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

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

#551

Post by WalterBright » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 7:55 PM UTC

sailfast wrote: post #531

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…

Why is a reduction in labor supply bad at present for low / unskilled labor? We're moving in that direction anyway using automation and software anyway, correct? Also I see no mention at all of frictional unemployment as part of Mr. Stucchio's conclusions and if I suddenly had the ability to look for new jobs I would certainly take advantage. The 10% number is created because people would now have actual OPTIONS, whi…

> I don't know anyone who would be less likely to be successful as a result of UBI.

I have an acquaintance who works at min wage jobs just long enough to qualify for unemployment, then he manages to get laid off. He lives off the unemployment until it runs out, then gets another min wage job, and the cycle repeats as long as I've known him. He's quite content with this arrangement.

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

#552

Post by zepto » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 7:55 PM UTC

battery_cowboy wrote: post #542

zazaalaza wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. With a permanent UBI in place you can throw all these studies out the window.

[citation needed] Is that anything but conjecture? I see a study showing that UBI is a "good thing", and you didn't provide a source for your reasoning. Edit: to all those saying that the parent comment is straightforward, or common sense, or whatever, it's not straightforward or common sense because I disagree that UBI would be a failure. No one knows what would happen under UBI, but these types of studies give some…

It’s a logical challenge to the ecological validity of the study.

No citation is needed for straightforward observations.

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

#553

Post by z9e » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 7:57 PM UTC

free652 wrote: post #475

saint_fiasco wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would anyone sane want to live in NYC anyway, if UBI was a thing? People move to big cities with expensive housing because that's where the well paying jobs are.

Sane? Like a great-grandmother? Would be she insane to live in NYC where is her whole family?

It would be insane for her family to not take her into their home and take care of her, which unfortunately the US doesn’t do as much as other cultures.

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

#554

Post by saint_fiasco » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 7:57 PM UTC

lumberjack wrote: post #467

minitoar wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where did you get the idea that all current social programs would continue unchanged if something as radical as UBI were introduced?

There are two versions of the proposal. UBI as a replacement for social programs is fantasy. The UBI cheque would have to be insanely fat to replace the welfare/medicare/housing/food all the other forms of assistance that disadvantaged people need. I know a lot of libertarians support it because it is essentially a round about way of cutting social benefits. And hypothetically speaking, say the government is spending…

> If you instead give $10k/year to that individual in cash he would not be able to buy the same level of care for the same price on the private market

How do you know that? Countries with much worse welfare than the US often have much better prices than the US when it comes to healthcare.

Maybe healthcare prices were allowed to grow so much only because insurance pays for most of it anyway. If that changes, healthcare providers would have to charge more realistic amounts, especially for common procedures like dental checkups and medications like insulin.

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

#555

Post by claudiawerner » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 7:58 PM UTC

Aunche wrote: post #513

claudiawerner wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>People aren't so stupid that they'd do something that completely against their best interests. The world is actually full of such examples. There's quite a bit of work done in psychology and sociology as to why this happens. Often, the move from, for example substinence farming to other jobs is a kind of throffer - and so it was, historically documented, in the 16th and 17th centuries in England, too with the move f…

> in the 16th and 17th centuries in England, too with the move from rural cottage industry to wide-scale factory production. The industrial revolution started in the late 18th century. Keep in mind that the population was booming then, so there wasn't enough space on the cottage to support the same standard of living. I feel like the concept of a idyllic peasant is the modern iteration of the "noble savage." For comp…

While the move to factories was only being completed by the end of the 18th century, the process had started much earlier, in laying the groundwork for the creation of industry, from the enclosures to the transformation of the peasantry to farmers who rent their land (rather than tithes to their lord). The market for land leases, necessary for the creation of the English capitalist class, flourished in the 16th and 17th centuries.

>However, choice between sacrificing time in order to accumulate capital is an easy one, as this has been done billions of times.

It's curious why so much land had to be expropriated forcefully if it were such an obvious choice to the modern-day noble savages - and even moreso when one considers modern union activity and intense revolts against the increasing duration and intensity of the working day in America, and to no lesser extent other countries which did not have the privilege of being so readily acquainted with capital. These are no edge cases either. The largest debate in the literature being the question of why the majority does not rise up against the unfair conditions implemented by a minority. Whether you subscribe to the false consciousness solution or the capability solution, both allow you to say that the "rational choice" of not rising up (or accumulating capital) is simply an element of playing the game. The only difference between the theories turns on the point of whether the players know it's a game or not.

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

#556

Post by zepto » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 7:59 PM UTC

Joeri wrote: post #500

Aunche wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

UBI doesn’t get stuffed under the mattress, it gets spent, buying electricity, funding investment into electricity networks. Give money to the poor and most of it will end up back at the rich. It doesn’t work as well trickling down.

Since trickling down doesn’t work, if UBI doesn’t work either, we need a new proposal.

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

#557

Post by zeta0x10 » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 8:00 PM UTC

Things like Kubernetes probably exist to employ engineers to have to do something and to contra basic income.

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

#558

Post by zazaalaza » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 8:07 PM UTC

battery_cowboy wrote: post #542

zazaalaza wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. With a permanent UBI in place you can throw all these studies out the window.

[citation needed] Is that anything but conjecture? I see a study showing that UBI is a "good thing", and you didn't provide a source for your reasoning. Edit: to all those saying that the parent comment is straightforward, or common sense, or whatever, it's not straightforward or common sense because I disagree that UBI would be a failure. No one knows what would happen under UBI, but these types of studies give some…

What I am saying is that a temporary UBI experiment cannot simulate the changes that a permanent UBI would bring. Especially when everyone is aware that this is temporary.

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

#559

Post by zazaalaza » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 8:11 PM UTC

simoninnes wrote: post #541

danans wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can go to a bank and take a loan against your UBI. Basically a government subsidy for loans. Trying to figure out how this would work. Presumably a bank would only lend a portion of the UBI to you

Quite simple, you'd borrow a lump sum and the bank would accept on the basis you have a guaranteed income and therefore able to make the repayments.

The average life expectancy of the population would determine together with inflation and interest the maximum amount you'd be able to borrow. A rough calculation at $1,000 UBI a month would give you around $500K available to borrow at 18 and you'd pay back around 750k till you die at 82.

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

#560

Post by logfromblammo » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 8:13 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…

I doubt that the 17% who quit were working in jobs that they liked.

If a employer's job requires a "work or die" sword of Damocles dangling over laborers' heads to be filled, perhaps it shouldn't exist.

The New Testament Bible aphorism from 2 Thessalonians 3:10, "He who does not work, neither shall he eat," has been used by many to incentivize work, including John Smith of Jamestown colony and V.I. Lenin of the Soviet Union. It is an aphorism borne by a world of scarcity, where all available labor is not only required, but must also be allocated wisely. It isn't just "work or die", but "if you won't help, we all might die."

In a world of excess, wherein machines supply most of the labor required to produce the necessities, that becomes counterproductive. If everyone must work to eat, but no person can work as efficiently as a machine, and there isn't enough discretionary work to go around, then that game of economic musical chairs ends when someone starves because someone didn't want their hedges trimmed into topiary, or they didn't want to upgrade to the fused basalt railings on their luxury yacht. If the machine-owners can't spend the profits from their machines fast enough, people cannot afford to buy what the machines produce.