3 ms·

If you look at that article, you will find it does not provide evidence for any of the claims in the post. That's not the fault of Wikipedia, as I explained, t

If you look at that article, you will find it does not provide evidence for any of the claims in the post. That's not the fault of Wikipedia, as I explained, this is an extremely broad and complex issue, and most academics won't directly cover it because "basic income" is too vague a concept for them. But that was the point I was making in the first place: you cannot cite three sources and then claim to have the evidence on your side, when these three sources don't provide the evidence that would be needed.

Cushman 13y ago
Personally, I assumed that whatever followed "If I recall correctly" would likely not be expertly sourced. I did look at that Wikipedia article-- it has 102 references, many of them offline. So hell if I know if there's evidence in there, but I'm certainly not complaining that I don't know where to read more for myself. But like the GP-- It's something I want to believe, it's very well-credentialed, and I've seen some encouraging but inconclusive evidence. So naturally as a skeptic the main thing I'm looking for now is the strongly negative evidence, if such a thing can exist. Do you have any leads?
- mc-lovin 13y ago
  I don't want to get too bogged down in the details of this thread, so I'll just tell you straight up why I don't support the idea of a basic income guarantee. Hopefully doing so will indirectly address the issue of evidence that we were discussing. The main problem is that the BIG is an unnecessary and unhelpful concept. I believe the sociology is that people like to believe in causes, rather than fine grained facts or principals, and so BIG is attractive as a cause in spite of not being a useful concept. First, BIG confuses the issues around redistribution. Assuming welfare is only conditional on income, the sum total of taxation, welfare, BIG and others, can be thought of as a negative taxation system. BIG obscures this because it implies there is something special about redistribution through a "guaranteed" income. E.g. economists are very concerned about the incentive effects of welfare, because every dollar you earn results in less welfare. BIG obscures this by focusing on the flat portion (the guaranteed income) and drawing attention away from the more progressive income taxes that would be needed to pay for it. Second, BIG is different from many current welfare systems because it is unconditional on being part of a special group (e.g. a parent, farmer, elderly) or certain actions (e.g. education, training, looking for work in good faith). I consider this to be a bad thing, in that it is too extreme in the direction of being unconditional, at least for the developed world. Both in terms of ethical fairness, political feasibility, and economic incentives, giving away money for nothing has strong limits on it. Adding a few conditions, like ensuring people are really looking for work, strikes a much better balance. So again, BIG takes a sliding scale decision (how much should welfare be conditional on certain actions, and should it be conditional on things other than income) and makes it seem like a binary decision by only providing one extreme as an alternative to the status quo. btw, below I give a well argued article which claims BIG is a useful concept. www.usbig.net/pdf/manyfacesofubi.pdf
  - ppereira 13y ago
    I don't understand your problem with a basic income guarantee. You say that it is unhelpful, but it is a very clear description of the mechanics of redistribution. It is much easier to explain a "basic income" to my mother than a "negative income tax" -- and yes she understands that anything provided by the government must be paid for by taxation. The unconditional aspect of a basic income allows individuals to accumulate capital. Many welfare systems require recipients to sell their cars, property, and maintain bank accounts at a near zero balance. They also clawback employment earnings at punitive tax rates of 50-100% (often higher than the top-marginal rate). Since welfare is often very low, those supplementing their income are often driven to working under-the-table for cash. This creates a welfare trap that keeps poor people poor. Means checking requires an expensive bureaucracy, is paternalistic, and I think unnecessary. If you read the research results for the Canadian and US experiments you will find that people want to work, even with a basic income. The slight negative incentives that were discovered can be attributable to two basic factors: 1. some women chose to stay home to care for children or elderly family members -- this has an obvious societal benefit, and 2. if the experiment is conducted in a non-saturation site (i.e. one fraction of the population gets a basic income while the other does not) then there will be an economic distortion affecting low income workers. Employers are driven to employ those without a basic income, who are more desperate for work. The same would happen if you tried to enforce a minimum wage on half the population. Employers would hire those without a minimum wage. If you are looking for the real problems with the basic income, it is easy to find. The cost to raise everyone above the poverty line is _very_ high. One would have to consider the size of the family unit receiving funds and adjust for economies of scale. Nevertheless, it could be done. By contrast, a basic income at the rate of many existing welfare systems would be very affordable and would result in many collateral savings such as reduced health care and administration costs. Also, despite the cost of a basic income, it has the support of many Nobel-prize winning economists because it increases utility. I have not yet seen a model for optimal income taxation that does not point to a negative tax / basic income. See, for example, textbooks on public economics or the classic paper by Mirrlees, http://www.econ.yale.edu/~dirkb/teach/pdf/mirrlees/1971%20optimal%20taxation.pdf http://www.econ.yale.edu/~dirkb/teach/pdf/mirrlees/1971%20op...
    - 13y ago

Cushman 13y ago

Personally, I assumed that whatever followed "If I recall correctly" would likely not be expertly sourced. I did look at that Wikipedia article-- it has 102 references, many of them offline. So hell if I know if there's evidence in there, but I'm certainly not complaining that I don't know where to read more for myself. But like the GP-- It's something I want to believe, it's very well-credentialed, and I've seen some encouraging but inconclusive evidence. So naturally as a skeptic the main thing I'm looking for now is the strongly negative evidence, if such a thing can exist. Do you have any leads?

mc-lovin 13y ago
I don't want to get too bogged down in the details of this thread, so I'll just tell you straight up why I don't support the idea of a basic income guarantee. Hopefully doing so will indirectly address the issue of evidence that we were discussing. The main problem is that the BIG is an unnecessary and unhelpful concept. I believe the sociology is that people like to believe in causes, rather than fine grained facts or principals, and so BIG is attractive as a cause in spite of not being a useful concept. First, BIG confuses the issues around redistribution. Assuming welfare is only conditional on income, the sum total of taxation, welfare, BIG and others, can be thought of as a negative taxation system. BIG obscures this because it implies there is something special about redistribution through a "guaranteed" income. E.g. economists are very concerned about the incentive effects of welfare, because every dollar you earn results in less welfare. BIG obscures this by focusing on the flat portion (the guaranteed income) and drawing attention away from the more progressive income taxes that would be needed to pay for it. Second, BIG is different from many current welfare systems because it is unconditional on being part of a special group (e.g. a parent, farmer, elderly) or certain actions (e.g. education, training, looking for work in good faith). I consider this to be a bad thing, in that it is too extreme in the direction of being unconditional, at least for the developed world. Both in terms of ethical fairness, political feasibility, and economic incentives, giving away money for nothing has strong limits on it. Adding a few conditions, like ensuring people are really looking for work, strikes a much better balance. So again, BIG takes a sliding scale decision (how much should welfare be conditional on certain actions, and should it be conditional on things other than income) and makes it seem like a binary decision by only providing one extreme as an alternative to the status quo. btw, below I give a well argued article which claims BIG is a useful concept. www.usbig.net/pdf/manyfacesofubi.pdf
- ppereira 13y ago
  I don't understand your problem with a basic income guarantee. You say that it is unhelpful, but it is a very clear description of the mechanics of redistribution. It is much easier to explain a "basic income" to my mother than a "negative income tax" -- and yes she understands that anything provided by the government must be paid for by taxation. The unconditional aspect of a basic income allows individuals to accumulate capital. Many welfare systems require recipients to sell their cars, property, and maintain bank accounts at a near zero balance. They also clawback employment earnings at punitive tax rates of 50-100% (often higher than the top-marginal rate). Since welfare is often very low, those supplementing their income are often driven to working under-the-table for cash. This creates a welfare trap that keeps poor people poor. Means checking requires an expensive bureaucracy, is paternalistic, and I think unnecessary. If you read the research results for the Canadian and US experiments you will find that people want to work, even with a basic income. The slight negative incentives that were discovered can be attributable to two basic factors: 1. some women chose to stay home to care for children or elderly family members -- this has an obvious societal benefit, and 2. if the experiment is conducted in a non-saturation site (i.e. one fraction of the population gets a basic income while the other does not) then there will be an economic distortion affecting low income workers. Employers are driven to employ those without a basic income, who are more desperate for work. The same would happen if you tried to enforce a minimum wage on half the population. Employers would hire those without a minimum wage. If you are looking for the real problems with the basic income, it is easy to find. The cost to raise everyone above the poverty line is _very_ high. One would have to consider the size of the family unit receiving funds and adjust for economies of scale. Nevertheless, it could be done. By contrast, a basic income at the rate of many existing welfare systems would be very affordable and would result in many collateral savings such as reduced health care and administration costs. Also, despite the cost of a basic income, it has the support of many Nobel-prize winning economists because it increases utility. I have not yet seen a model for optimal income taxation that does not point to a negative tax / basic income. See, for example, textbooks on public economics or the classic paper by Mirrlees, http://www.econ.yale.edu/~dirkb/teach/pdf/mirrlees/1971%20optimal%20taxation.pdf http://www.econ.yale.edu/~dirkb/teach/pdf/mirrlees/1971%20op...
  - 13y ago