Live data from Hacker News

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

cbc.ca

761–770 of 809 posts

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

#761

I really, really like the idea of UBI. However, some napkin math: In the US, with ~250 million people being eligible, a $1000 UBI would cost ~$3 trillion. That's almost the entire budget of the US. How is this even remotely realistic right now? Even if you can cut other spending in half due to it, you'd need an additional $1.5 trillion in "income" essentially. Is that something that would even be possible? How many r…

You threw out $1000 a month, any reason? Different proposals use different amounts, $1k a month happens to be in the Yang proposal (Freedom Dividend) which was funded largely from a consumption tax: https://freedom-dividend.com/ A conservative proposal ($6.5k-$10k a year, Charles Murray) might be largely funded on cuts to existing programs: https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-guaranteed-income-for-every-a...

> You threw out $1000 a month, any reason?

Well I think it needs to at least be high enough that other social spending can largely be cut (except for healthcare maybe), and that seemed like a reasonable value.

Unfortunately I can't read the link you posted since I don't have an account there.

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

#762

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The definition of "not poor" is not supposed to amount to "barely surviving" but to "living and being productive members of society". > many people have a vested interest in conflating the two. Just like you are conflating being poor and being a bad person: > your core needs are met, and you have a path to thrive on - up to you to do you now. This implicitly suggests that you are only poor because you were too lazy/s…

I implicitly suggest no such thing. At some point it's up to a competent adult to do with their lives what they see fit under the circumstances dealt them by life. They are not automatically the charge of others just because they don't achieve some nebulous whim of strangers. Each has their own dependents to prioritize.

So now they are poor either because they are "incompetent" or because they "saw fit" to be poor. Okay, there is nothing implicit or suggesting about this, you are explicit about it.

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

#763

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…

"If you consider multi-generational entrenchments of poverty as its own problem, worth serious merit, then the work disincentive could be a disaster." Multi-generational entrenchments of poverty are already a disaster, and not because of fuzzy ideas like "instilling a work ethic", but because many millions of people lack the basic material resources needed to fulfill anything close to their potential. A kid watching…

If you knew why multi-generational poverty existed you would win a Nobel Prize and who knows what else.

No one has been able to figure this out so far, and what you wrote above is not necessarily even a good description of what multi-generational poverty looks like.

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

#764
post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you could have worked twice as many hours and made twice as much money - would you? That was the position I found myself in, and that's how I got where I am. I never claimed to have a secret skill.

1. It would have been physically impossible for me to do so since I was already working 10-12 hour days pretty often and without sleep I'd be worthless. 2. Double income isn't necessarily that much income, if you're making 35k giving up sleeping to get 70k seems like a pretty poor trade. Also, no, never. I would never work twice as many hours (assuming we're taking a base number of hours between 6 and 8) for twice th…

> You effectively earn less money (due to graduated taxes)

A personal bugbear of mine: your point is directionally correct but expressed incorrectly. Under marginal tax rates you do not earn less money. You take home less per hour past a certain point, but are still earning more overall.

I'd be a lot less bothered about people getting this wrong if it hadn't been turned into a political football in recent memory.

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

#765
post #534
post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, congrats, but if you retired comfortably in your 20s you got crazy lucky - that kind of rapid wealth acquisition isn't skill based. I used to work in the game industry getting peanuts for the same hours, we made amazing things in crunch that I am proud of, but when we started to scale back hours our product got even better because we lowered the stress and increased the healthiness of our workplace.

> that kind of rapid wealth acquisition isn't skill based. This is just nonsense and reflects a desire to dismiss the capabilities and accomplishments of others because they don't reflect your self-pitying worldview. Chances are that the above poster did something you're unable or unwilling to do -- and the difference in outcomes is reflective of that.

The unfortunate truth of our modern economy is that skills are neither necessary nor sufficient for the outcome described. They may have been the deciding factor in this case, as may the hours worked, but calling that shot in advance is not trivial.

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

#766

> The three-year, $150-million program Three year. Would you quit your job, and move somewhere cheaper if you knew the money will run out after three years, and you'll have a three year gap in your CV? Are there really no lottery winners winning lifetime monthly payouts to study? Because, if you gave me 5x average earnings for three years, I wouldn't quit my job. But if you guaranteed the money for the rest of my lif…

> non-productive for society Why? I feel like a lot of people want to do things that are productive for society, that we have too little of right now. Things like producing art of all forms, building things, increasing their level of communication with those around them, participating in community events and activities, etc. Sure, these things aren't economically productive, but they're still productive for society,…

> Sure, these things aren't economically productive

The problem with UBI is, that you need people to be economically productive, to create money for fudning the UBI.

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

#767

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdote incoming. I work double full time and have done so for approaching a decade. It's definitely proven to be a significant competitive advantage in my case. I don't know too many folks who could have comfortably retired in their 20s (that didn't grow up with generational wealth). Still, I've seen many folks in esports do crazy workloads and get nowhere fast. So there's more to the formula than just pouring in m…

Most of American management cannot tell the difference between motion and progress. While I don't want to dismiss your extra effort as improving your results, I suspect that the value placed on your behavior by management may have been out of proportion with objective truth. I'm also concerned with whether you were Defecting, in a Prisoner's Dilemma sense. Management always sets unreasonable deadlines as long as anyb…

My role has always been to put out fires.

Typical examples would be a client says "Oh no, our campaign that was supposed to start next Monday just fell through - we need a solution ASAP!"

or

"Our project is six months past deadline with no end in sight..."

For some, this is an unreasonable situation to find themself in. For me, I look at such situations as opportunities. The client's management is under a ton of pressure to fix things immediately and a lot of the internal friction that exists for the employees doesn't exist for me as an outsider. I'm allowed to stick my finger in the wound.

Still, you're absolutely right that management (and it's not in any way limited to the US - I've helped clients across North America, Europe, and Asia who all had the exact same problems) can be unreasonable. I wish I knew a good solution for that, but the truth is that there's a fairly small percentage of people that are actually good managers and there's an enormous amount of political nonsense where managers try to justify their own existence by carving out little kingdoms for themselves.

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

#768

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.

And I know a few of all kinds of flawed or crazy people, but i would not use them as an example to prove anything

Try reasoning from the other end: is a society of uneducated people likely to be successful in the 21st century?

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

#769

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Education does not equate to a successful job > The only thing that betters society is the positive application of knowledge To apply knowledge, you have to first acquire it. How do you propose to do so without education?

the point is a degree in a subject where there is no money to be made is a WASTE of money. A degree is not inherently worth the time & money spent earning it if you can't make a career with it. You'll also have student loans to pay for. Don't bother saying "free college" is the issue either. There's no such thing. Somebody is paying for that "free" college in the form of higher taxes.

This is a superbly short sighted and harmful perspective.

Education conveys benefits besides merely financial: a technician might receive no financial benefit from knowing about DNA, nuclear fission and distance to Mars. However, these people make life choices informed by their general knowledge, they vote on policy, they act when Covid-19 is in the news.

If we take your perspective far enough, we will have a society of idiot savants that are clueless outside if their narrow speciality.

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

#770

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The effects are generally thought to converge after two years.

Citation needed.

Not sure the timestamp, it was a while ago. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rL6gJkdlNU
Post reply on HN