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

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

#501

Post by brightball » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 7:08 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…

That’s what I always come back to with UBI. It needs to be survival level but not desirable long term, so that the goal is for it to supplement a job and not to replace it.

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

#502

Post by zazaalaza » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 7:09 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 opinion is spot on. Also the studies are short term whereas real UBI would be permanent.

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

#503

Post by munk-a » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 7:10 PM UTC

graeme wrote: post #494

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.

Wealth isn’t fungible like that. A lot of recent wealth inequality was stocks rising. That doesn’t mean that food production went up, or that more houses get built cheaper, or that new doctors are cloned, or anything of the sort. It just means stocks went up. Most of the economy is people providing stuff to other people, or working to import stuff. If people don’t work, you don’t get the stuff they provide. To a cert…

Oh, so maybe we should fund UBI by just stripping out the capital gains exemptions that allow insanely rich people to get insanely richer.

Some people have more money than they need, it can be removed from them - the intricacies of how they got that money should be very carefully considered when it comes to structuring how UBI would be funded - but they clearly have more money in absolute terms. And that wealth is transferable.

Also, in the western world, we have enough of everything. No one starves in America because there isn't enough corn, they starve because they don't have enough money to afford it - no one is homeless because no homes could be built, they're homeless because nobody wants to pay for the home to be built.

These are all solvable problems.

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

#504

Post by AcerbicZero » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 7:11 PM UTC

This misses the point entirely. UBI is the democratic socialist version of The Great Leap Forward. Its an attempt to better human existence via direct government intervention, something which rarely works as intended (assuming you're counting net gains). I'm pretty pragmatic, (and libertarian) so if we're going to start down this path let's skip the faux capitalism and get straight to the bread and games part. The government already has a near limitless amount of power to effect changes in the economic structure of the country, and this is where they've gotten us. Going further down that path seems a bit daft.

I realize part of this problem is that we've moved into being a post-frontier world, where there are few, if any, places left where people can go to govern themselves, but I don't see why the lack of empty unclaimed space should lead to the government taking money from some citizens to buy the loyalty of other citizens.

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

#505

Post by lulula » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 7:11 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.

hah.

Go create this lean startup factory that raises children from infants to 18 year olds. After all interested parents are superfluous to the well being of a child.

Child raising is invisible and yet so crucial to our economy. What happens to our economy when parents refuse to raise the needed labor inputs for free anymore?

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

#506

Post by zazaalaza » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 7:12 PM UTC

DubiousPusher wrote: post #389

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…

I agree. Letting workers leave abusive employment situations is a benefit of UBI. UBI might even totally reorient the idea of work in that now an employer has the incentive to keep workers happy that must be balanced with the profit incentive.

UBI would reorient the idea of work in the sense that new generations won't think about work the way we do, for them it will be something that you can do, not something you have to do. Similarly how sport is today, you can do sports but you don't have to.

Also with UBI you are guaranteed a certain amount of income for the duration of your life. You can go to a bank and take a loan against your UBI. A big portion of the UBI will end up at the banks because basically the loans are guaranteed by the government.

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

#507

Post by danans » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 7:13 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…

UBI is a tool for dealing with rising inequality and economic insecurity, not a solution on its own.

People will be incentivized to work despite UBI because they still want better things, and will work to pay for things that provide social signalling value.

A UBI shouldn't be designed to try to cover all desires and eliminate all reason to work, but rather should be tailored to give people more flexibility in choosing jobs and locations.

Even Andrew Yang's $1k/mo/adult proposal will not allow anyone to live very well in even the low COL areas of the US. But it might help them not to lose their roof or car while unemployed.

This is analogous to how universal healthcare will never cover cosmetic procedures, but that's ok because it will cover your healthcare even if you end up unemployed.

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

#508

Post by elif » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 7:13 PM UTC

The problem is not the productivity of those on UBI, the elephant in the room is the ideology of humans on this planet who are forced into labor for survival vs those who are percieved as having a free ride.

That schism will exist for any set of parameters and methods of rolling it out. It will not solve class imbalances, it will make them painfully clear.

E.G. for those of us who have wealth, own houses, etc, UBI will make having a job seem like an optional folly to a person with debt and rent to pay. We really don't want a society like that.

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

#509

Post by asdkhadsj » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 7:15 PM UTC

DubiousPusher wrote: post #389

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…

I agree. Letting workers leave abusive employment situations is a benefit of UBI. UBI might even totally reorient the idea of work in that now an employer has the incentive to keep workers happy that must be balanced with the profit incentive.

Yea, I think many in the tech circles forget how predatory a lot of industries are. My first "real" job was a state job (good benefits, good hours, etc), and eventually I migrated to tech. After years of that I met my wife, who worked retail.

At basically every aspect of her job it felt like her employer did not respect her as a person. Her work hours weren't steady, her pay wasn't good, she was constantly at risk of losing her "full time" status and if she did lose that she could drop down to random ~5h/week slots. Her employer wouldn't even fire you, they would just drop you down to basically no hours until you had to quit and miss out on unemployment.

Most of the staff she worked with in fact, most of which I'd argue were full time employees were withheld hours just so they wouldn't get full time benefits. Looking around for jobs was also difficult as most other employers did not want full time employees either.

Employers in lesser skilled fields get away with murder because employees have very little ground to stand on. They don't have the income to build financial independence, nor does the government help them out in many cases. Even unemployment is gamed and withheld.

I don't know if UBI is the answer, but something needs to be done.

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

#510

Post by munk-a » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 7:15 PM UTC

luckylion wrote: post #480

munk-a wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And maybe if those jobs are as unattractive as you imply they should come with higher pay checks. I work in software and love the work that I'm doing - if I was a janitor I'd be miserable and be paid less, so where is the incentive for anyone who can do something else to be a janitor... and the answer is, it isn't there.

Sure, so ... who do we force to do the janitorial work once nobody has to work anymore? Or does the need for it magically vanish? If the answer is "we pay them more", great. We're paying more to janitors, janitorial work gets more expensive, we need to make more to afford it, we need more UBI, janitorial work becomes unattractive. You'll have to give up a significant part of your (real, not nominal) income to make a…

If I give you 1k, you get some amount of spending power x, if I give everyone 1k and you're on the lower end of the income scale then you've got an additional spending power y. 0 The reimbursement of janitors might go up with UBI, that's fine, if it's going up then it means that something in the current market situation was artificially holding back their reimbursement. The market can correct pretty easily for UBI and make sure that the jobs that need to be done are indeed done (or else they aren't jobs that need to be done) and maybe janitor, as a profession, is scaled back to just waxing the floors and we discover that people working in an office should, once a week, empty their own trash cans - it's a very plausible outcome from UBI and one that will happen naturally if it'll happen at all.