People kept working, became healthier while on basic income: report • Hacker News Board

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

#361

Post by xzel » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 5:33 PM UTC

prepend wrote: post #340

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 don’t understand many jobs, but many I thought were bullshit, I changed my mind after learning more about them. I do know that asking people if their job is bullshit is not a good way to truly understand. It’s natural to hate many jobs, that’s why I’m paid to do them. I once shoveled horse stalls. I hated it. It was. Horseshit job. But if the job stopped existing, it would have negative impact. I think it will be c…

I don’t think I’ve said all jobs will be rockstar you’re the boss type of jobs, but there are certainly a huge amount of inefficiencies in lots of business. I think asking people if they feel like their work is needed or could be automated away is probably the only gauge one might have until actually removing them or trying to automate it. I agree it’s not a perfect metric but it’s got to be correct within some boundary, right? I think that’s the bigger question here, as well if people are qualified to judge (which I would hope since it’s their job). I actually think we need more “horseshit jobs” (great phrase and pun btw I’m going to steal this) in America where in the last 20 years we’ve pushed a lot of them to China and others, such as recycling.

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

#362

Post by richardlblair » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 5:33 PM UTC

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 right in that the reporting needs a lot of help in this article. It does a terrible job of painting a picture of how the province's welfare works today.

Welfare in Ontario strongly disincentives work. Basic income may not be enough, but the current system is fundamentally broken. It punishes people who do what they can, by cutting them off from the system. So, by working, in many cases people will earn less.

I also would like a break down of the savings the province had on healthcare.

There is a lot of potential in Ontario and we need to help people get there. Health, wellness, education, and supporting those in a bad spot financially are all ways to do that.

Anecdotally, I live just outside of Hamilton, one of the places the trial was run. That city needs help desperately. For Canada's standard, it's in a very very rough place. It needs every bit of help it can get.

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

#363

Post by BlackCherry » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 5:34 PM UTC

megous wrote: post #325

loa_in_ wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But lack of personnel to do jobs would bump the wages due to demand and that would quickly find people ready to fill them in

Or it would kill the businesses operating at the margin of profitability.

Which leaves room for a more cost effective business to come in and fill the gap in the market left by the inefficient business' death.

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

#364

Post by ChrisLomont » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 5:34 PM UTC

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…

> basic income SHOULD disincentivise work; it's a boost for society, health, well-being, children, etc

Less work means less is produced, so society as a whole becomes poorer. There's simply less goods.

Less produced also shrinks the tax base, so tax rates must be raised to continue to pay for the basic income. Higher taxes would then dissuade more people from working, or leading them also to work less. Now there's more people wanting basic income, so more needs raised......

Sure free money gives some people nicer lives, but in this case it is not free - it is taken from other people. Maybe instead of calling it basic income, call it "larger tax transfers for those not needing it as much as current tax transfer systems."

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

#365

Post by rstupek » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 5:34 PM UTC

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?

And as a society we need to understand that men are facing tons of difficulties women don't face too? Why are men killing themselves at a rate 4-5 times higher than women in the western world? Why is the life expectancy of a male always less than a female?

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

#366

Post by baddox » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 5:35 PM UTC

ctdonath wrote: post #265

baddox wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because humans need an objective minimum to survive. I don’t even agree with this. Even for starvation there’s no clean dividing line. Malnutrition leads to reduced lifespans and health problems. I think that quality of life both can and should increase as society improves its technology and wealth.

You're bolstering my case. "Malnutrition" is, obviously, below the line I'm trying to draw. Meet the line, and you fundamentally want for nothing, no "reduced lifespan and health problems". Humans have a natural lifespan; what is the minimum necessary to support that (aside from externalities brought on by personal choice or random $#!^)?

I’m not being clear. I mean that as your nutrition gets worse, your expected lifespan decreases and you are at greater risk of health problems. Again there is no clean dividing line between malnutrition and good nutrition. In fact, in the future we might know so much more about nutrition that many common human diets in 2020 will seem like malnutrition.

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

#367

Post by xzel » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 5:35 PM UTC

Aunche wrote: post #355

BigBubbleButt wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, an…

I see what you're you're saying, but it's not like UBI is going to eliminate these bullshit jobs.

Yes it wouldn’t eliminate them. The processes that create them would have to be changed or reformed in some way. The bullshit jobs/UBI argument is more about filling in if/when these jobs are eliminated, that be via automation or process reformation.

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

#368

Post by bluGill » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 5:35 PM UTC

dwaltrip wrote: post #224

rmah wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 e…

You are using very charged and slanted language. Likely, their lives will be greatly enriched by an extra day off of work per week. Bank accounts, the GDP, and other similar metrics fail to capture enormous amounts of value and meaning in our lives. Even the progress of scientific understanding is poorly measured in this way.

Maybe. What will you do with that free time? Most people will give an answer that depends on having toys they can no longer afford.

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

#369

Post by richardlblair » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 5:35 PM UTC

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…

This is especially true where the trial was run. Those places are in a bad spot and three isn't much to lift them up.

> I'm happily paying taxes because other people paying taxes put me through college and into my current job

Me too. I came up very poor, but access to a good education allowed me to learn how to code at 16... We need to raise these people up. We are paying the taxes to support it, we just need a government who doesn't misappropriate funds.

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

#370

Post by rocmcd » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 5:36 PM UTC

76543210 wrote: post #326

daemonk wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Child rearing seems like a waste of talent. Our high cost of education should be teaching people to create more value than the 15k/yr of value it is raising a child before the age of 5.(daycare costs, 4 children per 1 adult) As an ancedote, it seems part time mothers are significantly happier than stay at home moms.

Trying to distill 'child rearing' to $15k/year and calling it a 'waste of talent' is absurd. Not everything can (and should) be broken down into a monetary amount and optimized for.

You can classify anything as a 'waste of talent' when looking through this lens. Are you a software engineer? If so, then doing literally anything apart from developing software is a 'waste of talent'. Cleaning dishes? Gardening? Exercising?