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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

#161

Post by rmah »

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.

To use different phrasing, what you're saying is that you want people to be poorer. Please understand that I don't mean this as a personal attack on you, your beliefs or philosophy. But from a different perspective, that really is what you're saying. Do you really want to say that?

Perhaps a better alternative is: a good goal would be to allow people to have more while using less natural resources and polluting the environment less. While certainly difficult, I'd hope that advances in efficiency (such as more automation) could theoretically allow this!

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

#162

Post by auiya »

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.

I'd be willing to bet in most workplaces, about 20% of the workforce is dead weight - especially those in the management chain.

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

#163

Post by billmalarky »

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…

You're forgetting about growth. Is UBI possible today? Probably not.

Quick googling (so take my numbers with a grain of salt but my point is to illustrate not be exact) says US economic growth the last 10 years has been ~45%. If that trend continues today's $3 trillion budget could be $4.5 trillion in 2030 - UBI starting to look much more possible. Another decade of 50% growth and the budget is $6.75 trillion in 2040 -- UBI seems absolutely possible. Sure there's population growth to consider as well, but you get my point where at some point the math works pretty well.

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

#164

Post by ctdonath »

macspoofing wrote: post #87
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…

>Right now there are explicit subsidies for housing and healthcare. If they get replaced with a UBI in the same amount Good luck with that. UBI is barely tolerated by the left and progressives but only under the constraint that it doesn't replace any existing social welfare programs. The minute UBI advocates start pushing it as a replacement is the minute that progressives will squash it.

Agreed. The momentum of welfare service providers alone would see to that, with somewhere around a million US workers having a vested interest in keeping their jobs as gatekeepers/facilitators, vs "everyone gets a check" covering what they control access to. Should UBI be enacted, the very same system would agitate to provide specialty services on top of UBI for special cases, building pretty much the same bureaucratic structure as exists now.

UBI simply redefines $0 income to a higher number functionally equal to $0.

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

#165

Post by frandroid »

jasonlotito wrote: post #35
virgilp wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But this is from Canada, don't they have universal healthcare?

> universal healthcare That doesn't mean what you think it means. There are many things not covered or not covered practically that you would want to pay for private healthcare. e.g. You can wait years for services, or you can pay a few thousand a month and get it sooner. This is critical for things that necessitate early intervention. Wait too long, and when the government does finally come around to being able to p…

> You can wait years for services

*in some rare cases

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

#166

Post by ethanbond »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #143
ethanbond wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 hou…

Agreed that there's additional margin we can get with less restrictive zoning, but land is ultimately supply constrained. More importantly, high-quality (previously defined as arable, now defined as "close to good jobs/services") is certainly constrained as a matter of physical distance.

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

#167

Post by AnthonyMouse »

ctdonath wrote: post #130
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…

Problem is the lack of colloquial objective definition of "poor". The US "poverty line" is at 80th percentile of world incomes. The US's vast welfare/entitlement system ensures few indeed net less than that line, shoring up their shortfall with trillions of $. What constitutes "poor" keeps shifting. There will always be a bottom 10%. There is ongoing increase to the standard of living, instilling a sense of "nobody s…

The simpler solution is to just impose a tax of a given rate and pay out all the money it generates as a UBI. As economic productivity increases over time, more revenue is generated and we can pay out a bigger UBI, which satisfies the intuition that minimum standard of living should increase as overall productivity improves.

If that amount is below some standard of living we wouldn't wish on our worst enemies then we can worry about it (i.e. raise the tax rate). If it's somewhat more than that but nonetheless we have a reasonable tax rate, so what? If the economy is doing better in ten years and that allows someone living on a UBI to be able to afford broadband when they couldn't before, is that supposed to be a problem?

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

#168

Post by dv_dt »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #151
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.

> Would fewer people in the workforce really be so bad? Yes. Someone needs to work to produce the goods and services they use, as well as fund their UBI. The more people who opt out of working, the harder everyone else must work to compensate. > What’s the carbon and water footprint of all of these goods we really don’t need but we bust our humps for anyway? People dropping out of the workforce doesn't reduce the dem…

Since we already have the productivity to grow and make all the necessities of life, why are we worried about maximizing degree to which we work for more luxury goods?

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

#169

Post by stevenwoo »

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…

Your link leaves out the study of the Alaska Permanent Fund https://www.nber.org/papers/w24312 I believe it's left out because it contradicts the premise - it found more people actually looked for work because prior to the Alaska payment they were too poor to venture far from home.

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

#170

Post by Cthulhu_ »

From my personal point of view, basic income SHOULD disincentivise work; it's a boost for society, health, well-being, children, etc.

Because in the current economy, a lot of people have to work unreasonable hours, multiple jobs, and have all people in a family work to make ends meet, at the cost of personal health and well-being, personal time, having children at all or having more children, getting married and buying a house, etc.

Right now I'm stressed because I'm earning less than I spend, my girlfriend is stressed because she doesn't have a job yet and due to personal reasons may find it hard to get, keep, and work enough hours at a job, etc. If she earned a basic income we'd be out of the woods already. If I then also earned one on top of my job we'd be VERY comfortable.

(And keep in mind I would already pay for both of our basic incomes through the income taxes I'm paying at the moment. I'm happily paying taxes because other people paying taxes put me through college and into my current job)

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