Basic income would not reduce people’s willingness to work

https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/news/2022/01/basic-income-would-not-reduce-peoples-willingness-to-work

by giuliomagnifico • 5 years ago

404 760 5 years ago

universiteitleiden.nl

baggy_trough• 5 years ago

Article does not say how big the basic income in question was.

ozzythecat2• 5 years ago

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.

osrec• 5 years 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.

otherme1234• 5 years 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.

tda• 5 years 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

pc866• 5 years 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.

bruce343434• 5 years ago

exactly. Sometimes you need to give the market a hand to set it free.

bitshiftfaced3• 5 years ago

And so what if people refuse to do shitty jobs?

The "so what" is that basic income doesn't change the ordinal ranking of how much people prefer to do different jobs. Neither does it change people's ability to get those jobs. Better qualified applicants will always have better options. So while basic income might increase the nominal pay of the least preferable jobs, it wouldn't mean you suddenly get to skip over the "shitty jobs" and suddenly get access to the better ones.

inglor_cz6• 5 years ago

Customer facing jobs are precisely the ones that are shitty. Some people are really entitled and awful.

But you can basically only get rid of them by automating the process and disconnecting human workers from complaintants. How well does it work?

Ask anyone who lost a YouTube channel without learning the real reasons and has no path to appeal to a human. HN hates whenever this happens.

thegrimmest16• 5 years ago

The "So what" is that if pay for waiters and labourers has to compete with UBI, the cost of service, food, and housing increases significantly, putting it out of reach of more people, and contracting the entire economy as a result.

You can postulate about how much we should value these jobs, but the reality is that most people wouldn't be able to afford a meal at a restaurant where all the staff make 50k, or a packet of strawberries picked by pickers who make the same.

agumonkey2• 5 years ago

Even if shitty jobs still exist, at least nobody is "forced" to. We can redistribute or change the way it's done.

I can clean the walkway, or toilets.. granted i don't spend my whole month on it with shoddy equipement.

mettamage• 5 years 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.

onlyrealcuzzo3• 5 years 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• 5 years 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!

bryanlarsen11• 5 years 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.

hoppyhoppy2• 5 years 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• 5 years 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.

staticassertion8• 5 years 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-_3• 5 years 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.

lr4444lr• 5 years ago

Much as we might agree these workers overall have more money - from whatever source - it does not follow that the pay would go up for crap jobs. The pay need only be high enough above the post tax increase from the UBI baseline to fill the spots. Maybe it won't they populated by people who need to feed their family anymore, but perhaps by college grads who need to feed themselves because UBI is eaten up by their student loan repayment. All we can guarantee really is shifting the bracket of the likely talent pool's need for a few extra dollars. Humans aren't alike in the level of income above which they're no longer in desperation for a few extra bucks.

ozzythecat2• 5 years ago

Shifting some power to them and giving the job a little more of an air of dignity or status would probably help a lot.

I agree, but is this feasible or wishful thinking?

As a society, we’re decidedly split on whether we should wear masks or should or should not get vaccines, despite the science or despite whatever seems like a rational decision. (Admittedly I’m introducing my bias here).

Would raising pay for retail workers or people acknowledging that we need to treat them with respect - would either of these actually lead to the right outcome? Or would it fuel another voice that vehemently sees these jobs as a stepping stone and not entitled to respect and dignity?

pkdpic• 5 years ago

Agreed, isnt this exactly whats been observed from pandemic financial aid? Increased pressure on employers to pay more and give workers a better work environment? Maybe someone has a better link to back that up but heres one at least.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/bryanrobinson/2021/10/14/employ...

Also isnt there some possibly-not-totally-fantasy narrative where at least some of these jobs become automated in response to workers not wanting them and its maybe a good thing?

kradroy• 5 years ago

On the other side of the coin, in my career I've had colleagues so bad that I would gladly pay them NOT to work. They created a toxic workplace and made everything worse. Unfortunately the majority of them would likely not take UBI (in two cases they were the owner/boss). However, if UBI kept just a portion of troublesome workers out of the workforce, then that would be beneficial as well.

dghughes2• 5 years ago

I've also seen within the same organization how such people are treated.

For example janitorial workers. At an old workplace of mine there were three shifts of at least two workers three during the day. Then they were cut to just one worker per day and evening no nights. One person frantically running from bathroom to bathroom not even getting to the other tasks that had to do like vacuuming.

Then they cut their hours to part-time for all but two workers. At minimum wage it was barely livable on 40 hours per week.

They also ask the night worker to come in the next day with less than a seven hour gap from the previous shift.

Even at the punch clock they were scolded for punching in or out a mere 1 minute off from the time to work or end.

I could tell when talking to the staff many of them felt defeated and this was the only job they could do. They just had to sit there and take it.

Guaranteed income (GI) would at least buffer some of the anxiety. I could also see businesses knowing it existed would cut worker hours to part-time. But if part-time plus GI was enough then the worker has the power.

Fernicia• 5 years ago

So labour costs would go up, things get more expensive, and there are still no incentives to be civil because that cost is spread amongst all customers.

surfmike• 5 years ago

I think this is an honest perspective, but it directly contradicts the article which is saying "basic income would not reduce people's willingness to work." Menial labor or being berated by customers rather clear-cut example, but most jobs have moderate amounts of unpleasantness, and given the choice many people would opt out of working altogether. There's a lot of unpleasant work that needs to be done to keep civilization going!

dgb23• 5 years ago

In addition it would incentivize companies to actually invest into research and development instead of wasting money into dead-end financial schemes and bullshit jobs. Everyone wins.

908B64B197• 5 years ago

Maybe that's a good thing. It's insane how people in service industries are treated - like they're less than human

Wait until you hear about healthcare. Not sure how you would staff an hospital floor once UBI is introduced.

tremon6• 5 years 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_cz6• 5 years 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.

systemvoltage2• 5 years 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.

otherme1234• 5 years 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.

nopenopenopeno• 5 years ago

Yeah, anyone trying to live on basic income would be resigned to rural squalor with no opportunity to speak of. Rent prices in those areas would be saran wrapped to basic income levels, making them impossible to get out of.

godelski7• 5 years 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• 5 years 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• 5 years 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• 5 years 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_cz6• 5 years 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.

agumonkey2• 5 years 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• 5 years 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.

jjk1666• 5 years 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• 5 years 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.

Natsu5• 5 years 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• 5 years 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• 5 years 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• 5 years 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• 5 years 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.

0xfaded2• 5 years 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.

kwhitefoot4• 5 years 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.

ksec• 5 years 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".

zozbot2348• 5 years 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.

aembleton2• 5 years 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.

truculent• 5 years ago

So wouldn’t we expect the market to make those jobs more attractive, either through better pay or better conditions?

rbobby• 5 years 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.

wpietri2• 5 years 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• 5 years 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.

MisterBastahrd• 5 years 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.

whateveracct• 5 years 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.

11thEarlOfMar• 5 years 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• 5 years 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?

mlyle3• 5 years 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• 5 years 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.

tekknik38• 5 years 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.

the_real_me• 5 years ago

I strongly suspect that the lion's share of UBI would go directly to landlords or existing property owners.

Hokusai• 5 years ago

Like it happens with current salaries. The problem is not universal income but an economic system that rewards rent seeking.

srcreigh3• 5 years ago

Would they get any more than the status quo?

I suspect the extra support may translate to decreased profits for landowners. Tenants would have more time and money to file maintenance issues and represent themselves in the legal system, which would cost landowners. In Ontario it costs $50 and takes a lot of time and energy to file a complaint to the LTB. Tenants would also have more ability to change their situation in response to abuse, shop around for a better deal on housing, etc.

jeffbee2• 5 years ago

In many U.S. states you need not even bother going to court, because of robust "implied warranty of habitability" statutes and precedents. A person who experiences real habitability issues such as no heat, no cooking fuel, doors or windows that don't close and lock, etc after notifying landlords and waiting a reasonable time (which is as short as 24 hours in the case of no heat) can simply hire someone to fix it and deduct the actual cost from rent. It would be on the landlord to initiate legal action, if they disagreed with the outcome. The tenant has no obligation to go through courts.

teakettle423• 5 years ago

This sounds like it would quickly devolve into a very socially unstable state.

For every legitimate complainant, there’d be a hundred entitled moochies with nothing better to do than work the bureaucracy to their own benefit, entirely at the cost of the few remaining people actually doing any work.

onion2k3• 5 years ago

Not if it was paid for by a tax on rental income. 100% tax on everything over the equivalent mortgage payment on the property would be a lovely cap on rent values.

josephcsible10• 5 years ago

There are some benefits to being a tenant, but your proposal would basically make it impossible, since your landlord would have to be losing money.

kube-system5• 5 years ago

There's not an objective number for that. But if we assume there is, then you are simply guaranteeing that no rentals will exist, because landlords pay higher taxes than a resident mortgagor, and they have overhead.

jopython• 5 years ago

Why stop at 'Basic income'? Why not 'Basic Housing', 'Basic Food' and others?

throwawayffffas2• 5 years ago

The basic idea behind income instead of housing/food is that individuals are better at figuring out their needs than the state.

Apocryphon2• 5 years ago

Good point. As production technology improves alongside automation, bringing us closer towards a post-scarcity civilization, society will be able to make more guarantees, as they are materially trivial to create.

goodpoint4• 5 years ago

Yes, most developed countries have programs for affordable housing and food supplements. UBI helps with that as well.

sib301• 5 years ago

This is what the military does. Of course, you’re expected to work.

Income Basic Allowance for Housing Basic Allowance for Sustenance

Dylan1680712• 5 years ago

Well in the US governments should do more to ensure cheap housing exists, and that groceries are available.

But providing it for free is less optimal than a basic income.

Either way it's a pretty direct tradeoff. Basic Housing and Basic Food would mean that a much smaller Basic Income would do a similar job.

bryanlarsen11• 5 years ago

UBI makes it a lot easier to move someplace cheaper rather than being forced to live where the jobs are.

rabuse2• 5 years ago

Wouldn't those prices spike with supply/demand though?

sudosysgen2• 5 years ago

This is true, which is why UBI would have to be combined with housing reform. Both are doable and needed.

One of my favourites is to encourage cooperative housing and to have the government become a landlord itself, but with rents capped to a share of income. This way, the government would have an incentive to make the system more efficient and to make more and better public housing, as the money would go back to the government budget and they would be able to lower taxes as a result. At the same time, the private housing market will have to compete. The idea of allowing the government to make a reasonable profit as measured by outcomes to the consumer is very successful for many endeavors, and it makes it very unpopular to cut public services as it would necessitate a tax increase. We have done this in Quebec with Hydro-Quebec and, unlike many crown corporations, it has resisted privatization, while still providing the best prices to the consumer in the world for electricity, without any subsidies (as it generates net profit for the government), and many very good jobs.

Beyond this, it has caused cascading positive externalities not only in Quebec but throughout the world - as it has pioneered mass production techniques of LiFePO4 battery technology that is now becoming dominant for EVs, greatly improved brushless hub motor technology which is now used in many low-cost EVs, and facilitated the construction of renewable energy projects.

This however requires a large change in ideology, as current neoliberal and neoconservative dominant ideologies not only refuse to admit the fact that the government can provide a better overall service than the free market, but are deathly afraid of allowing state owned enterprises to compete with private businesses as a matter of principle. This limits the scope of solutions to many problems.

passivate2• 5 years ago

but with rents capped to a share of income. This way, the government would have an incentive to make the system more efficient and to make more and better public housing, as the money would go back to the government budget and they would be able to lower taxes as a result.

Can you explain this a bit more? What would be their sources of income other than rents? I am not able to follow your efficiency argument.

greatpostman• 5 years ago

Pay me enough to live without working and I will quit my job and work on a moonshot startup/interesting tech all day. Most likely nothing will come of it, but I won’t be working

kevingadd5• 5 years ago

Is that a typo? You just said you'll be working, then said you won't be working

goldenkey• 5 years ago

He'd be in what capitalists like to call a "quantitative supercommission."

nightski2• 5 years ago

It's pretty clear to me he meant working on someone else's payroll.

european321• 5 years ago

No, I think they said that they think that "working" towards an idea, a moonshot, wouldn't feel like working

MarkLowenstein• 5 years ago

I'm with you. If I got basic income I would absolutely quit work and not go back. The burden is now on these researchers to find at least two people who would go to work only if basic income were instituted, to balance us out.

travisb• 5 years ago

I'd also stop working, though instead of working on a moonshot I'd go camping, work on my garden, and spend long days playing games with friends and family.

There is a qualitative difference between needing to spend 40+ hours a week to sustain yourself versus spending 0 hours. If one need to spend those hours anyways it makes sense to maximize the income from doing so.

It may take a generation, but I think most people would eventually come to the conclusion that the rat race isn't worth it when zero hours is an option.

quotemstr4• 5 years ago

Yes it would.

Look: we just went through a massive worker shortage caused by overly generous stimulus benefits and rent subsidies. Have we forgotten already?

What am I supposed to believe? A microfoundations paper from a field with infamous replication problems on one hand, or, on the other hand, common sense and my own lying eyes?

Of course UBI would reduce propensity to work. Only people with an axe to grind can seriously believe otherwise.

sschueller2• 5 years ago

So poor people are lazy and the rich aren't?

Maybe all these people don't want to work these kinda of jobs and are moving into other sectors.

Maybe working conditions and pay need to be drastically improved in those jobs.

quotemstr4• 5 years ago

So poor people are lazy and the rich aren't?

Honestly, yes --- not always, but frequently.

I am sick and tired of the mentality embedded in the sentence I quoted. Do you think the rich are rich for no reason at all? That their rewards are unfair?

Success is not the universe sprinkling good fortune on mankind at random: success comes from hard work and the courage to take advantage of the opportunities that time presents to everyone from time to time.

Let's be honest with ourselves for one and acknowledge the connection between teachable personal qualities and desirable outcomes.

vl• 5 years ago

So poor people are lazy and the rich aren't?

I’ll tell you a secret: rich people don’t work. Most rich people just work enough to maintain their wealth. You just don’t see them because there are not CEOs or celebrities.

nightski2• 5 years ago

I have relatively poor parents. They work extremely hard, but for some reason they choose to work super hard on all the wrong things. It's almost like they are obsessed with busy work. I try to help them but it often falls on deaf ears.

I don't believe poor people are lazy. I think it's just very hard to make the mental shift needed to pull yourself out of that situation (which they are likely not even capable of doing on their own without help - very few are).

This is just my personal opinion, but people need more than money thrown at them. They need help. If we are going to help the poor in society it's going to take time investment and personal relationships. That's what so few in America (even myself, I'll admit it) want to hear.

josephcsible10• 5 years ago

"went through" is an understatement. We're still in the massive worker shortage.

Mizza2• 5 years ago

"Worker shortage" is capitalist propaganda. There is a well-paying job shortage.

jyounker2• 5 years ago

we just went through a massive worker shortage caused by overly generous stimulus benefits and rent subsidies. Have we forgotten already?

Nope we haven't. We just paid attention to the facts:

Some states turned down additional unemployment benefits. Those states continued to have same employment issues as the states that maintained benefits.

So clearly the issue was not the unemployment benefits.

sschueller2• 5 years ago

Just look at the billionaires. They are all still working even after reaching retirement age.

orasis• 5 years ago

You’re mixing cause and effect. They became billionaires in large part because of their work ethic.

brailsafe4• 5 years ago

That's what they'd certainly like you to believe. The success of ycombinator depends on it!

throwhauser• 5 years ago

They're billionaires because of the work ethic, not necessarily their work ethic. Bezos isn't optimizing his own productivity, he optimizes his employees productivity and spends his time as he pleases. He keeps the gains from the productivity regardless.

EDIT: Actually I don't know if Bezos optimizes his own productivity or not. Nevertheless, his own productivity is a drop in the bucket compared to the thousands who work for his companies.

DoingIsLearning• 5 years ago

They became billionaires in large part because of their work ethic.

Tell me you're an American without telling me you're an American. :)

Thomas Piketty wrote a book on this topic (which I highly recommend) called "Capital in the Twenty-First Century".

Grustaf2• 5 years ago

Few of them work the checkout at walmart, or in a cement factory.

BoumTAC4• 5 years ago

They are working on what they like, not what is needed, it's totally different. If the thing they do doesn't interested them anymore they will stop.

gruez• 5 years ago

They simulated the reward structure of different forms of social security in an experiment. ‘We got people to do a task on a computer,’ says De Kwaadsteniet. ‘In multiple rounds, which represented the months they had to work, they did a boring task in which they had to put points on a bar. The more of these they did, the more money they earned.’

"short term experiments done in a lab" seems to be psychology's equivalent of "in vitro" (aka. in a test tube). I'm not really sure how you can draw any conclusions about someone's lifetime behavior, using a experiment that looks at the behavior of people sitting at a few hours at a computer.

kevingadd5• 5 years ago

There have already been real world basic income experiments with similar outcomes

pc866• 5 years ago

The fact that properly done experiments have the same outcome doesn't mean that these "let's go to the psych department from 1-4 this afternoon to get a $50 gift card" pseudo-experiments hold any real value.

HPsquared• 5 years ago

They have the same problem: the participants know it's only an experiment. They know it's temporary.

CaptainNegative• 5 years ago

If you're referring to longer-term experiments, do they show actual statistical significance? One of the two I've read through, the UBC experiment, showed a similar outcome but was only significant at the p≈0.13 or p≈0.24 level, depending on the precise statement of the null hypothesis, which is not particularly enthralling. The Stockton one I recall showing something similar but don't have the precise numbers for.

missedthecue13• 5 years ago

If I'm receiving $1000 a month for a six month program run by a university research group, which states very clearly that the program will end after six months, I'm not going to go quit my job.

That's the problem with these "studies". They are completely different from a permanent government program. They can't tell you the impact on inflation, the impact on the labor market, or if it is affordable over the long term.

KerryJones2• 5 years ago

Can you show some of these? My research has shown the opposite

quotemstr4• 5 years ago

Yep. Meaningless. Yet the paper will be blasted from one end of the earth to the other by people who care more about their agenda than the universe's frequently unhappy truths.

Probably the same people who said that increasing the money supply wouldn't cause inflation because MMT or some other tendentious garbage.

onion2k3• 5 years ago

Meaningless.

It's not meaningless. It's not enough to prove that basic income will have a long term positive impact, but it is enough to show further experimentation on a larger, more long term scale is worthwhile. It's decidedly unreasonable, not to mention unscientific, to dismiss something because you don't like it.

AnIdiotOnTheNet12• 5 years ago

Is it a truth though? Or is it merely a stubbornly persistent instilled cultural belief? The whole point of experiments is to separate the two.

ashtonkem8• 5 years ago

universe's frequently unhappy truths.

This phrase is usually used to force through otherwise unpopular economic policies. But here’s the thing, this isn’t actually an argument. You’re unilaterally asserting that you’re right and that anyone who disagrees with you is a child that refuses to accept “hard truths”. But you have offered literally no evidence for your assertions, only bluster. This is mere abuse of rhetoric, not an argument.

Oh, and it’s funny how only other people have an “agenda”. As if you aren’t also expressing a policy preference too.

CoastalCoder2• 5 years ago

I suspect the parent post is downvoted because it's guessing that bad behavior will occur, and then criticizing the anticipated perpetrators.

I'd prefer a comment that simply and politely argues for a particular interpretation.

ChrisLomont11• 5 years ago

Multiple studies of where basic income was tried in the real world found it to reduce work.

For example, "Manitoba, Canada experimented with Mincome, a basic guaranteed income, in the 1970s. In the town of Dauphin, Manitoba, labor only decreased by 13%, much less than expected" [1]. There are plenty of others.

I expect a targeted need use of scarce resources (tax money) is a much better use for helping those who need it, instead of ham handedly giving it regardless of need, thereby shorting those who need it at the benefit of many who do not.

And the current inflation (and previous events where govts gave out decent sums of cash to help short term other econ issues) shows what happens when people get money for free - prices rise to absorb it. The reason being if person X is willing to put in pain Y for product Z, this does not change if you rescale the meaning of money.

Product Z simply rises to cause person to put in the same pain to obtain it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_basic_income

rcMgD2BwE72F• 5 years ago

Bullshit work?

pc866• 5 years ago

UBI without the U is just welfare, which is fine, but it's kind of odd to say that UBI would be better if we just did "thing that makes it by definition no longer UBI."

I totally agree with you on re: inflation, though. Some organization, presumably government, will need to manage any UBI implementation, and government is nothing if not an inefficient allocator of its resources. I worry any broad national UBI system will just raise inflation to absorb the prices, while increases tax on the entire population, and losing a non-trivial percentage of that increase in the transfer.

rottencupcakes2• 5 years ago

Assuming we don’t want to MMT / money printer this, to keep a balanced budget, any UBI system would have to be accompanied by an increase in taxes.

These taxes would presumably be very progressive.

This effectively would end up more than negating the effect of UBI on the richer people, thus turning it into a directed welfare program.

UBI and directed welfare are essentially same same.

TehCorwiz• 5 years ago

How much of that labor reduction was second jobs?

jhauris• 5 years ago

If UBI could be implemented in around the same cost as the welfare programs it replaces, it would have a net zero effect on inflation. The downside of nearly all current forms of welfare (in the U.S.) is that they largely enforce the poverty gap. You get to a point where a small increase in pay causes a large decrease in benefits, and you become trapped unless you can get a large enough pay increase to jump the gap.

The two big ifs are: would UBI be the same cost as current welfare programs, and can we actually get rid of current welfare if we roll out UBI? There is a tremendous amount of overhead involved in current welfare programs, so it's not unreasonable that the first question is could be resolved. Politically, the second issue seems unlikely to be implemented.

ChrisLomont11• 5 years ago

If UBI could be implemented in around the same cost as the welfare programs it replaces, it would have a net zero effect on inflation

It cannot, unless you're ok with screwing those already on such programs. Do the math, and you'll find it is not even close. Welfare programs (unless you include SS) are given to a tiny amount of people - spreading that across a large group of people simply screws those who need it most.

If you include SS, now again you're screwing old people who many times need the money to give it to people capable of work.

The downside of nearly all current forms of welfare (in the U.S.) is that they largely enforce the poverty gap. You get to a point where a small increase in pay causes a large decrease in benefits, and you become trapped unless you can get a large enough pay increase to jump the gap.

This common claim is not true. There are ample people moving out of such program regularly, and many of them have limited lifetime benefits.

would UBI be the same cost as current welfare programs,

No. I've been down this set of math lots of times. Do it - all welfare budgets are public, population is public, it's easy to estimate.

PragmaticPulp4• 5 years ago

If UBI could be implemented in around the same cost as the welfare programs it replaces, it would have a net zero effect on inflation.

UBI is, by definition, Universal (e.g. given to everyone). Welfare programs are highly selective and only apply to a small number of people.

The only way to make them cost the same is to massively reduce the benefits given to the small number of welfare recipients, then give the balance to people who didn't previously qualify for welfare.

That's never going to happen, politically.

tgv• 5 years ago

There is a tremendous amount of overhead involved in current welfare programs

Take the salaries of the people involved, and divide that over the entire country. Will that suffice? I don't think so, because it isn't as if 25% of the population is involved in distributing welfare.

If UBI could be implemented in around the same cost as the welfare programs it replaces, it would have a net zero effect on inflation.

Not necessarily. If the government gave everybody a minimum wage extra, landlords could raise their prices further, shops, restaurants, construction firms, etc. would have to increase salaries to maintain lowly paid staff and raise prices, etc. There's a distinct risk of inflation involved in handing out money.

HideousKojima• 5 years ago

I'm about as anti big government and anti welfare programs as you can get, but the overhead costs of most welfare programs isn't nearly as much as UBI proponents seem to think they are. Food stamps, one of the more inefficient ones, costs about 15 cents in overhead for every dollar in benefits. Most other programs like social security etc. range between half a cent to 5 cents for every dollar of benefits.

rwmj• 5 years ago

Multiple studies of where basic income was tried in the real world found it to reduce work.

Isn't that a good outcome? Humans get more leisure time.

caskstrength7• 5 years ago

Not for the other group who will have products of their labor "redistributed" to pay for other's leisure time?

ChrisLomont11• 5 years ago

A lowering of work means a lowering of goods means society, including those not working, get less.

Sure, more leisure time is good, but mostly only so if mankind still gets the goods and services they are used to. UBI would not do that.

When national productivity drops a few percent, it's a recession, and people notice the lack of goods and services.

People can already work less. But people also like goods and services.

criddell2• 5 years ago

I expect a targeted need use of scarce resources (tax money) is a much better use for helping those who need it

That might be true but it also might not be true. If you add a bunch of rules to the program it can increase the administrative cost a lot and leave you with less money to distribute. I'm not sure if it's true, but when I was a kid I heard that Canada's baby bonus (Canada Child Benefit) was made universal because of this.

wefarrell3• 5 years ago

Exactly. Part of the appeal of UBI is that it doesn't come with a ton of bureaucratic overhead.

ClumsyPilot3• 5 years ago

"shows what happens when people get money for free - prices rise to absorb it"

A - so prices of $40,000 cars have increased becauae people got $2000 or whatever for free? What is that as percentage of wages, 0.5%

How about this massive supply chain and manufacturing disruption, could that somehow be responsible?

B - the wealthy and corporations were getting money for free for 20 years, it's called quanittative easing, and it caused massive inflation of asset prices

"pain Y for product Z, this does not change if you rescale the meaning of money."

Usually economic theories talk about productivity, resources and velocity of money. This stuff about pain sounds like it came out of a sadistic religious cult.

ChrisLomont11• 5 years ago

How about this massive supply chain and manufacturing disruption, could that somehow be responsible?

That is part of it. Fortunately there are plenty of other examples in US and other country history where money handouts are clearly a driver, so it's not a question of whether or not easy money adds to inflation.

As mot economists put it, all long term inflation is ultimately the result of more money in the system.

This stuff about pain sounds like it came out of a sadistic religious cult.

Not a rebuttal. If Bob willing to work job X for Y hours to get apartment Z, simply rescaling the value of money (inflation) will not change that Bob is willing to work job X for Y hours to get apartment Z.

Do you think this is not true? That he gets 37 yotobucks or 19 fishcoins or 39801892 bubblenotes is irrelevant. He is willing to trade time and effort for goods. If the value of the currency moves he is still willing to do this.

Free money will not, and historically has not, come without costs.

josephh• 5 years ago

It doesn't seem to me that apartment rents going up by $n/month when UBI of $n/month rolls out is an impossible proposition, since everyone can afford extra $n. Can you elaborate as to why this wouldn't happen?

PragmaticPulp4• 5 years ago

For example, "Manitoba, Canada experimented with Mincome, a basic guaranteed income, in the 1970s. In the town of Dauphin, Manitoba, labor only decreased by 13%, much less than expected"

The phrasing tries to downplay the number, but 1 in 8 people stopping work is very significant.

And the current inflation (and previous events where govts gave out decent sums of cash to help short term other econ issues) shows what happens when people get money for free - prices rise to absorb it. The reason being if person X is willing to put in pain Y for product Z, this does not change if you rescale the meaning of money.

Yes: If you give everyone extra money and theoretically nobody quits working, it's hard to argue that the extra money wouldn't just go to rising prices.

We're already seeing this with supply-constrained resources like housing: In hot cities, people will pay whatever they have to in order to outbid their competitors for houses or apartments. Pouring more money into the situation would only make the numbers go up, but the root problem still exists.

loceng5• 5 years ago

Do you know how many people stopped working when automation began?

snek_case• 5 years ago

The phrasing tries to downplay the number, but 1 in 8 people stopping work is very significant.

I agree that seems very significant. Unemployment is considered to be quite high when it's at 8% for instance.

During the pandemic, we've had to pay people monthly cheques because we forced businesses to shut down, and it's been difficult to get people to return to work. Granted, this isn't the same as UBI, and there are conflating factors, but currently, we're in a situation where we have high inflation and a labor shortage. That's not very encouraging.

In my mind, if we want to implement something like UBI, we need a way to control the inflation it might generate. It might also not be realistic to do this until we have something like general purpose robots to counter the labor shortage. Another problem is just how we finance something like this. Increasing taxes on the general population seems like a pretty bad idea. We'd have to fund it through money printing, but again, how do we control the resulting inflation? High sales taxes? Increasing income taxes in the higher brackets would create a situation where it's less worthwhile to work hard.

retrac• 5 years ago

You are correct. But as the Mincome report itself noted, some of the people who were most likely to decrease hours were young parents, especially single mothers, and students who returned to school. At least some of that decrease was a positive social outcome, probably.

Kim_Bruning22• 5 years ago

From your source:

"However, the only two groups who worked significantly less were new mothers, and teenagers working to support their families. New mothers spent this time with their infant children, and working teenagers put significant additional time into their schooling"

Note that 13% is likely the net value, so if this group slowed down, possibly other groups actually started working harder at the same time, compensating for some of the loss.

nine_zeros• 5 years ago

It will not reduce the willingness to work but certainly will reduce the willingness of workers to suck it up for low pay, shoddy benefits, lack of holidays, no job security and importantly, the lack of dignity.

The most recent American cash handout is the closest we have come to a large scale UBI and it does exactly what we expect humans to do - follow Maslow's pyramid.

fullshark• 5 years ago

This article doesn't have details on the experiment and how much money "social security" was, also it's incredibly easy to generate an experiment which shows no effect if it's underpowered or the effect is minor.

I used to believe this, based on the last 2 years I no longer do. I hope we get to a basic income state so that we change what motivates people to work (from push to pull) but I still maintain a large number of people will choose not to work if they can achieve their personal level of comfort with a basic income.

seibelj3• 5 years ago

We did a type of UBI experiment in the United States with the universal Covid payments. Low income workers got 80% of the salary. Many chose not to work. Why work 40 hours to make 20% more money than the dole? I’m acquaintances with two local business owners, a roofer and a general contractor, and they told me plainly that they were understaffed because their workers were taking a vacation until the Covid payments ended.

Seems like a more valid experiment to me.

kevingadd5• 5 years ago

You're ignoring the fact that they chose not to work during a pandemic, at jobs that almost universally had very poor protection for employees - little to no PPE, in some cases not even hand sanitizer and/or soap (i.e. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/mar/18/amazon-wh..., though I can't remember which warehouse had no soap). That is not applicable to UBI.

Also keep in mind that during this time period many schools were closed, so some of these people were staying home to monitor their children, not just "deciding not to work". Parenting is labor.

tengbretson• 5 years ago

You're ignoring the fact that they chose not to work during a pandemic, at jobs that almost universally had very poor protection for employees - little to no PPE, in some cases not even hand sanitizer and/or soap

Are you friends with any roofers?

seibelj3• 5 years ago

We need roofs fixed and structures to be made safe to live in. We are still in a pandemic - should we keep paying people not to work? Eventually nature ruins our structures and people are homeless. I just don’t see how your logic is sound.

brailsafe4• 5 years ago

Which is fine, because general contractor business owners and roofing company owners do the least arduous work and make quite a lot of money.

finiteseries• 5 years ago

The question is whether UBI reduces willingness to work, not whether small business owners struggling agrees with your politics, i.e. it is not “fine”.

jltsiren• 5 years ago

The actual UBI element in Covid payments was minimal. Most of the money went into traditional unemployment benefits, which make low-income jobs unattractive by increasing the effective tax rate to something like 80% or 90%. That's one of the key issues UBI is supposed to fix.

UBI would require complete restructuring of income taxes and benefits. Everyone would receive a fixed sum every month, standard deductions and other common deductions/tax credits would go away, and you would pay something like 40-50% combined income/payroll tax for every dollar you earn.

seattle_spring• 5 years ago

They "chose" not to work because the whole entire point was encouraging people not to work during a pandemic.

InitialLastName• 5 years ago

It's not basic income if it goes away when you get a job.

A large part of the problem that UBI was envisioned to solve is that means-tested welfare systems can find a steady-state equilibrium as poverty traps (as you noted, if you lose your welfare upon getting a job, the welfare support itself becomes a disincentive to working).

daenz• 5 years ago

The key question is: would it reduce people's willingness to work on things that provide objective monetary value?

charcircuit• 5 years ago

Anecdotally it reduced my willingness to work. I just watch youtube, use blender, program random things, play video games, etc with all of my free time. There are plenty of fun ways I can spend my time.

dwighttk• 5 years ago

We got people to do a task on a computer,’ says De Kwaadsteniet. ‘In multiple rounds, which represented the months they had to work, they did a boring task in which they had to put points on a bar. The more of these they did, the more money they earned.

I find it hilarious that they think they can reach the conclusion they did based on that description of the experiment.

notahacker3• 5 years ago

It's advocacy, not experimentation. That applies to most of the more in depth studies too, which tend to spend a lot of time and money concluding if you give a cohort extra money for a year or two, they're a bit better off as a result but haven't been able to afford to retire, something the study designers knew from the outset. We have another much larger and long running experiment in guaranteeing people livable incomes for the rest of their life called the pension system, which designers of UBI studies would like you to ignore because it only works by restricting when you're allowed to claim it.

lbj• 5 years ago

Well, in Denmark we have the equivalent of Basic income and I'd say we have a major problem with peoples willingness to work. Some families are on welfare for generations now.

kube-system5• 5 years ago

We don't have UBI in the US and many people here would say the same.

I think many are quick to conclude motivation is the cause without considering any less visible underlying reasons that cause people to be in those situations.

pizza234• 5 years ago

Could you elaborate on how would one sustain themselves without UBI in the US (according who those here who would say the same)?

Things that I typically read:

- the lower class struggle even to sustain themselves for days/weeks in between jobs

- in the middle class there is people who fear not having health insurance in between jobs

How can one survive in US without any job at all? US's welfare is radically different from Denmark's.

throwawayffffas2• 5 years ago

One could argue that welfare is the symptom not the cause.

rabuse2• 5 years ago

I always tell people, "Life is inherently lazy."

emteycz2• 5 years ago

How do you know that, and how do you explain that more people get on welfare as it gets available to them, even though they have good employment options?

Moreover, why does that matter at all - how is it fair to those still working, who are forced to pay for those who don't want to? I'm all for welfare - helping people in need. But I'm not going to fund someone's lifestyle.

BoumTAC4• 5 years ago

I do agree with this. Here in France I'm currently unemployed and I have a lot of compensation from government welfare.

I'm looking for a job and every time I apply to a job, I have a little voice in my head saying : are you sure you want to work there ? You currently have the opportunity to do what you want and learn whatever you want for free, but if you work there it will be boring af and you will not be able to do what you want.

So currently I'm reading a lot of books, doing coursera course I'm interested in and doing a lot of sport which is impossible when I have a job because reading takes hours just to read one book.

jeremyjh3• 5 years ago

Doesn't it also make a difference that you lose welfare benefits when you start working? Maybe you could just work part time if all earned income was supplemental with no welfare gap.

jeremyjh3• 5 years ago

In Denmark I don't think everyone gets payments from the government regardless of need do they? The welfare system is just for people who are unemployed/disabled right? This doesn't really tell us much about how UBI would work since losing welfare benefits is a disincentive to work that you don't have with UBI.

This article says UBI has been controversial for a long time in Denmark but is on the political agenda again recently:

https://basisindkomst.dk/basic-income-borgerloen-in-denmark-...

lordnacho2• 5 years ago

The Danish system has the same problem as all other means-tested systems: massive effective tax rate once you start working.

augustuspolius7• 5 years ago

So do you want to have both UBI and a low effective tax?

Kim_Bruning22• 5 years ago

Doesn't Denmark have a normal European style "Conditional" welfare system? That has very different dynamics from an UnConditional basic income.

Often the way that welfare is implemented is that if you can't work, you get welfare. This seems like a really obvious, logical, good idea. But there's a trap (a welfare trap!). Because on the other side, when you start working again, you stop getting welfare. And your net income might actually go down.

A rational actor might therefore end up stuck in this local optimum where they stay on welfare and never start working.

One argument for UBI is that it eliminates the drop in income associated with the return to work (because you get it unconditionally: whether you are working or not) . A theoretical prediction might therefore be that more people would work if UBI is available.

In practical tests so far this doesn't seem to have quite panned out. This is due to UBI having multiple effects simultaneously. However, I would be most amused to see if in some situations this does became the dominant effect, and the number of working people went up.

rocqua5• 5 years ago

I think a significant difference between the Danish system and UBI is that working people do _not_ get Danish welfare. In the Netherlands we have a very similar system, except with a legal obligation to apply for jobs or do volunteer work in order to keep the welfare.

If I guessed correct, then the Danish is significantly different from UBI, because that system discourages working. Starting work means losing your welfare. Or at best every euro you earn from working is subtracted from your welfare. Besides that, in such systems you need a complicated bureaucracy to figure out who should and should not get welfare. This bureaucracy needs to contend with fraud, and is probably rewarded for giving as few people welfare as possible. This leads to a bureaucracy that is somewhat hostile to those it is meant to serve.

With Universal basic income, you lose the discouragement to work. You lose the very complicated and hostile bureaucracy (with exceptions for emigrants and immigrants probably). And you lose some of the political pressure to cut welfare, because everyone gets UBI so there is less jealousy.

In the Netherlands there have been cases of people on welfare needing to pay back thousands of euros because sometimes their mother did groceries for them. That was officially 'income' they failed to declare, and therefore their welfare was retroactively cut. That is just inhumane, and stupid. It means anyone on welfare who cannot make ends meet cannot ask anyone for financial help, because that would cost them their welfare.

oxymoran• 5 years ago

My anecdote: It would reduce my willingness to work for others but it certainly would not reduce my willingness to work for myself. And it would allow me to take on entrepreneurial risks that I other wise can’t afford at this place in my life.

swalsh• 5 years ago

Something not talked about often, but I wonder if basic income might lower the "applicability" of what people spend their time on. I know if money were not an issue I'd spend my time working on projects that sound fun, but might not have a path to profitability.

Money, besides being a motivator is also a signal to markets on what people want.

asdff• 5 years ago

I've had a few landlords that just don't have any job at all and just ride off their cash flow. Boomer landlords of mine especially who got in on the property early before the market swelled in the last few decades just live like freespirited hippies. No other job, engaging in art or creative things, eating and drinking around town with their partner, and smoking a lot of weed. Even with this decadent living on their end and supposed enlightened disposition, getting simple repairs is still like pulling teeth.

augustuspolius7• 5 years ago

This argument doesn’t get enough attention. There is a large population right now that has enough money not to work and - perhaps surprisingly to some - they do not engage in creative side projects for fun. They choose not to work.

NoblePublius• 5 years ago

Job applications for my Florida restaurants increased 800% MoM the week after Florida ended enhanced unemployment.

dukeofdoom• 5 years ago

How's the reset going so far?

Everyone enjoying the lowering of standards? Higher food prices, and just general decline. Should we keep going until people are waiting in lines to buy food. Because this is how we get there.

c7DJTLrn• 5 years ago

Cool but most psychological studies are not reproducible. I'd be interested to see a large scale trial run.

josephcsible10• 5 years ago

We've had that in the US for about the last two years, and it had the opposite result.

brimble2• 5 years ago

1) There were some confounding factors, obviously, and 2) Though also polluted by unusual circumstances, didn't we get a bit of a test with this when some states pulled support before others did, and didn't that show little to no effect on employment and job-seeking rates?

notreallyserio• 5 years ago

Unfortunately without the paper or details this thread is going to turn in to a shit show of opinions (including my own, doh) and little concrete information. Gotta flag it. It'd be more interesting to see the actual paper and reasoned replies.

golemotron• 5 years ago

I'm not sure why anyone would think that this would not vary by culture.

mbesto• 5 years ago

Is it just me or is it impossible to mimic (and therefore test the psychology) of the real impact of UBI unless you implement it across a nation-state. For example, let's say you test in a small town in Minnesota. It's impossible to rule out variables such as federal taxes, healthcare costs, mobility, etc.

I therefore think its impossible to test UBI on the scale of the US for example.

biql• 5 years ago

I think it’s the same reason people rarely choose frugal FIRE approach, that is, live spending as little as possible to optimise for early retirement. People generally have way too many desires for it too be enough. The pecking order dynamic, social pressure, etc, are far stronger forces I think.

bluedino• 5 years ago

Of course it would. Look what a few "stimulus checks" did.

SV_BubbleTime2• 5 years ago

We didn’t lose our entry level employees and warehouse workers because of the checks. But we did lose them to the increased unemployment benefits.

We had guys working for $18 quickly so the math and figure out they would make $24 an hour not working. And they did. Our CFO took covid very seriously and laid them off or did whatever we had to do do they could take advantage of this.

We’re still having trouble getting people to fill those positions now even that the rates are back to normal.

Three guys I know of all started working construction and were being paid cash under the table. So making the $24 plus the cash, and are still doing that. So… I’m not sure about this whole thing.

leifg• 5 years ago

The problem I have with the UBI is that you absolutely have to nail it on the first try in order for it to succeed. A great example is the housing market (in the US but also applies to a lot of European countries).

Regardless of UBI there will always be locations that will be more popular than others. I'm not saying everyone wants to live in San Francisco or Manhattan but I don't think supply will always exceed demand.

Assuming this there will be regions where demand for housing exceeds supply. So naturally the price of rent will go up. In some places that means you will have to find a job in order to be able to pay rent. At this point people are again subject to the current patterns of exploitation.

Sure if you can't make rent in one of the coastal cities you can always move inland and have a nicer life but even leaving money issues aside there are so many factors why people are not willing or even unable to move (proximity to family and friends is a big deal).

All that is to say, before you can even think of a UBI you will have to first solve the housing crisis because at best UBI will mitigate it. And this is just one example (cough health care).

blamestross• 5 years ago

As long as UBI is never "localized" to regional costs of living it can act to revitalize housing markets in inland America. Housing isn't a gobal supply problem, it's that there isn't enough supply near sources of income. Unlink needing access to work from where you can live and things will get a LOT better.

respondo21343• 5 years ago

The very first sentence says this work was fudned by "FNV union"but I don't know what that means; the closest I could get was a Dutch trade union?

The fact that they don't define this (apparently) biased conflict, nor link to the actual study makes me immediately question the impartiality of any research.

We also just ran a real world experiment where many of the jobs in question here where impacted by covid and individuals got a flat-rate government cheque, and they DID stay home rather than go back to work the same job once restrictions where removed, so I question any outcomes from a set of behavioural studies that discounts the suppression on low-paying positions.

lucumo• 5 years ago

FNV is the largest federation of unions in the Netherlands. (It's name translates to Federation of Netherlands Unions.)

smm11• 5 years ago

UBI is a tax cut for all.

Which is why it will never happen.

josephcsible10• 5 years ago

No it isn't. A real tax cut wouldn't affect people who don't pay taxes.

panarky• 5 years ago

We'll be a lot better off when we realize that work is not an end in itself.

There's more than enough for everyone.

Society isn't going to collapse if someone doesn't want to work 75 hours a week at three different bullshit jobs.

macinjosh• 5 years ago

I think it would change how long people are willing to work and what people are willing to do for work.

For example, I could imagine less desirable jobs would see a drastic increase in market wages because there would be less people in the position of needing to take any job they can get to scrape by. Undoubtedly a good thing!

However, if it costs more money to get basic things done like cleaning and stocking grocery stores prices would inevitably increase to compensate for the added labor costs. How long before the basic income is not enough to cover basics and then it is increased? The whole process then repeats.

So sure, people still work and occupy their time but are they doing things that are valuable? Am I missing something?

digitcatphd• 5 years ago

Behavioral experiments by a cognitive psychologist…

I’m sure this wasn’t done in the field or over an extended period of time.

The only way to truly observe the effects would be historical analysis of similar conditions like unemployment or in extreme cases, socialism.

Such things are fairly well documented and don’t require branches of philosophy to run pseudoscientific studies on

regnull• 5 years ago

I would file it under "things you want to believe are true are actually true" category. It gets clicks.

malsuwaidi• 5 years ago

I work in the field of economic development and this universal basic income debate has been fascinatingly ideological with little grounding in fieldwork reality. There are stones in this debate that nobody wants to touch; the relationship to work of different cultures around the world for one, as well as the very real effect of reserve wages increasing above the economic opportunities available in remittance receiving communities.

I really wish it was as simple as give people money and we will get economic development across the board, if that was the case a lot of sub-Saharan africa wouldn’t be in the situation it is right now.

teucris8• 5 years ago

Would it really be so bad if some people stopped working altogether?

One of the proposed justifications for UBI is that automation creates wealth that could (or in some arguments, should) go to everyone rather than the ultra wealthy. That automation is taking up a larger and larger slice of the workforce, reducing the need for people to work.

Many people will choose to do work that gives them meaning. Some people will do unpleasant jobs because since they can’t be automated, they pay well. And some won’t work at all. Is it so bad if there is an entire class of people who just don’t work?

missedthecue13• 5 years ago

Fewer people working reduces the size of the pie, making ourselves poorer. So yes. I would say it's a bad thing if we tax society in order to pay able bodied people not to be productive.

teucris8• 5 years ago

But the systems I’m referring to do not suggest taxing the hard work of people. They propose taxing the work of automation.

oneoff7862• 5 years ago

Yes. Because the people most likely to quit are the people at the bottom. We need a lot of bottom tier workers to run society. See how much stuff falls apart right now with the labor shortage.

nouveaux4• 5 years ago

GP is framing his argument based on a world where the lower tier jobs do not exist through automation. So the assumption is that bottom tier work will be replaced by automation, and society will continue to run.

cxf12• 5 years ago

Welfare and Food Stamp Entitlements are Basic Income. And its been proven time and time again, that it incentivizes some people to avoid work.

IndPhysiker• 5 years ago

This makes me remember working in a grocery store as a kid where people would buy steak with their WIC and food stamps that might fill one or two meals. Could it go much farther by buying different things? Of course, but that wasn't as enjoyable, so consequences fall where they must. My worry with UBI is that unless people's choices are removed through a tangled web of attached strings and reporting, the UBI is going to be spent on non-essentials shortly after funds are made available each period and then the story will turn to needing more money as the first UBI isn't enough. The cynic in me says that UBI will just give more money to people without the capacity for managing their money, which is not going to lead to any improvement in their station, only more consuming. Removing the choices just further destroys a free society, but enables waste on a massive scale. I like a good safety net with job training programs should people fall down, but I have about as much hope in being able to dunk as I do that people will suddenly start making good choices when unearned money appears in their wallets each month.

mrkramer• 5 years ago

Back in the day it would but nowadays people are craving luxury goods so they would be forced to work to earn them.

tonymet• 5 years ago

how about the last 2 years ? about 4% of eligible workers stopped working (60% vs 64%)

missedthecue13• 5 years ago

That would be 6.5% of eligible workers quitting.

core-utility• 5 years ago

I may be misguided on this, but I don't believe a critique of UBI is the reduction in an individuals willingness to work, but rather the act of working. Individuals who don't want to work but do so as an understanding of a means to provide for themselves still have an unwillingness to work that wouldn't change if provided UBI, but their likelihood of quitting their job and not filling that time with a productive replacement is what is being questioned by opponents.

meatsauce2• 5 years ago

That's highly doubtful. If you can get by with a hand-out, most with such a low bar won't work unless they are hungry for more.

stevedekorte• 5 years ago

If everyone received basic income, at what point would the majority of voters not see it in their interest to vote for legislators who promise to increase it?

jeremyjh3• 5 years ago

A majority of people are duped into voting against their own interests all the time now, why would UBI change it?

beardedman2• 5 years ago

For me these studies are utterly meaningless without real world long-term data.

would not reduce people’s willingness to work
The psychologists also found an indication that people with a basic income look for work that suits them better.

Note how the authors use the word *willingness" to work. 0 people want to clean toilets or public restrooms for a living. Or be waiting staff at a restaurant. Yet those "grunt work" jobs are often formative in developing grit, social skills & long term prioritisation skills (instant gratification vs. long term payoff). I shudder to think what the consequence would be of participating in a society where you are free to skip the "hard stuff" because it's inconvenient.

smallcrustacean• 5 years ago

Is the only "hard stuff" in life found in employment?

What about losing a friend? Learning who you are in relation to your parents? Attempting to cooperate with a partner? Sacrificing your goals for your children?

Life is much richer than the lessons learned by doing menial labor.

beardedman2• 5 years ago

My comment was specific to employment & "menial labor", as is the issue of universal basic income.

augustuspolius7• 5 years ago

Agreed. The way I see it is that UBI has all the makings of an abusive relationship. One party supports the other, while there is no reciprocation. You don’t have to contribute to the society - the society will support all your basic needs.

Without a strong incentive for reciprocation we are solving half of the problem, while ignoring the negative consequences.

In a way it’s similar to how large mental institutions were closed in the US (the idea that had some merits), and now just ignore people with severe mental problems until they either injure themselves or someone else.

SV_BubbleTime2• 5 years ago

Isn’t the reciprocation that you keep voting for the people that want to send you checks? I’ve yet to see anyone explain how UBI isn’t eventually just buying future votes.

If I see them stand on a stage and tell grandmas they are going to end social security and Medicare - but will send everyone a check for $1000 instead, and I’ll think they are serious about UBI as an economic solution, but “we’ll also end other programs someday” isn’t the leading bullet point.

convolvatron4• 5 years ago

if the 'hard stuff'means earning a pittance so the investor class can sent their children to a decent school and I can't even afford to get treatment for my shot back. or to understand how clueless and narcissistic low level managers can sometimes psychologically abuse their employees. or that no matter how much time and energy I put in I'm never going anywhere.

some of these are lesson we can maybe stop teaching.

Mizza2• 5 years ago

I was, and mostly still am, in favor of basic income, but the effects of the COVID stimulus/PPA on my city (Philadelphia) have thrown some cold water on my idealism.

I lurk on the 'hood'/gang subreddit for the city, and the general consensus there is that the stimulus checks are the reason for the upswing in homicides, which shattered the all-time record this year to over 550, meaning that the murder rate in a city of 1.5 million is now 1/3000 per annum, and far higher if you're of a certain age group in certain neighborhoods.

The reasoning is that cliques which were previously only able to afford one gun for the whole squad can now afford lots more guns, enough for everybody to have their own, and those guns are being used as tools for acquiring even more money.

I think the lesson is strong rebuttal the libertarian argument that basic income can replace a functioning social state - a functioning society requires a lot more hard work than overnight helicopter money.

cassac• 5 years ago

People already don’t have a willingness to work. If you provide the three basic needs plus medical and the internet I’m retiring tomorrow.

Someone• 5 years ago

Not necessarily. Leaving out that word is highly unfair to the authors.

It turns a defensible but also boring claim into one that draws attention, but is as good as impossible to defend.

I think that, looking at pensioners, UBI will lead to people working less. Many of those who can afford to happily are unemployed.

antishatter• 5 years ago

If you give people basic incomes it would follow a Pareto 80/20 rule just like everything else. Duhhhhh

danShumway• 5 years ago

I want UBI to be proven workable, I am actively rooting for it. Philosophically, I believe that any market in which people are coerced into participation through threat of homelessness/poverty is not, at its absolute core, a free market.

Philosophically, I believe that UBI is at some level a question of whether or not free markets actually totally work, because a truly free market is one where people are not forced to choose between bad options -- where they're not being coerced by wage slavery, where they have a choice whether or not to participate in the market itself. So I have personal stake in this, because if UBI gets proven not to work, it then leads me to ask uncomfortable questions like, "is a truly free market actually possible?" Which I don't want to think about. I want UBI to succeed.

But having said that, this is one study undertaken by a small group of psychologists, and it should be viewed through that lens. I understand it's simpler to just say their conclusion in the title, and it doesn't break any site rules, but it misses that every study on UBI is an approximation of what UBI large-scale implementations would be. I feel like people look at isolated experiments with a lot more confidence than they should. I don't like when individual studies get framed as, "this proves X".

It's extremely difficult to reason about what the long-term impacts of UBI will be using short-term studies because people's long-term patterns often differ from their short-term patterns. I do think we should be experimenting more with UBI, I think it's good that this study was done. I'd like to see more studies like this, more real-world tests, and in instances where UBI doesn't work I think we should keep trying different strategies to make it work, because a world where people have universal stability is preferable to a world where they don't.

But it's important to keep in mind that this study doesn't really prove anything, it's just another data point. We don't actually know whether or not basic income would reduce people's willingness to work long-term, this is one data point that suggests it might not.

This pops up in a lot of areas (UBI, inflation, etc) -- basically anything involving the economy. People get very confident about things based on a few data points, and then we get threads talking about how people are 100% certain that stimulus checks caused the chip shortages or some crud. Just make sure you're taking a step back and thinking about these things like a Bayesian, economics is heckin complicated, and I think complicated systems like economics are particularly susceptible to the falacy of, "I've done several hours of research on this, maybe even a full day, and therefore I have a complete, fully formed theory about the entire system works that I will treat as fact."

kerneloftruth• 5 years ago

We just lived through a basic income experiment in the US during 2021 (American rescue plan, rent moratoriums, ...), and it showed indeed that willingness to work greatly decreased.

cbreynoldson• 5 years ago

It may increase their willingness to invest and day-trade so they don't have to work.

jacobn2• 5 years ago

This study and the discussion here reminds me of https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/12/beware-the-man-of-one-... - basically whenever you have a financial or politically motivated topic of study, you'll get numerous serious seeming studies supporting position X, then a thorough debunking of X, then a resounding rebuttal, then more studies taking other positions, those getting debunked & rebutted, meta studies trying to aggregate & tease out who's actually correct, those getting debunked & rebutted, and the fight goes on.

My concern with UBI is more that we're unlikely to be able to fix it if it's actually terrible - once in place, handouts tend to become sacrosanct regardless of efficacy (I'm sure that are exceptions that prove the rule ;) - and it is stupendously expensive.

How about Universal Basic Assistance instead?

We tend to make government assistance be "hard shell, soft center", i.e. hard to qualify for, but once you're in, it's all gravy, unless you do something silly like get back on your feet (see unemployment & disability).

What if we instead switched to a "soft shell, firm center" approach and made it really easy to access assistance funds, but they e.g. got gradually reduced over time as you tap into them? And perhaps you have some skin in the game with a required personal emergency fund? And perhaps you owe some of the assistance $$ back, so that the average person "pays for themselves" over the course of their life?

Just spit-balling. I'm sure there are tons of problems with such an approach as well. But maybe it would still be quite useful for the recipients, and a lot more palatable for the tax payers = more reasonable to actually implement?

mrfusion• 5 years ago

Critical question: do we have the right willingness to work right now? Could it be too high?

throwaway49274• 5 years ago

The study aside, it would reduce MY willingness to work and I have to imagine there are a lot of people, working a lot shittier jobs, out there who feel the same. In the end, the jobs still need to be done, so wages will need to go up, and the cost of the thing these jobs produce will go up, and then, inflation. Isn't that obvious?

mcs5280• 5 years ago

My fear is landlords will just increase rent by the UBI amount.

thinkloop• 5 years ago

One of the touted benefits of UBI is that individuals are better able to allocate money to meet their needs than some outside entity. However some results from Canada showed that some people continued to spend "irresponsibly". Rather than spending money on food, shelter, medicine and clothing, some continued to spend on maintaining addictions and/or entertainment, then still required assistance from the system. Can a society rely solely on UBI to help the down-trodden? I don't think so, in some cases you have to directly give food, medicine and shelter.

nickpp• 5 years ago

Even if it wouldn’t reduce people's willingness to work (which the article doesn’t prove in any way), people would work on whatever they feel like, not on what our society needs.

Because in the job market, wage signals work like price signals in other markets: they incentivize people to move in the direction most valued by the economy. Like IT right now.

So we may be doomed to a society of grasshoppers with nobody willing to be the ant - like in the old fable.

thoughtstheseus• 5 years ago

The idea that UBI alone solves anything is silly and not a realistic policy proposal.

UBI is the government distributing money to people. Normally the government spends money on behalf of people who are expected to contribute toward repaying it. A simple way to reduce the cost of UBI is to have it reduced by the cost of ALL government services you elect to use.

Assuming such a UBI covers basic needs, eliminate minimum wages. Wages no longer need a lower bound as everyone has sufficient income.

The root problem is an unfavorable distribution of wealth and income toward asset holders. Stop taxing labor.

Companies need to broaden the distribution of wealth gains- the plumbing for this is still uncertain.

nouveaux4• 5 years ago

The government already distributes money to people in the form of subsidies. UBI is just a different form of subsidy. In the case of UBI, its the profits from automation subsidizing the poor.

"The root problem is an unfavorable distribution of wealth and income toward asset holders. Stop taxing labor."

The problem UBI is trying to solve is one where more and more people will become unemployed because of automation. It is not trying to level the playing field.

josephcsible10• 5 years ago

Then the problem is that we've overdone it, relative to our current automation level. The amount of free money you can get is high enough that more people are choosing not to work than jobs have been automated away so far.

xwdv• 5 years ago

It doesn’t reduce willingness to work, it just reduces peoples willingness to do the cheap shitty jobs that society depends on for us to live comfortably. Like it or not, if you enjoy your current standard of living that is a problem.

theodric• 5 years ago

It would reduce mine

egberts1• 5 years ago

Original link: https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/news/2022/01/basic-inco...

Still no research paper found from this Google-Fu.

tippytippytango• 5 years ago

You are earning $4000/month after taxes and begin to receive $1000/month. What do you do?

Some fraction of people will reduce their workload so their earnings are $3000/month, bringing their total income back to $4000.

Some fraction of people will not reduce their workload at all and inflate their lifestyle to depend on $5000/month.

The overwhelming majority of people will choose the latter; we already know this, it's one of the chief complaints about a materialist, consumerist oriented society. When people get a raise, they overwhelmingly spend it. It's why most people can't save a $1000 emergency fund.

If you are earning $2000 per month and suddenly your income increases by 50% you feel like a baller, you are going to start eating better, ordering take out a little bit, replace that cracked phone, add a little more data to your cell phone plan, turn that thermostat up a little, whatever.

jeffbee2• 5 years ago

In the U.S. that would be a very good outcome. 15% of American households experience food insecurity. We absolutely want these people to spend it, not save it.

Even stimulus checks that were small and arrived irregularly had a huge impact on hunger in America. $1000/mo on the regular would be revolutionary.

burlesona• 5 years ago

Maybe, but I think the fact that they could be planned for / assumed would mean the benefit would have a high risk of quickly disappearing into inflation and rent-seeking.

In the case of rent in particular, there would be no reason for any landlord to take less than $UBI if there was a guaranteed monthly payment from the government.

Unexpected or unpredictable cash influx almost always makes things better because people know they can’t “count on it” and they use it for savings or to fix problems they had been unable to fix, rather than “live off it.”

To put that differently: what most people really need is margin to handle the unexpected problems in life. But living below your means to create margin is hard, even for high-income people! Doubly hard when you are low income. So unexpected cash is more beneficial than expected cash, precisely because it is unexpected and therefore inherently “margin.”

augustuspolius7• 5 years ago

Why not to increase federal minimum wage instead to, say, $30/h? If you were making $4000 - you are good already. If you were making $1000 - you get an increase.

91dylwyn• 5 years ago

This seems much more sensible than extra money to those already comfortably off.

bryanlarsen11• 5 years ago

That's a great example, but you need to use smaller numbers. If UBI is put into place, the only thing somebody making $4K/mo after taxes is going to do is complain about his increased taxes.

In a balanced UBI, the UBI is paid for with taxes. So if you make the average income, you get $X from UBI and your taxes go up by $X. If you make more than average, like your example, then you pay out more than you receive in UBI.

Because average income is considerably higher than median income, most people benefit from UBI.

feoren• 5 years ago

There are other taxes than income taxes. My idealistic view of UBI is a way to share the increasing benefit of automation. So if a factory owner fires all his employees and replaces them with robots, his increased profits are rather heavily taxed and go to UBI. I am aware of how logistically difficult it would be to have a fair "automation tax" though. But the point is: income tax is not the only tax, and probably not even the best tax, to fund UBI.

annoyingnoob• 5 years ago

Where does the money come from and how is using that money sustainable?

grdeken• 5 years ago

Looks like a European university. Would love to see that same study done on the U.S. population...

readthenotes1• 5 years ago

Some data points: the FIRE movement.

How many people have quit working as soon as they are able?

It is essentially the same question and the answer appears to be quite a few, with a few odd people who are unable to do nothing.

rocqua5• 5 years ago

These names don't sound real. They are to 'on point' in dutch. Poletiek is one letter off the dutch world for politics. And "de Kwaadsteniet" literrally means "not the worst" or more like "a decent dude".

I get the feeling this is an experiment, though I would expect better of a university like Leiden.

WalterBright2• 5 years ago

who saw no indications of such a behavioural effect.

One wonders what he was seeing.

I used to know a fellow who would get himself laid off as soon as he'd worked long enough to qualify for unemployment. Then he would fail to get a job until the unemployment ran out, then he'd get a job. He lived for many years like this.

He had no interest in working. He was quite open about what he was doing.

TMWNN• 5 years ago

I believe the Canadian term "newfie", for Newfoundlanders, came from such behavior. When US and Canadian troops arrived on the island during WW2, they found that male civilian employees they hired for construction would work long enough to save up some money, quit and return to their home villages around the island, loaf until the money ran out, then get another job.

WalterBright2• 5 years ago

I've also read that many people find a way to qualify for disability, and then never work again.

lkxijlewlf• 5 years ago

I had a sibling (he's dead now) who, all his short adult life, would work a job, get a few paychecks in his pocket, then quit and couch surf until the money ran out. Often, he couldn't find a new job and so he would couch surf until his welcome ran out. I am confident, given UBI, he would never have worked.

Now, that being said, I don't believe he represent(ed|s) a majority and actually I am in favor of a UBI. I have friends who I believe it would help out tremendously.

However, I really wish we would get universal HC first. HC expenses, in the not too distant future, will create more hardships than a lack of UBI ever would. And ALL people deserve good healthcare.

kcplate2• 5 years ago

I personally used to be a proponent of UBI, but after 2020 and watching some of the impact of Covid and what increasing government financial payouts has done to employment malaise and to the economy, my skepticism has increased. I am not convinced that the benefits outweigh the costs like I once did.

josephcsible10• 5 years ago

This is exactly where I am too. I thought replacing all of our existing safety net programs with UBI would be perfect until the COVID money happened. I knew some people would choose to just live off of it forever and never contribute to society again, but I didn't realize just how many people it would be.

bryanlarsen11• 5 years ago

Total employment in the US is higher today than it was in 2019.

Notanothertoo• 5 years ago

Where are these people? The benefits ended a couple of months ago.

moosey2• 5 years ago

This ignores data that shows how many older people retired, and how large that effect is.

Sum up the number of people who died, were injured, retired, our found better work, and it had a much greater effect than the government payouts. Otherwise, these problems would have already largely resolved already. Those extra payments are gone.

kcplate2• 5 years ago

I made no claim here other than my opinion changed beaded on my observations. And I am pretty sure that creating 20% more money out of thin air has a downstream economic effect far beyond the day the check was cashed

mech987• 5 years ago

I imagine that the validity of this research is completely dependent on the particular monetary rewards and other incentives built into the experiment design.

Getting paid $5 to do a boring task for an hour is a totally different ballgame than getting paid $100 for the same. Even moreso after you've done it for 100 hours. And in the context of a a person who is visiting a research lab the incentives to keep participating in the potentially "interesting game" are different than real life.

Grustaf2• 5 years ago

"Immigration from low wage countries is important because there are millions of jobs that Americans simply won't do (at the same low wage)" "People will not work less if we give them free money"

These opinions are often held by the same people.

ciconia• 5 years ago

UBI is some entitled bullshit. In practically all developed countries, there are already people that are payed less and that don't get the same social benefits as the rest of us. We have all seen them: legal and illegal immigrants. Those are the folks picking your vegetables, building your houses, butchering your meat and cleaning your airports. Not to mention the folks still in China, Bangladesh and Vietnam producing your clothes and putting together your iPhones...

Will those folks get UBI too?

tcmb• 5 years ago

These studies don't tell us much, because participants always know they will get the basic income for a limited time only. So any behavior changes that occur or don't occur are not representative.

andrewmcwatters• 5 years ago

If I had a guaranteed income that allowed me to meaningfully exist and only occasionally work so as to earn enough whenever I wanted to make larger expenses, AND society could more or less ensure that, then yeah, I would probably consider working less if someone is going to pay me to live.

Also enhanced unemployment during the COVID-19 pandemic basically proved nationwide that it would create pockets of the economy where people would literally just not work because you would earn more versus going back to work.

Wouldn't you do the same if your unemployment exceeded current market software engineer rates and any rate people offered you in the market? I would. I definitely would. I would work on my own projects while being funded by the state.

Isn't this something you could just ask people?

WesolyKubeczek• 5 years ago

What I dislike about these studies is that what they are measuring maps badly to real-world experiences. There was another study before, not long ago, where participants were asked what they would do if they had this and this much UBI. And from that they drew their conclusion. I don't know how and whether they corrected for obvious biases (who would honestly say that they would sit on their ass? People deceive themselves all the time!), but doing a study on imaginary situations just looks pointless to me. You want to do a study, you randomly select people from different walks of life and give them their money for a long enough time for them to feel secure and plan long-term. That's how you know. Yeah, you'd need to get money from somewhere, but who says it's gonna be easy?

I would certainly spend at least a month goofing around. Maybe two. Maybe I'd become a freaking train driver, who knows. Take up a shitty job, blog about it without fear of being fired. Or maybe I'd decide that I should spend the rest of my life goofing around. How should I know? Give me my money and see what I do, not what I say I'd do.

labrador3• 5 years ago

Owners of capital think people aren't happy unless they are working making money, because capital owners are made happy by having money. It's hard for them to understand that there are other, better sources of happiness. There are tons of examples of people forgoing money for something more satisfying.

teakettle423• 5 years ago

What’s hard to understand is why I should work even harder making money so that you don’t have to.

labrador3• 5 years ago

No one says you have to work even harder. If you reduce your consumption and live according to your most basic needs, you can achieve a level of self-suffiency that allows you to actually support yourself with your hobbies. Live simply, plant a garden, buy your clothes at thrift stores and shop at discount grocery stores. What ever it takes to follow your passion. Live like a starving artist and make something great. But if you're just a worker drone with no inner life and need to be a corporate servant, I can understand your frustration.

samstave• 5 years ago

Basic income provides people the basics needed to be able to look for and apply and interview for work without having to worry about how are they going to pay for food, transportation to/from interviews etc...

Its crippling knowing that you only have a little bit of money and you need to determine how much a sunk-cost-opportunity is worth -- meaning:

"I have $100, and I do have expenses - but in order to interview for [JOBS] - I need to be able to get to and from, put gas in car/pay for transport, and know that I can still feed myself/dependents && be able to absorb the cost of the interview if I dont get it -- AND have money to make it to the next interviews"

---

Everyone focuses on the lowest bar "these ghetto people wont work if we give them money"

FUCK YOU i you think that the only people who NEED such assistance are ghetto poor people who want to milk the system.

---

What about having employers cover the costs of actually interviewing with your company? If it costs one $50+ just to get-to-and-from an interview inclusive of time -- then some people will struggle to do so.

jbverschoor2• 5 years ago

Duh. Working is fun. Working is progress, pride, a social place, sparks your mind, etc.etc.

snapcaster• 5 years ago

I'm going to guess you don't work as a janitor?

jbverschoor2• 5 years ago

Actually thought of doing that for a while. What's wrong with that? It can be rewarding.

raffraffraff• 5 years ago

I think it depends on what level of devotion is expected from me, under the terms of "work". After spending 20+ years working like a trouper and genuinely enjoying the crazy pressure, I quit my job last year and took 6 months to do very little. I'm amazed at how much I've enjoyed not working. I'm about to return to work, but what I've taken away from my break is:

1. I want to work on interesting problems

2. I will not give my life to a company, ever again.

In other words, I'm waiting for companies to start offering 30-hour weeks, 4 day weeks, 60 days unpaid time off per year etc.

For now, I'm returning to "regular" work. However, whereas in the past I worked through months of stressful bullshit caused by bad management, toxic colleagues and unpaid technical debt, my future willingness to work will be based on job satisfaction. If my job isn't making me happy, I'll try to fix things for a while, but if things don't get better quickly, I'm gone.

colechristensen• 5 years ago

As with many psych studies: false conclusions based on contrived experiments that don’t measure what they claim.

Actual basic income experiment: the large amount of money given to Americans during the pandemic and subsequent labor shortage.

thesuperbigfrog• 5 years ago

How would UBI be funded?

We have trouble paying for existing budget items.

Would an existing budget item be cut or would new taxes be needed?

spoonjim• 5 years ago

It would reduce mine, if it came with health insurance. I only work for the insurance.

snicker7• 5 years ago

The problem with these social experiments is that these payments are not guaranteed for life. Being out of work is bad for your career, but if you receive passive income for rest of your life, I think that would change the calculus.

andreilys2• 5 years ago

I do wonder whether UBI will be feasible once the US loses its ability to print trillions of dollars.

Whether it’s China or Crypto, it seems like the reign of the PetroDollar is coming to an end, and with it the easy access to money printing.

Also any debates on UBI typically start with a country-centric view (US in this case), but what will be the implications for the rest of Earth citizens who live in countries without UBI?

moosey2• 5 years ago

If I were a leader of a country that engaged economically with the US, I would be less concerned with the use of the dollar for UBI than it's current use, which is too enrich a small financial elite. A group that not only had outsized power in the US, butt also around the world, since the power of the dollar is so generalized.

It takes a relatively small slice of a billionaire's power to destabilize national leadership, a process that I assume isn't just happening in the US butt around the world. This doesn't even include the fact that Facebook is a near-optimal propaganda tool in protecting the wealth of the people who rule over changes to the way it runs.

andreilys2• 5 years ago

If I were a trading partner of the US, would I want to continue to accept the US dollar as the currency became less and less valuable as a result of excessive money printing?

Eventually austerity measures will come, and it's unlikely it will be the boomers who pay for it but the younger generations.

disambiguation3• 5 years ago

I would like to see "negative income tax" (a la Milton Friedman) make a comeback in these experiments.

It's like minimum wage except the government funds the difference, and unlike UBI you still have to work to earn it, which seems to be a prevailing concern ITT.

akvadrako3• 5 years ago

That isn't how NIT works. Mathematically it is identical to UBI, it's just phrased differently.

disambiguation3• 5 years ago

No the difference is not simply semantics. The main difference between NIT and UBI is that your check is conditional on working.

From the article:

De Kwaadsteniet: ‘In the condition without social security, the test participants didn’t receive a basic sum. In the benefits condition they received a basic sum, which they lost as soon as they started working. In the basic income condition they received the same basic sum but didn’t lose this when they started work.’

They test for 3 scenarios, but they miss the 4th NIT scenario, in which the "basic sum" would only be granted _after_ they get a job.

xibalba• 5 years ago

I just don’t buy it. Here’s why:

I personally know several people who received sizable pandemic aid and have said, explicitly, that they are not bothering to look for work until their savings from the received aid runs low.

This is just very basic common sense. Work is often not fun or easy. So, if you’ve got free, no strings attached money coming in, why bother working?

paul7986• 5 years ago

Progressive socialist ideologies like this are not working out well! For example the recent social Justice laws passed in progressive cities where we are now seeing once unseen massive smash n grabs and rail cargo trains being ransacked.

Also give ppl free money the a good majority will not work ... I'm sure there's a lot of ppl who got free money from the govt during covid and have yet to go back to work when there's lots of jobs as well wage increases. We can argue that $15 an hour to work at a convenience store isn't great but every human if not mistaken can go to school and educate themselves ...work hard to better themselves. Some it's harder then others and that's where social ideologies need to be most focused on! Not giving free money or ignoring criminal activity... some images of the US as of late are starting to look like Venezuela.

taubek• 5 years ago

I totally agree with this "The psychologists also found an indication that people with a basic income look for work that suits them better.". If I would have enough money for all my needs I wouldn't stop working. I'm lucky that I'm already doing what I love. I'm not doing my job just to get payed.

dathinab• 5 years ago

Most people strife to life a life better then "just basic".

Many people are driven by more then just money. Tbh. I don't know if anyone would become a nurse in a hospital for monetary reasons (if they have another choice). Or a care taker of old people. At least where I'm from. (As it's severely under-payed for the work you do.)

Similar a lot of people love to compete with wearing brands, having fancy things or having the harder to get in job.

A lot of people are prevented from being able to do what they want because of money. Sometime because they can't afford to take some time off for education, sometimes because the job they want to do doesn't pay well.

So I'm sure you can have a well working society with basic income.

throwawaydroid• 5 years ago

Income subsidies for people in need is a nice thought, but isn't the bigger problem that we keep buying shit made with slave labor in China? We live in a global market, and as long as we keep supporting hucksters abroad it's no surprise things are stagnating at home.

nickelcitymario• 5 years ago

I'd like to believe this is true, but it's both counter-intuitive and counter to my actual lived experience the last couple of years.

I'm not sure how it's going down in other countries, but in Canada we've had an unintentional experiment with this due to the pandemic. Our economic relief package allows people to collect government insurance if they're out of work due to Covid. But unlike traditional employment insurance, everyone gets the same amount, and that amount turns out to be more than you could make working full-time at minimum wage.

Now, full disclosure, I'm unabashedly socialist in my leanings. I want UBI to work. I also don't believe that a person's value should be determined by their output. So I'm the last person to be against Basic Income.

However, we have to look at the results. And the results in Canada are that it's almost impossible to hire enough people to work those entry-level roles anymore:

- In my home city of Sudbury, the school bus companies are now offering a $2k signing bonus plus several dollars above minimum wage to attract drivers. They still can't get enough drivers and we're dealing with rolling daily bus cancellations as a result.

- As a hiring manager myself, I've found that jobs that used to get an abundance of high-quality applicants are now getting almost no qualified applicants at all. We're offering starting wages that are, in many cases, $20k more per year than they were a decade ago, and $10k more than they were 2 years ago. This is in a market where the average household income is well under $50k.

- Unemployment rates are higher than they've been in a long time despite the fact that job vacancies are higher than they've ever been.

Now, we can argue back and forth about whether the above is an acceptable trade-off for all the benefits of UBI. But my experience very much suggests that basic income does indeed reduce people's willingness to work.

gutino• 5 years ago

There should exist an incentive to do the dirty and hard jobs in the society. If there is a UBI, those jobs should offer a significant economic reward.

9887472• 5 years ago

More importantly: it would not reduce the NEED to work. Giving everybody free money would just cause prices of everything to skyrocket, and you would still need to work your ass off all the same, to make the ends meet.

You don't see that effect in the small-scale experiments, because they are too small to affect economy as whole.

yes_really2• 5 years ago

We got people to do a task on a computer,’ says De Kwaadsteniet. ‘In multiple rounds, which represented the months they had to work, they did a boring task in which they had to put points on a bar. The more of these they did, the more money they earned.

That's not really for research. That's for something we can call data laundering. It's like money laundering but for data. Now politicians will use articles like this to sound scientific and data-driven when proposing their policies.

In reality they are quoting an article that quotes a paper that uses a horribly designed experiment with zero scientific rigor. But voters that don't pay attention will never get to know the flow of the data from the fake research to the politician taking their money away. Hence the data laundering.

gpsx• 5 years ago

I would like to see more about work-fare, where people are given jobs if they are unemployed. I think it is very important people have work to do, and not all people are as self motivated as the hacker news crowd. Secondly, this would hopefully help productivity.

Previously job programs were giant public works projects, like building the Hoover dam. Today, with computers it would be easy to give any person a job, right out of their own house.

I do like allowing self motivated people to create their own jobs, and that should be factored into this kind of program.

badrabbit• 5 years ago

I don't like either sides of the argument. It really depends on the people. People that are doing well will want to work, poor people and people that just have a hard time getting a job will eventually give up. Proof? How people stop looking for work already and give up and stop getting counted as unemployed.

betwixthewires2• 5 years ago

OK, well let's look at the stimulus effects in the US. We have a real world example of a short term experiment like UBI.

It shook up the labor market and now you've got worker shortages. People aren't working unless they have to. Everyone has to offer more money.

I'm.happy about all this BTW. But it certainly goes against the claim in this article.

akvadrako3• 5 years ago

Nothing like UBI since it was combined with paying people not to work.

betwixthewires2• 5 years ago

That's a fair point.

UnknownUser1234• 5 years ago

We Don’t need UBI. We need to help those who want more than a crappy job that offers no future. Education, training, and resources are the way.

convolvatron4• 5 years ago

how much of this discussion about UBI is based in concerns with limits in growth or even demand collapse rather than altruism?

bioinformatics• 5 years ago

Nah, it won't.

randyrand• 5 years ago

I am a person and it would reduce my willingness to work.

So that was pretty easy to disprove.

aakresearch• 5 years ago

For me the u-turn from support of UBI to rejection was driven by realization that UBI is a perfect control tool for any government. When they needed a big stick to push vaccinations the initial pass of locking people out of restaurants, pubs and entertainment venues ended up looking pathetic. Once they realized how lame it is, they had no choice beyond going after people's livelihoods, the right to work and earn living. Imagine how easier it would be for governments to enact whatever they want if majority are scared of losing the access to the biggest trough?

It would be ok, if UBI was also Unconditional, but I'm confident no one will dare to make it so after the recent global event.

husamia• 5 years ago

if you give me a million dollar for doing nothing. I would still go to work.

Basic income would not reduce people’s willingness to work

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