8 ms·

Everywhere basic income has been tried, in one map

18 points by adrianhoward 4y ago

easytiger 4y ago
I love the idea of [U]BI simply because it exposes the emotional core of how fundamentally broken the philosophy of those who support it is. It doesn't work. It can't work. Utopian ideals always end the same way: imposed only through tyranny. Every study I've read by proponents starts from a view that it will work or must have a manner of working that is yet to be discovered because it meets the fundamental criteria of all their political beliefs; namely that all people are victims being oppressed by economic systems. Which is of course not true. As with almost all "social science" studies, these are easily designed to prove whatever the author needs to.
- 5350-uiop-1130 4y ago
  maybe it does not work within your current paradigms. people never considered widescale remote work as an option, when it became a necessity, we found a way to make it work. i don't like blanket "it cant work" statements - not possible for one person to have the perspective to make such a judgement. people deserve to live a life of dignity, what's the point of progress if it does not benefit all of us. not everything has to be driven by cold hearted free market ideas. we did not choose to exist.
  - johnnymorgan 4y ago
    Remote work has been functional for years before COVID hit and forced a migration. It was always a middle layer management that was against and they still don't love it. That aside, UBI when centralized through a bureaucracy is doomed to failure, ala the human condition, find a way to decentralize it and encourage human agency through an open system of shared, public, and private equity holdings..then maybe..(yeah I'm talking blockchain).
  - easytiger 4y ago
    > people never considered widescale remote work as an option, when it became a necessity, we found a way to make it work. That's literally untrue. Almost every job I've ever had has had some element of WFH for the last 20 years. Even if your false supposition were correct it wouldn't be remotely related or comparable. > people deserve to live a life of dignity, what's the point of progress if it does not benefit all of us. not everything has to be driven by cold hearted free market ideas. we did not choose to exist. As predicted above - imposition of an unsubstantiated widespread victimhood used to inversely justify a need rather than a natural driver for it.
  - spywaregorilla 4y ago
    > what's the point of progress if it does not benefit all of us What's the point of getting an ice cream if not everyone gets one?
  - giveupitscrazy 4y ago
    Remote work existed long before covid and had some great successful examples across both America and in Europe. I worked fully remote for the past decade. I used HN often to find good remote jobs. It was easy to see that remote work could work in more environments given the right push. Software and technology ultimately needed to improve and it absolutely has. Now compare to UBI, it's just not feasible. We see countries with extreme inflation and how bad it is, we see that UBI requires tyranny to work, it's just not comparable to remote work in any way.
- Johnythree 4y ago
  ROFL. ....because it exposes the emotional core of how fundamentally broken the philosophy of those who object to it.
- JoeAltmaier 4y ago
  A lot of claims with nothing to back it up, there. Folks have guaranteed incomes now. Lots of folk, lots of places. The world hasn't ended. Pensions, annuities, allowances, grants. Of course it can work. 90% of everything is automated now. We don't need everybody to work for what we consume, and haven't for a couple decades now. If it weren't for a strong Protestant Work Ethic and make-work programs, we'd see far more people doing things other than slaving away at a job. In future it'll only get more appealing, when nearly 100% of our needs are met by automation. Sure, build some pointless strawman about "What if nobody does anything?!!!" Not a problem, as long as folks who work earn more, then there will always be willing folks to do Engineering and whatnot. Face it, it's only FUD and that troubling work ethic that get people so riled up. Not logic nor pragmatism.
  - easytiger 4y ago
    > Folks have guaranteed incomes now. Lots of folk, lots of places. The world hasn't ended. Pensions, annuities, allowances, grants. A pension or annuity paid for by your own effort is not even remotely related or comparable. > Of course it can work. 90% of everything is automated now. I'm not sure if it is funny or disturbing that you believe that. How sheltered, or privileged, must you be to believe it. The automation fantasy - I'll believe it when I see it. So, in short, as per my post, your philosophy relies on an appeal to victimhood and a theoretician utopian advancement. For something that's only Apparently 10% away it sure isn't manifesting in utopian robots everywhere
    - JoeAltmaier 4y ago
      Yeah you must not work in the business. Factories with workers are evaporating as fast as they can be obsoleted. It's been going on for 2 decades now. The obstacle to UBI is not financial nor technological. It's social. Old entrenched views that haven't been revisited since childhood, and the folks holding those views making decisions. I think a generation will have to grow old and die before UBI will be found acceptable.
tamaharbor 4y ago
Just imagine the inflation if this were implemented on a large-scale basis. Everyone would be worse off.
- qgin 4y ago
  Only if it’s additive. In the hypothetical future where UBI replaces jobs lost to automation, it’s not clear that would be inflationary.
- doliveira 4y ago
  Only if money were to be printed out of thin air for the program, isn't it? If the money comes from a defined budget, I don't see why that would lead to inflation.
  - easytiger 4y ago
    So where will the money come from?
    - doliveira 4y ago
      Taxes, oil revenue, even private entities...
      - easytiger 4y ago
        So you don't know?
        doliveira 4y ago
        That's a very weird response. I'm obviously just talking about the inflation claim you brought up, pointing out possible sources of income for the program without "printing money". Not sure how "you don't know exactly so I'm right" fits here. There's probably even a named fallacy for what you're doing here.
        4y ago
Proven 4y ago
rvz 4y ago
And the map also shows where it has failed in the long term. A hopelessly utopian endeavour that is devoid of any reality and only can work through some form of short term tyranny (lockdowns for example) and afterwards it is immediately stopped or phased out because it is unsustainable. Anyone who thinks it can work forever on a larger scale, is really asking to bankrupt an entire country or wants another Greece-like eurozone crisis.
ieeamo 4y ago
Just imagine humanity had become so successful, that we managed to give everyone sufficient resources to live a life of their choosing. How would it go?
- windows2020 4y ago
  The optimist predicts a new era of enlightenment while the pessimist predicts a great spoiling. Who would do the dirty work and for what?
  - BenjiWiebe 4y ago
    The way I see it, it would require the dirty work (and probably most non-dirty work) to be entirely automated. Up to and including repairing the automation.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - klipt 4y ago
      Seems that would put a lot of power in the hands of whoever controls the automation.
- qgin 4y ago
  You would need an entire restructuring of society. Humans need a purpose to avoid falling into depression. Jobs don’t need to be that purpose, but currently jobs fill that role for a huge percentage of the population (if not the career itself, the purpose of providing for themselves and their family). What can replace that is not completely clear yet.
  - Valgrim 4y ago
    I don't see how the two are related. I don't think people find a great sense of purpose in a job if the only thing that job provides them is to not starve to death.
lostlogin 4y ago
Missing from the map is the over-65 pension in New Zealand. Everyone gets it and it isn’t means tested.
- easytiger 4y ago
  Many countries have state pensions that aren't means teated. The UK has an absurdly massive state pension budget. But it isn't ubi/bi because you earn it by paying national insurance. If you don't have enough years of NI history in the country you don't get it.
  - lostlogin 4y ago
    To get the NZ one you have to be over 65, have lived in NZ for 5 years after turning 50 and be a resident or citizen. If you never paid a cent of tax you are entitled to it. https://www.workandincome.govt.nz/eligibility/seniors/superannuation/superannuation-overview.html https://www.workandincome.govt.nz/eligibility/seniors/supera...
    - easytiger 4y ago
      It's not a bi or ubi if only retired people are getting it.
      - lostlogin 4y ago
        Everyone over 65 gets it. You get it did you are in paid work.
        easytiger 4y ago
        How is it a ubi/bi if it isn't applied to everyone?
        lostlogin 4y ago
        The article mentions that many of its examples were conditional. This is another example. Limited for sure, but by age rather than luck, programme attendance, tribal affiliation, income, region etc, which those in the article were. The article had a pretty loose definition of ‘universal’.
RestlessMind 4y ago
Basic income is like communism. Sounds good on paper. No matter where and how you try it, it will never be a true ubi experiment. And is ultimately doomed to fail because of human nature.
- sorethescore 4y ago
  Communism works great, it just doesn't scale. Finland guarantees every adult citizen free education, housing, heating, electricity, water, Internet, healthcare, and food. They also provide extra funding for hobbies and irregular needs like furniture and appliances. In Israel, communal settlements called kibbutz hold all wealth is held in common and reinvest all profits in the settlement.

18 points by adrianhoward 4y ago

I love the idea of [U]BI simply because it exposes the emotional core of how fundamentally broken the philosophy of those who support it is. It doesn't work. It can't work. Utopian ideals always end the same way: imposed only through tyranny. Every study I've read by proponents starts from a view that it will work or must have a manner of working that is yet to be discovered because it meets the fundamental criteria of all their political beliefs; namely that all people are victims being oppressed by economic systems. Which is of course not true. As with almost all "social science" studies, these are easily designed to prove whatever the author needs to.

5350-uiop-1130 4y ago
maybe it does not work within your current paradigms. people never considered widescale remote work as an option, when it became a necessity, we found a way to make it work. i don't like blanket "it cant work" statements - not possible for one person to have the perspective to make such a judgement. people deserve to live a life of dignity, what's the point of progress if it does not benefit all of us. not everything has to be driven by cold hearted free market ideas. we did not choose to exist.
- johnnymorgan 4y ago
  Remote work has been functional for years before COVID hit and forced a migration. It was always a middle layer management that was against and they still don't love it. That aside, UBI when centralized through a bureaucracy is doomed to failure, ala the human condition, find a way to decentralize it and encourage human agency through an open system of shared, public, and private equity holdings..then maybe..(yeah I'm talking blockchain).
- easytiger 4y ago
  > people never considered widescale remote work as an option, when it became a necessity, we found a way to make it work. That's literally untrue. Almost every job I've ever had has had some element of WFH for the last 20 years. Even if your false supposition were correct it wouldn't be remotely related or comparable. > people deserve to live a life of dignity, what's the point of progress if it does not benefit all of us. not everything has to be driven by cold hearted free market ideas. we did not choose to exist. As predicted above - imposition of an unsubstantiated widespread victimhood used to inversely justify a need rather than a natural driver for it.
- spywaregorilla 4y ago
  > what's the point of progress if it does not benefit all of us What's the point of getting an ice cream if not everyone gets one?
- giveupitscrazy 4y ago
  Remote work existed long before covid and had some great successful examples across both America and in Europe. I worked fully remote for the past decade. I used HN often to find good remote jobs. It was easy to see that remote work could work in more environments given the right push. Software and technology ultimately needed to improve and it absolutely has. Now compare to UBI, it's just not feasible. We see countries with extreme inflation and how bad it is, we see that UBI requires tyranny to work, it's just not comparable to remote work in any way.
Johnythree 4y ago
ROFL. ....because it exposes the emotional core of how fundamentally broken the philosophy of those who object to it.
JoeAltmaier 4y ago
A lot of claims with nothing to back it up, there. Folks have guaranteed incomes now. Lots of folk, lots of places. The world hasn't ended. Pensions, annuities, allowances, grants. Of course it can work. 90% of everything is automated now. We don't need everybody to work for what we consume, and haven't for a couple decades now. If it weren't for a strong Protestant Work Ethic and make-work programs, we'd see far more people doing things other than slaving away at a job. In future it'll only get more appealing, when nearly 100% of our needs are met by automation. Sure, build some pointless strawman about "What if nobody does anything?!!!" Not a problem, as long as folks who work earn more, then there will always be willing folks to do Engineering and whatnot. Face it, it's only FUD and that troubling work ethic that get people so riled up. Not logic nor pragmatism.
- easytiger 4y ago
  > Folks have guaranteed incomes now. Lots of folk, lots of places. The world hasn't ended. Pensions, annuities, allowances, grants. A pension or annuity paid for by your own effort is not even remotely related or comparable. > Of course it can work. 90% of everything is automated now. I'm not sure if it is funny or disturbing that you believe that. How sheltered, or privileged, must you be to believe it. The automation fantasy - I'll believe it when I see it. So, in short, as per my post, your philosophy relies on an appeal to victimhood and a theoretician utopian advancement. For something that's only Apparently 10% away it sure isn't manifesting in utopian robots everywhere
  - JoeAltmaier 4y ago
    Yeah you must not work in the business. Factories with workers are evaporating as fast as they can be obsoleted. It's been going on for 2 decades now. The obstacle to UBI is not financial nor technological. It's social. Old entrenched views that haven't been revisited since childhood, and the folks holding those views making decisions. I think a generation will have to grow old and die before UBI will be found acceptable.

tamaharbor 4y ago

Just imagine the inflation if this were implemented on a large-scale basis. Everyone would be worse off.

qgin 4y ago
Only if it’s additive. In the hypothetical future where UBI replaces jobs lost to automation, it’s not clear that would be inflationary.
doliveira 4y ago
Only if money were to be printed out of thin air for the program, isn't it? If the money comes from a defined budget, I don't see why that would lead to inflation.
- easytiger 4y ago
  So where will the money come from?
  - doliveira 4y ago
    Taxes, oil revenue, even private entities...
    - easytiger 4y ago
      So you don't know?
      - doliveira 4y ago
        That's a very weird response. I'm obviously just talking about the inflation claim you brought up, pointing out possible sources of income for the program without "printing money". Not sure how "you don't know exactly so I'm right" fits here. There's probably even a named fallacy for what you're doing here.
        4y ago

Proven 4y ago

rvz 4y ago

And the map also shows where it has failed in the long term. A hopelessly utopian endeavour that is devoid of any reality and only can work through some form of short term tyranny (lockdowns for example) and afterwards it is immediately stopped or phased out because it is unsustainable. Anyone who thinks it can work forever on a larger scale, is really asking to bankrupt an entire country or wants another Greece-like eurozone crisis.

ieeamo 4y ago

Just imagine humanity had become so successful, that we managed to give everyone sufficient resources to live a life of their choosing. How would it go?

windows2020 4y ago
The optimist predicts a new era of enlightenment while the pessimist predicts a great spoiling. Who would do the dirty work and for what?
- BenjiWiebe 4y ago
  The way I see it, it would require the dirty work (and probably most non-dirty work) to be entirely automated. Up to and including repairing the automation.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - klipt 4y ago
    Seems that would put a lot of power in the hands of whoever controls the automation.
qgin 4y ago
You would need an entire restructuring of society. Humans need a purpose to avoid falling into depression. Jobs don’t need to be that purpose, but currently jobs fill that role for a huge percentage of the population (if not the career itself, the purpose of providing for themselves and their family). What can replace that is not completely clear yet.
- Valgrim 4y ago
  I don't see how the two are related. I don't think people find a great sense of purpose in a job if the only thing that job provides them is to not starve to death.

lostlogin 4y ago

Missing from the map is the over-65 pension in New Zealand. Everyone gets it and it isn’t means tested.

easytiger 4y ago
Many countries have state pensions that aren't means teated. The UK has an absurdly massive state pension budget. But it isn't ubi/bi because you earn it by paying national insurance. If you don't have enough years of NI history in the country you don't get it.
- lostlogin 4y ago
  To get the NZ one you have to be over 65, have lived in NZ for 5 years after turning 50 and be a resident or citizen. If you never paid a cent of tax you are entitled to it. https://www.workandincome.govt.nz/eligibility/seniors/superannuation/superannuation-overview.html https://www.workandincome.govt.nz/eligibility/seniors/supera...
  - easytiger 4y ago
    It's not a bi or ubi if only retired people are getting it.
    - lostlogin 4y ago
      Everyone over 65 gets it. You get it did you are in paid work.
      - easytiger 4y ago
        How is it a ubi/bi if it isn't applied to everyone?
        lostlogin 4y ago
        The article mentions that many of its examples were conditional. This is another example. Limited for sure, but by age rather than luck, programme attendance, tribal affiliation, income, region etc, which those in the article were. The article had a pretty loose definition of ‘universal’.

RestlessMind 4y ago

Basic income is like communism. Sounds good on paper. No matter where and how you try it, it will never be a true ubi experiment. And is ultimately doomed to fail because of human nature.

sorethescore 4y ago
Communism works great, it just doesn't scale. Finland guarantees every adult citizen free education, housing, heating, electricity, water, Internet, healthcare, and food. They also provide extra funding for hobbies and irregular needs like furniture and appliances. In Israel, communal settlements called kibbutz hold all wealth is held in common and reinvest all profits in the settlement.