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Some libertarians may not be fans of a guaranteed or basic income because such a system would, they argue, disincentivize work. Murray believes that his surtax

Some libertarians may not be fans of a guaranteed or basic income because such a system would, they argue, disincentivize work. Murray believes that his surtax scheme would incentivize work after someone began earning over $25,000. I'm fairly libertarian and also agree with the concept of a basic income or negative income tax, but phrases like this are very dangerous. It would only begin incentivizing work after you make 25k? And what about people like me that took 28 years to get to that point? I would have never worked as hard as I did to finish college if I didn't have the threat of perpetual poverty and possibly homelessness hanging over my head. When I was 22, a $25k income with no work attached would have been the party of a lifetime, and I would have never tried going to college, let alone struggle (albeit mostly with ADHD, not college itself) to finish. There is a reason people get a little squeamish about proposals to just give poor people money...we all know what it does to us. You can't just go proposing something like this and throw out a magic number ($25k) and an assertion of how people will react to the incentive. You have to be much more careful and empirical than that.

rsynnott 13y ago
In conventional basic income systems, the basic income is _on top of_ anything you might be earning from a job, so work is incentivised from the start. In practice, for high earners, a lot of it would be clawed back in tax, of course. Certainly there would be people happy to live on it without working (assuming it was a reasonable figure), and that's fine, as long as _most_ people aren't in that group. To an extent it will depend on what you set the figure at, but history has shown that most people don't like not working, even if they don't need to to survive. An example; Ireland has a relatively generous social welfare system; an adult currently gets 188 euro a week plus housing benefit etc, and this lasts indefinitely. During the 90s-00s economic boom, unemployment fell below 4%, which is normally considered functional full employment. Clearly, when jobs were available, people wanted to do them. Now, maybe if you double or triple the figure it'll work out differently, but I'd be surprised if it would be that different. And that's a social welfare payment, which disincentivises working more than basic income (the social welfare payment goes away when you start working, the basic income doesn't).
kiba 13y ago
It would only begin incentivizing work after you make 25k? And what about people like me that took 28 years to get to that point? Incentive to work is only one issue. Another is that people don't want to lose their job because it would mean that they die. That mean technological improvements are more likely to be opposed by workers. With basic income, programmers and other job destroyers will be able to automate at will, and everyone will benefit. I would have never worked as hard as I did to finish college if I didn't have the threat of perpetual poverty and possibly homelessness hanging over my head. Then find a way to incentivize yourself to work. I never finished college, but now I am pretty active as a self taught learner and actually care more about learning than most college students. It has been a while since I didn't study and learn something new everyday. The threat of perpetual poverty is like the threat of dying in wars. Yes, it propel you forward, but it was not a good incentive.
- saosebastiao 13y ago
  I'm not saying people should have looming threats of poverty in order to work. I'm saying that having too much too soon is a disincentive to self improvement. I've wanted to do what I currently do for a very long time, but there was no entrance to it without college, which was something I struggled with immensely. A $10k income with some pell grants would have meant food and health care while working my way through college (which I achieved by being a truck driver on weekends), but a $25k income would have meant "fuck it, I'm just gonna do nothing". Solutions like "Then find a way to incentivize yourself to work" might be good advice, but not a good policy.
vidarh 13y ago
> There is a reason people get a little squeamish about proposals to just give poor people money...we all know what it does to us. Except we don't. We think we do. And even then, we only have a rough idea what each one of us personally might do. Yet when there have actually been experiments, people don't tend to act in line with these expectations. > You have to be much more careful and empirical than that. Exactly. And the (to be fair: very little) data we have so far does not support the notion that people in general won't work hard if they're paid for nothing. Some won't. Others see it as their opportunity to build something. A lot of others simply don't change their behaviour all that much. Maybe you'd party all the time. For others, social safety nets is what makes doing something greatly useful with their time low risk enough for them to dare do it. E.g. my own example is the opposite of yours: I've never a day in my life seen poverty or homelessness as a possibility, and for me that is a large part of what has made doing startup after startup viable, because I want to do something fun and challenging. The possibility of a big payout is great, but that's a gamble with poor odds.
saraid216 13y ago
The issue of "incentive to work" is one that I think people in general are too philosophically cowardly to explore seriously: people tend to resort to cultural tropes rather than think about what principles are driving their analysis. As kiba implies, you're basically saying "work or death". This isn't a real choice, unless the person in question is suicidal or otherwise interested in dying. Freedom of choice necessitates at least two desirable options; without this, it's coercion. You can replace "death" with the more optimistic "poverty" or "homelessness" if you prefer: the philosophical problem is the same. The issue isn't even "a basic income will remove incentive to work". The issue is "why does there need to be an incentive to work in the first place". If society will break down if we all stop working, isn't that a problem to be solved, rather than a state to be maintained?

rsynnott 13y ago

In conventional basic income systems, the basic income is _on top of_ anything you might be earning from a job, so work is incentivised from the start. In practice, for high earners, a lot of it would be clawed back in tax, of course. Certainly there would be people happy to live on it without working (assuming it was a reasonable figure), and that's fine, as long as _most_ people aren't in that group. To an extent it will depend on what you set the figure at, but history has shown that most people don't like not working, even if they don't need to to survive. An example; Ireland has a relatively generous social welfare system; an adult currently gets 188 euro a week plus housing benefit etc, and this lasts indefinitely. During the 90s-00s economic boom, unemployment fell below 4%, which is normally considered functional full employment. Clearly, when jobs were available, people wanted to do them. Now, maybe if you double or triple the figure it'll work out differently, but I'd be surprised if it would be that different. And that's a social welfare payment, which disincentivises working more than basic income (the social welfare payment goes away when you start working, the basic income doesn't).

kiba 13y ago

It would only begin incentivizing work after you make 25k? And what about people like me that took 28 years to get to that point? Incentive to work is only one issue. Another is that people don't want to lose their job because it would mean that they die. That mean technological improvements are more likely to be opposed by workers. With basic income, programmers and other job destroyers will be able to automate at will, and everyone will benefit. I would have never worked as hard as I did to finish college if I didn't have the threat of perpetual poverty and possibly homelessness hanging over my head. Then find a way to incentivize yourself to work. I never finished college, but now I am pretty active as a self taught learner and actually care more about learning than most college students. It has been a while since I didn't study and learn something new everyday. The threat of perpetual poverty is like the threat of dying in wars. Yes, it propel you forward, but it was not a good incentive.

saosebastiao 13y ago
I'm not saying people should have looming threats of poverty in order to work. I'm saying that having too much too soon is a disincentive to self improvement. I've wanted to do what I currently do for a very long time, but there was no entrance to it without college, which was something I struggled with immensely. A $10k income with some pell grants would have meant food and health care while working my way through college (which I achieved by being a truck driver on weekends), but a $25k income would have meant "fuck it, I'm just gonna do nothing". Solutions like "Then find a way to incentivize yourself to work" might be good advice, but not a good policy.

vidarh 13y ago

> There is a reason people get a little squeamish about proposals to just give poor people money...we all know what it does to us. Except we don't. We think we do. And even then, we only have a rough idea what each one of us personally might do. Yet when there have actually been experiments, people don't tend to act in line with these expectations. > You have to be much more careful and empirical than that. Exactly. And the (to be fair: very little) data we have so far does not support the notion that people in general won't work hard if they're paid for nothing. Some won't. Others see it as their opportunity to build something. A lot of others simply don't change their behaviour all that much. Maybe you'd party all the time. For others, social safety nets is what makes doing something greatly useful with their time low risk enough for them to dare do it. E.g. my own example is the opposite of yours: I've never a day in my life seen poverty or homelessness as a possibility, and for me that is a large part of what has made doing startup after startup viable, because I want to do something fun and challenging. The possibility of a big payout is great, but that's a gamble with poor odds.

saraid216 13y ago

The issue of "incentive to work" is one that I think people in general are too philosophically cowardly to explore seriously: people tend to resort to cultural tropes rather than think about what principles are driving their analysis. As kiba implies, you're basically saying "work or death". This isn't a real choice, unless the person in question is suicidal or otherwise interested in dying. Freedom of choice necessitates at least two desirable options; without this, it's coercion. You can replace "death" with the more optimistic "poverty" or "homelessness" if you prefer: the philosophical problem is the same. The issue isn't even "a basic income will remove incentive to work". The issue is "why does there need to be an incentive to work in the first place". If society will break down if we all stop working, isn't that a problem to be solved, rather than a state to be maintained?