Basic income in Finland did not lead to finding work, researchers said • Hacker News Board

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

#161

Post by AnthonyMouse » Fri, Feb 08, 2019, 6:28 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #159

benj111 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always think of Star Trek. It isn't really explored in depth but there isn't money and people don't have to work, transporter rationing is alluded to though. I guess in a world where everything can be made in a replicator, 'employment' becomes untenable. You still need some way of rationing scarce resources, and allowing people to 'vote' for what they want more of though.

Scarcity is beyond just stuff. Land for example is a finite resource.

It is and it isn't. Land in Manhattan is scarce. Land in the non-coastal western US or most of Canada or Australia is theoretically scarce too, but not so much in practice.

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

#162

Post by lazyasciiart » Fri, Feb 08, 2019, 6:31 PM UTC

tracker1 wrote: post #160

Reedx wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has there been any exploration of a version of Basic Income in exchange for community service? There's a virtually endless amount of unskilled work that could be done to improve the environment and people's lives.

I think it'd be a great idea.. you either are on disability, work an average of at least 20 hours a week at a paid, taxable job (under the table work won't count), or you volunteer for registered services programs for 20 hours a week. 20 hours a week is just my suggestion as a minimum that would allow for people to still job search if they choose to and could be averaged over a quarter or year or similar. Exceptions…

Most of the discussions of UBI are amounts too small to cover e.g chemotherapy. Or are you picturing a collapse in prices of healthcare as well?

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

#163

Post by a-priori » Fri, Feb 08, 2019, 6:32 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #159

benj111 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always think of Star Trek. It isn't really explored in depth but there isn't money and people don't have to work, transporter rationing is alluded to though. I guess in a world where everything can be made in a replicator, 'employment' becomes untenable. You still need some way of rationing scarce resources, and allowing people to 'vote' for what they want more of though.

Scarcity is beyond just stuff. Land for example is a finite resource.

Horizontally maybe, but not vertically.

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

#164

Post by lazyasciiart » Fri, Feb 08, 2019, 6:34 PM UTC

njarboe wrote: post #142

LarryDarrell wrote: post #111

Which would be a fine outcome. We're entering a real messy period where dignified, decent paying jobs are becoming scarce. All of our philosophies about work and welfare are rooted in a post WWII era where we were essentially rebuilding the world and there was more work than competent people. If we are going to insist that all productivity gains must now go directly to the capital class, we're going to need a UBI, un…

Do people really want to have all of their support depend on the government? As an American I know people that don't and even reject government paid food stamps and healthcare, although they are poor enough to qualify for them. I don't think it is very psychologically healthy to be so dependent on things out of your control. A better system would be some system where people can earn a large chunk of capital that basi…

I don't think it's psychologically healthy to deny that you are incredibly dependent on things outside your control already.

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

#165

Post by zanny » Fri, Feb 08, 2019, 6:34 PM UTC

psadri wrote: post #129

Handing out free money will most likely just cause inflation and defeat itself. The inflation will make the amount paid out in basic income insufficient to live on. The alternate to basic income for the purpose of housing, health and food, is to provide a basic version of those resources at zero cost.

Because minimum wage increases inflate basic goods so much that raising minimum wage is pointless.

For the exact same reasons minimum wage works, UBI works. You raise the floor and things inflate less than the floor is raised.

UBI has an added benefit to mitigate inflation in that long-term universal income becomes an exceedingly stable revenue source. There are thousands of retirement homes across the US that cost social security to live in - the business model is that the income is guaranteed, so the customer base and revenue is maximally reliable, so you can operate on razor margins because of hugely reduced uncertainty.

In that same capacity there would emerge UBI living accommodations meant to provide the "basics" for the whole value of the UBI. Even when not everyone uses them, their existence will act as a price floor on basic necessities to prevent them from inflating out of control - for the basic necessities with market price competition. That wouldn't include land or medicine, which can inflate in perpetuity because they are noncompetitive markets that should be more stringently regulated and socialized.

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

#166

Post by lazyasciiart » Fri, Feb 08, 2019, 6:35 PM UTC

lusmd wrote: post #154

yason wrote: post #121

The experiment was probably staked with an agenda to show that UBI doesn't work, given the parties in the government and the massive bias in selecting the participants. The sample of 2000 people were chosen from a group of unemployed people . I think the criteria for being randomly chosen was having been paid unemployment benefits during some range of dates. So it's not representative of a real UBI at all: the point…

> most likely taxed away Yes, most UBI proposals (as designed by economists) tax earnings with little to know exemption. That is, we give you $15k per year, but start taxing you the very first dollar you earn rather than only taxing income about , say, $20k.

But what a waste of effort. Why do they suggest this instead of starting at UBI+$1, at least?

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

#167

Post by dragonwriter » Fri, Feb 08, 2019, 6:37 PM UTC

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. $3.8 trillion by many estimates.

$3.8 trillion would be about right if you set the benefit level equal to the poverty line for a single-person household, and then gave it to every many, woman, and child in the country, starting at birth, irrespective of citizenship or immigration status, while...

> That's nearly 20% of America's GDP.

...nearly 20% of GDP would be accurate for the benefit level you suggested, if you instituted it at that level today. Anything phased in over time would be lower even when fully phased in, because GDP growth per capita over the long term is more rapid than inflation.

If instead you took the poverty line for the median household size, divided by the median household size, and assigned that as the per person benefit (and still had no citizenship/immigration status test, and no phase in period, you'd drop the cost to about $2.2 trillion, or about double existing combined state/federal welfare spending.)

Any reasonable UBI will also be restricted to those legally present (and quite likely only LPRs, citizens, and nationals of the United States; maybe only citizens and nationals) and not initially start at a full poverty support level (meaning other programs will phase out rather than be big-bang eliminated.)

> Scope. I am of the opinion that one of the beauties of federalism is that policies can be tested first at the state level before we commit our entire nation. Why would a national government do this?

Because without authority for immigration controls, migration for benefits is a problem.

> Necessity. I don't think we need to be paying anyone who makes over 50k (maybe not the right number, but there should be a cutoff). That just takes money away from those who need it.

Means testing is additional bureaucratic cost to serve the same function that can instead be served by tax allocation, and you already need income-verification bureaucracy and income sensitive formulae on the income tax side, so the choice is between two bureaucracies duplicating function and one serving the function. The latter is clearly more efficient. There's going to be an income level beyond which, considering taxes which fund UBI, people get no net UBI payment; you don't need a cutoff in direct UBI benefits to acheive that.

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

#168

Post by dragonwriter » Fri, Feb 08, 2019, 6:40 PM UTC

msluyter wrote: post #82

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…

To your list of issues I'd add extraction by rentiers. My (perhaps naive) understanding is that rents tend to rise to a market equilibrium. Infuse the the aggregate market in an area with X dollars, and rents will rise to consume X. I'd be curious to hear counterarguments to that point.

> Infuse the the aggregate market in an area with X dollars

UBI (designed sanely) doesn't involve any net infusion of dollars (which would require government borrowing or printing money to distribute), it is paid for from tax revenues; it's a downstream redistribution, not an infusion.

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

#169

Post by Wowfunhappy » Fri, Feb 08, 2019, 6:40 PM UTC

ThomPete wrote: post #76

It's a general misunderstanding that Basic Income is some sort of job program, it's not. It's a job replacement program for a society where there aren't enough jobs for everyone because technology have taken over most. Basic Income should provide fundamental living cost support in a society that has no jobs so there is no "but" in there. Edit: Keep in mind we already have Basic Income it's just conditional. UBI is di…

I'm not sure I'd call it a "general misunderstanding", because people seem to have very different thoughts on what UBI is or should be for.

I generally align with your view, but I'm not convinced our definition is more "correct" than others. It would be nice to get the terminology straightened out.

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

#170

Post by bakhy » Fri, Feb 08, 2019, 6:42 PM UTC

This is a weird title. The article says that the people on basic income were equally likely to find a job as those who were not receiving it. I was expecting that basic income might make people less motivated to find jobs, and that would have been an issue. But this result seems like a positive outcome for UBI.