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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

#631

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…

And this is a very misleading summary of the results. Here are some actual quote from the study: > Ten respondents moved from unemployment to employment while 32 moved from employment to unemployment. Of the participants who moved from employment to unemployment, 13 (40.6%) enrolled in full-time education during the pilot with the intention of re-entering the labour market later as more qualified workers. Almost half…

Education does not equate to a successful job. I know a few career students that acquire one useless degree after another because every time they try to get a job they find no one is hiring.

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

#632

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this is a very misleading summary of the results. Here are some actual quote from the study: > Ten respondents moved from unemployment to employment while 32 moved from employment to unemployment. Of the participants who moved from employment to unemployment, 13 (40.6%) enrolled in full-time education during the pilot with the intention of re-entering the labour market later as more qualified workers. Almost half…

Education does not equate to a successful job. I know a few career students that acquire one useless degree after another because every time they try to get a job they find no one is hiring.

Education does correlate with a more successful job and it also correlates with a better functioning society. I believe that there is plenty of evidence to suggest that there is some causal relationship (note: this does not say that higher education leads to a successful job, but rather says that higher education increases the chances of you getting a more successful job).

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

#633

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

That's not necessarily true. Work ethic is not derived only from the notion that people need to work. It is derived from an ethical imperative and from a sense of achievement people get from work. Also, any UBI would likely be well under the amount of money necessary to live a middle class life. I myself was on SSI and could have found a way to subsist on it but really did not want to live that way. I got to know a l…

The proposed monthly amount was €2,300 in Switzerland when they had a referendum on the issue in 2016. That is enough to have a more than decent living.

Work ethic might be engrained into our culture, but someone who is brought up in a society where UBI is normal and they are just a few years away from becoming "rich", I think not-working-ever is a very enticing idea and many teens will fall into that trap.

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

#634
post #573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[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…

The main thing being said is there's a drastic difference between knowing the BI you're getting is temporary and it being a 'permanent' government program. There's no way to provide a citation for that because the only way to run that is to have a full UBI and study the results to see if these short term BI studies still hold water. However it's not a stretch at all to say people will act different when they're tempo…

In fact it's well known that disposable vs fixed income directly impacts the financial decisions people make

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

#635
post #617

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sounds like a success to me. I like the concept too, but we have to be careful what we wish for. If, somehow, UBI becomes real there will be a huge push from the libertarians and far-right to dismantle whatever is left of the social safety net. They actually would love the idea of replacing medicare, social security and other programs with a quick 1000/month that would enable even more shrinking of government.

I mean, part of the allure of UBI to me is that it is a social safety net except it benefits everyone. Because it's universal and not means-tested, it removes the stigma of being 'on welfare' which IMO is incredibly discouraging and makes it harder to rise out of your unfortunate situation. So yes, I would love if UBI replaced some programs while augments others. At the end of the day it's the most direct and effecti…

> At the end of the day it's the most direct and effective way of combating poverty and goes a long way towards closing the wealth gap.

Where do you think all this Income is going to come from? The middle class will shoulder the bulk of it which will widen the wealth gap. You will end up with 1k in UBI and 1500 in taxes to pay for it.

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

#636

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This issue is not a "flaw". It's a root problem. We want to know the effect of permanent UBI, not of a temporary one, and we know (strongly suspect) the effect will be different. Maybe the simple solution is that the researchers establish a dedicated million dollar bank account for a participant and automatically withdraw $1000 for the participant every month.

But there is no such thing as "permanent UBI", though. UBI is a political decision which is renewed with every government. The perspective of the participants makes sense. Whether they believe their access to UBI will continue or not, it makes sense to up-skill. Besides, we do know how people behave when they are born with a million dollar bank account, and it's relatively very rare that they are criticised for how t…

"UBI is a political decision which is renewed with every government"

If this is true than implementing UBI will be more problematic than I thought. All UBI proposals so far call for all other financial safety nets to be removed in order to finance UBI. Managing that will be a nightmare if you can just cut off UBI, then you have to spin up everything else again. I imagine UBI to be something similar to how the pension system is, once in place it stays there forever-ish (meaning that it can potentially collapse).

"we do know how people behave when they are born with a million dollar bank account, and it's relatively very rare that they are criticised for how they choose to live" - that's an excellent point.

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

#637

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can argue that the only way to perform a completely accurate UBI experiment would be to run it for at least 60-80 years for everyone. Social experiments are very hard to do and have many flaws, but it seems unreasonable to say that the information gained by doing such studies should be "thrown out the window".

This issue is not a "flaw". It's a root problem. We want to know the effect of permanent UBI, not of a temporary one, and we know (strongly suspect) the effect will be different. Maybe the simple solution is that the researchers establish a dedicated million dollar bank account for a participant and automatically withdraw $1000 for the participant every month.

That would more accurately gauge the effect on how much it disincentivizes, and how it changes the lifestyle of the recipient.

It does very little to test economics. Perhaps UBI leads to a lot of people deciding to tend bar at the local tennis club, volunteering for the job. Maybe introducing UBI across a large area has marked effects on gym memberships.

Those seem easier to test if you put a large area on UBI for a short-ish term (though I admit I haven't seen any UBI research that analyses such social effects - perhaps somebody knows of some?)

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

#638

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Education does not equate to a successful job. I know a few career students that acquire one useless degree after another because every time they try to get a job they find no one is hiring.

Education does correlate with a more successful job and it also correlates with a better functioning society. I believe that there is plenty of evidence to suggest that there is some causal relationship (note: this does not say that higher education leads to a successful job, but rather says that higher education increases the chances of you getting a more successful job).

No, because you can be educated in any topic up to and including the history of the Kardashians. This in no way contributes to a better functioning society. Your entire premise that education = more intelligence is completely wrong. Would you argue a person educated by extremists correlates with a better functioning society?

The only thing that betters society is the positive application of knowledge to creating something of value for others. It's not enough to learn a topic, you must actually apply it make a difference.

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

#639

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this is a very misleading summary of the results. Here are some actual quote from the study: > Ten respondents moved from unemployment to employment while 32 moved from employment to unemployment. Of the participants who moved from employment to unemployment, 13 (40.6%) enrolled in full-time education during the pilot with the intention of re-entering the labour market later as more qualified workers. Almost half…

> Sounds like a success to me. I like the concept too, but we have to be careful what we wish for. If, somehow, UBI becomes real there will be a huge push from the libertarians and far-right to dismantle whatever is left of the social safety net. They actually would love the idea of replacing medicare, social security and other programs with a quick 1000/month that would enable even more shrinking of government.

This is why Yang wanted to make it a choice. The average welfare recipient is getting less than $1k/mo in help and are limited in how they can use it (food stamps can't buy the car repair you need to keep your job).

But I do think that is is an overstated concern __because__ most welfare recipients are already receiving less assistance. Btw, there's capitalist oriented arguments for single payer options that libertarians are in favor of (tldr: health care operates under a network effect and single payer can minimize individual and public costs).

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

#640
post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similar findings are repeated all across the social safety net. For example, the Scandinavian countries with their robust social programs routinely top lists for ease of entrepreneurship. [0] (e.g. Losing health insurance is big disincentive to starting a new company.) There are also have been repeated studies that found that financial stress causes people to perform worse on cognitive tasks, and removing that stress…

Ease of entrepreneurship might be high, but actual entrepreneurship lags the US where a much weaker social safety net exists. Ow do you explain that?

Sweden has 10 million people. The U.S. has 300 million.
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