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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? H

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.
    - otherme123 5y ago
      Well, the "Malibu surfer" is a recurrent theme. E.g. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-3-030-37908-7_4 https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-3-030-37908-... or https://www.jstor.org/stable/2265291 https://www.jstor.org/stable/2265291. Van Parijs (author of the last text) is very well known in the field of UBI (some sources even list him as the founder of the idea). The haiku theme often arises in discussions, but I cannot find a source. Anyway, is the same idea: being paid for doing whatever you want or nothing at all. What you talk about is not UBI, but other schema of basic income conditioned (thus not fulfilling the U).
tda 5y ago
> there are plenty of jobs where you absolutely will quit And so what if people refuse to do shitty jobs? Perhaps we as society can do without those jobs. And if we can't, we should value them more
- bruce343434 5y ago
  exactly. Sometimes you need to give the market a hand to set it free.
- pc86 5y ago
  Which is exactly what will happen. The pay for those jobs will increase, until such a point where it becomes cheaper/easier to just not have the job in the first place. I don't honestly know why whether or not people will work even factors into one's support for UBI. Some people will keep working, some people won't. Nobody will starve so that seems like something in the "pro" column at least.
  - jacobn 5y ago
    Those who work and thereby pay for the UBI may feel that freeriding is actually unjust, and not the hallmark of a glorious new post-scarcity society?
    - pc86 5y ago
      I'm sure some will. Some won't. So what? I'm not trying to be dismissive, but this strikes me as a "but some people will be upset!" argument, which seems irrelevant to whether the policy achieves its stated goals or not.
      - respondo2134 5y ago
        then why are so many UBI proponents surprised when those who would bankroll this experiement fight it so hard?
        5y ago
onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
The more money you have - the less value a marginal dollar has. I think there would be a massive pressure to raise minimum wage. Why would you work for $7.50 an hour and pay $1 in taxes - spending the majority of your day to make ~$50 - that doesn't buy much - and you don't have much time to spend it anyway? When your options are either do that or be homeless and hungry - most people opt for work. But when you have other options - spending your entire day to make $50 seems dramatically less appealing.
- vanviegen 5y ago
  Yes, but not by raising minimum wage (in fact it would no longer be needed given a high enough UBI to make a living), but because employers would voluntarily raise wages, because they now need to compete against not working. Also, I think many menial jobs could be made a lot more pleasant with only a slight cut in productivity. Hurray for qualify of life!
- bryanlarsen 5y ago
  UBI might cover your food and rent, but it won't cover much past that. So if you want some beer money or a new videogame or whatever, you'll need to work. And since after UBI every dollar after taxes goes to luxuries, a low income provides a lot more luxuries than it does before UBI, so it's actually a lot more appealing to work -- you see the benefits directly.
  - onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
    Are you saying you'd be more encouraged to work to buy a video game than to not be homeless? Why wouldn't regular minimum wage workers just be homeless and spend their money on luxuries if this was the case?
    - bryanlarsen 5y ago
      I'm saying that the work wouldn't be so mentally tedious. You're working because you want to be there because the reward is tangible. The difference between working because you have to and because you want to is massive, even if the work is the same.
mettamage 5y ago
One could argue this has nothing to do with willingness to work. In many professions verbal abuse is simply that: verbal abuse. One could say abuse does not count as work (except in healthcare perhaps, e.g. psychiatry). Just like getting beaten up should normally not count as work (except in MMA or as a security guard). Your point still stands for the professions for which abuse is part of the job by definition. However, I get the idea that too many industries are tolerating it while it could go away by having a culture change. Another reason why one could argue it’s not the same as willingness to work is because if one is willing to work a job where abuse isn’t really common then you could say that person does have a willingness to work.
hoppyhoppy2 5y ago
>My spouse worked for the state government as part of a benefits/disbursement program. She took phone calls from benefits recipients Not to excuse bad behavior, but one of the arguments for UBI is that it could help streamline the convoluted systems of government benefits; under a simpler basic-income system perhaps those callers would be fewer and less angry.
ncallaway 5y ago
“If my job…” That implies your job currently doesn’t require those things. Does it mean you would continue to do the work you currently do? I think a better phrasing to the hypothetical might be: “if my current job requires…”. And sure, you would leave that job, but does that mean you wouldn’t work at all? Or does it mean you might use that free space to learn the skills to do a different job that wouldn’t treat you like such garbage. It almost sounds like your conclusion is: “such a program would allow workers to reject abusive workplaces, and require management to ensure people didn’t abuse their workers if they would want any workers”. To which I say, don’t threaten me with a good time.
staticassertion 5y ago
> If my job requires menial labor or involves getting berated by customers (many retail jobs), personally I would absolutely not work. Maybe that's a good thing. It's insane how people in service industries are treated - like they're less than human. Shifting some power to them and giving the job a little more of an air of dignity or status would probably help a lot. And the pay would obviously go up. People would be willing to do the job if it means life or death, but not for minimum wage - and that's a good thing.
- _-david-_ 5y ago
  >And the pay would obviously go up. Maybe. Many jobs can be automated, but it was cheaper to just hire minimum wage people to do a job. If the pay required to find people got to be too high, automation would happen more rapidly.
  - meatsauce 5y ago
    I wonder where people get this idea that you should be paid like a rockstar without knowing how to play the guitar.
    - jodrellblank 5y ago
      I wonder where people got this idea that UBI proponents are expecting everyone to be paid like rockstars.
    - andi999 5y ago
      That would bei URI, universal rockstar income.
      - chii 5y ago
        which, ironically, would be a pittance since most musicians are starving artists.
  - wizzwizz4 5y ago
    Then roll on automation. Not even the Luddites had a problem with automation; just with the quality of the result and with who reaped the rewards.
tremon 5y ago
So, what you're basically saying is that your spouse had a job that was a net negative for her: compensation for the abuse was not sufficiently priced into her pay grade. To me, your argument says that UBI will cause a re-evaluation of the income market, where undesirable jobs will have to be priced higher so that employers still can find the employees they need (and the services will have to be priced accordingly). I'm okay with that outcome. (in this particular case: I suspect that private companies will very quickly add language to their contract that being abusive to their employees will void the contract -- I'm okay with that outcome as well. In the case of government services, that could mean that the person would be required to only interact through an intermediary, like a legal guardian or social worker)
- inglor_cz 5y ago
  Or those jobs will be eliminated altogether. Need to speak to a live human to solve some issue? Bad luck, here is our AI chatbot programmed for six common situations and wishing you a good day.
  - respondo2134 5y ago
    this has already happened in the food service industry. McDonalds used to hire a lot of teenagers; for many it was their first job. When minimum wage went up sufficiently high enough they replaced human labour with self-serve kiosks and reduced staff to a single register and kitchen staff. Tim Hortons switched to centralized bakeries and terminated all store-level bakers. I'm not arguing either side of this, just that there are very real impacts. It's not a situation where every entry-level job is going to be floated by a rising tide, some people will drown.
    - tremon 5y ago
      Turning your example around: if those teens were to receive UBI and McDonalds could hire them for only $3/hour instead of having to pay them full wage, some of the self-service kiosks might not have appeared, and the customers might have encountered better motivated workers?
systemvoltage 5y ago
My guess is that inflation would go through the roof resetting it back where the UBI wouldn't be enough to sustain basic life. Increasing UBI would further lead to runaway inflation. We literally just did this with COVID checks. I would vote for the complete opposite of basic income - invest heavily in education, trade schools, colleges and free access to tools for learning, apprenticeships, etc. Give tools to people to become productive and sustain a good life, by also providing value to the society.
- otherme123 5y ago
  Inflation would rise if UBI is paid with newly printed money and deficit (e.g. covid checks). If it's paid with taxes, nothing should change in terms of inflation. Surely, prices close to the consumption should rise, and price of capital goods should fall, but overall it stay the same.
  - systemvoltage 5y ago
    We don't have a balanced budget. Programs like UBI would most likely not be paid by taxes (which would be better used for education/trade programs that I mentioned) but by increasing the deficit. There is no undo button. Millions of people would be dependent on it. You will have no choice but to print money. I suspect California will try UBI anyways and fail spectacularly. It will be a canary in the coal mine.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - Apocryphon 5y ago
      There are basic income schemes (such as Andrew Yang's Freedom Dividend proposal) where UBI also involves slashing existing programs. > I suspect California will try UBI anyways and fail spectacularly. It will be a canary in the coal mine. We've already discussed Richmond, CA before. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28420296 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28420296
godelski 5y ago
I'm not sure how this is relevant. I'm sorry for your wife having to go through that. That's a shitty job. But I think the premise is about working in general, not a specific job. As a thought experiment, if you and your wife had a billion dollars, would you still work? Would you still do things that are work? Or would you fly around the world vacationing all day, watching TV, or things like that. If it's not the latter then that's the premise of the article: people find fulfillment in work.
fartcannon 5y ago
So, this is anecdotal of course, but my high school was a terrible experience and university was incredible. Why? I think it was because the people who didn't want to be there didn't have to be. That's one benefit of UBI. As for the jobs people won't do, those jobs will be higher valued and eventually, when the price is right, people will do them. The angry people who don't want to work, who cheat the system won't have to (some still will, of course, but since everyone gets the same amount no matter what, there's less incentive and less frustration built into the system). Finally, people who don't have the means to take risks will suddenly be able to. We will unlock their potential and the future will benefit as a result. I just think it's a great idea all around.
- skinnymuch 5y ago
  Tens of millions of people aren’t at university because they lack the privilege to be able to realistically attend too. > The angry people who don't want to work, who cheat the system won't have to (some still will, of course, but since everyone gets the same amount no matter what, there's less incentive and less frustration built into the system). No need to bring up points like this when the effect on the overall system is small. It’s a great way to continue to demonize poorer people and let the 1% or .1% off the hook. —- overall I agree with your comment. Nice ending.
gamerDude 5y ago
I also think in general all the research around basic income misses an incredibly important piece that is being proposed in policy changes. Basic income experiments usually game it like this: We will give you x years of payments monthly for just being alive. Then they see what happens. The problem is, policy has one huge difference. It doesn't end. The difference between, I'll give you 2 years of payments monthly and then you'll have to take care of yourself the rest of your life is extraordinarily different than, I'll give you monthly inflation adjusted payments for life, there will be no point in the future when you will need to take care of yourself again. Think about the FIRE movement. People are working to create an early retirement for themselves with the government not offering it. There will certainly be a percent of the population who retires with basic income.
- inglor_cz 5y ago
  "It doesn't end." To be more precise, it has no specific end date, but in a democracy, it can be repealed again with every new parliament. Or possibly via a ballot initiative. At which moment the net recipients are in for a major shock.
  - overrun11 5y ago
    There's not been enough thought on this. UBI is basically irreversible. If it ends up not being good policy you're still stuck with it forever.
  - rhino369 5y ago
    The bigger danger is its just a path to the end of democracy. If the 50.1% can just vote themselves a bigger piece of the pie, how long before the morlocks decide they don't like supporting a bunch of eloi. If the morlocks decide eloi votes don't count, what are they going to do? Go on strike?
    - tremon 5y ago
      Democracy is not the same as time-limited dictatorship. A well-working democracy has constitutional safeguards against policies that are hostile against parts of the population. If you're living in a country where 50.1% of the population can impose their will on the other 49.9% unopposed, you're not living in a healthy democracy. Regardless of what the media says. (And yes, the Brexit referendum is a good example of that. All the issues the British government now has in living up to the results of that binary decision are problems of their own making -- on the other hand, one might say that these current problems show that the British democracy is in a healthier state than that referendum made it out to be)
hogFeast 5y ago
agumonkey 5y ago
i have two main thoughts about work - if we had guaranteed roof, we'd do different jobs, fill desire, aim at useful. A lot of people go to work with zero benefits being ability to pay rent. They dread it but they have no choice. It's a weird balance - any task can be done, even being berated or doing petty tasks, you just dont have to do it from 9 to 5, all year long. You can do 2h if that pleases you. And those jobs now being recognized as nasty would be distributed differently or at least valued as such and workers doing it would feel appreciated ps: our current system makes us angry at each others. very ironic.
mathraki 5y ago
Agreed. So people will either drop out of the workforce for such jobs, or will require more money to do those jobs. As with most things related to worker protection, this presents a trade-offs. Some workers will be better off, whereas the customers that rely on them for services will end up paying more money for the same goods or services, a form of inflation. I am not judging what is best here, I just want to point out that it's a trade-off. And one observation: most of the HN audience is pretty well off, definitely middle class or above. So when someone says "Im ok with workers getting paid more and prices being more expensive" they are virtue signaling but forgetting that if you are poor, Walmart prices is what affords your lifestyle and even small increases disproportionally hurt the poor. A second observation: you can't create wealth by giving everyone more money. To create wealth you need to increase supply and reduce real prices, which means increase productivity. I am not sure why this is not part of the UBI conversation.
jjk166 5y ago
That has nothing to do with desire to work. Shitty jobs are shitty jobs, and if employers don't pay enough to justify putting up with the negatives, people are naturally going to do something else. I presume your spouse didn't quit after a year to sit on a couch, she quit and found some other job which was (hopefully) better. A lot of shitty jobs out there rely on the fact that people need to settle to pay the bills. There are people with little experience or going through rough times who simply can't afford to wait for a good opportunity to come along, they need something to hold them over for a few months or maybe years. The employers know that these people have few options and will leave as soon as they do, so they offer low wages and overwork their staff and replace them when they are used up. UBI means people don't have to settle for the first low paying, undesirable job that comes along, they can hold out indefinitely for something better. Yeah, people are still going to need to get their foot in the door somewhere, and some opportunities might be too rare to be considered realistic, so we're not all going to be working our dream jobs, but the worst abusive employment anti-patterns will go extinct.
elil17 5y ago
If someone’s job involves receiving verbal abuse, perhaps they should be paid extra to compensate for the fact that it’s a very difficult job. If a job like that paid enough, people will still take it. Basic income would just mean that employees couldn’t pay poverty wages for shit jobs. In addition to being fairer, total utility could even rise because companies would be financially motivated to remove the need for the most unpleasant jobs.
Natsu 5y ago
> If my job requires menial labor or involves getting berated by customers (many retail jobs), personally I would absolutely not work. Having worked in a factory, there's no way I'd do that for free. Heck, even at my current salary, which is multiple times higher, I wouldn't want to do that again.
johnchristopher 5y ago
Somehow, if those jobs are so bad no one wants to do it but the purpose of the job must still to be done/accomplished then maybe people will try other solutions, some that don't let those kind of behaviors emerge. Also, if basic income is good enough then their wouldn't be a need for that kind of job :).
avereveard 5y ago
I think basic income is a great incentive for workplaces to be better. it does need balances tho, to prevent abuse, especially against undeclared workers double dipping the state (not paying labour taxes and getting the income) basic incomes tho has a series of drawback that current experiment cannot easily handle. the first one is of principle: it doesn't solve what caused poverty in the population, and unilaterally ties recipient survival to the benevolence of the ruling class - without a strong economy to zero involuntary unemployment, it begins to look a lot like vassalage. the second one is of application: punctual welfare is inherently less efficient than aggregated action - living universal income + private school and private healthcare is just a way to bleed state resources into private coffers. public school and public healthcare are much more efficient, and then the supplementary income should just cover the remaining quota of needs (housing, food etc) there's also second order effects tied to basic income inelasticity - if housing or schooling or whatever price raises, it can displace all the recipient from an area. it's not unrealistic to expect basic income city quarters, at which point state provided housing seem a better alternative to prevent basic-slums. and there's a question about what the long term goal of the society are - given that there will always be premium goods/service out of reach of people living off basic income, I'd wager that while basic income is sure helpful to bring people out of poverty and placing them into the same bucket of the working class, it rarely help bringing such people into middle class, as that would require the saving necessary to bootstrap a private action, which I rarely hear to be the goal of basic income.
schwartzworld 5y ago
Employees should not have to take verbal abuse, but must because they will get fired if they stand up to rude customers. I personally was "fired" for standing up to vicious customers more than once, and I only felt comfortable standing up for myself because I was young and single and could afford not to work for a month or two. But I worked with plenty of people in retail and food service who were older and had families to support and mortgages to pay. They didn't have the luxury of putting their self-respect above their paycheck. It's ironic to think that people put up with that level of abuse for 8 or 10 or $12 an hour. Now that I'm an engineer, he would be unthinkable for anybody to talk to me like that, but in food service I experienced it from both customers and managers on the daily. If the only way anybody can stand working someplace is if they're so desperate that they can't afford to leave, that's a job that shouldn't exist.
bjourne 5y ago
> 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. You have no personal experience with UBI schemes, yet you think you know what people would do based on what you think you would do. A long time ago people thought that heavier objects fell faster than lighter ones. Then Galileo came along, conducted an experiment, and proved them wrong. It seems something similar is going on here. Peoples intuitions about UBI and joblessness are faulty and researchers are disproving them.
0xfaded 5y ago
Another take is that if workers are able to say no to a shit job, then the burden is placed on the employer to either eliminate the job or make it less shit. In the Nordics, there are no manual car washes, yet life goes on. Economically it doesn't make sense because of the high labor costs, and realistically it is a menial job that can be for the most part automated. If you want to live in a world where you can have a cheap hand wash in your back yard, then you have to also admit to wanting structural inequalities to keep people trapped in those carwash jobs. It's delusional to believe that the people washing your car have a path out through hard work alone; my observation is that they already work pretty hard. UBI is much more about giving workers power than giving them free money. And yes, there will be dole bludgers. Unfortunately any system is going to have inefficiencies, you just have to pick which ones and live with it. Alternatively, you can get tough on crime and house a prison population.
- kwhitefoot 5y ago
  > In the Nordics, there are no manual car washes, This is simply not true, at least in the more densely populated parts of Norway. They are simply very expensive.
  - Ericson2314 5y ago
    That works, too!
  - yurishimo 5y ago
    Which car washes are we talking about? Self service manual washes, or something more akin to a light detail that includes a hand wash? In the US, you can drive up and pay $1~/min and spray your car yourself w/ soap and water. You can also do the drive-thru option for about $10. On the upper end, you can pay $50~ for what might start as a drive-thru, but then someone comes out and does a manual touch up where the machine might have missed a spot, and then they will vacuum and wipe down the interior. At $100+, you're looking at a hand wash and detail, potentially going up to hundreds of dollars for different aftercare options. Detailing can be very lucrative if you get a good referral network established.
ksec 5y ago
That is the thing. My definition of UBI is suppose to keep people alive. You wont die in starvation and live on street. But it is not suppose to give you Netflix, movies and popcorn. If you want those you need to work. Which is why >> ‘It’s sometimes said that people will sit around doing nothing if you give them free money.’ this never make sense unless people have different definition of UBI. You will need to work to borderline enjoy life. And it also shift the power to workers. No more shitty jobs like what you describe just to put food on table. The level of abuse people will tolerate before they quit will reduce. It will fundamentally shift ( or lift ) the power in bottom half of the society. But no work on UBI have ever provided a solution how they deal with "living". If I have a small flat of 6m2 ( unless you want to live in a cage like Hong Kong, I think 6m2 per person is bad enough to be the absolute minimum ) , enough for a bed and bathroom, and zero rent. Getting yourself fed is easy enough. Which shift the question from UBI to something else, our biggest problem isn't UBI, but property. How it is both an investment as an asset as well as a fundamental need by human. You could always pop up the property prices so UBI will never be enough. And every time we have a discussion about UBI, it is always about tax, equality, willingness to work and nothing on actual "living".
- zozbot234 5y ago
  > But no work on UBI have ever provided a solution how they deal with "living". UBI would be a major part of the solution, because it would enable people to move to lower cost-of-living areas where their UBI payment would go a lot further. Today this sort of mobility is heavily impeded by the need to be around meaningful job opportunities and all sorts of government services provided in-kind. With UBI, the job opportunities would spring up where people reside and not vice-versa.
- aembleton 5y ago
  The government could provide everyone with a small apartment, free food and free public transport. Then do away with UBI and other direct financial benefits. The government can better organise these things and not worry that some money will just go to drug dealers or other vices.
rbobby 5y ago
I would think basic income would only cover the basic necessities, plus some extra. Not enough for one person to live without a roomate, or have the latest and greatest technology. So... to pay for a private apartment maybe that crap retail job would be ok.
wpietri 5y ago
Great point. People often try to measure "willingness to work" by looking at "willingness to harm yourself", often in service of making somebody else wealthy. Well, they do that for poor people. People of the right caste are instead, "funemployed", "taking a sabbatical", "looking for the right thing", or "a socialite". One of the silver linings for me of the pandemic is how much the Great Resignation is revealing to the general public how much "essential workers" were poorly paid and miserable. Not even in a way that was necessitated by the work itself, but just because their bosses could get away with being jerks.
16012022 5y ago
Ah, so you are saying we shouldn’t offer UBI because then we would have no excuse to keep degrading conditions in the workplace. So people should have to go through with bad experiences (see retail, “menial” jobs) in order to be worthy of their lives. Ok, got it.
whateveracct 5y ago
Then many of those people can go work in ways of their choosing. Surely providing more value to themselves, their families, and society as a whole. This is basically Plato's Republic 101.
MisterBastahrd 5y ago
If the market is as intelligent as the gravitationally wealthy sitting at the top want to make it out to be, then we should be able to solve that no problem through hard work, bootstraps, ingenuity, and whatever marketing term Volkswagen has decided to pimp. If you think that people who are sitting at the bottom wouldn't take a job to ensure that their basic needs are met and they can have something nice for themselves every once in a while, then I don't know what to tell you. People didn't just start working degrading jobs in the 2010s.
11thEarlOfMar 5y ago
If there were basic income, the payments would be incremental to the salary. The worker, though unhappy, could upgrade other elements of their life. Perhaps jobs are scarce and this worker really has no place to go and must endure the abuse. Once BI is introduced, what percent of workers would quit and stop working, vs. quit but find new employment using the BI to bridge expenses in the meantime and be able to make a full time effort of the search? BI should make employees more mobile and employers with unpleasant work will need to pay more to get those positions filled.
pandemicsoul 5y ago
> 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. This feels like a particularly unfair anecdote in the context of what we're talking about. Imagine for a second that the tables were turned and your spouse was disabled and unable to work: Everything is harder – they can't leave the house without someone to give them a ride; maybe they have to use a wheelchair, which makes everything twice as difficult. They're in survival mode every day. Not only do they rely on the state for money to eat, to pay rent, to keep the lights on, but doing anything enjoyable is challenging. They have to navigate a byzantine system that is DESIGNED to make qualifying for support extremely frustrating, and then have to stay on top of getting their benefits regularly. The system has literally trained them to react to any issue with anger because they know that whenever a problem occurs, it could be weeks or months until they get the money they need to survive. I'm not saying that your spouse's experience was justified in any way – dealing with that requires a hell of a lot more than minimum wage! – but (theoretically) this particular problem would go away with something like basic income, where most of these people would have their basic costs covered. They might still have "disability" to help pay for all the other stuff disabled people have to deal with, but at least they aren't relying on a sclerotic bureaucracy to eat, yunno?
mlyle 5y ago
> involves getting berated by customers One reason retail workers passively endure being berated by customers is that they are fearful of losing their job. UBI would reduce that fear and increase worker power.
BoiledCabbage 5y ago
> My point is - there are plenty of jobs where you absolutely will quit and not work if the basic income can provide a sufficient su I'm neither arguing for nor against UBI here, but from my understanding, you description is not of UBI. Here you are saying income as a substitute for work. Where as UBI as I understand it is provided independent of work. Meaning that by your spouse quitting she would be losing half of her income. Maybe she still makes that trade off and quits and the program needs to raise wages to keep people. Or maybe she stays in place for the pay (with abuse). Or maybe the programs doesn't raise wages and has worse/fewer employees as a result. But it doesn't sounds like the situation you describe is UBI.
tekknik 5y ago
It quite well ignores that this only works with some subset of the population. If it’s truly universal, or even for the majority, then the net result will be nothing. We’re just moving decimals again to give people some idea they’re making more.

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.
  - otherme123 5y ago
    Well, the "Malibu surfer" is a recurrent theme. E.g. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-3-030-37908-7_4 https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-3-030-37908-... or https://www.jstor.org/stable/2265291 https://www.jstor.org/stable/2265291. Van Parijs (author of the last text) is very well known in the field of UBI (some sources even list him as the founder of the idea). The haiku theme often arises in discussions, but I cannot find a source. Anyway, is the same idea: being paid for doing whatever you want or nothing at all. What you talk about is not UBI, but other schema of basic income conditioned (thus not fulfilling the U).

tda 5y ago

> there are plenty of jobs where you absolutely will quit And so what if people refuse to do shitty jobs? Perhaps we as society can do without those jobs. And if we can't, we should value them more

bruce343434 5y ago
exactly. Sometimes you need to give the market a hand to set it free.
pc86 5y ago
Which is exactly what will happen. The pay for those jobs will increase, until such a point where it becomes cheaper/easier to just not have the job in the first place. I don't honestly know why whether or not people will work even factors into one's support for UBI. Some people will keep working, some people won't. Nobody will starve so that seems like something in the "pro" column at least.
- jacobn 5y ago
  Those who work and thereby pay for the UBI may feel that freeriding is actually unjust, and not the hallmark of a glorious new post-scarcity society?
  - pc86 5y ago
    I'm sure some will. Some won't. So what? I'm not trying to be dismissive, but this strikes me as a "but some people will be upset!" argument, which seems irrelevant to whether the policy achieves its stated goals or not.
    - respondo2134 5y ago
      then why are so many UBI proponents surprised when those who would bankroll this experiement fight it so hard?
      - 5y ago

onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago

The more money you have - the less value a marginal dollar has. I think there would be a massive pressure to raise minimum wage. Why would you work for $7.50 an hour and pay $1 in taxes - spending the majority of your day to make ~$50 - that doesn't buy much - and you don't have much time to spend it anyway? When your options are either do that or be homeless and hungry - most people opt for work. But when you have other options - spending your entire day to make $50 seems dramatically less appealing.

vanviegen 5y ago
Yes, but not by raising minimum wage (in fact it would no longer be needed given a high enough UBI to make a living), but because employers would voluntarily raise wages, because they now need to compete against not working. Also, I think many menial jobs could be made a lot more pleasant with only a slight cut in productivity. Hurray for qualify of life!
bryanlarsen 5y ago
UBI might cover your food and rent, but it won't cover much past that. So if you want some beer money or a new videogame or whatever, you'll need to work. And since after UBI every dollar after taxes goes to luxuries, a low income provides a lot more luxuries than it does before UBI, so it's actually a lot more appealing to work -- you see the benefits directly.
- onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
  Are you saying you'd be more encouraged to work to buy a video game than to not be homeless? Why wouldn't regular minimum wage workers just be homeless and spend their money on luxuries if this was the case?
  - bryanlarsen 5y ago
    I'm saying that the work wouldn't be so mentally tedious. You're working because you want to be there because the reward is tangible. The difference between working because you have to and because you want to is massive, even if the work is the same.

mettamage 5y ago

One could argue this has nothing to do with willingness to work. In many professions verbal abuse is simply that: verbal abuse. One could say abuse does not count as work (except in healthcare perhaps, e.g. psychiatry). Just like getting beaten up should normally not count as work (except in MMA or as a security guard). Your point still stands for the professions for which abuse is part of the job by definition. However, I get the idea that too many industries are tolerating it while it could go away by having a culture change. Another reason why one could argue it’s not the same as willingness to work is because if one is willing to work a job where abuse isn’t really common then you could say that person does have a willingness to work.

hoppyhoppy2 5y ago

>My spouse worked for the state government as part of a benefits/disbursement program. She took phone calls from benefits recipients Not to excuse bad behavior, but one of the arguments for UBI is that it could help streamline the convoluted systems of government benefits; under a simpler basic-income system perhaps those callers would be fewer and less angry.

ncallaway 5y ago

“If my job…” That implies your job currently doesn’t require those things. Does it mean you would continue to do the work you currently do? I think a better phrasing to the hypothetical might be: “if my current job requires…”. And sure, you would leave that job, but does that mean you wouldn’t work at all? Or does it mean you might use that free space to learn the skills to do a different job that wouldn’t treat you like such garbage. It almost sounds like your conclusion is: “such a program would allow workers to reject abusive workplaces, and require management to ensure people didn’t abuse their workers if they would want any workers”. To which I say, don’t threaten me with a good time.

staticassertion 5y ago

> If my job requires menial labor or involves getting berated by customers (many retail jobs), personally I would absolutely not work. Maybe that's a good thing. It's insane how people in service industries are treated - like they're less than human. Shifting some power to them and giving the job a little more of an air of dignity or status would probably help a lot. And the pay would obviously go up. People would be willing to do the job if it means life or death, but not for minimum wage - and that's a good thing.

_-david-_ 5y ago
>And the pay would obviously go up. Maybe. Many jobs can be automated, but it was cheaper to just hire minimum wage people to do a job. If the pay required to find people got to be too high, automation would happen more rapidly.
- meatsauce 5y ago
  I wonder where people get this idea that you should be paid like a rockstar without knowing how to play the guitar.
  - jodrellblank 5y ago
    I wonder where people got this idea that UBI proponents are expecting everyone to be paid like rockstars.
  - andi999 5y ago
    That would bei URI, universal rockstar income.
    - chii 5y ago
      which, ironically, would be a pittance since most musicians are starving artists.
- wizzwizz4 5y ago
  Then roll on automation. Not even the Luddites had a problem with automation; just with the quality of the result and with who reaped the rewards.

tremon 5y ago

So, what you're basically saying is that your spouse had a job that was a net negative for her: compensation for the abuse was not sufficiently priced into her pay grade. To me, your argument says that UBI will cause a re-evaluation of the income market, where undesirable jobs will have to be priced higher so that employers still can find the employees they need (and the services will have to be priced accordingly). I'm okay with that outcome. (in this particular case: I suspect that private companies will very quickly add language to their contract that being abusive to their employees will void the contract -- I'm okay with that outcome as well. In the case of government services, that could mean that the person would be required to only interact through an intermediary, like a legal guardian or social worker)

inglor_cz 5y ago
Or those jobs will be eliminated altogether. Need to speak to a live human to solve some issue? Bad luck, here is our AI chatbot programmed for six common situations and wishing you a good day.
- respondo2134 5y ago
  this has already happened in the food service industry. McDonalds used to hire a lot of teenagers; for many it was their first job. When minimum wage went up sufficiently high enough they replaced human labour with self-serve kiosks and reduced staff to a single register and kitchen staff. Tim Hortons switched to centralized bakeries and terminated all store-level bakers. I'm not arguing either side of this, just that there are very real impacts. It's not a situation where every entry-level job is going to be floated by a rising tide, some people will drown.
  - tremon 5y ago
    Turning your example around: if those teens were to receive UBI and McDonalds could hire them for only $3/hour instead of having to pay them full wage, some of the self-service kiosks might not have appeared, and the customers might have encountered better motivated workers?

systemvoltage 5y ago

My guess is that inflation would go through the roof resetting it back where the UBI wouldn't be enough to sustain basic life. Increasing UBI would further lead to runaway inflation. We literally just did this with COVID checks. I would vote for the complete opposite of basic income - invest heavily in education, trade schools, colleges and free access to tools for learning, apprenticeships, etc. Give tools to people to become productive and sustain a good life, by also providing value to the society.

otherme123 5y ago
Inflation would rise if UBI is paid with newly printed money and deficit (e.g. covid checks). If it's paid with taxes, nothing should change in terms of inflation. Surely, prices close to the consumption should rise, and price of capital goods should fall, but overall it stay the same.
- systemvoltage 5y ago
  We don't have a balanced budget. Programs like UBI would most likely not be paid by taxes (which would be better used for education/trade programs that I mentioned) but by increasing the deficit. There is no undo button. Millions of people would be dependent on it. You will have no choice but to print money. I suspect California will try UBI anyways and fail spectacularly. It will be a canary in the coal mine.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - Apocryphon 5y ago
    There are basic income schemes (such as Andrew Yang's Freedom Dividend proposal) where UBI also involves slashing existing programs. > I suspect California will try UBI anyways and fail spectacularly. It will be a canary in the coal mine. We've already discussed Richmond, CA before. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28420296 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28420296

godelski 5y ago

I'm not sure how this is relevant. I'm sorry for your wife having to go through that. That's a shitty job. But I think the premise is about working in general, not a specific job. As a thought experiment, if you and your wife had a billion dollars, would you still work? Would you still do things that are work? Or would you fly around the world vacationing all day, watching TV, or things like that. If it's not the latter then that's the premise of the article: people find fulfillment in work.

fartcannon 5y ago

So, this is anecdotal of course, but my high school was a terrible experience and university was incredible. Why? I think it was because the people who didn't want to be there didn't have to be. That's one benefit of UBI. As for the jobs people won't do, those jobs will be higher valued and eventually, when the price is right, people will do them. The angry people who don't want to work, who cheat the system won't have to (some still will, of course, but since everyone gets the same amount no matter what, there's less incentive and less frustration built into the system). Finally, people who don't have the means to take risks will suddenly be able to. We will unlock their potential and the future will benefit as a result. I just think it's a great idea all around.

skinnymuch 5y ago
Tens of millions of people aren’t at university because they lack the privilege to be able to realistically attend too. > The angry people who don't want to work, who cheat the system won't have to (some still will, of course, but since everyone gets the same amount no matter what, there's less incentive and less frustration built into the system). No need to bring up points like this when the effect on the overall system is small. It’s a great way to continue to demonize poorer people and let the 1% or .1% off the hook. —- overall I agree with your comment. Nice ending.

gamerDude 5y ago

I also think in general all the research around basic income misses an incredibly important piece that is being proposed in policy changes. Basic income experiments usually game it like this: We will give you x years of payments monthly for just being alive. Then they see what happens. The problem is, policy has one huge difference. It doesn't end. The difference between, I'll give you 2 years of payments monthly and then you'll have to take care of yourself the rest of your life is extraordinarily different than, I'll give you monthly inflation adjusted payments for life, there will be no point in the future when you will need to take care of yourself again. Think about the FIRE movement. People are working to create an early retirement for themselves with the government not offering it. There will certainly be a percent of the population who retires with basic income.

inglor_cz 5y ago
"It doesn't end." To be more precise, it has no specific end date, but in a democracy, it can be repealed again with every new parliament. Or possibly via a ballot initiative. At which moment the net recipients are in for a major shock.
- overrun11 5y ago
  There's not been enough thought on this. UBI is basically irreversible. If it ends up not being good policy you're still stuck with it forever.
- rhino369 5y ago
  The bigger danger is its just a path to the end of democracy. If the 50.1% can just vote themselves a bigger piece of the pie, how long before the morlocks decide they don't like supporting a bunch of eloi. If the morlocks decide eloi votes don't count, what are they going to do? Go on strike?
  - tremon 5y ago
    Democracy is not the same as time-limited dictatorship. A well-working democracy has constitutional safeguards against policies that are hostile against parts of the population. If you're living in a country where 50.1% of the population can impose their will on the other 49.9% unopposed, you're not living in a healthy democracy. Regardless of what the media says. (And yes, the Brexit referendum is a good example of that. All the issues the British government now has in living up to the results of that binary decision are problems of their own making -- on the other hand, one might say that these current problems show that the British democracy is in a healthier state than that referendum made it out to be)

hogFeast 5y ago

agumonkey 5y ago

i have two main thoughts about work - if we had guaranteed roof, we'd do different jobs, fill desire, aim at useful. A lot of people go to work with zero benefits being ability to pay rent. They dread it but they have no choice. It's a weird balance - any task can be done, even being berated or doing petty tasks, you just dont have to do it from 9 to 5, all year long. You can do 2h if that pleases you. And those jobs now being recognized as nasty would be distributed differently or at least valued as such and workers doing it would feel appreciated ps: our current system makes us angry at each others. very ironic.

mathraki 5y ago

Agreed. So people will either drop out of the workforce for such jobs, or will require more money to do those jobs. As with most things related to worker protection, this presents a trade-offs. Some workers will be better off, whereas the customers that rely on them for services will end up paying more money for the same goods or services, a form of inflation. I am not judging what is best here, I just want to point out that it's a trade-off. And one observation: most of the HN audience is pretty well off, definitely middle class or above. So when someone says "Im ok with workers getting paid more and prices being more expensive" they are virtue signaling but forgetting that if you are poor, Walmart prices is what affords your lifestyle and even small increases disproportionally hurt the poor. A second observation: you can't create wealth by giving everyone more money. To create wealth you need to increase supply and reduce real prices, which means increase productivity. I am not sure why this is not part of the UBI conversation.

jjk166 5y ago

That has nothing to do with desire to work. Shitty jobs are shitty jobs, and if employers don't pay enough to justify putting up with the negatives, people are naturally going to do something else. I presume your spouse didn't quit after a year to sit on a couch, she quit and found some other job which was (hopefully) better. A lot of shitty jobs out there rely on the fact that people need to settle to pay the bills. There are people with little experience or going through rough times who simply can't afford to wait for a good opportunity to come along, they need something to hold them over for a few months or maybe years. The employers know that these people have few options and will leave as soon as they do, so they offer low wages and overwork their staff and replace them when they are used up. UBI means people don't have to settle for the first low paying, undesirable job that comes along, they can hold out indefinitely for something better. Yeah, people are still going to need to get their foot in the door somewhere, and some opportunities might be too rare to be considered realistic, so we're not all going to be working our dream jobs, but the worst abusive employment anti-patterns will go extinct.

elil17 5y ago

If someone’s job involves receiving verbal abuse, perhaps they should be paid extra to compensate for the fact that it’s a very difficult job. If a job like that paid enough, people will still take it. Basic income would just mean that employees couldn’t pay poverty wages for shit jobs. In addition to being fairer, total utility could even rise because companies would be financially motivated to remove the need for the most unpleasant jobs.

Natsu 5y ago

> If my job requires menial labor or involves getting berated by customers (many retail jobs), personally I would absolutely not work. Having worked in a factory, there's no way I'd do that for free. Heck, even at my current salary, which is multiple times higher, I wouldn't want to do that again.

johnchristopher 5y ago

Somehow, if those jobs are so bad no one wants to do it but the purpose of the job must still to be done/accomplished then maybe people will try other solutions, some that don't let those kind of behaviors emerge. Also, if basic income is good enough then their wouldn't be a need for that kind of job :).

avereveard 5y ago

I think basic income is a great incentive for workplaces to be better. it does need balances tho, to prevent abuse, especially against undeclared workers double dipping the state (not paying labour taxes and getting the income) basic incomes tho has a series of drawback that current experiment cannot easily handle. the first one is of principle: it doesn't solve what caused poverty in the population, and unilaterally ties recipient survival to the benevolence of the ruling class - without a strong economy to zero involuntary unemployment, it begins to look a lot like vassalage. the second one is of application: punctual welfare is inherently less efficient than aggregated action - living universal income + private school and private healthcare is just a way to bleed state resources into private coffers. public school and public healthcare are much more efficient, and then the supplementary income should just cover the remaining quota of needs (housing, food etc) there's also second order effects tied to basic income inelasticity - if housing or schooling or whatever price raises, it can displace all the recipient from an area. it's not unrealistic to expect basic income city quarters, at which point state provided housing seem a better alternative to prevent basic-slums. and there's a question about what the long term goal of the society are - given that there will always be premium goods/service out of reach of people living off basic income, I'd wager that while basic income is sure helpful to bring people out of poverty and placing them into the same bucket of the working class, it rarely help bringing such people into middle class, as that would require the saving necessary to bootstrap a private action, which I rarely hear to be the goal of basic income.

schwartzworld 5y ago

Employees should not have to take verbal abuse, but must because they will get fired if they stand up to rude customers. I personally was "fired" for standing up to vicious customers more than once, and I only felt comfortable standing up for myself because I was young and single and could afford not to work for a month or two. But I worked with plenty of people in retail and food service who were older and had families to support and mortgages to pay. They didn't have the luxury of putting their self-respect above their paycheck. It's ironic to think that people put up with that level of abuse for 8 or 10 or $12 an hour. Now that I'm an engineer, he would be unthinkable for anybody to talk to me like that, but in food service I experienced it from both customers and managers on the daily. If the only way anybody can stand working someplace is if they're so desperate that they can't afford to leave, that's a job that shouldn't exist.

bjourne 5y ago

> 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. You have no personal experience with UBI schemes, yet you think you know what people would do based on what you think you would do. A long time ago people thought that heavier objects fell faster than lighter ones. Then Galileo came along, conducted an experiment, and proved them wrong. It seems something similar is going on here. Peoples intuitions about UBI and joblessness are faulty and researchers are disproving them.

0xfaded 5y ago

Another take is that if workers are able to say no to a shit job, then the burden is placed on the employer to either eliminate the job or make it less shit. In the Nordics, there are no manual car washes, yet life goes on. Economically it doesn't make sense because of the high labor costs, and realistically it is a menial job that can be for the most part automated. If you want to live in a world where you can have a cheap hand wash in your back yard, then you have to also admit to wanting structural inequalities to keep people trapped in those carwash jobs. It's delusional to believe that the people washing your car have a path out through hard work alone; my observation is that they already work pretty hard. UBI is much more about giving workers power than giving them free money. And yes, there will be dole bludgers. Unfortunately any system is going to have inefficiencies, you just have to pick which ones and live with it. Alternatively, you can get tough on crime and house a prison population.

kwhitefoot 5y ago
> In the Nordics, there are no manual car washes, This is simply not true, at least in the more densely populated parts of Norway. They are simply very expensive.
- Ericson2314 5y ago
  That works, too!
- yurishimo 5y ago
  Which car washes are we talking about? Self service manual washes, or something more akin to a light detail that includes a hand wash? In the US, you can drive up and pay $1~/min and spray your car yourself w/ soap and water. You can also do the drive-thru option for about $10. On the upper end, you can pay $50~ for what might start as a drive-thru, but then someone comes out and does a manual touch up where the machine might have missed a spot, and then they will vacuum and wipe down the interior. At $100+, you're looking at a hand wash and detail, potentially going up to hundreds of dollars for different aftercare options. Detailing can be very lucrative if you get a good referral network established.

ksec 5y ago

That is the thing. My definition of UBI is suppose to keep people alive. You wont die in starvation and live on street. But it is not suppose to give you Netflix, movies and popcorn. If you want those you need to work. Which is why >> ‘It’s sometimes said that people will sit around doing nothing if you give them free money.’ this never make sense unless people have different definition of UBI. You will need to work to borderline enjoy life. And it also shift the power to workers. No more shitty jobs like what you describe just to put food on table. The level of abuse people will tolerate before they quit will reduce. It will fundamentally shift ( or lift ) the power in bottom half of the society. But no work on UBI have ever provided a solution how they deal with "living". If I have a small flat of 6m2 ( unless you want to live in a cage like Hong Kong, I think 6m2 per person is bad enough to be the absolute minimum ) , enough for a bed and bathroom, and zero rent. Getting yourself fed is easy enough. Which shift the question from UBI to something else, our biggest problem isn't UBI, but property. How it is both an investment as an asset as well as a fundamental need by human. You could always pop up the property prices so UBI will never be enough. And every time we have a discussion about UBI, it is always about tax, equality, willingness to work and nothing on actual "living".

zozbot234 5y ago
> But no work on UBI have ever provided a solution how they deal with "living". UBI would be a major part of the solution, because it would enable people to move to lower cost-of-living areas where their UBI payment would go a lot further. Today this sort of mobility is heavily impeded by the need to be around meaningful job opportunities and all sorts of government services provided in-kind. With UBI, the job opportunities would spring up where people reside and not vice-versa.
aembleton 5y ago
The government could provide everyone with a small apartment, free food and free public transport. Then do away with UBI and other direct financial benefits. The government can better organise these things and not worry that some money will just go to drug dealers or other vices.

rbobby 5y ago

I would think basic income would only cover the basic necessities, plus some extra. Not enough for one person to live without a roomate, or have the latest and greatest technology. So... to pay for a private apartment maybe that crap retail job would be ok.

wpietri 5y ago

Great point. People often try to measure "willingness to work" by looking at "willingness to harm yourself", often in service of making somebody else wealthy. Well, they do that for poor people. People of the right caste are instead, "funemployed", "taking a sabbatical", "looking for the right thing", or "a socialite". One of the silver linings for me of the pandemic is how much the Great Resignation is revealing to the general public how much "essential workers" were poorly paid and miserable. Not even in a way that was necessitated by the work itself, but just because their bosses could get away with being jerks.

16012022 5y ago

Ah, so you are saying we shouldn’t offer UBI because then we would have no excuse to keep degrading conditions in the workplace. So people should have to go through with bad experiences (see retail, “menial” jobs) in order to be worthy of their lives. Ok, got it.

whateveracct 5y ago

Then many of those people can go work in ways of their choosing. Surely providing more value to themselves, their families, and society as a whole. This is basically Plato's Republic 101.

MisterBastahrd 5y ago

If the market is as intelligent as the gravitationally wealthy sitting at the top want to make it out to be, then we should be able to solve that no problem through hard work, bootstraps, ingenuity, and whatever marketing term Volkswagen has decided to pimp. If you think that people who are sitting at the bottom wouldn't take a job to ensure that their basic needs are met and they can have something nice for themselves every once in a while, then I don't know what to tell you. People didn't just start working degrading jobs in the 2010s.

11thEarlOfMar 5y ago

If there were basic income, the payments would be incremental to the salary. The worker, though unhappy, could upgrade other elements of their life. Perhaps jobs are scarce and this worker really has no place to go and must endure the abuse. Once BI is introduced, what percent of workers would quit and stop working, vs. quit but find new employment using the BI to bridge expenses in the meantime and be able to make a full time effort of the search? BI should make employees more mobile and employers with unpleasant work will need to pay more to get those positions filled.

pandemicsoul 5y ago

> 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. This feels like a particularly unfair anecdote in the context of what we're talking about. Imagine for a second that the tables were turned and your spouse was disabled and unable to work: Everything is harder – they can't leave the house without someone to give them a ride; maybe they have to use a wheelchair, which makes everything twice as difficult. They're in survival mode every day. Not only do they rely on the state for money to eat, to pay rent, to keep the lights on, but doing anything enjoyable is challenging. They have to navigate a byzantine system that is DESIGNED to make qualifying for support extremely frustrating, and then have to stay on top of getting their benefits regularly. The system has literally trained them to react to any issue with anger because they know that whenever a problem occurs, it could be weeks or months until they get the money they need to survive. I'm not saying that your spouse's experience was justified in any way – dealing with that requires a hell of a lot more than minimum wage! – but (theoretically) this particular problem would go away with something like basic income, where most of these people would have their basic costs covered. They might still have "disability" to help pay for all the other stuff disabled people have to deal with, but at least they aren't relying on a sclerotic bureaucracy to eat, yunno?

mlyle 5y ago

> involves getting berated by customers One reason retail workers passively endure being berated by customers is that they are fearful of losing their job. UBI would reduce that fear and increase worker power.

BoiledCabbage 5y ago

> My point is - there are plenty of jobs where you absolutely will quit and not work if the basic income can provide a sufficient su I'm neither arguing for nor against UBI here, but from my understanding, you description is not of UBI. Here you are saying income as a substitute for work. Where as UBI as I understand it is provided independent of work. Meaning that by your spouse quitting she would be losing half of her income. Maybe she still makes that trade off and quits and the program needs to raise wages to keep people. Or maybe she stays in place for the pay (with abuse). Or maybe the programs doesn't raise wages and has worse/fewer employees as a result. But it doesn't sounds like the situation you describe is UBI.

tekknik 5y ago

It quite well ignores that this only works with some subset of the population. If it’s truly universal, or even for the majority, then the net result will be nothing. We’re just moving decimals again to give people some idea they’re making more.