People kept working, became healthier while on basic income: report (2020)

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/hamilton/basic-income-mcmaster-report-1.5485729

by jszymborski • 1 year ago

197 253 1 year ago

Yeah how many of these have we had now? Literally every test and study about UBI comes back with similar data: it improves lives, reduces stress, and nobody becomes a drain on the system. It doesn’t matter. The people who oppose it aren’t looking at the data, they just don’t want "my tax dollars" going to support people struggling to get by.

jagged-chisel• 1 year ago

… people struggling to get by.

Rather, people who “didn’t earn it.”

interstice2• 1 year ago

Is this \s?

ToucanLoucan4• 1 year ago

In a world with so much surplus, the fact that we still demand people earn a living under penalty of death is the most psychotic shit I've ever seen.

reactordev• 1 year ago

It’s funny because it’s such a small amount for those who oppose it. I mean, capital gains doesn’t kick in until $48,350 in the US and you can survive off of that if you needed to. The issue is pulling that consistently for an income requires a bit of capital the average American doesn’t have.

SR2Z• 1 year ago

We already have the EITC, which is frankly a better version of UBI (it incentivizes working more and literally goes up as you increase your earnings). Expand the EITC and tax capital gains as regular, inflation-adjusted income to pay for it and we've basically done it - a single Democratic administration could.

In fact, during COVID, an increase to the child tax portion of the EITC reduced childhood poverty by _70%_ at a relatively low cost. Guess why we don't do that anymore?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_income_tax_credit#/medi...

https://www.cbpp.org/research/poverty-and-inequality/expirat...

(US focused even though the article is Canada lol)

AnthonyMouse14• 1 year ago

A large EITC is trivially converted into a UBI. Otherwise-unemployed people pay each other a salary to do whatever they were each going to do anyway and then the salaries cancel but they both get the EITC. Attempts to prevent this largely don't work against people who want to do the scam and just find a different way to structure it, but tend to be used as an excuse to e.g. screw legitimate self-employed workers out of the credit.

The only reason this doesn't happen at scale right now is that the existing EITC is smaller than the amount of payroll tax you'd pay by making a given amount of money, i.e. it's not a negative income tax at all. If you're going to make it larger than that you might as well make it a UBI.

programjames3• 1 year ago

I think the issue is there are a lot of welfare programs that haven't seen the same success. If you subscribe to the "taxes are to solve public goods problems" model, then welfare that doesn't come back around to help you isn't taxation, it's theft! When people talk about UBI, they're wary it's just a relabelling of the same-old "steal from the rich, give to the poor" Robinhood scheme. I think the left has also really shot themselves in the foot by talking about UBI as "helping struggling people get by" or accusing opposers of being unempathetic (or, worst of all, "what would Jesus do?"). That's the wrong way of framing it (and this holds for most welfare initiatives too).

People are always going to care about different things. Some really care that everyone has clean water, others a good education, others freedom of expression. Some care more about their families, while others apply equal empathy to every stranger, cow, and tree. When you forcibly take money from someone, and use it to fund your project, it comes from a place of very selective empathy. The proper way to fund your projects is to get everyone on board. Frame it so they see how it helps them achieve their goals, not just yours.

(Now, I know I'm ignoring that some people are just incredibly selfish; more accurately, some people's hearts are bleeding out on the floor, some are calcified into stone, and most are somewhere in between. I'm ignoring this discrepancy because 1. even very selfish people can get on board with welfare (like primary/secondary education), as long as it's framed properly, and 2. if a system relies on self-sacrifice, it's too easy to hijack that sacrifice into someone else's pet project.)

For example, with education, you can point out how much more economic activity is available when everyone knows how to read and write. I think the argument that actually worked, though, was "how can we avoid roving bands of teenagers in our city once we enact some child-labor laws?" (that's probably the reason highschool is compulsory, not just free to enroll in). For a universal basic income, you probably need to approach it from an entropy argument. The capitalist system tries to maximize GDP, but physical systems actually maximize the free energy (GDP - temperature * Theil index [entropy]). The capitalist system avoids this by artificially restricting free trade: for example, your boss makes a dollar, while you make a dime. There's fewer trades that could happen than if, say, you both made 55 cents (unless your boss is just reallly good at doing things with money). Or, more fundamental, your boss needs you much less than you need a salary. You have less freedom of movement than he has to remove you. A universal basic income fixes this entropy problem, which makes trades more frequent and the market more competitive. In the end, it can come around to help even a seflish centimillionaire.

ToucanLoucan4• 1 year ago

When people talk about UBI, they're wary it's just a relabelling of the same-old "steal from the rich, give to the poor" Robinhood scheme.

You mean the scheme responsible for the greatest period of economic boom in American history, not JUST for the (unfortunately, primarily white) people, but the rest of the country as well? When we got the Hoover Dam, and the highway system, and wall to wall telephone coverage, and stable power grids in every state that isn't Texas? That scheme?

Yeah no I vastly prefer the modern one where like ten people get all of the money and our bridges collapse now. Makes the morning commute far more thrilling that way.

I think the left has also really shot themselves in the foot by talking about UBI as "helping struggling people get by" or accusing opposers of being unempathetic (or, worst of all, "what would Jesus do?"). That's the wrong way of framing it (and this holds for most welfare initiatives too).

I mean it's less an accusation of being unempathetic and more just an observation of the facts on the ground, isn't it?

When you forcibly take money from someone, and use it to fund your project, it comes from a place of very selective empathy. The proper way to fund your projects is to get everyone on board. Frame it so they see how it helps them achieve their goals, not just yours.

Yeah but that's just not scalable for society? Since I have been working, my taxes have funded wars in the Middle East that I certainly didn't give two shits about, and in fact opposed. My taxes support all manner of corporate welfare, some which is decent, a lot of which is horrendous and counterproductive to global health and climate change. Why is it we only start clutching our purse strings when it's about helping people, but there's always money for more fucking war and more oil subsidies?

Edit to respond to your reply:

You talk about things not being scalable for society; well guess what, your version of empathy is one of them.

Not only is empathy scalable, it is the utter FOUNDATION of society. If we didn't give a shit what happened to everyone else who was in our tribe, we never would've progressed from the caves in the first place. Every moral code throughout history has been based on empathy. Every legal code is based in part on empathy. "I don't want to die, so we should recognize it's bad to kill people." It's the emotional bedrock of a social species; to see an individual that is like you, and to treat that individual as you would want to be treated.

Like if I said, "everyone deserves chocolate ice cream", and you said "wow, how unempathetic, don't you care about everyone getting vanilla?"

That is just... flagrantly wrong. I'm not arguing for people to have a given flavor of ice cream, or a category of food. I'm saying people should have food, shelter, and all the basic necessities of life, because they're people, and by virtue of being people in a world with so much more than it needs, that they should be provided for. Why? Because we can. Because it hurts no one. Because it helps immense quantities of people who are in dire need.

And, additionally, if you are indeed not moved by the notion of "people should live, that's better than if they die" then I can give you an absolute TROVE of selfish reasons too!

* Reduced need and therefore cost of emergency services; houseless people make a disproportionate use of ambulances and ER services, and are uniquely unable to pay for them (not that anyone should pay for healthcare either but that's our world currently)

* Substantially lower costs for the penal and legal systems: houseless people commit a lot of crime, since their very existence in many places is a crime, and alongside that they suffer from chronic lack of resources. Giving them resources keeps them out of jails and lets police solve actual problems, not just harass people who have no options.

* Higher workforce participation: A whole ton of unhoused folks would love NOTHING MORE than to get jobs and improve their situation, something that is borne out by many UBI studies, because, plot twist, being houseless also makes it quite a lot harder to find work, even if you're skilled in an in-demand profession. And, in the odd event you do get work, it's harder to attend to that job to earn money because it's very hard to get ready for work on the corner of Sixth and Delton Ave.

* And, greater economic activity. Houseless people naturally consume far, far less goods and services than housed people and even if they do want them, they lack the ability to buy them. Giving them an even temporary living situation lets them establish themselves and become productive members of society.

And all of these points will also apply in varying degrees to everyone from destitute street-bound folks up through everyone who is living check to check. The fact of the matter is that poor people cost our society money, and a LOT of it at that, but currently that money doesn't go to those people to help them; it goes to the poverty industrial complex and makes a handful of people a LOT of money. I am merely proposing instead of doing that, we just give it to the fucking people who need it and then call it a day.

throaway95518• 1 year ago

You are of course right, and it is sad to see that the idea of "building consensus," now has to be explained in a long 4 paragraph post when it used to be just a normal way of doing things.

CoastalCoder• 1 year ago

MUH TAX DOLERS

Please don't use regional accents as an epithet.

Aurornis3• 1 year ago

and nobody becomes a drain on the system

That’s a generous interpretation of the results. This was a short term pilot and over one quarter of respondents stopped working, despite knowing it was a temporary program.

luisfmh3• 1 year ago

Did you read the article? Because it says that about half of the ones that stopped working stopped working because they were going back to school. That doesn't seem like a drain on the system...

david-gpu7• 1 year ago

We already have something that resembles a basic income in developed countries. It's called retirement pensions. And what we see there is that most people, as soon as they are eligible for their pension, they stop working. Sure, they may volunteer a few hours a month here and there, but their productivity plummets compared to the previous year when they didn't collect that pension. I don't blame them one bit -- it's exactly the same thing I did once I retired.

So what happens as we lower the age at which they receive a pension? Different countries and companies have sometimes offered pensions to some of their senior workers to reduce their workforce -- the results were the same. Most people stop working as soon as they have a lifetime guaranteed income that allows them to afford life's essentials, even if they are in their forties.

A pilot where the participants know or suspect that the money will soon stop flowing won't capture the real-world effect of this decades-long experiment that we call pensions.

And if people don't work, or don't work nearly as much as they did before, then how is the system going to be sustained?

stablgeniushatr• 1 year ago

Except…people retire so they can stop working? Or they retire because they can no longer physically or mentally work.

voxl• 1 year ago

False equivalence. People stop working during retirement because it is the very cultural expectation to not work.

There is no reason to believe this analogy you're attempting to make would transfer to something like a negative tax rate

mbrumlow• 1 year ago

Maybe they can stop working because of cultural allowance.

Who knows how many people should retire at 30 if the social norms allowed it.

Think about it this way. If a 60 year old says “I’m retiring” most responses will be “aw good for you, you earned it”. But if a 23 year old says “I am retiring” I guarantee there will be many more negative responses and questions.

Swizec• 1 year ago

A pilot where the participants know or suspect that the money will soon stop flowing won't capture the real-world effect of this decades-long experiment that we call pensions.

There is a big difference in getting a guaranteed income in your 20’s vs your 60’s.

In your 20’s it unlocks taking big risks and swing for the fences. YC bets in this, for example. What can ambitious kids do when they don’t need to worry about money?

But when you’ve been grinding for 40 years … yeah for sure most people stop working.

mulletbum• 1 year ago

I think Universal Healthcare does this too. I just turned 40 and I would be WAY more interested in jumping jobs if it existed. Instead I keep on because my wife is going back to school and such, so everything relies on me.

dolebirchwood• 1 year ago

In your 20’s it unlocks taking big risks and swing for the fences. YC bets in this, for example. What can ambitious kids do when they don’t need to worry about money?

That might be true for maybe 5-10% of 20-somethings. The rest will blow it.

protocolture4• 1 year ago

In your 20’s it unlocks taking big risks and swing for the fences.

In your 20s it might also unlock travel and adventure.

cosmic_cheese• 1 year ago

But when you’ve been grinding for 40 years … yeah for sure most people stop working.

I’d like to emphasize “grinding” here. For many it’s a grind in the truest sense, involving decades of backbreaking physical work. For others it’s immense stress to keep a roof over their family’s head no matter what. By the time retirement rolls around practically everybody has been burned out to some degree but had to power through regardless simply because quitting wasn’t an option.

Yeah, under conditions like that, people are indeed going to stop working the very second they’re no longer required to in order to survive. Things like UBI, 4-day work weeks, remote work, and fair compensation would all improve that situation measurably.

ChrisMarshallNY• 1 year ago

Just anecdata.

I stopped when I was 55 (didn't have a choice, actually). Fortunately, I had saved wisely, and lived frugally, so I was able to stop working (which was good, because no one wanted me, anyway).

I actually get more done, every day (like, seven days a week), than I did when getting paid.

ToMAYto, ToMAHto...

robocat• 1 year ago

In your 20’s it unlocks taking big risks and swing for the fences.

I think it is really common for retiree risk takers to swing for the fences in their 60's.

Their time is freed up and often lump sums become available: retirees often feel they need to make money to live well in retirement. I'm sure you can think of cliched coffee shop entrepreneurs, restaurant owners, franchise purchasers and investment property purchasers.

The reason it's such a well known cliche is because of how often they get burnt (due to poor understanding of risks) and many lose their homes.

I really notice it because I'm nearer retirement than 20 (they're not my peers but my acquaintances span a wide range of age and money demographics).

MichaelRo• 1 year ago

> There is a big difference in getting a guaranteed income in your 20’s vs your 60’s.

No, it's the difference between getting a pension (a guaranteed income for the rest of your life) and a second job's salary without working it. Basically the "basic income" experiments create Reddit r/overemployed participants without even having to work the additional job.

interstice2• 1 year ago

If you asked me what I would spend a 'free' 10k on at 15, 25 or 35 I would have given you radically different answers. I don't expect what someone does with basic income at 65 to have much relation to what they would do at other stages in life.

atomicnumber32• 1 year ago

15: GTS 8800 25: GTX 1080 35: RTX 8090

I suspect when I'm 45, $10,000 won't get nvidias flagship card, so I'll let you know about that one when I get there

andrepd• 1 year ago

Well yeah it's the exact same thing except... given to people when they're 67, i.e. after a lifetime of working and about 10 years from the mean age of death.

Gee why would they stop working, you think?

And if people don't work, or don't work nearly as much as they did before, then how is the system going to be sustained?

Technology gives us massive gains in productivity; we could reasonably reduce working hours to <20/week in the developed world. We might have less business dynamic analysts or scrum masters or social media coordinators. We'll be fine.

tacticus• 1 year ago

Technology gives us massive gains in productivity; we could reasonably reduce working hours to <20/week in the developed world. We might have less business dynamic analysts or scrum masters or social media coordinators. We'll be fine.
beyond this, we shall endeavour to spread the bread thin on the butter-to make what work there is still to be done to be as widely shared as possible. Three-hour shifts or a fifteen-hour week may put off the problem for a great while. For three hours a day is quite enough to satisfy the old Adam in most of us!

Unfortunately the governments and the wealthy looked at Hayek and decided they much preferred the idea where they could continue to abuse the workers.

pj_mukh4• 1 year ago

"We might have less business dynamic analysts or scrum masters or social media coordinators."

Do we have any guarantees of this? Couldn't we equally have way less Nurses, Doctors, ER Techs, Construction Workers building homes, Teachers.

Feels like all the stressful, back-breaking jobs will be quitting first?

david-gpu7• 1 year ago

Well yeah it's the exact same thing except... given to people when they're 67

Have you met any people who were eligible for a pension at e.g. 50? I know a few, they all retired. Not because they couldn't continue to work, but because with the pension they were finally able to quit.

Jedd4• 1 year ago

It's called retirement pensions. And what we see there is that most people, as soon as they are eligible ...

This feels like a bizarre take on quite a different arrangement.

That demographic has planned for ~40 years for tha transition, and in many cases is strongly encouraged by their industry / government / superannuation scheme, etc - to stop working at that age.

Extrapolating that back to providing a safety net to 20-40yo's just seems to miss everything about UBI - unless it's a 'I didn't have this, so no one else should' position?

All the research we're seeing - in very small, time-boxed, precarious trials - indicate that we'll probably get a positive result out of implementing this more broadly, without a drop-dead date attached.

The counter-argument always seems to be 'Oh, but we might not...' (and then some opinions).

wredcoll• 1 year ago

Pascal's scam! Oh no, what if the world explodes! We can't risk it!

david-gpu7• 1 year ago

Extrapolating that back to providing a safety net to 20-40yo's just seems to miss everything about UBI - unless it's a 'I didn't have this, so no one else should' position?

Quite the opposite. I basically retired at 40. A few of my coworkers did the same. Most people, when given the means to quit working, choose to retire.

Most people don't retire at age X because they have reached age X, they do it because they finally are eligible for a pension.

pasquinelli• 1 year ago

And what we see there is that most people, as soon as they are eligible for their pension, they stop working.

oh well that's cuz they're retired.

Aurornis3• 1 year ago

We already have something that resembles a basic income in developed countries. It's called retirement pensions.

These aren’t comparable at all. UBI programs would start at adulthood and not require any work. Someone receiving a retirement pension has put in many years of work.

mrangle• 1 year ago

I'm not a fan of basic income due to its inflationary effect that all-but neutralizes its spending power.

I also think that the monetary system is inherently imperfect. To put it mildly.

It is structurally unfixable and there is no possible utopia within it. Last, there is no other good option that I know of.

But pensions are not Basic Income, thank goodness. They're a payment into an investment fund that grows as lifetime earned income grows. They're an asset, exactly the same as a business is an asset.

In fact, pension funds invest in businesses.

Whether or not that fund is well managed is another discussion. Moreover, most people in the United States (at least) do not get pensions aside from a minimal social security payment. Which was also paid into a fund.

Working is only individually valuable when there are good jobs, or to fend off starvation.

What working is not is an immutable positive value that any de facto sweat shop owner can claim to offer the opportunity for.

At a certain point the social contract is broken and working becomes something, at the least, that is not virtuous to offer nor to fulfill. Except insofar as one's personal survival needs are concerned.

When there are only terrible jobs, then society should not feel morally compelled to work them. Especially when it has other income. And especially when a concurrent social value is to drop wages and benefits through the floor, by any means necessary.

For the sake of virtue, are business owners working underpaid second jobs "for the system"?

Are successful business owners widely coming out of retirement to work "for the sake of the system"?

We're not talking about volunteering at the old age home. We're talking about a real work schedule.

Society may have to work those jobs out of necessity, but they can and should tell people trying to morally shame them with a "come out of retirement and to work attitude" to go copulate with themselves.

Especially when the social contract between employers and employees is long-shattered beyond repair.

In society, there can be low paying jobs alongside well paying jobs. What there can't be is moralizing combined with decades of illegal shenanigans whose sole purpose is to suppress wages / job security (especially due to wages) and undermine working conditions.

"Productivity". Give us a break.

Unless your payment is compelling enough to get me to work, as a retired person the health of your business is not my morality nor my productivity. Your business is yours, and mine is my own.

Are those business owners going to come and "be productive" by cleaning my gutters after work? Are they going to "be productive" by doing my taxes?

And if people don't work, or don't work nearly as much as they did before, then how is the system going to be sustained?

That may be the most communist mindset I've ever seen written out on this forum.

Being a WalMart floor employee is not a virtuous contribution to the system, above being retired. It's an agreement, for a certain wage, to be a part of the employee pool of the Walton family's for-profit vehicle.

Would it be virtuous to come out of retirement and work that job if it paid nothing?

Should the Walton's pay every red cent of their profit to employees, make nothing themselves, and run their business regardless and for the sake of the system?

The virtue is one's monetary needs, and the Walton's have to pay enough to meet the social contract requirement to maintain enough employees in their employee pool. If they don't have enough employees, then they aren't meeting the unspoken requirement. No amount of moralizing / whining is going to increase their social virtue. Only cash on-offer will.

Joe's construction or accounting business is not "the system" either. It's Joe's income vehicle. Retired people have their own income vehicles.

If the employer-employee relationship is a social contract, and not slavery, then working is no more "for the system" then making a profit is.

And if both are needed to "sustain the system", and the business owner can't draw enough people to work via a pay package, then the answer is to bring them in as partners.

If both are for the benefit of the system, and one person is going to be morally compelled to work, and another is going to be morally compelled to make a profit, and the pay isn't high enough to compel the employee, then they need to be made a profit partner in the business.

When I hear someone whining that they are worried about having enough workforce, I think that they are exhausting their vocabulary to avoid stating that they're too cheap to pay employees enough for the job.

I'm not saying that they have to be compelled to pay a minimum wage. Offer $1 an hour for all I would care. As long as the other side of that isn't to illegally / immorally undermine the labor pool.

But the other side of that is if they aren't paying enough to draw employees, then the "I'm going to employ people" part of their business is not viable.

The other side of it is not "people are too over-benefitted / over-privileged to work".

If you want someone to join a social contract, then you have to make a compelling enough offer. That's our only "system".

Anything else needs to be a partnership / significant enough profit split.

When the pay is rock-bottom, employees are scarce, and those profit shares are eventually legally compelled because "oh no, the system", then it's formal communism.

When the employees are legally compelled without partnerships, then its slavery.

AnthonyMouse14• 1 year ago

I'm not a fan of basic income due to its inflationary effect that all-but neutralizes its spending power.

What causes you to believe that a transfer payment would be inflationary? Some high-paid partner at a law firm has less money, some low-paid teacher has more money, net amount of money everybody has in total hasn't changed.

IAmBroom2• 1 year ago

I'm not a fan of basic income due to its inflationary effect that all-but neutralizes its spending power.

You start off with a completely unproven belief, posited as a fact. I lost interest in your arguments after that. But I slogged on anyway, to no fruitful avail.

rhelz4• 1 year ago

// most people as soon as they are eligible...stop working...//

Is that true?

I mean, the best comparison to this wouldn't be some kind of pension system. It would be the universal guaranteed income we already have. Yes, we guarantee every citizen a minimum income...as long as they are over 65 :-)

Most of them would probably keep working in some capacity if they didn't lose their benefits.

luisfmh3• 1 year ago

The system that is killing our planet, that exploits and ends up killing the majority of its unwilling participants? Yeah, I don't think the loss in productivity will be a bad thing. Maybe people will consider the effect of their work before doing it a little more when they don't have a gun to their head.

TFYS• 1 year ago

And if people don't work, or don't work nearly as much as they did before, then how is the system going to be sustained?

I think people and markets would just adapt to a lower level of consumption and amount of work. The work that people find truly important, like growing food, construction of housing, healthcare, etc. would remain in demand. The demand for things that people don't really want to work to create, or work to consume, would be reduced. So salaries for work that actually matters to people would increase and people would still do that work, and salaries for work that produces things that people don't really need would be reduced. In the end we'd have a society that only does the work that people actually want and need to get done and consume only things that have enough value to justify working for it. Less work, less consumption, probably happier people.

tukantje2• 1 year ago

Elderly population not working is _hardly_ the equivalent of UBI. Besides; in most developed countries you are actually _penalized_ for working while retired; and furthermore most elderly people on pension tend to still do work such as handling childcare for grand kids.

tharga8616• 1 year ago

What do you expect after a life of forced labour? Do they stop helping their families on the daily tasks? I think these questions should clarify your thoughts.

tekla• 1 year ago

He acknowledged the report's findings are only based on short-term effects but, given the project has been shut down, it's all they have.

OK, yeah. They kept working because everyone expected that it would go away

hatthew4• 1 year ago

I'm sure there is already much discussion about this, but I feel like basic income pilots will never show the true impact. Someone who knows they'll have guaranteed income for the rest of their life is more likely to stop working than someone who is told they will receive guaranteed income for a few years. Especially when this pilot is cancelled and now people won't trust that future ones will last even for the few years specified.

445202977• 1 year ago

Sure, but let’s remember that “working” is not the end-all, be-all of human existence. Some will stop working and care for an aging parent. Some will stop working and raise children. Some will stop working and make art. We have the opportunity to maximize human flourishing. Let’s not mistake where we’ve been for where we’re going.

bluefirebrand• 1 year ago

Many will simply stop working and simply rot

We saw plenty of it during COVID, people were off work and had basic income and such taken care of. They chose to just sit and do nothing

Some people started streaming or content creating or doing art at home or whatever

Most people just rotted. They sat and watched shows and movies and goofed around online

LadyCailin• 1 year ago

I think it’s totally fair to ask who is supposed to pay for that. I don’t want the guy who grows the food I eat to stop and go paint, I like eating more than I like him painting. There are plenty of jobs that aren’t fulfilling in the slightest, they are just a means to a paycheck, but are absolutely vital to society. And if those people quit to go make art, we’re all screwed. I don’t think that’s an unfair ask to have a comprehensive answer to.

appreciatorBus3• 1 year ago

Who picks up the garbage, who works all day in the solar panel factory, and works in the fields while you are making art?

Ofc it's possible for our world to be much better than today for all of us, but it's also possible for it to be much, much worse.

skeeter2020• 1 year ago

> Some will stop working and make art

Why do some people get to decide they're going to do this? Why do I have to pay for it?

tomrod• 1 year ago

Is it best for society that everyone works a job with high enough income to contribute to taxes and that can accrue a 401k? We aren't there under current policy, there are many people left behind and experiencing negative income tax rates. But I feel this hypothetical world is the ideal posited in your example.

I think it's a fair question, and as an economist the topic fascinates me far beyond the typical econ 101 perfect world hand waving.

Jedd4• 1 year ago

Someone who knows they'll have guaranteed income for the rest of their life is more likely to stop working than someone who is told they will receive guaranteed income for a few years.

Is that true - or is that your belief?

I feel like if UBI guaranteed that I wouldn't be homeless and starve to death - but did not guarantee me avocado for my toast - I wouldn't stop working.

I can't say that for sure, but a lot of the subjective concerns expressed by people about UBI seem to think that it provides the proverbial four-bedroom-house-in-suburbia-with-two-cars-and-an-overseas-holiday-each-year, which might in fact reduce the eagerness for someone to travel two hours a day to sit in a small box and bang away at a keyboard for a third their waking life.

The B in UBI stands for Basic.

hatthew4• 1 year ago

Is that true - or is that your belief?

If I was offered basic income for 3 years, I wouldn't change my life in the slightest (maybe I'd make frivolous purchases slightly more often).

If I was offered trustworthy basic income for the rest of my life, depending on the amount I would retire at some point within 3 years. If it was the same amount as in this study and was adjusted for inflation, I'd consider retiring on the spot.

Maybe I'm just a weird outlier?

t-writescode3• 1 year ago

For those fortunate enough to have made absurd amounts of money, think of what you did when you had it. You kept making for whole different reasons. You kept making, kept doing.

The only thing that stops is tolerance of actual garbage bosses, abusive companies and saying “yes” to decisions that require you to be immoral.

bombcar• 1 year ago

Well, 25% stopped apparently. Which is somewhat telling.

If you gave me a $basicIncome raise I’d keep working; but I’d appreciate the cash.

If you guaranteed $basicIncome for life I’d restructure my life around that, and likely FIRE.

t-writescode3• 1 year ago

What would you do in your retirement? Loaf? Volunteer? Make art?

Two of those are “work”

pxc2• 1 year ago

Well, 25% stopped apparently. Which is somewhat telling.

The report also says that half of those who stopped working went back to school! So that's no more than 13% who really became "idle". And there are also questions we should ask about that group, like their age composition, for instance. If of the 13% that quit working without returning to education or training, many of them were older people, wouldn't that meaningfully change the picture as well?

dumbledoren• 1 year ago

Aside from half of those who stopped working going back to school, there is a simple reason why a lot of people will stop for a while when universal income or a similar scheme first starts:

People are burned out. They are overworked. Over-stressed. Most of them were just hurled into careers by the system without much choice because they had to make a living. Most of them didnt even have time to think about their choices. A majority has spent decades struggling for survival amidst financial insecurity. When universal income starts for the first time, all of these people will stop for a while and start revising their lives. Something which they needed to do way before, but were not allowed by the system. Its natural.

When they get over the burnout and do their reflection, they will go active again. We see this in the case of the privileged minority who are able to retire early or take sabbaticals. They rest and do random stuff for a while, then they go back to doing something they want to do. Especially in tech, that has been the case.

People dont like staying idle for long.

ropable2• 1 year ago

I bet you wouldn't, at least not until your 70s. Here's my anecdote-based argument to the contrary: every single recent retiree I know (having $basicIncome as a pension) has taken 6-12 months off work and then started working again (where they are physically capable of doing so). The reasons vary from necessity, boredom or wanting to feel "useful". This seems to drop off sharply the mid-70s. I'm not saying that working is hardwired in humans, but it seems to be a strong part of our sense of self-worth.

david-gpu7• 1 year ago

For those fortunate enough to have made absurd amounts of money, think of what you did when you had it.

I quit my job. A handful of my coworkers did the same.

Most people, when given the chance to stop working, they stop. Just look at pensioners, including those who get a pension at 50. The vast majority simply stop working.

JKCalhoun4• 1 year ago

I retired when I thought I (barely) could financially. 57 years old is by no means young, but I have done better than my parents did in that regard.

(Although I might start substitute teaching this Fall ... maybe I didn't retire after all.)

crtified3• 1 year ago

You quit working in the conventional, modern, hierarchical contract employment system - a very tight and specific definition of "work".

But I'd be very surprised if you didn't still spend a goodly proportion of your time beavering away at endeavours that were productive to yourself or others in your family and community.

joegibbs4• 1 year ago

That's because the kinds of people who make those huge amounts of money usually have that ambition and lack of satisfaction. But what about the parts of society that aren't go-getting yuppie strivers? There is a vast majority of people who never consider grinding leetcode to get a job at Jane Street so that they can later pivot to B2B SAAS for timeseries data.

t-writescode3• 1 year ago

Honestly, I think you think too little of people. A *lot* of people love to invent, create, explore, dream, participate and so on. I would argue the vast, vast majority.

People I know grow crops, make food, paint, draw, build worlds, write stories, create programs and so on. And these are people from every area in life.

apparent• 1 year ago

There's a strong selection bias at play. People who have made absurd amounts of money are disproportionately likely to be highly-motivated people.

winstonewert• 1 year ago

Some thoughts:

- It says that 3/4 of people kept working; to me, that seems like a big drop.

- Data is based on a survey of people in the program; I distrust data from surveys on principle.

- There seems to have been a reduction in the payment as they earned money, so its not really UBI as typically advocated.

strken3• 1 year ago

Lewchuk added that while some people did stop working, about half of them headed back to school in hopes of coming back to a better job.

I believe previous UBI experiments have shown the same results: most people keep working, some people stop, but they usually have decent reasons. Education, extending parental leave, or being a caregiver aren't necessarily things we want to discourage if they result in a greater return.

qeternity2• 1 year ago

if they result in a greater return.

Greater return than what and to whom?

We already have existing labor markets that are very capable of determining returns.

mostertoaster2• 1 year ago

If we could get rid of social security, Medicaid, food stamps, and all forms of welfare, and replace them all with a UBI equally given to every citizen, the trade off might make something as inherently idiotic as UBI worth it.

Analemma_• 1 year ago

You can’t replace Medicaid with UBI unless you also change the entire health care system to be single-payer, because people will still have random medical problems which need a million dollars (or whatever) worth of treatment. For the rest of it I agree, but I think you’re overestimating how much we spend on all those programs— they don’t even come close to what a reasonable UBI would cost. UBI would require a huge change to how taxation/spending works no matter how it’s implemented.

mostertoaster2• 1 year ago

Honestly I think UBI would be awful. And what I really mean is take the sum amount of all welfare we spend today divide by the number of citizens and give every citizen that much. Would hardly be enough still. The only people who should be in favor of it though is the billionaire aristocrats.

It would effectively take the entire middle class and make them serfs.

It would be the quickest way to bring back a feudal type system with a few people at the top and everyone else pretty much poor.

Sure they’d make sure we have enough to eat and clothe ourselves, but even the slave owners of old did that.

Just look at the experiment in 2020-2021 where we gave everyone even more free money, the result we saw companies go from less than a trillion market cap to over three trillion while wages went up maybe 25%

chris_va• 1 year ago

I realize UBI has been a popular topic on HN, answer me this...

UBI, if implemented, would move O($10T/year) around the economy.

We've seen a lot of small scale studies, which basically boil down to giving people money == life improvements. However, I do not see how a small scale study could possibly answer the open macro questions, like inflationary collapse (e.g. increased velocity without direct economic output), even if the whole "will people work anymore" question is moot.

Without answering those questions, it would be a USSR scale experiment, which is incredibly dangerous. Improving peoples lives would be great, but I cannot see how one could be an advocate for UBI without having solid answers to those questions.

micromacrofoot3• 1 year ago

why not do it gradually by expanding regional pilot programs, you can't answer these questions without doing it

burnt-resistor3• 1 year ago

Another possibility is a negative tax issued every month that becomes effectively UBI.

Also, if the IRS were to cut some of their absurd tax breaks for billionaires like the carried interest loophole, simplify things, calculate it for people, and withhold the most likely correct amount ahead of time, it would ease the unnecessary burden placed on people who aren't rich enough to have tax accountants.

Corporations need to be taxed at around 75% too while we're at it to pay their fair share. The ratcheting of tax brackets should also be 90% of personal income for the 3 millionth dollar and over. Every billionaire is a policy failure and CEO:worker pay exceeding 1000x is crazy.

theteapot• 1 year ago

"inflationary collapse" seems contradictory. I think hyperinflation is a more correct term.

strken3• 1 year ago

I see being an advocate for UBI as advocating for solid answers to those questions.

I would also point out that there's a difference between a full UBI, a modest partial UBI, and the kind of "basic income" that's not universal and goes away at a rate of 50c on the dollar when you earn more, like in this study. You can't slowly roll out a full UBI, but that's definitely possible for a partial UBI or a means-tested cash payment. You can dial the amount down as far as you want and still study the impact.

mbesto• 1 year ago

Two points:

(1) You are correct that you cannot test UBI in a petri dish. It has to be all or nothing to see the REAL effects.

(2) If you rework UBI to be a negative income tax and remove all of government subsidies and handouts then it would have much less potential for disastrous economic impact (see Milton Friedman[0])

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax

rhelz4• 1 year ago

We already have UBI....as long as you are over 65 :-) In addition, I suppose you would agree that children should be guaranteed to have a home and 3 square meals.

So already something like half of our lives are covered by some kind of UBI. 20 years to mature, 20 years of retirement, sandwiching a 30-40 year career.

Don't forget, UBI would replace everything else. Food stamps, unemployment benefits, social security, etc etc. And literally SQUARE MILES of office building staffing bureaucrats who do means testing, fraud prevention, etc etc for government benefits would also not be required.

If you put together all of the money we spend for all of that, I wouldn't be surprised if 90%, or even 100% of the cost of a UBI could be covered.

verteu3• 1 year ago

If you put together all of the money we spend for all of that, I wouldn't be surprised if 90%, or even 100% of the cost of a UBI could be covered.

Administrative overhead is nowhere near as high as you estimate.

SNAP covers ~12% of the population with 5% overhead costs.

Medicaid covers ~20% of the population with 5-10% overhead.

Social security covers ~20% of the population with <1% overhead.

The extra spending to make benefits universal is an order of magnitude higher than any savings from eliminating bureaucracy.

JKCalhoun4• 1 year ago

I have a hard time seeing how UBI would be fundamentally different than what exists on American Indian reservations. Is that the model that people are envisioning?

rozap2• 1 year ago

There was quite a bit of displacement, subjugation and genocide of entire peoples that precipitated any handouts they did receive. It is possible that that influenced outcomes.

chneu5• 1 year ago

Are you serious? Reservations are employment deserts with little to no opportunity to do much. That, paired with generations of societal genocide, means reservations are not a good test for what can be done elsewhere.

That comparison is absolutely wild.

j_timberlake4• 1 year ago

It's a proposed solution to mass unemployment scenarios.

If the government wanted to give people money right now, it would just lower income taxes.

If you have a better solution to mass unemployment, feel free to share it with the rest of us.

km144• 1 year ago

How about... greater benefits to people who are unemployed? I mean, UBI is inherently a poor policy for "mass unemployment scenarios", because there is no feasible scenario in which the majority of people are unemployed. To give UBI to people making around the median wage or higher because there is mass unemployment due to automation that doesn't affect them doesn't seem like a good use of money at all.

AnthonyMouse14• 1 year ago

(e.g. increased velocity without direct economic output)

Transfer payments don't really increase the velocity of money because they're not associated with any direct economic output.

If Alice has $100,000 to spend and Carol has $25,000 to spend, there is $125,000 in actual spending, i.e. demand for something that has to be produced. If you then do a transfer payment of $10,000 from Alice to Carol then Alice is spending $90,000 and Carol is spending $35,000, it's still the same $125,000.

Maybe they'll buy different stuff, maybe one would be more likely to buy business investments and the other would be more likely to buy college tuition, but that has no more likelihood to cause problems than if Carol got a raise and Alice had to pay for it.

Doxin2• 1 year ago

If Alice has $100,000 to spend and Carol has $25,000 to spend it's much more likely that Alice will save a bunch of money instead of spending it.

Giving poor people money is much more likely to be spent at all than when you let overly rich people keep it.

burnt-resistor3• 1 year ago

1. You're fear-mongering and red baiting with strawman FUD.

2. Doesn't have to be that much.

3. Alaska issues a yearly dividend from their permanent fund.

nixpulvis2• 1 year ago

Why not strengthen need based assistance? Why give everyone $X/mo when you could give just those who need it the money? Why not strengthen programs like SNAP or affordable housing programs? UBI solves the issue of changing requirements and confusing/embarrassing applications, but I'm not sure it's better overall.

doctorpangloss• 1 year ago

one POV is that libertarians, who have a lot of beefs, are running the country right now, so what choice do you have? they keep winning elections.

another POV is, libertarians have empathy, it's quixotic, so how can it be harnessed to achieve your goals?

micromacrofoot3• 1 year ago

ubi is inherently cheaper because it's significantly simpler, means testing programs are expensive to operate and are often slow and needlessly bureaucratic

nixpulvis2• 1 year ago

I have serious trouble believing UBI provides enough to solve the poorest peoples problems without needlessly costing a huge amount funding well off peoples hobbies.

You'll still need affordable housing, you'll still need food programs, etc. I don't see how you save on cutting those programs.

verteu3• 1 year ago

Ballpark numbers: About 1/3 of Americans get government assistance, and typical administrative costs are 1-10% of the program.

Making these benefits universal would require spending 200% more, and save at most 10% in overhead.

Thus, optimistically, you'd be spending +190% more.

lmm• 1 year ago

Why not strengthen need based assistance? Why give everyone $X/mo when you could give just those who need it the money? Why not strengthen programs like SNAP or affordable housing programs?

Because those are vastly less efficient, create traps where people can't afford to increase their income, and ultimately divide the population and tend to get dismantled.

MaysonL• 1 year ago

Why not guaranteed employment, not UBI. Subsidize minimum wage jobs that produce social good without being soul-crushing. (Raise the minimum wage while you’re at it).

codebje• 1 year ago

Guaranteed employment is tricky to get right.

How do you provide minimum wage jobs that are not soul-crushing, without destroying the private sector soul-crushing minimum wage jobs?

How do you even find productive jobs people would want to do (or at least find tolerable) that no-one in the private sector was willing to pay minimum wage to get done?

How do you provide jobs to a wide range of contextual needs, from ages 16 to 65, office workers to labourers, physical and mental impairment, neurodivergence, ability to travel, etc? How do you fund the administrative burden of matching jobs to people?

What do you do for the people who still cannot work for various reasons - total disability, caring for another, etc. You still need provide a wide gamut of social welfare programs for different needs and circumstances, with its concomitant bureaucratic cost and inefficiency - or let people starve, or give them "jobs" that have no productive output, just performative burdens.

What's the actual upside of guaranteed employment programs over a UBI?

Aurornis3• 1 year ago

This is a 2020 news article and should have the (2020) tag added.

The study has also been picked apart for the methodology issues and the enormous amount of spin applied to the results. From what I recall, the link to the results didn’t lead to an academic paper, it led to something more like a pamphlet or advertisement with a lot of graphic design, dozens of pages, and lots of spin.

Even this news article shows the amount of spin happening. Read this section and think about what it really means:

The report shows nearly three-quarters of respondents who were working when the pilot project began kept at it despite receiving basic income

In other words: Over one quarter of people who received the checks stopped working, despite knowing that the program was temporary. This is actually a wild result when you think about it. Contrast this with the title that claims “people kept working” without qualifiers.

The better studies have included a control group that gets a nominal payment but much less than the basic income checks. Something like $50 or $100 per month to fill out the same questionnaire. Giving a single group some checks for a short period of time without any control group doesn’t tell you much.

The entire world of UBI studies is wild. Every time I read the actual data I come away with a completely different interpretation than the news articles and graphic design heavy reports that are produced by the UBI proponents.

jszymborski• 1 year ago

My bad, added the year to the title.

protocolture4• 1 year ago

I tend to see:

"New UBI study is designed to demonstrate that productivity will increase with payments"

and then after the results are released.

"UBI study confirms that participants were happier and healthier on a UBI"

9rx• 1 year ago

The entire world of UBI studies is wild.

Are you counting this study in that world, given that it wasn't a UBI study? It was intended to be a continuation of the Manitoban study from the 1970s, which wasn't modelled as UBI either.

JoshTriplett• 1 year ago

In other words: Over one quarter of people who received the checks stopped working, despite knowing that the program was temporary. This is actually a wild result when you think about it. Contrast this with the title that claims “people kept working” without qualifiers.

Half of those people stopped working so that they could go to school.

I'd also expect an even better result if working did not cancel out the UBI.

throaway95518• 1 year ago

is "kept working" the point of ubi? is that how were measuring its success?

sokoloff5• 1 year ago

It’s one measure of the impact of UBI and is particularly important if you want to support the “UBI makes society more productive and prosperous” argument that some proponents make.

opo4• 1 year ago

The report shows nearly three-quarters of respondents who were working when the pilot project began kept at it despite receiving basic income.

1/4 of the people stopped working?? That is a huge effect, particularly since it was a short duration experiment. Unfortunately this is also seen in other experiments with basic income. The economist Noah Smith blogged about a large randomized basic income study done in the US where participants received about $1,000 a month for three years:

...Just $1000 a month made 2% of people stop working! That’s a very large negative effect. It contradicts the results of earlier studies showing little or no effect of unconditional cash benefits on employment. And worst of all, the basic income recipients didn’t seem to transfer to better jobs or go back to school — two of the most powerful arguments for basic income. Instead, people just sat around at home.

https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/at-least-five-interesting-thin...

chneu5• 1 year ago

Don't forget to compare that to the number of people who exit the job market without UBI.

Given the chance, many people will quit working. That isn't surprising. Acting like this is UBI's fault is kind of weird.

opo4• 1 year ago

Acting like this is UBI's fault is kind of weird.

As Noah Smith wrote:

...Now, increased leisure time isn’t zero benefit — obviously it’s nice to be able to sit around and do nothing and live off of government cash for a little while. But it represents a steep tradeoff — programs like this are already very expensive in fiscal terms, and if they make people work less, that only adds to the total economic cost. If leisure time is all we’re getting for all of that money and lost output, it’s highly questionable whether the intervention is worth it.

abeppu• 1 year ago

I dunno this seems like a not great program and a not great study.

Its findings are the result of a 70-question, anonymous online survey made available to basic income recipients in Hamilton, Brantford and Brant County. A total of 217 former recipients participated, according to the report.
Forty in-depth interviews with participants were also completed in July 2019.
The project worked by recruiting low-income people and couples, offering them a fixed payment with no strings attached that worked out to approximately $17,000 for individuals and $24,000 for couples.

Earlier it mentions the program had 4k participants. So 4k participants -> 217 survey respondents -> 40 interviews. We don't know to what degree there was a selection bias in who decided to respond or was available to interview. Not great in terms of the data the study generated.

Whatever income participants earned was deducted from their basic income at 50 per cent, meaning once someone hit $34,000 they wouldn't receive a payment anymore, Lewchuk explained while speaking with As It Happens.
Lewchuk added that while some people did stop working, about half of them headed back to school in hopes of coming back to a better job.

And the program told people up front that it was temporary, and that the marginal benefit of their own work or income would be substantially reduced. If your earning power already wasn't great (which qualifies you for the program) and now your effective wage per hour worked is functionally reduced ... it's kinda shocking that most of them kept working! If the program wanted to keep people working, it wouldn't take away funds from them as they earn.

ropable2• 1 year ago

There's a segment of the population who are vehemently against the idea of undeserving/lazy/the wrong people receiving any kind of welfare benefit, and the concept of UBI really, really triggers that segment. To the point where rational analysis goes straight out the window.

I'm quite certain that all the same arguments were had about every kind of retirement or disability pension everywhere. Many of our societies are producing an enormous amount of resources surplus to our basic needs, often distributed very unevenly. Putting some of that surplus towards ensuring all members are at least housed and fed would not be a bad thing.

Manuel_D2• 1 year ago

Time-boxed UBI experiments don't represent how people would behave if they had the benefits for life. That's not throwing rational analysis out the window. If anything, trying to extrapolate the results of a UBI pilot that didn't last 3 years is playing fast and loose with rationality.

Disabled people receive benefits because their ability to work is impeded by their disability and thus those programs don't have the same potential to disincentive work among the disabled population.

Retirement benefits do diminish older people's labor participation rates. That's the intended purpose of retirement programs. Society agrees that at a certain age people should ideally be able to relax and not work if they don't want to. Why do people protest when countries raise their retirement age? Because people don't want to have to work in their 70s or late 60s. Some do (my dad kept consulting for the fun of it), but they're probably in the minority.

somedude895• 1 year ago

ensuring all members are at least housed and fed would not be a bad thing.

Not sure about your country, but normally those cases are covered by social security and welfare, it doesn't require helicopter money.

chneu5• 1 year ago

You're talking about the "welfare queen" myth. The idea that given any sort of welfare, a large percentage of the population will exploit that welfare and quit being productive.

throaway95518• 1 year ago

no duh

osigurdson• 1 year ago

The question is, what happened to the people who they took the money from or inflated away the value of their savings? The second question is, how much money was "lost in translation".

UBI might be fine in a post scarcity world. Let's maybe think about it once governments eliminate all debt and have run surpluses for a decade.

joegibbs4• 1 year ago

The problem with UBI is that not only does it give people an incentive to not work (as 25% of people in the study stopped working, even when they presume that the money would stop coming at some point) but, at a national level, it also requires a massive tax hike on the people who do work, which disincentivises work.

It would have an inflationary effect on basic goods and services. If you're renting and everybody is getting an extra few thousand a month then landlords know that they can charge a bit more since everyone has that money. Same with staple foods.

The cost savings don't make sense. An argument is that it will actually save money because the government will be able to abolish disability support and welfare, get rid of free healthcare, etc. But this ignores the fact that a lot of that stuff has unequal demand. You crash your car, your leg gets cut off, go to the hospital, they spend $100k on making sure you survive (specialised machines, a team of doctors and nurses, medicines, recovery and physiotherapy). How's that work under UBI if the government isn't paying for it anymore, who is? Or say you have a child with a disability, it's still going to cost more than the UBI.

Also, regardless of the economic system - could be feudalism, communism, the bronze age palace economy - redistributing income away from producers towards people who don't work (or even work less) is going to have negative effects. There is lot more demand for garbagemen than there are people who really love being garbagemen and wouldn't mind the high taxes. Take a look at the UK: the percentage of the population that are pensioners keeps on rising and the government keeps giving them more money - it's gone from 2% in the 50s to more like 10% now - all money that could be spent on other things that could grow the economy.

luisfmh3• 1 year ago

So not sure if you read this part

Lewchuk added that while some people did stop working, about half of them headed back to school in hopes of coming back to a better job.

But they didn't just stop working, they went back to school

joegibbs4• 1 year ago

That's not that much better - 12.5% stopped working and didn't do anything at all.

I think that would also massively increase if the money was guaranteed to keep coming in for the rest of their lives. And even if the percentage stayed flat it would be an economic disaster - an increase of 12.5% of the population unemployed would be worse, in the US, than peak COVID. Another 12.5% going off to school still gets them out of the workforce, and would worsen elite overproduction.

rexpop• 1 year ago

I'm not convinced taxes disincentivize work. Do other purchases?

AnthonyMouse14• 1 year ago

requires a massive tax hike on the people who do work

Net of the benefit they would be receiving, it doesn't. The average person would be paying $10,000 in taxes to fund the UBI and then receiving a $10,000 UBI.

It would have an inflationary effect on basic goods and services. If you're renting and everybody is getting an extra few thousand a month then landlords know that they can charge a bit more since everyone has that money. Same with staple foods.

There is no extra money. It isn't being printed. There are net transfers for people making more or less than average, but then Alice has a little more money than before and Bob has a little less and it's still the same total.

Also, that's not how prices work anyway. If people have more money, prices only change if the cost of production is non-linear. If it costs $5 each to make a million sandwiches and $5 each to make two million sandwiches, increasing the number of sandwiches people want just increases the number of sandwiches produced instead of increasing the price of each sandwich. Sometimes an increase in demand causes the unit price to go down because of economies of scale.

But this ignores the fact that a lot of that stuff has unequal demand. You crash your car, your leg gets cut off, go to the hospital, they spend $100k on making sure you survive (specialised machines, a team of doctors and nurses, medicines, recovery and physiotherapy). How's that work under UBI if the government isn't paying for it anymore, who is?

That's the purpose of insurance.

redistributing income away from producers towards people who don't work (or even work less) is going to have negative effects.

Your premise here is that being paid to do what someone else wants you to do is more productive than doing what you want to do.

Most modern jobs are not "productive" in the sense that they actually produce anything of importance. People waste untold hours in corporate meetings or making things the world would be better off without. Would assigning agency to the individuals instead of the institutional bureaucracies reduce productivity or increase it?

whatever1• 1 year ago

The minute the asset owners sense more cash availability they will just hike the rent and housing prices.

Congrats you just made inflation!

j_timberlake4• 1 year ago

They haven't solved the biggest question: "Would landlords raise rents to take the UBI for themselves?"

This study was always way too small for that. We'll probably only find out for sure the hard way.

kbelder2• 1 year ago

We pretty much know the answer to that question.

Everything universal... that everyone needs to purchase (rent, food, power, etc.) will raise in price to eat up the UBI. It will reach an equilibrium where, to make ends meet, you will need UBI and at least a minimum wage job.

Any attempt to stop that from happening, such as price controls, raising UBI, etc., will cause shortages, abuse, or other issues.

That's my prediction, at least.

j_timberlake4• 1 year ago

Yeah that's called Neoclassical economics, I don't doubt it's true.

The question is whether the "shortages, abuse, or other issues" are worse than very-high unemployment scenarios in futures where the value of human labor has dipped below labor costs. It's probably going to get ugly no matter how the government tries to intervene, but it would be great if we knew ahead of time which interventions are better than others.

thimkerbell• 1 year ago

If this result is from 2020, there have been others since. With less rosy results, I think I recall.

burnt-resistor3• 1 year ago

"Them thar's CoMmUnIsM" Can't have that because Murica despises people beneath them getting any support or help of any kind. That's why universal healthcare won't happen without an FDR 2.0. Mamdani is kind of like that but can't become POTUS. Maybe Ro Khanna and AOC, but too many America voters are hostile towards them because the corporate news and podcasters told them so.

Ironically, the Trump stimulus checks provide fantastic and unexpected relief for millions.

People kept working, became healthier while on basic income: report (2020)

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