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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

#341

Post by BigBubbleButt »

Aunche wrote: post #331
xzel wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of work today is pretty much bullshit/meaningless; I mean look at 85% of the US insurance / medical billing professions are useless and only exist because there is manufactured bureaucracy. Bullshit Jobs is a great book looking into to this. Also UBI shouldn't be disincentivizing work, it should be allowing people to explore more fulfilling pursuits.

I'm sure if you closely examine the bullshit jobs, you'll find they usually exist for a reason. You can't get rid of them unless you tear everything down and rebuild it. If it was so easy, companies would have already laid them off.

Lots of bullshit jobs exist for a reason other than those jobs being useful. Politicians want to create bullshit jobs because it helps them get votes. And sometimes bullshit jobs exist to enrich corporate owners for government contracts - just look at almost any military contract where literally billions of dollars go unaccounted for. Or look at most construction jobs in the US that are regularly overbudget, late, and oftentimes not even up to the original requirements. And yet - those people still get paid and the people who created those contracts make lots of money. In fact, they usually make more money by being more incompetent, because they have to ask for more money to finish the job.

The question is always: who is benefiting from this?

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

#342

Post by simiones »

luckylion wrote: post #234
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #170

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 buyi…

> From my personal point of view, basic income SHOULD disincentivise work; it's a boost for society, health, well-being, children, etc. Somebody has to do the work though, until robots do everything (and then declare war on us), you need somebody to take away the garbage, pick the fruits and unclog the toilets. Disincentivizing work doesn't make that go away, it just means you'll put that load on fewer shoulders.

> you need somebody to take away the garbage, pick the fruits and unclog the toilets

So your plan is to make sure some people will die of starvation unless they accept to do these jobs?

If no one is willing to do these critical jobs voluntarily, perhaps we should either pay them large amounts of money to convince someone to do them, or spread the work between more people - perhaps on a rotational basis.

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

#343

Post by easytiger »

danenania wrote: post #218
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…

"If you consider multi-generational entrenchments of poverty as its own problem, worth serious merit, then the work disincentive could be a disaster." Multi-generational entrenchments of poverty are already a disaster, and not because of fuzzy ideas like "instilling a work ethic", but because many millions of people lack the basic material resources needed to fulfill anything close to their potential. A kid watching…

> A kid watching their parents break their backs as minimum-wage slaves living paycheck to paycheck doesn't prepare them to do anything other than the same thing with their lives.

I'm sorry but you don't have the first clue.

Plenty of immigrant families leave low opportunity nation states and work what you consider demeaning work whilst taking steps to ensure their children seek more aspirational jobs and careers.

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

#344

Post by danenania »

Aunche wrote: post #304
danenania wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If you consider multi-generational entrenchments of poverty as its own problem, worth serious merit, then the work disincentive could be a disaster." Multi-generational entrenchments of poverty are already a disaster, and not because of fuzzy ideas like "instilling a work ethic", but because many millions of people lack the basic material resources needed to fulfill anything close to their potential. A kid watching…

> millions of people lack the basic material resources needed to fulfill anything close to their potential There is a limited amount of capital in the world. Distributing it now might help those at home, but it does not help the billion people who still lack electricity. There simply is not enough capital in the world to build trillions of dollars worth of infrastructure for free. Investment is a much better vehicle…

"There is a limited amount of capital in the world."

You've already lost me. This is provably false, as any programmer should know: if you sit down and code something useful today, you've just increased the amount of capital in the world. Out of thin air. A carpenter who buys a bunch of lumber and turns it into a thousand-dollar piece of furniture does the same. The more people can learn to add value to the world, and the more value they can add, the bigger the total pie of wealth can grow.

Investment distributes wealth primarily from the elite to the slightly-less elite. It doesn't break the cycle of poverty and immediate survival focus that prevents millions and millions of potential Einsteins or Feynmans or Musks from doing anything with their lives other than scraping by.

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

#345

Post by nennes »

isoskeles wrote: post #318
nennes wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So as a gender, women choose lower paid jobs and work less? If this is true and it is a choice, that would mean that women as a gender are either lazy or less qualified. If this is not true then it is evidence of inequality in the selection of employees. I don't see either of the above making your point.

> lazy or less qualified No one is saying that, it's more of a strawman you want to use to, I'm not sure, maybe accuse people who disagree with you of sexism. Or could you explain why you use those words rather than assume we think it's, let's suppose, just a choice based on differences in average values men and women have?

My argument is that -as a society- we don't really accept that women are facing tons of difficulties that men don't experience, because of their sex. For example, sometimes it's because they might choose to have a baby in the future and a lot of employers don't want to have that risk, so they avoid hiring women after say 25. I'm not saying that you're sexist, I'm saying that as a society we're comfortable saying that people who have less deserve it for some reason and we have more for just reasons. If we accept that the society is unfair, and part of why we're better off than others is either luck of because the game is rigged (ie rich parents), we'll be more generous and fair. Apologies if I insulted people, I was trying to make a point for generosity and I got carried away.

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

#346

Post by sfkdjf9j3j »

sabarn01 wrote: post #216
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #170

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 buyi…

People should fear being destitute its the natural human condition. Learning skills is the only way to make wealth.

Does that mean you would support a 100% inheritance tax and say, confiscating all of someone's wealth every few years?

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

#347

Post by einpoklum »

> The ... program was scrapped by Ontario's ... government in July. ... minister Lisa MacLeod, said the decision was made because the program was failing to help people become "independent contributors to the economy."

Basic income is supposed to help people cover their basic needs, not to make them "independent contributors to the economy".

This is doubly the case when we remember that doing volunteer work, social/community organizing, (non-commercialized) art - is not even counted as part of "the economy".

Also, if you're an employee - becoming an employee or continuing to be one - you're not an "independent contributor to the economy". But the vast majority of"contributors to the economy" are wage workers, not independent tradespeople.

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

#348

Post by Ididntdothis »

karatestomp wrote: post #245
_bxg1 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument for UBI in place of those other things is that it's extremely simple. Legislatively, bureaucratically, etc. Just give people more money to offset all of these systems that are too expensive. Simpler also means cheaper to implement. It does avoid dealing with the root problems in some sense, but it's certainly elegant.

I'm tentatively a UBI fan, but just switching to single-payer healthcare would do a lot of that. So much damn bureaucracy, public and private, for that. I think the public side's under-accounted-for, actually—so many government agencies end up having to deal with health insurance crap for one reason or another. Some would remain for private supplemental plans or whatever, but 90+% of that work would just go away. Plu…

Universal healthcare is a prerequisite for UBI. How could you ever rely on it if you have the threat of a six figure hospital bill whenever you get sick or have an accident? Affordable housing is also a prerequisite or the UBI money will go straight into the pockets of landlords (I often suspect this is the secret plan of billionaires who propose UBI).

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

#349

Post by ngokevin »

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 is work? With a large portion of labor subject to automation in and economy that doesn't need much of work anymore, people can rediscover their own form of work that brings value to the us as humans: caregiving, volunteering, arts, creativity, music, journalism, teaching, and revitalize local communities where all our main street stores are shuttering and local newspapers die in the thousands.

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

#350

Post by asjw »

crystaln wrote: post #187
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…

Part of the reason for ubi is that a lot of work is exploitative or underpaid. Ubi puts people in a negotiating position to not work and demand higher payment, or to not work and contribute to society in other ways.

Or could put them out of business forever because they are less keen to work hard than those not living on UBI (for different reasons, it doesn't really make a difference)

I think UBI is a good redistribution strategy if it's truly universal and with not requirements, but work wise I doubt it will change much...

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