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Basic Income Research Proposal

basicincome.ycr.org

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191–200 of 427 posts

Re: Basic Income Research Proposal

#191

Post by confounded »

vasco wrote: post #28

I would speculate that any end date on this scenario will invalidate results. What a person does if it is guaranteed a job for life vs 5 years is wildly different, as you'll need to make sure when those 5 years are up, you'll be ready to enter the job market again, etc. I believe the same will happen with basic income. If we want to study where people gravitate to more fulfilling jobs, feel happier and so on, you nee…

Most critically, UBI is a two-step system:

- A small amount of free money for everyone

- Rollback the state, welfare programs, etc. to balance out step 1

It's not realistic to reason about the effectiveness of the UBI proposal without considering the effects of the second step.

Re: Basic Income Research Proposal

#192

Post by hueving »

godelski wrote: post #186
vasco wrote: post #28

I would speculate that any end date on this scenario will invalidate results. What a person does if it is guaranteed a job for life vs 5 years is wildly different, as you'll need to make sure when those 5 years are up, you'll be ready to enter the job market again, etc. I believe the same will happen with basic income. If we want to study where people gravitate to more fulfilling jobs, feel happier and so on, you nee…

I think you overestimate how much the average person prepares for the future. Look at the number of people who have emergency funds. 62% of Americans have So with this time frame I believe initial ideas of "I'm going to put this to savings" will quickly disappear. Five years is a pretty long time, especially when considering at how bad humans are at preparing for the future. What I think will be interesting is to see…

That's still not the same thing. Failing to save is partially because people think jobs are stable. That's unrelated to knowing you will need to get a job in 5 years after your extended basic income vacation.

Re: Basic Income Research Proposal

#193

Post by Guvante »

Jedi72 wrote: post #117
Guvante wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Make free public housing that all citizens have a right to ask for. 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.

To me that only highlights how prohibatively expensive it would be to give BI to people in any amount that would really move the needle

UBI doesn't need to cover the median cost of living in the US. In fact with just income tax that is an impossible line to hit as it would certainly trigger inflation.

But that doesn't mean that X dollars won't matter. In fact that is the entire purpose of this study "If we give people $1000/month, what happens?". Sure it isn't representative of what would actually happen with BI but if the study is done well and its findings are sound through review, then it would be a great way of answering "would that amount of money matter".

Re: Basic Income Research Proposal

#194

Post by zanny »

chris_va wrote: post #95
guaka wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trillions. That's what's currently going around in quantitative easing. That's why many are calling for QE for the people. Instead of giving money to financial institutions, give it directly to the people. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_easing

There is a big difference between loaning $1T once, and getting paid back, versus giving it away every year.

You loan 1T to the poor one year and get paid back 1T from the rich the next from all those poor spending money on goods the rich sell.

UBI isn't like defense spending. It isn't a black hole you put tax dollars down and get nothing out. It means tremendous goods demand for the necessities of life that is extremely stable and reliable for businesses to profit off.

Re: Basic Income Research Proposal

#196

Post by icelancer »

zanny wrote: post #154
Jedi72 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me that only highlights how prohibatively expensive it would be to give BI to people in any amount that would really move the needle

UBI isn't expensive. Its wealth redistribution, not consumption. Military spending is a black hole of money - you get very little R&D or productive GDP growth yields out of it but it stucks hundreds of billions out of the country every year. Social security is better than military spending but usually worse than UBI - recipients of social security are some of the richest people right now as an age class, so transferr…

>>Military spending is a black hole of money - you get very little R&D or productive GDP growth yields out of it but it stucks hundreds of billions out of the country every year.

I am no fan of the military and I agree with your premise, but I would strongly, strongly disagree with the "little R&D" portion of this comment. A great deal of technology we take for granted today was first made available due to the military taking on the huge reverse asymptotic cost curves of early adoption and invention of new tech.

The military is an inefficient and potentially immoral R&D department, but it is not one that generates very little. A quick historical look at what has come out of the machinations of war and preparing for it will illustrate the point, and fast.

Re: Basic Income Research Proposal

#197

Post by godelski »

FreakyT wrote: post #79
LoSboccacc wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you not work? Basic income is nearly not enough to access luxuries. Sure you should be able to live off it, but I think most people would likely want more, the difference from forced equality being that you can still work and keep that as luxury money.

> I think most people would likely want more Would they, though? That's the key question that I believe this study (and others like it) fail to address. Depending on the basic income amount, I believe it would be possible to live a fulfilling (if somewhat minimalist) life without needing to supplement that income.

Besides a few monks, everyone I've met that makes under $20k/yr wants more. I've never seen a real area where people are comfortable until the $40k/yr mark. Yeah, I know there are exceptions (there's always outliers in data, but you can still find means and trends). So I am confident you wouldn't see a significant difference in number of workers unless you brought that UBI level up by several times the proposed $1k/mo.

Re: Basic Income Research Proposal

#198

Post by zanny »

JOnAgain wrote: post #32
adangert wrote: post #26

You know this might be speculative, but I feel like a basic income applied to a national allows that population to act more like an ant hive. In the sense that only 3% of the population is actually doing the real hard work, but this is a healthy paradigm, and is much better than forcing individuals who shouldn't be doing the work they currently are to pursue things they actually care about, such as taking care of lov…

A lot more video games will be played

Maybe for a year. Then people will want meaning in their lives and would seek meaningful productive things to do that they want to do.

The reason people right now love gaming so much and often to an unhealthy degree is because its an escape from a life they don't like living but have no choice in because they are chained to a job to survive.

Re: Basic Income Research Proposal

#199

Post by zanny »

olleromam91 wrote: post #159

I like to do this though experiment sometimes. Let's assume some sort of Basic Income is enacted. A standard livable amount for all adults, that will scale with inflation, and even with number of dependents. Some people will still work. Will still pursue hard working jobs that contribute to society, that push our capabilities as a species forward, and add value (important). But think about most of the world and peopl…

It happens a lot where people make this jump from autonomous machines to sentient machines. It isn't a small gap. Going from domain learning and genetic algorithms to develop solutions for a hardcoded task to sapience is a huge leap.

It won't be accidental, or at least come out of nowhere. We should be able to see it coming even if it will come out of evolving algorithms. There will absolutely be intent in constructing intelligent artificial life.

Re: Basic Income Research Proposal

#200

Post by Frondo »

conanbatt wrote: post #151
vasco wrote: post #28

I would speculate that any end date on this scenario will invalidate results. What a person does if it is guaranteed a job for life vs 5 years is wildly different, as you'll need to make sure when those 5 years are up, you'll be ready to enter the job market again, etc. I believe the same will happen with basic income. If we want to study where people gravitate to more fulfilling jobs, feel happier and so on, you nee…

That would be true of a real BI as well, as you dont know if the government will cut it on the next election!

"I have structured my life not to depend on roads, because you never know if the next government will stop maintaining them."

When there's a cultural shift to a UBI, that's not going to vanish overnight just because of an election cycle.

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