with this decadent living on their end and supposed enlightened disposition, getting simple repairs is still like pulling teeth.
    • augustuspolius 5y ago
      This argument doesn’t get enough attention. There is a large population right now that has enough money not to work and - perhaps surprisingly to some - they do not engage in creative side projects for fun. They choose not to work.
      • bryanlarsen 5y ago
        The majority won't engage in productive tasks, but the output from the minority can be massive. Einstein wrote his papers as a side gig from his patent office job. It doesn't take many Einstein's to make up for a large number of slackers.
        • augustuspolius 5y ago
          Why would we want to foster a society where the majority are slackers?
          • 5y ago
• NoblePublius 5y ago
  Job applications for my Florida restaurants increased 800% MoM the week after Florida ended enhanced unemployment.
• dukeofdoom 5y ago
  How's the reset going so far? Everyone enjoying the lowering of standards? Higher food prices, and just general decline. Should we keep going until people are waiting in lines to buy food. Because this is how we get there.
• c7DJTLrn 5y ago
  Cool but most psychological studies are not reproducible. I'd be interested to see a large scale trial run.
  • josephcsible 5y ago
    We've had that in the US for about the last two years, and it had the opposite result.
    • brimble 5y ago
      1) There were some confounding factors, obviously, and 2) Though also polluted by unusual circumstances, didn't we get a bit of a test with this when some states pulled support before others did, and didn't that show little to no effect on employment and job-seeking rates?
• notreallyserio 5y ago
  Unfortunately without the paper or details this thread is going to turn in to a shit show of opinions (including my own, doh) and little concrete information. Gotta flag it. It'd be more interesting to see the actual paper and reasoned replies.
• golemotron 5y ago
  I'm not sure why anyone would think that this would not vary by culture.
• mbesto 5y ago
  Is it just me or is it impossible to mimic (and therefore test the psychology) of the real impact of UBI unless you implement it across a nation-state. For example, let's say you test in a small town in Minnesota. It's impossible to rule out variables such as federal taxes, healthcare costs, mobility, etc. I therefore think its impossible to test UBI on the scale of the US for example.
• biql 5y ago
  I think it’s the same reason people rarely choose frugal FIRE approach, that is, live spending as little as possible to optimise for early retirement. People generally have way too many desires for it too be enough. The pecking order dynamic, social pressure, etc, are far stronger forces I think.
• olivermarks 5y ago
• deleted 5y ago
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• bluedino 5y ago
  Of course it would. Look what a few "stimulus checks" did.
  • SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
    We didn’t lose our entry level employees and warehouse workers because of the checks. But we did lose them to the increased unemployment benefits. We had guys working for $18 quickly so the math and figure out they would make $24 an hour not working. And they did. Our CFO took covid very seriously and laid them off or did whatever we had to do do they could take advantage of this. We’re still having trouble getting people to fill those positions now even that the rates are back to normal. Three guys I know of all started working construction and were being paid cash under the table. So making the $24 plus the cash, and are still doing that. So… I’m not sure about this whole thing.
• leifg 5y ago
  The problem I have with the UBI is that you absolutely have to nail it on the first try in order for it to succeed. A great example is the housing market (in the US but also applies to a lot of European countries). Regardless of UBI there will always be locations that will be more popular than others. I'm not saying everyone wants to live in San Francisco or Manhattan but I don't think supply will always exceed demand. Assuming this there will be regions where demand for housing exceeds supply. So naturally the price of rent will go up. In some places that means you will have to find a job in order to be able to pay rent. At this point people are again subject to the current patterns of exploitation. Sure if you can't make rent in one of the coastal cities you can always move inland and have a nicer life but even leaving money issues aside there are so many factors why people are not willing or even unable to move (proximity to family and friends is a big deal). All that is to say, before you can even think of a UBI you will have to first solve the housing crisis because at best UBI will mitigate it. And this is just one example (cough health care).
  • blamestross 5y ago
    As long as UBI is never "localized" to regional costs of living it can act to revitalize housing markets in inland America. Housing isn't a gobal supply problem, it's that there isn't enough supply near sources of income. Unlink needing access to work from where you can live and things will get a LOT better.
• respondo2134 5y ago
  The very first sentence says this work was fudned by "FNV union"but I don't know what that means; the closest I could get was a Dutch trade union? The fact that they don't define this (apparently) biased conflict, nor link to the actual study makes me immediately question the impartiality of any research. We also just ran a real world experiment where many of the jobs in question here where impacted by covid and individuals got a flat-rate government cheque, and they DID stay home rather than go back to work the same job once restrictions where removed, so I question any outcomes from a set of behavioural studies that discounts the suppression on low-paying positions.
  • lucumo 5y ago
    FNV is the largest federation of unions in the Netherlands. (It's name translates to Federation of Netherlands Unions.)
• smm11 5y ago
  UBI is a tax cut for all. Which is why it will never happen.
  • josephcsible 5y ago
    No it isn't. A real tax cut wouldn't affect people who don't pay taxes.
• panarky 5y ago
  We'll be a lot better off when we realize that work is not an end in itself. There's more than enough for everyone. Society isn't going to collapse if someone doesn't want to work 75 hours a week at three different bullshit jobs.
• macinjosh 5y ago
  I think it would change how long people are willing to work and what people are willing to do for work. For example, I could imagine less desirable jobs would see a drastic increase in market wages because there would be less people in the position of needing to take any job they can get to scrape by. Undoubtedly a good thing! However, if it costs more money to get basic things done like cleaning and stocking grocery stores prices would inevitably increase to compensate for the added labor costs. How long before the basic income is not enough to cover basics and then it is increased? The whole process then repeats. So sure, people still work and occupy their time but are they doing things that are valuable? Am I missing something?
• digitcatphd 5y ago
  Behavioral experiments by a cognitive psychologist… I’m sure this wasn’t done in the field or over an extended period of time. The only way to truly observe the effects would be historical analysis of similar conditions like unemployment or in extreme cases, socialism. Such things are fairly well documented and don’t require branches of philosophy to run pseudoscientific studies on
• regnull 5y ago
  I would file it under "things you want to believe are true are actually true" category. It gets clicks.
• malsuwaidi 5y ago
  I work in the field of economic development and this universal basic income debate has been fascinatingly ideological with little grounding in fieldwork reality. There are stones in this debate that nobody wants to touch; the relationship to work of different cultures around the world for one, as well as the very real effect of reserve wages increasing above the economic opportunities available in remittance receiving communities. I really wish it was as simple as give people money and we will get economic development across the board, if that was the case a lot of sub-Saharan africa wouldn’t be in the situation it is right now.
• teucris 5y ago
  Would it really be so bad if some people stopped working altogether? One of the proposed justifications for UBI is that automation creates wealth that could (or in some arguments, should) go to everyone rather than the ultra wealthy. That automation is taking up a larger and larger slice of the workforce, reducing the need for people to work. Many people will choose to do work that gives them meaning. Some people will do unpleasant jobs because since they can’t be automated, they pay well. And some won’t work at all. Is it so bad if there is an entire class of people who just don’t work?
  • missedthecue 5y ago
    Fewer people working reduces the size of the pie, making ourselves poorer. So yes. I would say it's a bad thing if we tax society in order to pay able bodied people not to be productive.
    • teucris 5y ago
      But the systems I’m referring to do not suggest taxing the hard work of people. They propose taxing the work of automation.
      • missedthecue 5y ago
        Why would we want to create tax policy that discourages automation investment in favor of human labor?
        • jjk166 5y ago
          So you are opposed to people not working, and you're opposed to people working?
          • missedthecue 5y ago
            I'm opposed to paying people not to work. Humans and automation coexist. It's not as if all the engineers that used slide-rules and graphing paper went homeless when AutoCAD was invented. Same with farmers and the tractor. Society gets richer as automation makes our labor more efficient.
• Proven 5y ago
• cxf12 5y ago
  Welfare and Food Stamp Entitlements are Basic Income. And its been proven time and time again, that it incentivizes some people to avoid work.
  • IndPhysiker 5y ago
    This makes me remember working in a grocery store as a kid where people would buy steak with their WIC and food stamps that might fill one or two meals. Could it go much farther by buying different things? Of course, but that wasn't as enjoyable, so consequences fall where they must. My worry with UBI is that unless people's choices are removed through a tangled web of attached strings and reporting, the UBI is going to be spent on non-essentials shortly after funds are made available each period and then the story will turn to needing more money as the first UBI isn't enough. The cynic in me says that UBI will just give more money to people without the capacity for managing their money, which is not going to lead to any improvement in their station, only more consuming. Removing the choices just further destroys a free society, but enables waste on a massive scale. I like a good safety net with job training programs should people fall down, but I have about as much hope in being able to dunk as I do that people will suddenly start making good choices when unearned money appears in their wallets each month.
• mrkramer 5y ago
  Back in the day it would but nowadays people are craving luxury goods so they would be forced to work to earn them.
• tonymet 5y ago
  how about the last 2 years ? about 4% of eligible workers stopped working (60% vs 64%)
  • missedthecue 5y ago
    That would be 6.5% of eligible workers quitting.
• core-utility 5y ago
  I may be misguided on this, but I don't believe a critique of UBI is the reduction in an individuals willingness to work, but rather the act of working. Individuals who don't want to work but do so as an understanding of a means to provide for themselves still have an unwillingness to work that wouldn't change if provided UBI, but their likelihood of quitting their job and not filling that time with a productive replacement is what is being questioned by opponents.
• forgithubs 5y ago
• meatsauce 5y ago
  That's highly doubtful. If you can get by with a hand-out, most with such a low bar won't work unless they are hungry for more.
• beardedman 5y ago
  For me these studies are utterly meaningless without real world long-term data. > would not reduce people’s willingness to work > The psychologists also found an indication that people with a basic income look for work that suits them better. Note how the authors use the word *willingness" to work. 0 people want to clean toilets or public restrooms for a living. Or be waiting staff at a restaurant. Yet those "grunt work" jobs are often formative in developing grit, social skills & long term prioritisation skills (instant gratification vs. long term payoff). I shudder to think what the consequence would be of participating in a society where you are free to skip the "hard stuff" because it's inconvenient.
  • smallcrustacean 5y ago
    Is the only "hard stuff" in life found in employment? What about losing a friend? Learning who you are in relation to your parents? Attempting to cooperate with a partner? Sacrificing your goals for your children? Life is much richer than the lessons learned by doing menial labor.
    • beardedman 5y ago
      My comment was specific to employment & "menial labor", as is the issue of universal basic income.
  • augustuspolius 5y ago
    Agreed. The way I see it is that UBI has all the makings of an abusive relationship. One party supports the other, while there is no reciprocation. You don’t have to contribute to the society - the society will support all your basic needs. Without a strong incentive for reciprocation we are solving half of the problem, while ignoring the negative consequences. In a way it’s similar to how large mental institutions were closed in the US (the idea that had some merits), and now just ignore people with severe mental problems until they either injure themselves or someone else.
    • SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
      Isn’t the reciprocation that you keep voting for the people that want to send you checks? I’ve yet to see anyone explain how UBI isn’t eventually just buying future votes. If I see them stand on a stage and tell grandmas they are going to end social security and Medicare - but will send everyone a check for $1000 instead, and I’ll think they are serious about UBI as an economic solution, but “we’ll also end other programs someday” isn’t the leading bullet point.
• stevedekorte 5y ago
  If everyone received basic income, at what point would the majority of voters not see it in their interest to vote for legislators who promise to increase it?
  • jeremyjh 5y ago
    A majority of people are duped into voting against their own interests all the time now, why would UBI change it?
• Mizza 5y ago
  I was, and mostly still am, in favor of basic income, but the effects of the COVID stimulus/PPA on my city (Philadelphia) have thrown some cold water on my idealism. I lurk on the 'hood'/gang subreddit for the city, and the general consensus there is that the stimulus checks are the reason for the upswing in homicides, which shattered the all-time record this year to over 550, meaning that the murder rate in a city of 1.5 million is now 1/3000 per annum, and far higher if you're of a certain age group in certain neighborhoods. The reasoning is that cliques which were previously only able to afford one gun for the whole squad can now afford lots more guns, enough for everybody to have their own, and those guns are being used as tools for acquiring even more money. I think the lesson is strong rebuttal the libertarian argument that basic income can replace a functioning social state - a functioning society requires a lot more hard work than overnight helicopter money.
• cassac 5y ago
  People already don’t have a willingness to work. If you provide the three basic needs plus medical and the internet I’m retiring tomorrow.
• Someone 5y ago
  Not necessarily. Leaving out that word is highly unfair to the authors. It turns a defensible but also boring claim into one that draws attention, but is as good as impossible to defend. I think that, looking at pensioners, UBI will lead to people working less. Many of those who can afford to happily are unemployed.
• antishatter 5y ago
  If you give people basic incomes it would follow a Pareto 80/20 rule just like everything else. Duhhhhh
• danShumway 5y ago
  I want UBI to be proven workable, I am actively rooting for it. Philosophically, I believe that any market in which people are coerced into participation through threat of homelessness/poverty is not, at its absolute core, a free market. Philosophically, I believe that UBI is at some level a question of whether or not free markets actually totally work, because a truly free market is one where people are not forced to choose between bad options -- where they're not being coerced by wage slavery, where they have a choice whether or not to participate in the market itself. So I have personal stake in this, because if UBI gets proven not to work, it then leads me to ask uncomfortable questions like, "is a truly free market actually possible?" Which I don't want to think about. I want UBI to succeed. But having said that, this is one study undertaken by a small group of psychologists, and it should be viewed through that lens. I understand it's simpler to just say their conclusion in the title, and it doesn't break any site rules, but it misses that every study on UBI is an approximation of what UBI large-scale implementations would be. I feel like people look at isolated experiments with a lot more confidence than they should. I don't like when individual studies get framed as, "this proves X". It's extremely difficult to reason about what the long-term impacts of UBI will be using short-term studies because people's long-term patterns often differ from their short-term patterns. I do think we should be experimenting more with UBI, I think it's good that this study was done. I'd like to see more studies like this, more real-world tests, and in instances where UBI doesn't work I think we should keep trying different strategies to make it work, because a world where people have universal stability is preferable to a world where they don't. But it's important to keep in mind that this study doesn't really prove anything, it's just another data point. We don't actually know whether or not basic income would reduce people's willingness to work long-term, this is one data point that suggests it might not. This pops up in a lot of areas (UBI, inflation, etc) -- basically anything involving the economy. People get very confident about things based on a few data points, and then we get threads talking about how people are 100% certain that stimulus checks caused the chip shortages or some crud. Just make sure you're taking a step back and thinking about these things like a Bayesian, economics is heckin complicated, and I think complicated systems like economics are particularly susceptible to the falacy of, "I've done several hours of research on this, maybe even a full day, and therefore I have a complete, fully formed theory about the entire system works that I will treat as fact."
• kerneloftruth 5y ago
  We just lived through a basic income experiment in the US during 2021 (American rescue plan, rent moratoriums, ...), and it showed indeed that willingness to work greatly decreased.
• jacobn 5y ago
  This study and the discussion here reminds me of https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/12/beware-the-man-of-one-study/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/12/beware-the-man-of-one-... - basically whenever you have a financial or politically motivated topic of study, you'll get numerous serious seeming studies supporting position X, then a thorough debunking of X, then a resounding rebuttal, then more studies taking other positions, those getting debunked & rebutted, meta studies trying to aggregate & tease out who's actually correct, those getting debunked & rebutted, and the fight goes on. My concern with UBI is more that we're unlikely to be able to fix it if it's actually terrible - once in place, handouts tend to become sacrosanct regardless of efficacy (I'm sure that are exceptions that prove the rule ;) - and it is stupendously expensive. How about Universal Basic Assistance instead? We tend to make government assistance be "hard shell, soft center", i.e. hard to qualify for, but once you're in, it's all gravy, unless you do something silly like get back on your feet (see unemployment & disability). What if we instead switched to a "soft shell, firm center" approach and made it really easy to access assistance funds, but they e.g. got gradually reduced over time as you tap into them? And perhaps you have some skin in the game with a required personal emergency fund? And perhaps you owe some of the assistance $$ back, so that the average person "pays for themselves" over the course of their life? Just spit-balling. I'm sure there are tons of problems with such an approach as well. But maybe it would still be quite useful for the recipients, and a lot more palatable for the tax payers = more reasonable to actually implement?
• mrfusion 5y ago
  Critical question: do we have the right willingness to work right now? Could it be too high?
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• throwaway49274 5y ago
  The study aside, it would reduce MY willingness to work and I have to imagine there are a lot of people, working a lot shittier jobs, out there who feel the same. In the end, the jobs still need to be done, so wages will need to go up, and the cost of the thing these jobs produce will go up, and then, inflation. Isn't that obvious?
• mcs5280 5y ago
  My fear is landlords will just increase rent by the UBI amount.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• thinkloop 5y ago
  One of the touted benefits of UBI is that individuals are better able to allocate money to meet their needs than some outside entity. However some results from Canada showed that some people continued to spend "irresponsibly". Rather than spending money on food, shelter, medicine and clothing, some continued to spend on maintaining addictions and/or entertainment, then still required assistance from the system. Can a society rely solely on UBI to help the down-trodden? I don't think so, in some cases you have to directly give food, medicine and shelter.
• nickpp 5y ago
  Even if it wouldn’t reduce people's willingness to work (which the article doesn’t prove in any way), people would work on whatever they feel like, not on what our society needs. Because in the job market, wage signals work like price signals in other markets: they incentivize people to move in the direction most valued by the economy. Like IT right now. So we may be doomed to a society of grasshoppers with nobody willing to be the ant - like in the old fable.
• thoughtstheseus 5y ago
  The idea that UBI alone solves anything is silly and not a realistic policy proposal. UBI is the government distributing money to people. Normally the government spends money on behalf of people who are expected to contribute toward repaying it. A simple way to reduce the cost of UBI is to have it reduced by the cost of ALL government services you elect to use. Assuming such a UBI covers basic needs, eliminate minimum wages. Wages no longer need a lower bound as everyone has sufficient income. The root problem is an unfavorable distribution of wealth and income toward asset holders. Stop taxing labor. Companies need to broaden the distribution of wealth gains- the plumbing for this is still uncertain.
  • nouveaux 5y ago
    The government already distributes money to people in the form of subsidies. UBI is just a different form of subsidy. In the case of UBI, its the profits from automation subsidizing the poor. "The root problem is an unfavorable distribution of wealth and income toward asset holders. Stop taxing labor." The problem UBI is trying to solve is one where more and more people will become unemployed because of automation. It is not trying to level the playing field.
    • josephcsible 5y ago
      Then the problem is that we've overdone it, relative to our current automation level. The amount of free money you can get is high enough that more people are choosing not to work than jobs have been automated away so far.
• xwdv 5y ago
  It doesn’t reduce willingness to work, it just reduces peoples willingness to do the cheap shitty jobs that society depends on for us to live comfortably. Like it or not, if you enjoy your current standard of living that is a problem.
• egberts1 5y ago
  Original link: https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/news/2022/01/basic-income-would-not-reduce-peoples-willingness-to-work https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/news/2022/01/basic-inco... Still no research paper found from this Google-Fu.
• theodric 5y ago
  It would reduce mine
• tippytippytango 5y ago
  You are earning $4000/month after taxes and begin to receive $1000/month. What do you do? Some fraction of people will reduce their workload so their earnings are $3000/month, bringing their total income back to $4000. Some fraction of people will not reduce their workload at all and inflate their lifestyle to depend on $5000/month. The overwhelming majority of people will choose the latter; we already know this, it's one of the chief complaints about a materialist, consumerist oriented society. When people get a raise, they overwhelmingly spend it. It's why most people can't save a $1000 emergency fund. If you are earning $2000 per month and suddenly your income increases by 50% you feel like a baller, you are going to start eating better, ordering take out a little bit, replace that cracked phone, add a little more data to your cell phone plan, turn that thermostat up a little, whatever.
  • jeffbee 5y ago
    In the U.S. that would be a very good outcome. 15% of American households experience food insecurity. We absolutely want these people to spend it, not save it. Even stimulus checks that were small and arrived irregularly had a huge impact on hunger in America. $1000/mo on the regular would be revolutionary.
    • burlesona 5y ago
      Maybe, but I think the fact that they could be planned for / assumed would mean the benefit would have a high risk of quickly disappearing into inflation and rent-seeking. In the case of rent in particular, there would be no reason for any landlord to take less than $UBI if there was a guaranteed monthly payment from the government. Unexpected or unpredictable cash influx almost always makes things better because people know they can’t “count on it” and they use it for savings or to fix problems they had been unable to fix, rather than “live off it.” To put that differently: what most people really need is margin to handle the unexpected problems in life. But living below your means to create margin is hard, even for high-income people! Doubly hard when you are low income. So unexpected cash is more beneficial than expected cash, precisely because it is unexpected and therefore inherently “margin.”
  • augustuspolius 5y ago
• annoyingnoob 5y ago
  Where does the money come from and how is using that money sustainable?
• grdeken 5y ago
  Looks like a European university. Would love to see that same study done on the U.S. population...
  • readthenotes1 5y ago
    Some data points: the FIRE movement. How many people have quit working as soon as they are able? It is essentially the same question and the answer appears to be quite a few, with a few odd people who are unable to do nothing.
• rocqua 5y ago
  These names don't sound real. They are to 'on point' in dutch. Poletiek is one letter off the dutch world for politics. And "de Kwaadsteniet" literrally means "not the worst" or more like "a decent dude". I get the feeling this is an experiment, though I would expect better of a university like Leiden.
• WalterBright 5y ago
  > who saw no indications of such a behavioural effect. One wonders what he was seeing. I used to know a fellow who would get himself laid off as soon as he'd worked long enough to qualify for unemployment. Then he would fail to get a job until the unemployment ran out, then he'd get a job. He lived for many years like this. He had no interest in working. He was quite open about what he was doing.
  • TMWNN 5y ago
    I believe the Canadian term "newfie", for Newfoundlanders, came from such behavior. When US and Canadian troops arrived on the island during WW2, they found that male civilian employees they hired for construction would work long enough to save up some money, quit and return to their home villages around the island, loaf until the money ran out, then get another job.
• WalterBright 5y ago
  I've also read that many people find a way to qualify for disability, and then never work again.
• lkxijlewlf 5y ago
  I had a sibling (he's dead now) who, all his short adult life, would work a job, get a few paychecks in his pocket, then quit and couch surf until the money ran out. Often, he couldn't find a new job and so he would couch surf until his welcome ran out. I am confident, given UBI, he would never have worked. Now, that being said, I don't believe he represent(ed|s) a majority and actually I am in favor of a UBI. I have friends who I believe it would help out tremendously. However, I really wish we would get universal HC first. HC expenses, in the not too distant future, will create more hardships than a lack of UBI ever would. And ALL people deserve good healthcare.
• kcplate 5y ago
  I personally used to be a proponent of UBI, but after 2020 and watching some of the impact of Covid and what increasing government financial payouts has done to employment malaise and to the economy, my skepticism has increased. I am not convinced that the benefits outweigh the costs like I once did.
  • josephcsible 5y ago
    This is exactly where I am too. I thought replacing all of our existing safety net programs with UBI would be perfect until the COVID money happened. I knew some people would choose to just live off of it forever and never contribute to society again, but I didn't realize just how many people it would be.
    • bryanlarsen 5y ago
      Total employment in the US is higher today than it was in 2019.
      • marcusverus 5y ago
        I'd like to see some data to support that claim. Fed data shows the opposite--the employment ratio is down 1.5% from its 2020 peak. That's at least a million people who've stopped working. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/EMRATIO https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/EMRATIO
        • bryanlarsen 5y ago
          https://www.statista.com/statistics/269959/employment-in-the-united-states/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/269959/employment-in-the...
          • marcusverus 5y ago
            This isn't jobs data... This is an estimate, by an unknown source, as to what the employment numbers might be be at the end of 2022. From your site: > In 2019, around 157.54 million people were employed in the United States. For 2022, an increase by almost 2 million employed people is expected. Also, do we think this estimate is recent? The US economy has not been adding jobs as expected, and has undershot recent projections by a lot. New hires were 300K short of projections in November[0] and 200K short in December! [0]https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/03/jobs-report-november-2021.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/03/jobs-report-november-2021.ht... [1]https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/07/hiring-falters-in-december-as-payrolls-rise-only-199000.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/07/hiring-falters-in-december-a...
• mech987 5y ago
  I imagine that the validity of this research is completely dependent on the particular monetary rewards and other incentives built into the experiment design. Getting paid $5 to do a boring task for an hour is a totally different ballgame than getting paid $100 for the same. Even moreso after you've done it for 100 hours. And in the context of a a person who is visiting a research lab the incentives to keep participating in the potentially "interesting game" are different than real life.
• ciconia 5y ago
  UBI is some entitled bullshit. In practically all developed countries, there are already people that are payed less and that don't get the same social benefits as the rest of us. We have all seen them: legal and illegal immigrants. Those are the folks picking your vegetables, building your houses, butchering your meat and cleaning your airports. Not to mention the folks still in China, Bangladesh and Vietnam producing your clothes and putting together your iPhones... Will those folks get UBI too?
• tcmb 5y ago
  These studies don't tell us much, because participants always know they will get the basic income for a limited time only. So any behavior changes that occur or don't occur are not representative.
• Grustaf 5y ago
  > "Immigration from low wage countries is important because there are millions of jobs that Americans simply won't do (at the same low wage)" > "People will not work less if we give them free money" These opinions are often held by the same people.
• andrewmcwatters 5y ago
  If I had a guaranteed income that allowed me to meaningfully exist and only occasionally work so as to earn enough whenever I wanted to make larger expenses, AND society could more or less ensure that, then yeah, I would probably consider working less if someone is going to pay me to live. Also enhanced unemployment during the COVID-19 pandemic basically proved nationwide that it would create pockets of the economy where people would literally just not work because you would earn more versus going back to work. Wouldn't you do the same if your unemployment exceeded current market software engineer rates and any rate people offered you in the market? I would. I definitely would. I would work on my own projects while being funded by the state. Isn't this something you could just ask people?
• WesolyKubeczek 5y ago
  What I dislike about these studies is that what they are measuring maps badly to real-world experiences. There was another study before, not long ago, where participants were asked what they would do if they had this and this much UBI. And from that they drew their conclusion. I don't know how and whether they corrected for obvious biases (who would honestly say that they would sit on their ass? People deceive themselves all the time!), but doing a study on imaginary situations just looks pointless to me. You want to do a study, you randomly select people from different walks of life and give them their money for a long enough time for them to feel secure and plan long-term. That's how you know. Yeah, you'd need to get money from somewhere, but who says it's gonna be easy? I would certainly spend at least a month goofing around. Maybe two. Maybe I'd become a freaking train driver, who knows. Take up a shitty job, blog about it without fear of being fired. Or maybe I'd decide that I should spend the rest of my life goofing around. How should I know? Give me my money and see what I do, not what I say I'd do.
• labrador 5y ago
  Owners of capital think people aren't happy unless they are working making money, because capital owners are made happy by having money. It's hard for them to understand that there are other, better sources of happiness. There are tons of examples of people forgoing money for something more satisfying.
  • teakettle42 5y ago
    What’s hard to understand is why I should work even harder making money so that you don’t have to.
    • labrador 5y ago
      No one says you have to work even harder. If you reduce your consumption and live according to your most basic needs, you can achieve a level of self-suffiency that allows you to actually support yourself with your hobbies. Live simply, plant a garden, buy your clothes at thrift stores and shop at discount grocery stores. What ever it takes to follow your passion. Live like a starving artist and make something great. But if you're just a worker drone with no inner life and need to be a corporate servant, I can understand your frustration.
      • teakettle42 5y ago
        I was replying in the context of implementing UBI, but to take the broader view: If I recall correctly, the per-capita share of the US budget individuals are responsible for, if we split it evenly between every US resident of age, is (very) roughly $10k a year. I currently pay above $100k/year in federal taxes; about 10x my share. How much does the person “following their passion” pay? Are you really self-sufficient if you rely almost entirely on the largesse of others to fund your society?
        • labrador 5y ago
          You're assuming that people following their passions add no value and such people are getting a free ride. Take roads: corporations need them to move their products around, workers need them to get to their jobs. Yes, I get to use them for free, but say I keep bees and harvest organic honey. It's not a money making business (say a net neutral), but people who work at corporations are happy I have produced organic honey for their enjoyment. Or I'm a muscician who likes to play at restaurants at night. I get paid the very little, just the cost of gas basically, but I enjoy it. Am I mooching off your 100K?
• samstave 5y ago
  Basic income provides people the basics needed to be able to look for and apply and interview for work without having to worry about how are they going to pay for food, transportation to/from interviews etc... Its crippling knowing that you only have a little bit of money and you need to determine how much a sunk-cost-opportunity is worth -- meaning: "I have $100, and I do have expenses - but in order to interview for [JOBS] - I need to be able to get to and from, put gas in car/pay for transport, and know that I can still feed myself/dependents && be able to absorb the cost of the interview if I dont get it -- AND have money to make it to the next interviews" --- Everyone focuses on the lowest bar "these ghetto people wont work if we give them money" FUCK YOU i you think that the only people who NEED such assistance are ghetto poor people who want to milk the system. --- What about having employers cover the costs of actually interviewing with your company? If it costs one $50+ just to get-to-and-from an interview inclusive of time -- then some people will struggle to do so.
• jbverschoor 5y ago
  Duh. Working is fun. Working is progress, pride, a social place, sparks your mind, etc.etc.
  • snapcaster 5y ago
    I'm going to guess you don't work as a janitor?
    • jbverschoor 5y ago
      Actually thought of doing that for a while. What's wrong with that? It can be rewarding.
• raffraffraff 5y ago
  I think it depends on what level of devotion is expected from me, under the terms of "work". After spending 20+ years working like a trouper and genuinely enjoying the crazy pressure, I quit my job last year and took 6 months to do very little. I'm amazed at how much I've enjoyed not working. I'm about to return to work, but what I've taken away from my break is: 1. I want to work on interesting problems 2. I will not give my life to a company, ever again. In other words, I'm waiting for companies to start offering 30-hour weeks, 4 day weeks, 60 days unpaid time off per year etc. For now, I'm returning to "regular" work. However, whereas in the past I worked through months of stressful bullshit caused by bad management, toxic colleagues and unpaid technical debt, my future willingness to work will be based on job satisfaction. If my job isn't making me happy, I'll try to fix things for a while, but if things don't get better quickly, I'm gone.
• colechristensen 5y ago
  As with many psych studies: false conclusions based on contrived experiments that don’t measure what they claim. Actual basic income experiment: the large amount of money given to Americans during the pandemic and subsequent labor shortage.
• thesuperbigfrog 5y ago
  How would UBI be funded? We have trouble paying for existing budget items. Would an existing budget item be cut or would new taxes be needed?
• spoonjim 5y ago
  It would reduce mine, if it came with health insurance. I only work for the insurance.
• snicker7 5y ago
  The problem with these social experiments is that these payments are not guaranteed for life. Being out of work is bad for your career, but if you receive passive income for rest of your life, I think that would change the calculus.
• andreilys 5y ago
  I do wonder whether UBI will be feasible once the US loses its ability to print trillions of dollars. Whether it’s China or Crypto, it seems like the reign of the PetroDollar is coming to an end, and with it the easy access to money printing. Also any debates on UBI typically start with a country-centric view (US in this case), but what will be the implications for the rest of Earth citizens who live in countries without UBI?
  • moosey 5y ago
    If I were a leader of a country that engaged economically with the US, I would be less concerned with the use of the dollar for UBI than it's current use, which is too enrich a small financial elite. A group that not only had outsized power in the US, butt also around the world, since the power of the dollar is so generalized. It takes a relatively small slice of a billionaire's power to destabilize national leadership, a process that I assume isn't just happening in the US butt around the world. This doesn't even include the fact that Facebook is a near-optimal propaganda tool in protecting the wealth of the people who rule over changes to the way it runs.
    • andreilys 5y ago
      If I were a trading partner of the US, would I want to continue to accept the US dollar as the currency became less and less valuable as a result of excessive money printing? Eventually austerity measures will come, and it's unlikely it will be the boomers who pay for it but the younger generations.
• disambiguation 5y ago
  I would like to see "negative income tax" (a la Milton Friedman) make a comeback in these experiments. It's like minimum wage except the government funds the difference, and unlike UBI you still have to work to earn it, which seems to be a prevailing concern ITT.
  • akvadrako 5y ago
    That isn't how NIT works. Mathematically it is identical to UBI, it's just phrased differently.
    • disambiguation 5y ago
      No the difference is not simply semantics. The main difference between NIT and UBI is that your check is conditional on working. From the article: > De Kwaadsteniet: ‘In the condition without social security, the test participants didn’t receive a basic sum. In the benefits condition they received a basic sum, which they lost as soon as they started working. In the basic income condition they received the same basic sum but didn’t lose this when they started work.’ They test for 3 scenarios, but they miss the 4th NIT scenario, in which the "basic sum" would only be granted _after_ they get a job.
      • akvadrako 5y ago
        That isn't how the term is normally used. This is a good intro: https://www.scottsantens.com/negative-income-tax-nit-and-unconditional-basic-income-ubi-what-makes-them-the-same-and-what-makes-them-different https://www.scottsantens.com/negative-income-tax-nit-and-unc... And you can even see on wikipedia that: > Therefore, a family with $0 income would be entitled to receive $1500 in subsidy. ^ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax
        • disambiguation 5y ago
          Oh TIL thanks!
• xibalba 5y ago
  I just don’t buy it. Here’s why: I personally know several people who received sizable pandemic aid and have said, explicitly, that they are not bothering to look for work until their savings from the received aid runs low. This is just very basic common sense. Work is often not fun or easy. So, if you’ve got free, no strings attached money coming in, why bother working?
• paul7986 5y ago
  Progressive socialist ideologies like this are not working out well! For example the recent social Justice laws passed in progressive cities where we are now seeing once unseen massive smash n grabs and rail cargo trains being ransacked. Also give ppl free money the a good majority will not work ... I'm sure there's a lot of ppl who got free money from the govt during covid and have yet to go back to work when there's lots of jobs as well wage increases. We can argue that $15 an hour to work at a convenience store isn't great but every human if not mistaken can go to school and educate themselves ...work hard to better themselves. Some it's harder then others and that's where social ideologies need to be most focused on! Not giving free money or ignoring criminal activity... some images of the US as of late are starting to look like Venezuela.
• taubek 5y ago
  I totally agree with this "The psychologists also found an indication that people with a basic income look for work that suits them better.". If I would have enough money for all my needs I wouldn't stop working. I'm lucky that I'm already doing what I love. I'm not doing my job just to get payed.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• dathinab 5y ago
  Most people strife to life a life better then "just basic". Many people are driven by more then just money. Tbh. I don't know if anyone would become a nurse in a hospital for monetary reasons (if they have another choice). Or a care taker of old people. At least where I'm from. (As it's severely under-payed for the work you do.) Similar a lot of people love to compete with wearing brands, having fancy things or having the harder to get in job. A lot of people are prevented from being able to do what they want because of money. Sometime because they can't afford to take some time off for education, sometimes because the job they want to do doesn't pay well. So I'm sure you can have a well working society with basic income.
• throwawaydroid 5y ago
  Income subsidies for people in need is a nice thought, but isn't the bigger problem that we keep buying shit made with slave labor in China? We live in a global market, and as long as we keep supporting hucksters abroad it's no surprise things are stagnating at home.
• nickelcitymario 5y ago
  I'd like to believe this is true, but it's both counter-intuitive and counter to my actual lived experience the last couple of years. I'm not sure how it's going down in other countries, but in Canada we've had an unintentional experiment with this due to the pandemic. Our economic relief package allows people to collect government insurance if they're out of work due to Covid. But unlike traditional employment insurance, everyone gets the same amount, and that amount turns out to be more than you could make working full-time at minimum wage. Now, full disclosure, I'm unabashedly socialist in my leanings. I want UBI to work. I also don't believe that a person's value should be determined by their output. So I'm the last person to be against Basic Income. However, we have to look at the results. And the results in Canada are that it's almost impossible to hire enough people to work those entry-level roles anymore: - In my home city of Sudbury, the school bus companies are now offering a $2k signing bonus plus several dollars above minimum wage to attract drivers. They still can't get enough drivers and we're dealing with rolling daily bus cancellations as a result. - As a hiring manager myself, I've found that jobs that used to get an abundance of high-quality applicants are now getting almost no qualified applicants at all. We're offering starting wages that are, in many cases, $20k more per year than they were a decade ago, and $10k more than they were 2 years ago. This is in a market where the average household income is well under $50k. - Unemployment rates are higher than they've been in a long time despite the fact that job vacancies are higher than they've ever been. Now, we can argue back and forth about whether the above is an acceptable trade-off for all the benefits of UBI. But my experience very much suggests that basic income does indeed reduce people's willingness to work.
• gutino 5y ago
  There should exist an incentive to do the dirty and hard jobs in the society. If there is a UBI, those jobs should offer a significant economic reward.
• 988747 5y ago
  More importantly: it would not reduce the NEED to work. Giving everybody free money would just cause prices of everything to skyrocket, and you would still need to work your ass off all the same, to make the ends meet. You don't see that effect in the small-scale experiments, because they are too small to affect economy as whole.
• yes_really 5y ago
  > We got people to do a task on a computer,’ says De Kwaadsteniet. ‘In multiple rounds, which represented the months they had to work, they did a boring task in which they had to put points on a bar. The more of these they did, the more money they earned. That's not really for research. That's for something we can call data laundering. It's like money laundering but for data. Now politicians will use articles like this to sound scientific and data-driven when proposing their policies. In reality they are quoting an article that quotes a paper that uses a horribly designed experiment with zero scientific rigor. But voters that don't pay attention will never get to know the flow of the data from the fake research to the politician taking their money away. Hence the data laundering.
• gpsx 5y ago
  I would like to see more about work-fare, where people are given jobs if they are unemployed. I think it is very important people have work to do, and not all people are as self motivated as the hacker news crowd. Secondly, this would hopefully help productivity. Previously job programs were giant public works projects, like building the Hoover dam. Today, with computers it would be easy to give any person a job, right out of their own house. I do like allowing self motivated people to create their own jobs, and that should be factored into this kind of program.
• _8j50 5y ago
  I don't like either sides of the argument. It really depends on the people. People that are doing well will want to work, poor people and people that just have a hard time getting a job will eventually give up. Proof? How people stop looking for work already and give up and stop getting counted as unemployed.
• betwixthewires 5y ago
  OK, well let's look at the stimulus effects in the US. We have a real world example of a short term experiment like UBI. It shook up the labor market and now you've got worker shortages. People aren't working unless they have to. Everyone has to offer more money. I'm.happy about all this BTW. But it certainly goes against the claim in this article.
  • akvadrako 5y ago
    Nothing like UBI since it was combined with paying people not to work.
    • betwixthewires 5y ago
      That's a fair point.
• UnknownUser1234 5y ago
  We Don’t need UBI. We need to help those who want more than a crappy job that offers no future. Education, training, and resources are the way.
• convolvatron 5y ago
  how much of this discussion about UBI is based in concerns with limits in growth or even demand collapse rather than altruism?
• bioinformatics 5y ago
  Nah, it won't.
• randyrand 5y ago
  I am a person and it would reduce my willingness to work. So that was pretty easy to disprove.
• aakresearch 5y ago
  For me the u-turn from support of UBI to rejection was driven by realization that UBI is a perfect control tool for any government. When they needed a big stick to push vaccinations the initial pass of locking people out of restaurants, pubs and entertainment venues ended up looking pathetic. Once they realized how lame it is, they had no choice beyond going after people's livelihoods, the right to work and earn living. Imagine how easier it would be for governments to enact whatever they want if majority are scared of losing the access to the biggest trough? It would be ok, if UBI was also Unconditional, but I'm confident no one will dare to make it so after the recent global event.
• husamia 5y ago
  if you give me a million dollar for doing nothing. I would still go to work.