5 ms·

Universal basic income: German experiment bring surprising results

54 points by janandonly 2y ago

csunbird 2y ago
[flagged]
- probably_wrong 2y ago
  The fact that the experiment takes places in Germany doesn't necessarily mean that the results apply exclusively to basic income in Germany for Germans. How to better distribute income and how to deal with income inequality are definitely important topics, but that doesn't mean that all research on wealth distribution has to stop there.
- MrBuddyCasino 2y ago
  [flagged]
- oneshtein 2y ago
  In ancient Rome, slave labor was used.
  - TJSomething 2y ago
    I don't think that's a fair representation of the ancient Roman combination social welfare and grain price stabilization system or of the role slaves had in Roman society.
- neilwilson 2y ago
  The other people in the fixed exchange rate area that don’t receive the transfer. So the Greeks etc. The same people that the Germans have been exporting their unemployment to for twenty years
  - Propelloni 2y ago
    That's a hot take. Care to elaborate?
    - tmcb 2y ago
      I am not sure if I agree with his conclusion, but some economists are of the opinion that countries in Northern Europe used the euro as a political tool to protect their own internal markets by making goods produced in the poorer countries of the Eurozone less competitive. If a country’s government could previously deflate their own currency to make their exports more attractive, they cannot do it anymore since they joined the Eurozone.
      - Propelloni 2y ago
        OK, I've heard of the second part about being unable to devalue the Euro because it basically reflects the economic power of the Eurozone as a whole and that e.g. Greece leaving the Eurozone could have helped Greece in 2008. But as a whole I'd guess that especially export-focused Eurozone members like Germany would welcome a depreciation of the Euro. At the very least I think they would not try to bolster it. It does, however, not bring me any closer to understanding the "exporting unemployment" statement. I guess it is some kind of multi-step reasoning that is eluding me, or maybe it is an example of a control illusion? I don't know.
        tmcb 2y ago
        > But as a whole I'd guess that especially export-focused Eurozone members like Germany would welcome a depreciation of the Euro. Yes, but only if it is guaranteed that their imports would depreciate similarly. Otherwise, say, Germany would devalue the Deutsche Mark but then run into the risk of importing produce from The Netherlands at a higher cost. > It does, however, not bring me any closer to understanding the "exporting unemployment" statement. The monetary policy after the 2008 crisis forced poor countries to cut public spending so that industrial economies could be bailed out. As a metaphor, the potentially unemployed factory worker from Germany was replaced an actual unemployed public service worker in Greece.
- tmcb 2y ago
  If the ultra-rich don’t pay their fair share of taxes, yes.
  - senectus1 2y ago
    why dont we ever talk about a Universal Basic Taxation? something has has no way to avoid, it doesnt matter how good your accountant is....
- xienze 2y ago
  It’s supposed to be paid for by people who’d rather work to earn just a bit more than UBI than do nothing and get paid, obviously. The fundamental problem with UBI, like every other feel-good economic initiative, is that its proponents make poor assumptions about how the people who stand to benefit will behave — see all the predictions that the folks currently working in fast food or Walmart will magically turn into entrepreneurs or usher in a golden age of art if they simply had $1000 per month in cash. It’s noble to think the best of others, but they just kind of hand wave away the reality that there’s a non-trivial population that aspires to do nothing more than consume drugs and/or play video games for their entire lives. It’s not everyone obviously, but it’s enough to be a problem. Doubly so when you consider they could become a sizable voting bloc that will continue to vote for whoever promises to increase UBI. When people dismiss UBI studies that last for just a few years and target a small slice of the population, it’s precisely because these long term negative effects take time and people to play out.
m-schuetz 2y ago
"No strings attached...for threee years" That study has shown exactly nothing. Of course I'm not going to quit if I'm out of job and UBI after three years.
- mark_and_sweep 2y ago
  The study actually shows that the people on UBI switched their jobs more often than the control group. Considering that the group on UBI was also happier, felt more financially secure and freer than the control group, this is hardly surprising.
  - pithanyChan 2y ago
    [flagged]
- bell-cot 2y ago
  Would €1,200/month "for life" inspire you to behave any differently? I suspect relatively few Germans aspire, long-term, to the lifestyle which that income would support. And then there are long-term considerations - like inflation. And gov't spending programs going away after either an election, or a financial crisis.
  - m-schuetz 2y ago
    It sure would. I was living off of a way smaller stipend for 2 or 3 years (the Austrian "Selbsterhalterstipendium"), and it was the most unproductive time of my life because I got enough to get by with minimal effort, since the conditions for the stipend were ridiculously low. I learned that if I can get money with basically no strings attached, I become lazy. Nowadays I'm not, simply because I have to work for stuff. I enjoy my work, but I wouldnt do it if it wasnt necessary. It was a great time, but it tought me that people get lazy if they don't have to work. So now I am obviously projecting my own lazyness to the general population, which is why I am against UBI.
  - Fargren 2y ago
    If it's inflation adjusted and I trust it's forever, I would 100% quit my job and work on something less stressful that I enjoy more. 1200 Euro is slightly below my average monthly expenses; my job pays multiple times this, but I keep at it to save and make sure I won't ever want for money. (I live in Spain, not Germany)
mptest 2y ago
>A German experiment has found that people are likely to continue working full-time even if they receive no-strings-attached universal basic income payments. Surprising only to those who have not read literally any other study on UBI. They all come to this conclusion. The only reason we don't have nice things like this: universal housing, healthcare, income, food security, is because a handful of dragons sit on and hoard unfathomably sized mountains of gold and convince the uneducated and those ignorant of economics and politics that the real problem is average people getting what they deserve - A dignified life where their basic needs are met and they have the dignified freedom to pursue a fulfilling life rather than spend it enriching aforementioned dragons for exploitative wages.
- MrBuddyCasino 2y ago
  "Let us disown the kulaks. This has never been tried before."
  - mptest 2y ago
    Shocker, a retort against evidenced based advocacy for clearly beneficial social policy utilizing red scare propaganda within 10 minutes.
- influx 2y ago
  Do you believe the economy is a zero sum game?
  - mptest 2y ago
    I believe the mountains of evidence that money in a 'poor' person's hands does more for the economy than when it is added to a dragon's pile.
    - janmarsal 2y ago
      Taxing the workers and giving the money to the 'poor' is an indirect subsidy to the dragons. Dragons are rich and cunning enough to afford to 'plan' their taxes, so it's not like they need to contribute to the UBI. They just reap the benefits.
cladopa 2y ago
All this simulations and experiments always have the same problem: They simulate giving people free money, but you are not simulating the other side of the coin: extracting the money from other people to pay for it(a.k.a stealing or "redistributing" euphemis) The "surprising results" are so surprising to me because I talk to people in Germany and most people believe they pay too much taxes, specially young people. The difference is that middle class Germans are actually paying for the system. No free lunch there. If robots take over human labor, you can always own robots(privately owning distributed means of production) instead of having a central planning system that never worked but interested people are hell bent designing so they benefit.
- actionfromafar 2y ago
  Depends who's doing the owning. Do you own Uber? "You will own nothing and be happy."
- Frieren 2y ago
  > people in Germany and most people believe they pay too much taxes 100% this. The average worker pays too much indeed. Mega-corporations and the super-rich do not pay anymore their share. It is a shame.
  - mariusor 2y ago
    I'm not sure about which taxes you're talking about, but employees pay about 50% of the taxes for any of their workers' income. I think this is the same for Germany as a lot of other countries in the EU.
    - Frieren 2y ago
      > but employees pay about 50% of the taxes for any of their workers' income That is wrong. Employers pay a small fraction of taxes per each one of their employees. I think that there is a big problem with education and the tax system. When people thinks that the "employer part of the salary tax" is 50% of the employee tax we are failing to provide education to our own citizens. And I think that HN readers are more informed that the average person. But this is by design. Misinformed citizens have a more difficult time realizing how much money big corporations and the rich are stealing.
bell-cot 2y ago
This seems to be a common thread in articles about UBI experiments: Economists, critics, and others expect the behavior of the recipients to be determined by either (1) "economic rationalist" clockwork, or (2) some laughably simplistic (and very demeaning) stereotype of poor people. And the results generally bear little resemblance to either (1) or (2). Napoleon supposedly said "the moral is to the physical as three to one" in reference to the battlefield performance of military units. But the same is true across extremely wide ranges of human behaviors.
- notahacker 2y ago
  The most common thread in these articles is that people treat the discovery that young people don't retire after receiving $10k or €43.2k from a magic money tree as proving UBI is economic panacea but handwave away the issue of paying for it.
  - bell-cot 2y ago
    > The most common thread in these ... Superficially, yeah. I'd read that situation as a combination of (1) "millions of clicks from wanna-feel-happy lefties pay the bills" journalism, and (2) editors wanting "friends" in the "so rich I can afford to be a blinkered ideologue" progressive set. For those inclined to real-world public policy, the main result I see is that the complex "needs testing" part of existing entitlement and welfare programs is 99% ideological/political bullshit and bureaucratic make-work.
bryanrasmussen 2y ago
>Mein Grundeinkommen (My Basic Income), the Berlin-based non-profit that ran the German study, followed 122 people for three years. From June 2021 to May 2024, this group received an unconditional sum of €1,200 ($1,365) per month. 122 people for 3 years seems worse than useless, worse in that it probably makes people think this isn't statistically useless.
- Braxton1980 2y ago
  Why?
  - bryanrasmussen 2y ago
    You think 122 people for 3 years is likely to be a statistically meaningful sample? Germany is 44.4 million people in the labor market.
    - Braxton1980 2y ago
      Isn't the experiment to show the effects? Why would a country matter , it's about people. It wasn't to see if the country could implement it. Drug trials often include can go to several thousand but only in a later stage, earlier stages are a few hundred. https://www.fda.gov/patients/drug-development-process/step-3-clinical-research https://www.fda.gov/patients/drug-development-process/step-3...
- amarcheschi 2y ago
  122 is not a low number, i'm doing a course right now where medical datasets have <50 people. My professor would be very happy to have 122 people. Although, i don't know whether soft sciences require more people than hard ones to be significant
  - bryanrasmussen 2y ago
    a medical dataset with 50 people may or may not be a low number depending on the rarity and the profile of people being affected by the disease. But as it happens low counts for studies are often a problem so maybe I shouldn't be so snippy, that said I would say yes, soft sciences often require more people in studies to be significant, but that is just my opinion on it.
reify 2y ago
surprisingly people do love to work. Although I have a masters degree I worked for 10 years, 3 nights each week, as a volunteer psychotherapist, providing free therapy to those that could least afford psychotherapy, those that needed it most. I obviously had a day job too. I loved working for free, the benefits are huge, less stress and autonomy in how you choose to spend your time and skills and a greater sense of achievement. If I had CBI I would work for free. I am all for social devotional work backed with CBI. CBI and work for free if you want to. I can definitetely understand the sense of feeling more mentally stable without the daily stresses that come with not enough money to live on. Most people who earn a decent salary are generally against CBI because of their own values around their own working ethic. There is nothing written anywhere that says that work is beneficial to a human being. The money for nothing crowd always raises its ugly head when talking about any support that benefits human development especially of the poor. As a retired therapist the majority of my lower socio-economic clients problems where due in full to the finanacial situation they found themselves in. All therapists carry a sense of helplessnes when dealing with such clients becaue we cannot help them.
- VagabundoP 2y ago
  People love meaning and purpose in their life and they typically find that in work as its a complex amalgamation of all sorts of challenges and rewards. I believe UBI would be a net benefit for society it would enable the poorest to survive better and the rest of us more flexibility in how we life our lives.
- Kon5ole 2y ago
  >Most people who earn a decent salary are generally against CBI because of their own values around their own working ethic. There is nothing written anywhere that says that work is beneficial to a human being. I'm not against UBI, I just don't see how it can be done. It seems fundamentally impossible to finance at scale, which all of these experiments ignore. They are always experiments where a tiny number of people get money generated by a vast majority of people. Which we have already, in the form of needs-based welfare.
marsven_422 2y ago
[dead]
WastedCucumber 2y ago
>Matthew Johnson, a professor of public policy at Northumbria University in the U.K., who works on basic income and authored a book on the topic, called the findings “unsurprising.” Seems like the article undermines its own headline.
TrackerFF 2y ago
I've been thinking about UBI a bit. One effect it might have, is that employers need to go above and beyond to keep their workers happy. So, so many people have a job which they at the very best tolerate, but would quit on the spot - if they had the economic means to do so. Some of those jobs are quite critical for society. Just think about healthcare...plenty of people enter healthcare with high morale and a desire to help, but find them completely disillusioned due to overwork, shitty shifts, unappreciation, mediocre pay, and what have you. If half of healthcare workers quit on the spot, that would lead to a societal crisis. But maybe it would also force the employers to fundamentally change the space, in order to not lose their employees. I also think UBI would give people a "second chance". Lots of people enter the workforce before they know what they want to do, and find themselves lock into the profession or work - due to financial reasons.
- Frieren 2y ago
  > If half of healthcare workers quit on the spot, that would lead to a societal crisis. But maybe it would also force the employers to fundamentally change the space, in order to not lose their employees. In a capitalist society, wages would rise and conditions will improve as people are willing to pay as much as needed for health care. The problem is that in the current rent-seeking economy (capital gets all the money while work is worth very little) all that money is redirected to the owners of middleman companies that add nothing to the economy. Produce no services nor products. Our current system is very inefficient and cannot last as it is today. To increase wages and improve the situation of most workers will assure increased productivity and citizens well-being. It is a no-brainer. But it is not easy to implement as the people in power profits handsomely with the current bad situation.
  - tmcb 2y ago
    > In a capitalist society, wages would rise and conditions will improve as people are willing to pay as much as needed for health care. People also need food, which is a labor-intensive business, and it is one of the main drivers of human trafficking in the US: https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/human-trafficking-forced-labor-charges-are-first-under-ices-new-labor-exploitation https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/human-trafficking-forced-l...
MichaelRo 2y ago
>> A German experiment has found that people are likely to continue working full-time even if they receive no-strings-attached universal basic income payments. That's because this is not basic income but just an additional, lucky source of income, for a limited time. It's effectively landing a contract job on top of a regular job. I'm gonna go to great lengths to keep both since I can save the additional money and they might have quite an impact on my life. I'm guessing the target people were not the best paid workers in Germany but still, saving €1200 per month is a lot more than the average of €450 ("According to a survey conducted in 2020 in Germany, the average monthly savings among the population amounted to 451 euros."). So if they were an average family that had a job and saved €450, with the "UBI" they just managet to triple their savings over a period of three years! Of course people won't quit their jobs, they're not stupid. Overall it shows absolutely nothing on UBI but maybe it shows something on human psychology and rational behavior.
mytailorisrich 2y ago
None of this matters because the premise, that is to hand €1,200 per month to people "for free", is totally unrealistic and unsustainable at scale.
alkonaut 2y ago
Any proper experiment for UBI requires 1) to do it for a whole economy. You can't have 10 or 100 people on UBI where the job market, prices etc aren't affected by UBI. And 2) For life. The small effects on behavior if I'm given UBI for 1, 3 or 5 years are going to be so small as to be uninteresting. The surprising results will just be artifacts of the experiment.
readthenotes1 2y ago
“We find no evidence that people love doing nothing,” Come talk to me
kelipso 2y ago
In the US at least, UBI would basically mean the rent and monthly mortgage prices increase by the same amount as the monthly UBI.

54 points by janandonly 2y ago

csunbird 2y ago

[flagged]

probably_wrong 2y ago
The fact that the experiment takes places in Germany doesn't necessarily mean that the results apply exclusively to basic income in Germany for Germans. How to better distribute income and how to deal with income inequality are definitely important topics, but that doesn't mean that all research on wealth distribution has to stop there.
MrBuddyCasino 2y ago
[flagged]
oneshtein 2y ago
In ancient Rome, slave labor was used.
- TJSomething 2y ago
  I don't think that's a fair representation of the ancient Roman combination social welfare and grain price stabilization system or of the role slaves had in Roman society.
neilwilson 2y ago
The other people in the fixed exchange rate area that don’t receive the transfer. So the Greeks etc. The same people that the Germans have been exporting their unemployment to for twenty years
- Propelloni 2y ago
  That's a hot take. Care to elaborate?
  - tmcb 2y ago
    I am not sure if I agree with his conclusion, but some economists are of the opinion that countries in Northern Europe used the euro as a political tool to protect their own internal markets by making goods produced in the poorer countries of the Eurozone less competitive. If a country’s government could previously deflate their own currency to make their exports more attractive, they cannot do it anymore since they joined the Eurozone.
    - Propelloni 2y ago
      OK, I've heard of the second part about being unable to devalue the Euro because it basically reflects the economic power of the Eurozone as a whole and that e.g. Greece leaving the Eurozone could have helped Greece in 2008. But as a whole I'd guess that especially export-focused Eurozone members like Germany would welcome a depreciation of the Euro. At the very least I think they would not try to bolster it. It does, however, not bring me any closer to understanding the "exporting unemployment" statement. I guess it is some kind of multi-step reasoning that is eluding me, or maybe it is an example of a control illusion? I don't know.
      - tmcb 2y ago
        > But as a whole I'd guess that especially export-focused Eurozone members like Germany would welcome a depreciation of the Euro. Yes, but only if it is guaranteed that their imports would depreciate similarly. Otherwise, say, Germany would devalue the Deutsche Mark but then run into the risk of importing produce from The Netherlands at a higher cost. > It does, however, not bring me any closer to understanding the "exporting unemployment" statement. The monetary policy after the 2008 crisis forced poor countries to cut public spending so that industrial economies could be bailed out. As a metaphor, the potentially unemployed factory worker from Germany was replaced an actual unemployed public service worker in Greece.
tmcb 2y ago
If the ultra-rich don’t pay their fair share of taxes, yes.
- senectus1 2y ago
  why dont we ever talk about a Universal Basic Taxation? something has has no way to avoid, it doesnt matter how good your accountant is....
xienze 2y ago
It’s supposed to be paid for by people who’d rather work to earn just a bit more than UBI than do nothing and get paid, obviously. The fundamental problem with UBI, like every other feel-good economic initiative, is that its proponents make poor assumptions about how the people who stand to benefit will behave — see all the predictions that the folks currently working in fast food or Walmart will magically turn into entrepreneurs or usher in a golden age of art if they simply had $1000 per month in cash. It’s noble to think the best of others, but they just kind of hand wave away the reality that there’s a non-trivial population that aspires to do nothing more than consume drugs and/or play video games for their entire lives. It’s not everyone obviously, but it’s enough to be a problem. Doubly so when you consider they could become a sizable voting bloc that will continue to vote for whoever promises to increase UBI. When people dismiss UBI studies that last for just a few years and target a small slice of the population, it’s precisely because these long term negative effects take time and people to play out.

m-schuetz 2y ago

"No strings attached...for threee years" That study has shown exactly nothing. Of course I'm not going to quit if I'm out of job and UBI after three years.

mark_and_sweep 2y ago
The study actually shows that the people on UBI switched their jobs more often than the control group. Considering that the group on UBI was also happier, felt more financially secure and freer than the control group, this is hardly surprising.
- pithanyChan 2y ago
  [flagged]
bell-cot 2y ago
Would €1,200/month "for life" inspire you to behave any differently? I suspect relatively few Germans aspire, long-term, to the lifestyle which that income would support. And then there are long-term considerations - like inflation. And gov't spending programs going away after either an election, or a financial crisis.
- m-schuetz 2y ago
  It sure would. I was living off of a way smaller stipend for 2 or 3 years (the Austrian "Selbsterhalterstipendium"), and it was the most unproductive time of my life because I got enough to get by with minimal effort, since the conditions for the stipend were ridiculously low. I learned that if I can get money with basically no strings attached, I become lazy. Nowadays I'm not, simply because I have to work for stuff. I enjoy my work, but I wouldnt do it if it wasnt necessary. It was a great time, but it tought me that people get lazy if they don't have to work. So now I am obviously projecting my own lazyness to the general population, which is why I am against UBI.
- Fargren 2y ago
  If it's inflation adjusted and I trust it's forever, I would 100% quit my job and work on something less stressful that I enjoy more. 1200 Euro is slightly below my average monthly expenses; my job pays multiple times this, but I keep at it to save and make sure I won't ever want for money. (I live in Spain, not Germany)

mptest 2y ago

>A German experiment has found that people are likely to continue working full-time even if they receive no-strings-attached universal basic income payments. Surprising only to those who have not read literally any other study on UBI. They all come to this conclusion. The only reason we don't have nice things like this: universal housing, healthcare, income, food security, is because a handful of dragons sit on and hoard unfathomably sized mountains of gold and convince the uneducated and those ignorant of economics and politics that the real problem is average people getting what they deserve - A dignified life where their basic needs are met and they have the dignified freedom to pursue a fulfilling life rather than spend it enriching aforementioned dragons for exploitative wages.

MrBuddyCasino 2y ago
"Let us disown the kulaks. This has never been tried before."
- mptest 2y ago
  Shocker, a retort against evidenced based advocacy for clearly beneficial social policy utilizing red scare propaganda within 10 minutes.
influx 2y ago
Do you believe the economy is a zero sum game?
- mptest 2y ago
  I believe the mountains of evidence that money in a 'poor' person's hands does more for the economy than when it is added to a dragon's pile.
  - janmarsal 2y ago
    Taxing the workers and giving the money to the 'poor' is an indirect subsidy to the dragons. Dragons are rich and cunning enough to afford to 'plan' their taxes, so it's not like they need to contribute to the UBI. They just reap the benefits.

cladopa 2y ago

All this simulations and experiments always have the same problem: They simulate giving people free money, but you are not simulating the other side of the coin: extracting the money from other people to pay for it(a.k.a stealing or "redistributing" euphemis) The "surprising results" are so surprising to me because I talk to people in Germany and most people believe they pay too much taxes, specially young people. The difference is that middle class Germans are actually paying for the system. No free lunch there. If robots take over human labor, you can always own robots(privately owning distributed means of production) instead of having a central planning system that never worked but interested people are hell bent designing so they benefit.

actionfromafar 2y ago
Depends who's doing the owning. Do you own Uber? "You will own nothing and be happy."
Frieren 2y ago
> people in Germany and most people believe they pay too much taxes 100% this. The average worker pays too much indeed. Mega-corporations and the super-rich do not pay anymore their share. It is a shame.
- mariusor 2y ago
  I'm not sure about which taxes you're talking about, but employees pay about 50% of the taxes for any of their workers' income. I think this is the same for Germany as a lot of other countries in the EU.
  - Frieren 2y ago
    > but employees pay about 50% of the taxes for any of their workers' income That is wrong. Employers pay a small fraction of taxes per each one of their employees. I think that there is a big problem with education and the tax system. When people thinks that the "employer part of the salary tax" is 50% of the employee tax we are failing to provide education to our own citizens. And I think that HN readers are more informed that the average person. But this is by design. Misinformed citizens have a more difficult time realizing how much money big corporations and the rich are stealing.

bell-cot 2y ago

This seems to be a common thread in articles about UBI experiments: Economists, critics, and others expect the behavior of the recipients to be determined by either (1) "economic rationalist" clockwork, or (2) some laughably simplistic (and very demeaning) stereotype of poor people. And the results generally bear little resemblance to either (1) or (2). Napoleon supposedly said "the moral is to the physical as three to one" in reference to the battlefield performance of military units. But the same is true across extremely wide ranges of human behaviors.

notahacker 2y ago
The most common thread in these articles is that people treat the discovery that young people don't retire after receiving $10k or €43.2k from a magic money tree as proving UBI is economic panacea but handwave away the issue of paying for it.
- bell-cot 2y ago
  > The most common thread in these ... Superficially, yeah. I'd read that situation as a combination of (1) "millions of clicks from wanna-feel-happy lefties pay the bills" journalism, and (2) editors wanting "friends" in the "so rich I can afford to be a blinkered ideologue" progressive set. For those inclined to real-world public policy, the main result I see is that the complex "needs testing" part of existing entitlement and welfare programs is 99% ideological/political bullshit and bureaucratic make-work.

bryanrasmussen 2y ago

>Mein Grundeinkommen (My Basic Income), the Berlin-based non-profit that ran the German study, followed 122 people for three years. From June 2021 to May 2024, this group received an unconditional sum of €1,200 ($1,365) per month. 122 people for 3 years seems worse than useless, worse in that it probably makes people think this isn't statistically useless.

Braxton1980 2y ago
Why?
- bryanrasmussen 2y ago
  You think 122 people for 3 years is likely to be a statistically meaningful sample? Germany is 44.4 million people in the labor market.
  - Braxton1980 2y ago
    Isn't the experiment to show the effects? Why would a country matter , it's about people. It wasn't to see if the country could implement it. Drug trials often include can go to several thousand but only in a later stage, earlier stages are a few hundred. https://www.fda.gov/patients/drug-development-process/step-3-clinical-research https://www.fda.gov/patients/drug-development-process/step-3...
amarcheschi 2y ago
122 is not a low number, i'm doing a course right now where medical datasets have <50 people. My professor would be very happy to have 122 people. Although, i don't know whether soft sciences require more people than hard ones to be significant
- bryanrasmussen 2y ago
  a medical dataset with 50 people may or may not be a low number depending on the rarity and the profile of people being affected by the disease. But as it happens low counts for studies are often a problem so maybe I shouldn't be so snippy, that said I would say yes, soft sciences often require more people in studies to be significant, but that is just my opinion on it.

reify 2y ago

surprisingly people do love to work. Although I have a masters degree I worked for 10 years, 3 nights each week, as a volunteer psychotherapist, providing free therapy to those that could least afford psychotherapy, those that needed it most. I obviously had a day job too. I loved working for free, the benefits are huge, less stress and autonomy in how you choose to spend your time and skills and a greater sense of achievement. If I had CBI I would work for free. I am all for social devotional work backed with CBI. CBI and work for free if you want to. I can definitetely understand the sense of feeling more mentally stable without the daily stresses that come with not enough money to live on. Most people who earn a decent salary are generally against CBI because of their own values around their own working ethic. There is nothing written anywhere that says that work is beneficial to a human being. The money for nothing crowd always raises its ugly head when talking about any support that benefits human development especially of the poor. As a retired therapist the majority of my lower socio-economic clients problems where due in full to the finanacial situation they found themselves in. All therapists carry a sense of helplessnes when dealing with such clients becaue we cannot help them.

VagabundoP 2y ago
People love meaning and purpose in their life and they typically find that in work as its a complex amalgamation of all sorts of challenges and rewards. I believe UBI would be a net benefit for society it would enable the poorest to survive better and the rest of us more flexibility in how we life our lives.
Kon5ole 2y ago
>Most people who earn a decent salary are generally against CBI because of their own values around their own working ethic. There is nothing written anywhere that says that work is beneficial to a human being. I'm not against UBI, I just don't see how it can be done. It seems fundamentally impossible to finance at scale, which all of these experiments ignore. They are always experiments where a tiny number of people get money generated by a vast majority of people. Which we have already, in the form of needs-based welfare.

marsven_422 2y ago

[dead]

WastedCucumber 2y ago

>Matthew Johnson, a professor of public policy at Northumbria University in the U.K., who works on basic income and authored a book on the topic, called the findings “unsurprising.” Seems like the article undermines its own headline.

TrackerFF 2y ago

I've been thinking about UBI a bit. One effect it might have, is that employers need to go above and beyond to keep their workers happy. So, so many people have a job which they at the very best tolerate, but would quit on the spot - if they had the economic means to do so. Some of those jobs are quite critical for society. Just think about healthcare...plenty of people enter healthcare with high morale and a desire to help, but find them completely disillusioned due to overwork, shitty shifts, unappreciation, mediocre pay, and what have you. If half of healthcare workers quit on the spot, that would lead to a societal crisis. But maybe it would also force the employers to fundamentally change the space, in order to not lose their employees. I also think UBI would give people a "second chance". Lots of people enter the workforce before they know what they want to do, and find themselves lock into the profession or work - due to financial reasons.

Frieren 2y ago
> If half of healthcare workers quit on the spot, that would lead to a societal crisis. But maybe it would also force the employers to fundamentally change the space, in order to not lose their employees. In a capitalist society, wages would rise and conditions will improve as people are willing to pay as much as needed for health care. The problem is that in the current rent-seeking economy (capital gets all the money while work is worth very little) all that money is redirected to the owners of middleman companies that add nothing to the economy. Produce no services nor products. Our current system is very inefficient and cannot last as it is today. To increase wages and improve the situation of most workers will assure increased productivity and citizens well-being. It is a no-brainer. But it is not easy to implement as the people in power profits handsomely with the current bad situation.
- tmcb 2y ago
  > In a capitalist society, wages would rise and conditions will improve as people are willing to pay as much as needed for health care. People also need food, which is a labor-intensive business, and it is one of the main drivers of human trafficking in the US: https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/human-trafficking-forced-labor-charges-are-first-under-ices-new-labor-exploitation https://www.ice.gov/news/releases/human-trafficking-forced-l...

MichaelRo 2y ago

>> A German experiment has found that people are likely to continue working full-time even if they receive no-strings-attached universal basic income payments. That's because this is not basic income but just an additional, lucky source of income, for a limited time. It's effectively landing a contract job on top of a regular job. I'm gonna go to great lengths to keep both since I can save the additional money and they might have quite an impact on my life. I'm guessing the target people were not the best paid workers in Germany but still, saving €1200 per month is a lot more than the average of €450 ("According to a survey conducted in 2020 in Germany, the average monthly savings among the population amounted to 451 euros."). So if they were an average family that had a job and saved €450, with the "UBI" they just managet to triple their savings over a period of three years! Of course people won't quit their jobs, they're not stupid. Overall it shows absolutely nothing on UBI but maybe it shows something on human psychology and rational behavior.

mytailorisrich 2y ago

None of this matters because the premise, that is to hand €1,200 per month to people "for free", is totally unrealistic and unsustainable at scale.

alkonaut 2y ago

Any proper experiment for UBI requires 1) to do it for a whole economy. You can't have 10 or 100 people on UBI where the job market, prices etc aren't affected by UBI. And 2) For life. The small effects on behavior if I'm given UBI for 1, 3 or 5 years are going to be so small as to be uninteresting. The surprising results will just be artifacts of the experiment.

readthenotes1 2y ago

“We find no evidence that people love doing nothing,” Come talk to me

kelipso 2y ago

In the US at least, UBI would basically mean the rent and monthly mortgage prices increase by the same amount as the monthly UBI.