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People kept working, became healthier while on basic income: report

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Re: People kept working, became healthier while on basic income: report

#141

Post by Mountain_Skies »

jimbokun wrote: post #47

> The project worked by recruiting low-income people and couples, offering them a fixed payment with no strings attached that worked out to approximately $17,000 for individuals and $24,000 for couples. Why discriminate so heavily against couples? It creates every incentive to lie about your relationship status. Or to avoid sharing a household altogether, creating greater economic inefficiencies and less built in soc…

Maybe those setting the rates believe most of the money will be spent on housing. Two people each living in their own one bedroom apartment will pay more in total than two people living in a two bedroom apartment. The gap is even larger if the couple lives together in a one bedroom apartment. Healthcare, food, and many other expenses will tend to double but not all will. If UBI is meant to cover the basics rather than everything, and housing is most people's largest expense, the amount can be lower for couples and achieve the same result. The problem, as you noted, is many will choose to game the system.

Re: People kept working, became healthier while on basic income: report

#142

Post by ctdonath »

new_realist wrote: post #32
immawizard wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree on the housing point. With basic income, people who can’t afford housing in expensive areas would move to towns with cheap housing/land but less lucrative/efficient work. There’s no housing shortage in rural areas.

Why doesn’t that happen today?

Because relocating requires a tremendous effort: new housing, job, occupation, acquaintances, etc.

Because a lot of that cheap land is cheap for a reason: low/no data service, harsh weather, insufficient community.

Because "basic income" is free: the whole point of UBI is a basic income which one can get by on - non-zero effort to work at all withers against the prospect of being comfortable doing nothing; there is no imperative incentive to work.

Re: People kept working, became healthier while on basic income: report

#143

Post by AnthonyMouse »

ethanbond wrote: post #117
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With basic income, we may just raise the cost of those things. The problem with this argument is that it proves too much. It's true of anything that causes the poor to have more money . Lower unemployment, higher wages, anything. Heck, it's true of lower healthcare costs, because people would have more money for housing, or vice versa. Housing costs and healthcare costs are problems, but they're independent problem…

> The problem with this argument is that it proves too much. It's true of anything that causes the poor to have more money. "The conclusion of this argument is deeply inconvenient, therefore the argument is wrong." It's actually true that rising wages result in higher rents. It's plainly obvious that this is the case - otherwise why would anyone care about rent explosion wherever Amazon decides to put HQ2?

> It's actually true that rising wages result in higher rents.

It's true in places with a constrained housing supply, i.e. restrictive zoning. Which is common in urban areas. But what you have there is a zoning problem, not a UBI problem -- evidence being that it's also true of higher wages and lower unemployment etc.

In unconstrained areas higher demand for housing causes more housing to be built, which prevents housing costs from absorbing anywhere near 100% of the new money.

Re: People kept working, became healthier while on basic income: report

#144

Post by daemonk »

simonsarris wrote: post #88

This is very misleading reporting. First: All studies so far show a pretty consistent ~10% work disincentive. This is what all the detractors say when they say it disincentivizes work. So how about this one? From actually reading the study's conclusion: > Slightly less than one-fifth were employed before but unemployed during the pilot (17%) So even worse than what we've seen so far. 17% dropping out of the labor mar…

What are the demographics of those that dropped out of the work force? Didn't some UBI studies observe that while there are people that dropped out of the workforce, these people consisted of mothers that can now go back to child rearing or younger people that can now pursue an education?

Re: People kept working, became healthier while on basic income: report

#145

Post by contravariant »

burlesona wrote: post #111

Basic income makes sense to me as a more effective implementation of welfare, but I personally strongly prefer the negative income tax implementation: https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/negative-incom... That seems to address many of the concerns that people are raising in this thread. Namely, it doesn’t require you to work, but ensures that you never have a disincentive to work either.

Mathematically they're entirely equivalent.

Although I'd be inclined to agree that negative income tax might be the better model, as it gives the most direct control over the net-income vs gross-income curve, and it's the properties of that curve that drives people's behaviour.

For instance the steepness of the curve indicates how much someone is incentivized to earn more (ideally you'd want this to decrease strictly monotonically as people earn more, but somehow this is rather controversial). And its curvature dictates whether a stable or unstable income incurs more tax (this property doesn't seem to be used much but it's still interesting).

One of the problems with income dependent welfare is that it messes up the lower end of the curve, making its slope smaller or even negative. In the worst case it provides a financial barrier to people on welfare to re-enter the work force.

Re: People kept working, became healthier while on basic income: report

#146

Post by variaga »

adrr wrote: post #101
pingyong wrote: post #95

I really, really like the idea of UBI. However, some napkin math: In the US, with ~250 million people being eligible, a $1000 UBI would cost ~$3 trillion. That's almost the entire budget of the US. How is this even remotely realistic right now? Even if you can cut other spending in half due to it, you'd need an additional $1.5 trillion in "income" essentially. Is that something that would even be possible? How many r…

Doesn’t Alaska have basic income? How do they afford it?

Briefly, the state of Alaska owns the oilfields in Alaska and makes money from selling the oil. That money is then partially disbursed to people living in the state.

The actual payment has varied over time (with oil prices, mostly), peaking at $3269/person/year in 2008 but was only $878/person/year in 2012.

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/alaska-mode...

[former Alaska resident]

Re: People kept working, became healthier while on basic income: report

#147

Post by lonelappde »

burlesona wrote: post #111

Basic income makes sense to me as a more effective implementation of welfare, but I personally strongly prefer the negative income tax implementation: https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/negative-incom... That seems to address many of the concerns that people are raising in this thread. Namely, it doesn’t require you to work, but ensures that you never have a disincentive to work either.

Money is fungible. UBI + progressive income tax is the same as negative income tax plus UBI to cover people with 0 income. The parameters matter not the name of the model.

Also we already have EITC negative income tax in US. So negative income tax is either irrelevant rewording or cruel to people who can't work.

Re: People kept working, became healthier while on basic income: report

#148

Post by vzidex »

exabrial wrote: post #133

The end does not justify the means. Forcibly removing someone's money and transferring it to another person can never be justified. Tax-funded UBI is theft, slavery, and extortion. However, if a billionaire wishes to privately sponsor UBI, this is a completely different story in charity and example that should be regarded. It's important to differentiate between the two, but unfortunately most UBI schemes refer to ex…

> Forcibly removing someone's money and transferring it to another person can never be justified

Except that almost everything government does involves removing someone's money - through taxes - and transferring it to another person - through social programs (including public school, building infrastructure), social programs, paying government employees, etc.

> If a billionaire wishes to privately sponsor UBI...

Extending this to include the social programs listed above: gee I can't wait to lick a billionaire's boots and do the hokey-pokey to be allowed to drive on their roads, have my burning house saved by their private firefighters, and send my kids to the schools they own.

Re: People kept working, became healthier while on basic income: report

#150

Post by luxuryballs »

hinkley wrote: post #129

I want UBI and a 30-32 hour work week, so I guess I’m proposing a 20% “disincentivization”. Would fewer people in the workforce really be so bad? What’s the carbon and water footprint of all of these goods we really don’t need but we bust our humps for anyway? At this point, more robots don’t mean more of the stuff we need. they mean more stuff we don't need.

You can already have a 30 hour work week if you want to do contract or part-time work, but for a full-time position you’d be competing with companies who still work 40-50 hour weeks so I don’t think there’s much practical opportunity here.
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