Basic Income Research Proposal

I took a couple years off a long time ago. I didn't stop working on stuff. Really, if you pay me, all that means is that I work on what you want me to work on, and maybe show up at particular times. It doesn't motivate me to work, it just motivates me to change topics.

I absolutely know people who would never work again. I know other people like me, who do it because they enjoy it. And details matter a lot, and tend to be ignored[1] by simplistic first-principle reasoning.

A big part of this is the ratio of those, and how quickly the number of jobs drop. I would fully expect this sort of thing to need tuning as it goes - I personally see the biggest change being a sudden explosion of people with lots of free time. Just as a tiny example, what does this do to the video game market? What about dry cleaners when fewer people wear business-drag?

Anyone who makes confident predictions based on econ101-style reasoning is simply dressing their politics up in an argument from authority.

[1] What does assortive mating look like under such a scheme - how much status will holding a job gain? Is the income set at an "uncomfortable" level, how will that change over time, what sort of barriers (class, academic, opportunities, etc.) will grow up around it? Are there any incentives to do something useful, even if it isn't what we think of as a 'job'?

Details really matter.

As well I think for established people with kids and other commitments 1000 isn't nearly enough to get by but there is a real danger that for young adults you give them this option of completely checking out of society if it's available forever. Rent a cheap house with friends, smoke weed, and play videogames sounds like a pretty decent option to a lot of 18 year olds. Or even younger maybe? When can kids legally drop out of high school?

I really think basic income is a bad idea. I don't think we are anywhere near the point of mass replacement of the entire workforce with robots/ai even in the developed world. Forcing people who are working to pay into a system that lets people contribute 0 to society while enjoying a decent life(24k for a couple/roomates is completely livable in many parts of US especially without a car) is both unfair and likely to cause significant social strife between workers/non-workers.

I really think a basic livable wage with the removal of the minimum wage is a far better solution. Set some minimum livable wage based on 40 hour work week and have the government top up wages rather than incomes. Obviously there would have to be some sort of progressive claw back system to encourage people to find better paying jobs and not just go with the easiest thing available. Maybe have the government act as an employer of last resort creating some busy work cleaning streets or repairing roads.

I really think it's important for people to have something to do when they wake up in the morning and to be contributing members of society. Not only out of a sense of fairness for the people that are working but I think it is incredibly unhealthy to not have any responsibilities in life.

This research, to me, seems to be ignoring the biggest open question of UBI. All tests to date have looked pretty good, but have only been done on a micro level. The fundamental issue one really needs to answer for UBI is the macro scale effects.

As a society, if we were to redistribute trillions of dollars without commensurate economic value being directly created, we'd expect to see large scale inflation.

Money is a complicated subject, but essentially it represents a transfer of a future scarce resource. For commodities, the cost is essentially the sum of labor to generate it (either to mine the raw resources, build the factory, discover the technology, etc).

If no economic resource is being added to the economy, then you are just devaluing money. That is usually very regressive, and in this case could be made worse by people slightly reducing their economic labor because of the extra income stream. I could see this leading to a bad cycle, where any economic gains due to increasing UBI are later undermined.

Anyway, it would be nice if UBI worked, but I've seen no evidence that it will in a large system. It would be nice to get confirmation of previous UBI studies, but this research proposal is likely to just generate the same data, without addressing any of the open fundamental issues.

Median rent in the US is $934 thus this one benefit costs the US goverment as much as this proposed BI would. Unless we are talking about housing where people aren't which is likely a non-starter for a slue of reasons.