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We're officially launching UBI

givedirectly.org

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Re: We're officially launching UBI

#81

Post by shkkmo »

ttoinou wrote: post #49
skybrian wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't answer all questions. For another example, we won't know how much the results will transfer to other countries. But it's meaningful to see what people will spend the money on, its effect on the local economy (village level), and how this compares to other ways of reducing poverty. There are still a lot of people who think that people will stop working or spend the money on some wasteful way, and this will…

people will stop working or spend the money on some wasteful way That's not really the argument. What does matter is where does the money come from. Cf These hand­out incomes are to be given as "an absolute constitutional right," and not to be withheld "under any circumstances." This means that the recipi­ents are to continue to get this in­come not only if they absolutely re­fuse to seek or take a job, but if they t…

Your claim is contradicted by your quotes which specifically calls out people not working and spending their money wastefully.

Re: We're officially launching UBI

#83

Post by ttoinou »

pfarnsworth wrote: post #61

Congrats, and good luck. I'm personally against the idea of UBI because I don't believe it works at a large scale because all it will do is create inflation, but I'm genuinely curious to see me proven wrong. That's the whole point of experimentation, so I fully support this.

Easy. Delete cash and crypto currencies and let men of the state set prices.

Poof, no inflation.

Re: We're officially launching UBI

#84

Post by jerf »

moduspol wrote: post #27
chatmasta wrote: post #22

How can you meaningfully experiment with UBI if the “BI” is not even universal ? My understanding is that many of the criticisms of UBI are based on externalities that would only become manifest in a meaningfully large population. For example, price increases and inflation might arise from everyone having extra money. If you’re only testing UBI on a small population, then 1) it’s not even universal, and 2) there will…

I agree that it's tough to measure "success," but at least it would be presumably easy to measure failure. If we see exactly what opponents claim will happen, it would suggest a more strict implementation might be worse. My concern is that with this we're likely looking at an even worse version of the problems seen with sending shoes to Africa [1]. Over the duration of this experiment, it's quite possible you'll crea…

"Over the duration of this experiment, it's quite possible you'll create a society that abandons skills / equipment / expertise necessary to sustain an economy. That won't be a problem until the experiment ends, and then you've left people in a place far less than where you found them."

That would be a valid result of the experiment though, in light of the fact it is completely impossible to implement UBI everywhere at once. UBI isn't useful if there isn't a path from here to there. We have no lack of wonderful utopias whose only problem is that there is no path from here to there. If UBI can't prove itself out on a smaller scale it can on no account be tried on a larger scale. If the worst some bad social engineering idea does is leave a single county worse off, then it will be doing very well as bad social engineering ideas go.

It appears from reading this post that tracking the skills of the community is already part of the plan. There are certainly predictions about this from both sides.

(I'm a skeptic, yes, but I promise to treat the results from this experiment fairly. However, bear in mind that even total success at this level still wouldn't prove to me that we should immediately adopt it at a national level; I'll need to see a larger one. But I will admit that I was at least wrong about this experiment, because I don't expect this to prove out very well either. I also expect a lot of spinning of the results to make them look as good as possible, so I reserve the right to unspin the results.

As a token of such good faith, I offer that while I remain a cryptocurrency skeptic, and a BitCoin skeptic in particular, I expected BitCoin to be totally dead by now, and it is not. I say this to demonstrate that I can indeed eat crow.)

Re: We're officially launching UBI

#85

Post by rafiki6 »

There seems to be lots of confusion about what constitutes UBI here. This isn't talking about America or developed nations. And government led UBI experiments in developed nations were always doing UBI in place of other social welfare benefits.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income_pilots

The argument isn't about if UBI is good or bad. It's if UBI is better than the current social welfare structure. The question is, "is it cheaper and more efficient to just give people money and get rid of the several programs we have?".

And I'm quite sure any UBI done on a large scale will end up taking money away from those who don't need it in the form of higher taxes so it effectively balances out.

Yes it is income redistribution. That's not necessarily bad. We already do it in several forms. It helps society more than it hurts it. Most people are ambitious and don't want to live at or below the poverty line for the rest of their lives. Some do, that's unfortunate.

Re: We're officially launching UBI

#86

Post by gbear605 »

Gargoyle wrote: post #34

I'd rather see someone work on the Universal part first. Get distributions, however small, into the hands of every individual. Scaling up the distributions isn't a difficult problem to solve, the universal part is.

The questions that GiveDirectly are looking at are not about the technical implementation, but whether it actually produces good results.

Re: We're officially launching UBI

#87

Post by matt4077 »

ttoinou wrote: post #70
pc86 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most popular UBI proposals that I've seen all contain some level of social safety net reduction (some more than others). None of the proposals I've seen suggest that social services remain at their current level and we give everyone $ N on top of that.

But, will it happen ? Are laws implemented according to the proposals ? Of course the most urgent thing will be to implement UBI. And then to raise it. No one will think about deleting previous welfare benefits

Every single proposal of UBI has included it replacing all other welfare benefits. That simplification, and the resulting reduction in administrative overhead, is among the top arguments for UBI. Also: spaces before question marks look strange.

Re: We're officially launching UBI

#88

Post by rory096 »

pc86 wrote: post #58
quaunaut wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I've understood, it solves multiple problems that the negative income tax didn't, because it didn't apply to everyone. To clarify for those coming later: The negative income tax is the idea that beneath a certain amount of income, you actually are given money by the government. If you're over the amount, you get nothing, and in fact are taxed a portion of your income. Depending on how far beneath the amount…

In the US at least all the rates are marginal. The only "disincentive to work" is completely psychological and made up. If you make more money, you get more money. There is no financial scenario where you make $1 more and lose anything close to $1 in government benefits, tax credits, etc. I was on unemployment for approximately 6 months in 2008 and every $100 I made only decreased my unemployment benefit by $15-20. A…

>In the US at least all the rates are marginal. The only "disincentive to work" is completely psychological and made up. If you make more money, you get more money. There is no financial scenario where you make $1 more and lose anything close to $1 in government benefits, tax credits, etc.

Well there's at least one, though you're generally right that welfare cliffs have been all but eliminated in the US.

That said, here in Charlottesville our healthcare.gov market fell apart for 2018 and the one remaining insurer's second-cheapest silver plan is a tad over $10,000 per year. Under 400% of the federal poverty level, the ACA guarantees a subsidy of the difference between the second-cheapest silver plan premium and a certain percentage of your income (sliding scale, but no higher than 9.56%). That means if you're at 400% of the poverty line, $48,240 for a single-person household in 2018, your premiums are capped at $4,612 and thus you receive a subsidy for $5,468. At 401% of the poverty line, you get nothing.

Thus, effective marginal tax rates are >100% between $48,240 and $53,709 — it does not make sense to earn any more than the lowest end of that range. A bit of an extreme case that won't hold in more functional markets, but... personally frustrating.

/rant

Re: We're officially launching UBI

#89

Post by moduspol »

shkkmo wrote: post #78
moduspol wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UBI doesn't send money in, it redistributes it. And if solving economic problems were as simple as "just take more money from the rich people and give it to the poor people," this problem would have been solved centuries ago.

The post I was responding to wasn't citicizing UBI, but rather criticizing this specific type of program which DOES inject money into the local economy from outside doners. > And if solving economic problems were as simple as "just take more money from the rich people and give it to the poor people," this problem would have been solved centuries ago. When in history have we tried anything like UBI? How can we know if…

We've provided subsidies and guarantees to try to help poor people and manipulated markets with predictable results countless times. In the US, higher education loans and urban housing are modern day examples of this.

UBI isn't inherently different. It's trying to pretend you can manipulate a market with no detrimental side effects, but it's been tried many, many times.

Re: We're officially launching UBI

#90

Post by shkkmo »

chatmasta wrote: post #74
shkkmo wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) How do you mean it isn't "universal"? My understand is that this initiative is universal within these communities? Are you saying that there is no meaningful way to test UBI without jumping immediately into a global program? 2) 6000 is a pretty good sample size. Given that this will be universal within these communities, we can certainly look for any evidence of local price changes.

That would be true if every economic good were produced within the community. I don’t know how isolated these experimental communities are, but I doubt they source 100% of supplies from the same group that’s getting the basic income.

It's true if ANY economic good is produced locally. You can look for individual prices changes.

Additionally, production costs are highly variable component of local prices and can be dwarfed by transport and retail costs (e.g. produce in the US.)

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