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

cbc.ca

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

#481

Post by heavyset_go »

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…

> “A linen shirt is, strictly speaking, not a necessary of life. The Greeks and Romans lived, I suppose, very comfortably though they had no linen. But in the present times, through the greater part of Europe, a creditable day-labourer would be ashamed to appear in public without a linen shirt, the want of which would be supposed to denote that disgraceful degree of poverty which, it is presumed, nobody can well fall into without extreme bad conduct.”

- Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations

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

#482

Post by mwigdahl »

theklub wrote: post #412
z3t4 wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The litterally shitty job of manually cleaning toilets would be higher paid, as it should be.

Seems like that job will be taken over by robots sooner or later.

Just means someone has to clean the toilet-cleaning robots.

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

#483

Post by joe_fishfish »

munk-a wrote: post #471
refurb wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, but work (productivity) is how you actually pay for UBI. So by giving UBI, you are decreasing the resources that pay for it.

We currently have intense income inequality in the world - pretty sure we can shave some off the top and the middle to help everyone live a healthier life.

Unfortunately the people at the top will do everything they can to stop this.

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

#484

Post by chillacy »

WilliamEdward wrote: post #66
EGreg wrote: post #53

If you want to make UBI a reality, instead of just talking about it for 50 years, we have to do it from the bottom up. I supported Yang, my company Qbix even built https://yang2020.app for him. But he didn’t get anywhere. We have a project to build UBI from the bottom up, using cryptocurrencies for communities - including local townships and cities like Stockton. Local currencies already exist, including casino chips…

What's to stop UBI from eating into other welfare checks? Or what's stopping renters from simply raising rent 1000 dollars?

> from eating into other welfare checks

I think that's the point for most UBI proposals. The most cash-like welfare programs are TANF and SNAP, they pay out on the order of $250 (depending on state), are temporary, hard to obtain, always under danger of being cut, etc.

UBI is an appealing replacement that's universal (more resistant to cuts because it's more popular), pays out more, has no discontinuities which result in welfare traps, etc.

The goal should not be to increase welfare recipients but to increase quality of life and social outcomes. For instance a jobs program like the Green New Deal would probably "eat into welfare checks" as people become ineligible through earnings.

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

#485

Post by kube-system »

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…

Exactly. Too many people think about the relationship between employment, productivity, and prosperity way too linearly.

The biggest problem is that we don't really have a good way to measure the value of free time or well-being. While someone could spend every penny of a minimum wage job on daycare services and it would boost productivity figures, it would be a pretty silly decision for someone to make in terms of actual prosperity.

Society has decided for a long time to continue working the same or more hours as productivity rises, but at what point does it make more sense in terms of prosperity to cash out some of that productivity in the form of free-time rather than dollars?

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

#486

Post by bo1024 »

ethanbond wrote: post #227
bo1024 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't follow that. HQ2 was about creation of new jobs and immigration of more people into the area. For a fixed supply, higher rents are caused by a larger number of people demanding housing at the current prices. Higher wages only affect that by (a) causing immigration into the area, or (b) raising people out of poverty so that they can afford housing when they couldn't before.

Hypothetical landlord: “All my tenants are now earning an additional $1k per month and nothing prevents me from raising prices. But I won’t raise rents because... reasons.”

Because the apartment next door would be $1000 cheaper and tenants would leave and go there.

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

#488

Post by csa »

munk-a wrote: post #424
csa wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m guessing you don’t know many people who were born into wealth. The skill that they must learn is how not to lose the money. This skill is difficult to sustain over more than a generation or two — grandparent earns it, parent might keep it, child usually ends up destitute both in terms of financial capital and social capital. If the “child” in this scenario is lucky, they have some social capital that will save th…

That skill is so trivial to learn compared with the skill of surviving and building up income from nothing. Rich people literally just need to not be complete idiots - if you've got 300 million in the bank put it in some low interest stable investment and you'd be able to live off the investment earnings alone. There, I just explained all the life skills you need as a rich person - there is no equivalence between the…

I am guessing that you do not know many people who were born into wealth.

There are existential questions that gnaw at some of these people that hinder them from taking the seemingly simple path that you have presented.

I would also argue that it is not as easy as you would think to park millions in some "low interest stable investment" that also does not have substantial (for generational wealth) counter-party risk.

> there is no equivalence between the road the rich and the poor need to walk to survive

I agree with this, but I think you are being overly dismissive of the skills that someone born into a wealthy family needs to keep that wealth.

It requires a healthy amount of self-awareness among other things.

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

#489

Post by chillacy »

jariel wrote: post #204
SirLotsaLocks wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

to be fair, a lot of people are stuck in jobs that don't give them the benefits they want, don't pay them enough, or just don't suit them very well but they can't quit and get a new job because they aren't paid enough for that. UBI gives people a chance to quit and not immediately be on the streets. This also creates more competition for employers to win over employees instead of creating wage-slaves. I doubt that's…

"don't give them the benefits they want, don't pay them enough, or just don't suit them very well " 80-90% of the population would fit into this category. You are not entitled to social services because 'you don't like your job'.

Yea the basic income in the study seems to be means tested so it might incentivize people to quit.

Just want to point out that a universal income would be constant regardless of job held, so there's no incentive to quit. If the UBI amount is tuned correctly, then those who don't have a job can subsist long enough to find a better job, which I'd posit is a net boon for our economy.

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

#490

Post by munk-a »

joe_fishfish wrote: post #483
munk-a wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We currently have intense income inequality in the world - pretty sure we can shave some off the top and the middle to help everyone live a healthier life.

Unfortunately the people at the top will do everything they can to stop this.

Getting this done may be quite a challenge, but it's a good thing to get done.

It's why this article is from the CBC, since Canada (while not perfect) is much better than the US in pursuing good things even if it hurts the powerful.

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