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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

#181

Post by kardos »

savanaly wrote: post #177
Retric wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If we are efficient enough in our use of land, the demand relative to the supply will shrink enough that it's no longer scarce. I suppose lots of people enjoy owning their own land-- large tracts of it in fact, and not sharing it with anyone. That's a little tougher to conceptualize as post-scarcity as there's a limit to making land enjoyment more efficient with advanced technology. But in a world where other resourc…

Not really. Even if we triple land use efficiency, population growth will increase the demand to compensate

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

#182

Post by dragonwriter »

cheeseomlit wrote: post #178
dragonwriter wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's still no answer to questions like "what if it starts to entrench a permanent underclass and make inter-generational wealth worse, as people who stop working bear a generation of people who have never worked, and they bear children, etc". Why would reducing disincentives to work, as compared to means-tested welfare, rationally be expected to have anything like that effect?

The main incentive to work is that you need to work to make a living. If the government hands you everything you need without working that is a massive disincentive to work

> The main incentive to work is that you need to work to make a living.

With means-tested social benefits, that is not the case, and, in fact, you lose some (or in some particularly perverse, but unfortunately not all that uncommon cases when multiple means-tested programs are involved, more than all) of the additional money gained by adding work to reduced benefits.

That is the disincentive UBI removes (or, more accurately, reduces and/or pushes to a higher income level, because you run into it—though not the more perverse form unless marginal tax rates are above 100%—in the taxes to pay for benefits.)

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

#183

Post by AnthonyMouse »

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.

> 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.

I may start calling this the "it is impossible to reduce inequality" fallacy.

If you gave everyone money, would things cost more? Maybe some things. Not everything, and not by 100.0% of the amount of money provided.

Because some of the money gets saved or used to pay down debts, not spent, and only makes people more secure rather than affecting prices. And not everything has the same price elasticity of supply. There are no practical resource limits on how many electronic devices or kitchen tables or wind turbines we can build. If more people can afford them, the price doesn't have to go up because the supply can go up at approximately the same price.

And the money comes from somewhere, unless you're outright printing it, so consumption goes down to some degree there when it goes up somewhere else.

The fact that you get the same amount of inflation you get by anything else that causes the poor to have more money is not a real problem. Getting $1000 and then paying $100 more for stuff is $900 better than the status quo.

Especially since the current problem is not enough inflation -- the Fed keeps wanting to raise interest rates and can't because as low as they are there is still no almost inflation. They keep missing their inflation target on the low side:

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/feds-bullard-says-interest...

Meanwhile everyone is saturated with debt, which inflation helps erode, so having a little more would be better.

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

#184

Post by zozbot123 »

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.

> 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.

Yup; even in formal models of "utility-maximizing non-linear taxation", it's actually very common for optimal clawback rates to be fairly high for lowish incomes, because (1) this allows you to have a decent UBI for people who literally don't have any other income, while at the same time (2) any money you claw back early is money you won't have to pay out or claw back higher up in the income distribution, and this allows you to lower marginal tax rates a lot for the bulk of income earners, which is good for incentives - especially long-run incentives on skill acquisition and the like. Think of the break-even point where you're getting nothing on net and have to start paying into the system - you don't want that income level to be too high, or else the whole thing would become both unfair and infeasible to fund!

In the real world, UBI is mostly about slashing complex paperwork, and preventing marginal clawback rates as high as 100% or perhaps more(!). But a clawback rate of even 60% or perhaps a bit more, is in fact quite appropriate.

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

#185

Post by munk-a »

savanaly wrote: post #177
Retric wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If we are efficient enough in our use of land, the demand relative to the supply will shrink enough that it's no longer scarce. I suppose lots of people enjoy owning their own land-- large tracts of it in fact, and not sharing it with anyone. That's a little tougher to conceptualize as post-scarcity as there's a limit to making land enjoyment more efficient with advanced technology. But in a world where other resourc…

Land will always be scarce because it isn't quantity of land (though that too can be a separate issue) but quantity coupled with positioning of land. Most people could afford to purchase four acres of land in Alaska or VT's north east kingdom, but four acres along central park is quite expensive because, due to the location of the site relative to all the services of NYC and the access to greenery, it is rather exclusive... and I don't believe (including references from all the SciFi I've ever read) that there is any situation society could be in that would nullify the difference in value of two parcels of land - Judge Dredd and Mega City one I believe come closest, even though land overall is much more of a limited supply, most of the inhabitable land is equally worthless - but there are still a few Oasis of dystopian high society around that have vastly different value.

If we draw even to Hitchiker's Guide's concept of built planets, and we considered the cost of making planets would eventually trend to zero... there is still the concept of locality that would influence price.

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

#186

Post by yakshaving_jgt »

matz1 wrote: post #85
yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is absolutely relevant. That money isn't just pulled from the ether. Another citizen worked to produce that value which is distributed through UBI. One happy person at the expense of someone else is not success.

The money (tax) will be pulled regardless. It's the cost of doing business. You should be producing value because producing value make you happier. Basic income enable both type people to be happy.

> You should be producing value because producing value make you happier

That is your opinion, and to some degree it’s an opinion I agree with.

That doesn’t mean the opinion has any basis in reality however.

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

#187

Post by antris »

kardos wrote: post #181
savanaly wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we are efficient enough in our use of land, the demand relative to the supply will shrink enough that it's no longer scarce. I suppose lots of people enjoy owning their own land-- large tracts of it in fact, and not sharing it with anyone. That's a little tougher to conceptualize as post-scarcity as there's a limit to making land enjoyment more efficient with advanced technology. But in a world where other resourc…

Not really. Even if we triple land use efficiency, population growth will increase the demand to compensate

Population growth has been steadily slowing down since 1960s.

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

#188

Post by AnthonyMouse »

kardos wrote: post #181
savanaly wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we are efficient enough in our use of land, the demand relative to the supply will shrink enough that it's no longer scarce. I suppose lots of people enjoy owning their own land-- large tracts of it in fact, and not sharing it with anyone. That's a little tougher to conceptualize as post-scarcity as there's a limit to making land enjoyment more efficient with advanced technology. But in a world where other resourc…

Not really. Even if we triple land use efficiency, population growth will increase the demand to compensate

Not at current fertility rates. If the current trend continues we're in for a world-wide population decline.

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

#189

Post by dragonwriter »

cromulent wrote: post #148
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…

True. In addition, from an employer's perspective, it unlocks easy employment of people without massive commitment from either side. Can I do a few hours work for this guy without losing my unemployment? Yes. Can I employ this person for a few hours without having to pay them while on paternity leave to make sure their kid gets a good start to life? Yes.

> Can I do a few hours work for this guy without losing my unemployment?

UBI doesn't really make sense as a replacement for unemployment insurance, unless benefits are really high. If you replace UI with a poverty-support-level UBI, it makes unemployment a lot worse for anyone but the lowest-paid workers.

UBI might reduce the perceived need for public funding of additional unemployment benefits in extended downturns (though if the be benefit level is poverty-support-level, probably not that much; that's more of a support for middle-income dislocation.)

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

#190

Post by msluyter »

dragonwriter wrote: post #168
msluyter wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Perhaps my wording was poor. I'm thinking of geographical regions, not the economy as a whole. Thus, despite a net zero effect globally, any redistributive effects would be unevenly allocated to various regions. And it's easy to imagine certain areas -- in particular, poorer ones -- having a higher income per capita of renters in particular.

Toy example: a population of 100, with one billionaire who owns their house outright and 99 people renting apartments. Take X dollars from the billionaire, distribute it to the 99. Why would the rentier, esp. if it happened to be the billionaire, not raise rents in aggregate by X?

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