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Basic income in Finland did not lead to finding work, researchers said

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Basic income in Finland did not lead to finding work, researchers said

#51

Post by zozbot123 »

eeZah7Ux wrote: post #18

> 'happier but jobless' That's a very misleading title. > Universal basic income, or UBI, means that everyone gets a set monthly income, regardless of means. The Finnish trial was a bit different That's a huge difference. It encourages some of the unemployed people to stay unemployed. That's called "poverty trap". This was not real UBI. Also, a 2-year long trial can be very misleading. People take very different choi…

The only difference the article mentions is that the experimental subjects were chosen among people getting unemployment benefits. What this suggests is that if you're on unemployment to begin with, differential incentives do not have a detectable impact on whether you'll find a job - that's all. It's saying that incentives aren't everything, at least on a 2-years-out scale.

Re: Basic income in Finland did not lead to finding work, researchers said

#52

Post by zozbot123 »

SatvikBeri wrote: post #4

So, basically the article says that unemployed people who received a basic income stipend of $685/month weren't any more likely to get jobs within 2 years than a control group who didn't. This doesn't seem very surprising to me – if anything, I would expect people on UBI to be less likely to get jobs, and this study seems like evidence against that.

The experimental outcome is actually indirect evidence against the view that traditional unemployment insurance makes people a lot less likely to get a job, at least in this specific experimental population. This is interesting news - it suggests that unemployment benefits works so well already that incentive effects just aren't hugely important, at least not to the extent that you'd find a statistically-detectable difference by giving UBI instead.

Re: Basic income in Finland did not lead to finding work, researchers said

#55

Post by msluyter »

Simulacra wrote: post #5

I think it's human nature to do a little as possible for the most reward. If someone is giving you money to literally do nothing, then you're likely going to do..nothing!

Incentives matter, as they say, so I'm sure you're correct to some degree, but by how much?

Don't forget about the importance of relative status. At least some -- my guess would be a large majority, but part of the problem with these discussions is that everyone's just doing WAGs without much real data -- folks will want a) better than average educations for their children, b) nicer houses in safer than average neighborhoods, c) etc... and will work quite hard for it. And since these are positional goods, UBI will have no impact on their availability.

Personally, I tend to think that UBI is untenable for mostly other reasons (extraction by rentiers, for example).

Re: Basic income in Finland did not lead to finding work, researchers said

#56

Post by bryanlarsen »

mises wrote: post #48

I still see some big issues with universal basic income, and would appreciate one of its supporters responding to some of them: Cost. $3.8 trillion by many estimates. That's nearly 20% of America's GDP. How is it possible to pull this much money out of the American economy without crashing it? Scope. I am of the opinion that one of the beauties of federalism is that policies can be tested first at the state level bef…

Cost: The money isn't going into a black hole, it's being given to those who tend to spend their money more quickly and more locally (aka the poor). So I would expect it to increase the velocity of money rather than decreasing it, giving the economy a nice boost.

Necessity: Any sane UBI system is revenue neutral. So anybody with above average income is going to pay more in increased taxes than they receive in benefits. That's easier and fairer than a claw-back.

Re: Basic income in Finland did not lead to finding work, researchers said

#60

Post by contrast »

java-man wrote: post #54
yasp wrote: post #53

Did they not have an identical cohort serving as a control to compare employment rates at the end of the trial?

no they did not.

Yes they did, according to the article:

“Mr Simanainen says that while some individuals found work, they were no more likely to do so than a control group of people who weren't given the money.”

Note this means the headline is the opposite of the truth. And the quote is not to be found in the article. It’s how the author/editor chose to interpret a single individual’s statement, despite the overall finding being very different.

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