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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

#781

Post by bena »

I-M-S wrote: post #279
bena wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you. That's the part of automation that no one wants to discuss. What happens when we're like 90% automated and there simply isn't enough jobs for everyone. Who do we force to work and is that ethical?

loa_in_ just answered that question for you

No, they didn't.

"Pay more" is meaningless when most of what you want is provided for you. What are you going to use that money for?

For some godawful reason people think near to full automation is going to look exactly like today, but without driving or something.

It's not. It's going to look radically different. It will be unprecedented. It's very naive to believe the current methods of incentives will work for a society that doesn't need them.

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

#782

Post by nybble41 »

jpttsn wrote: post #779
nybble41 wrote: post #654

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. You could get decent results in less than 60-80 years by granting each participant a fully-funded fixed annuity guaranteeing them a specific income for the remainder of their lives independent of the continuation of the study. Of course, that would raise the cost of the study to…

Lotteries do this all the time, so there’s plenty of data.

Yes, and a depressing number of lottery winners end up poorer than they started within a few years after burning through all their winnings and then going into debt to support their new lifestyle. Easy come, easy go.

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

#783

Post by danenania »

whiddershins wrote: post #763
danenania wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

Well, given that UBI studies have been promising so far (despite their limitations), there seems to be a decent chance that quite a lot of multi-generational poverty is primarily caused by... multi-generational poverty, meaning it's a self-reinforcing cycle that's difficult for people to escape. Or in other words: when you're broke, it's really hard to build wealth, so you're likely to stay broke.

Perhaps it's an over-simplification, or perhaps a lot of people have been over-complicating the problem, particularly when they're trying to prop up a pet political bias.

If we implement UBI on a large scale and it drastically increases upward mobility, I suppose this hypothesis will be more or less proven. I hope that day comes sooner rather than later so we can find out.

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

#784

Post by dahart »

barry-cotter wrote: post #777
dahart wrote: post #759

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lucky for us, social waste is not the criteria for taxation, or we’d be dead broke from sharing beliefs on the internet alone. What is your metric of social waste, and why do you think education has enough to worry about compared all the millions of other socially wasteful things we do when not working? Us GDP per capita is not going down, and education rates are going up. Both monotonically since the 70s, despite th…

US GDP per capita is going up at the same time as education for the same reason the size of the v average dwelling has gone up; Richer people consume more. Education doesn’t make people more productive. More productive people buy more stuff. If you give everyone a Bachelor’s degree they will not become 2x as productive. The people are different. The education is less important than the difference in the people. Educa…

> Education is not making them that much more productive. It’s certifying them as already being more productive.

How do you measure productivity? And (asking again, since you didn’t answer) how do you measure social waste? Where is the evidence of your claims?

If what you claimed is true, then if the rate of education were to go up, then the income premium for education would go down, because you’re saying the income premium is correlation and not causation of education’s effect on society. But education rates have been going up for the last 50 years and the income premium for education is stable, despite more people being educated. Why?

> Richer countries spend more on education but the extra spending on education follows the getting rich, not the other way around

Your argument is that education is an economic drain. Where is the evidence of that? Even if true that wealth precedes education (and citation is needed there), your argument here is contradicting your earlier argument that education is socially wasteful - countries are getting richer and staying richer with increased education rates, regardless of whether it’s causation or correlation.

Ghana is an outlier with political issues not representative of most of the world, it doesn’t prove much about education. China’s massive economic growth coincides with an increase in education, framing it as being “based” on an uneducated populace because their education rate was lower at the start seems like it’s dodging the inconvenient fact that their education rates have risen while their economy has grown? Why are you so convinced that education is not even part of the cause for their economic growth, or anyone else’s?

You seem to be claiming that education teaches nothing of economic value, does not help people personally gain any skills, does not help people improve their productivity? Is that what you’re saying, and if so why?

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

#785

Post by toolz »

nennes wrote: post #290
toolz wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're arguing for is equity, not equality. We already have equal opportunity. As for the gender wage gap, if women are so disadvantaged - exactly how do they make up 85% of consumer spending?

How do we have equal opportunity? Can you point me towards evidence of this? I guess you're not arguing about the gender wage gap, as it's a well documented fact. What is the point you're trying to make?

What is the point, _you're_ trying to make? If you're trying to show women are financially burdened you can cherry-pick wage gap data to show that, sure, or you can take a more holistic view of society and what do you see? You see women with significantly more purchasing power than men. So are women disadvantaged or is there no incentive to be high earners? For me it's fairly obvious. There will be men and women who become high earners. There will be men and women who are overlooked based on gender. What I see with the wage gap can be fully explained by lack of necessity to earn for women. Think about that for a minute - they earn less than men, but they spend vastly more money than men. Exactly where is the incentive to earn more for women? Should they continue to work and earn more until they make up 90% of consumer spending? 95%?

It's beyond me how anyone can claim a group that represents 85% of consumer spending is somehow financially burdened and suffers from inequality. It's almost unfathomable, but here we are.

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

#786

Post by Loughla »

hitpointdrew wrote: post #780
Loughla wrote: post #623

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Who cares what specific the money is spent on if it is making people healthier, less stressed, and happier? And here, in one sentence, is why we will NEVER see UBI in the United States of America. There is no ability to be the moral whip and maintain control over someone else's choices to make sure they don't 'waste my money'. Therefore, it will never happen. In the US, at least, it's not about doing what's right. I…

> And here, in one sentence, is why we will NEVER see UBI. OK sure pal. UBI will happen without question in the USA. Probably in 2024.

Do you have any supporting arguments or reasons for that?

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

#787

Post by einpoklum »

tic_tac wrote: post #709
r-w wrote: post #672

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> […] its value as a signaling mechanism, which is where the majority of modern education's value lies in the first place. I’m not sure education is a very high-resolution or effective signal for much, and I think its dilution as a signal would help force us to find a better one. I’m curious though, given how self-assured you seem: what do you think education signals right now?

Education signals that you are "better" than those with worse education. Smarter, harder working, etc. We need to create better options for students. We can do this by refocusing education on learning practical skills for real world jobs rather than maintaining an educational system built upon a foundation over 1000 years old that up until 100 or so years ago was intended for the elites and scholars, not the average…

That would not be "better", that would be myopic: Practical skills are only a part of what an education is or can be; information and skills which are not practical are still quite significant for us and for society at large; practicality changes over time; and the determination of what is and isn't practical is itself quite contentious.

A lot of our education - practical or otherwise - may be useless fluff, or even ideologically biased. But that's mostly not because of the chosen discipline.

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

#788

Post by hitpointdrew »

Loughla wrote: post #786
hitpointdrew wrote: post #780

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And here, in one sentence, is why we will NEVER see UBI. OK sure pal. UBI will happen without question in the USA. Probably in 2024.

Do you have any supporting arguments or reasons for that?

https://movehumanityforward.com/ site just launched yesterday, received 3M in donations within 24hours.

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

#789

Post by blackflame7000 »

dahart wrote: post #784
barry-cotter wrote: post #777

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US GDP per capita is going up at the same time as education for the same reason the size of the v average dwelling has gone up; Richer people consume more. Education doesn’t make people more productive. More productive people buy more stuff. If you give everyone a Bachelor’s degree they will not become 2x as productive. The people are different. The education is less important than the difference in the people. Educa…

> Education is not making them that much more productive. It’s certifying them as already being more productive. How do you measure productivity? And (asking again, since you didn’t answer) how do you measure social waste? Where is the evidence of your claims? If what you claimed is true, then if the rate of education were to go up, then the income premium for education would go down, because you’re saying the income…

>How do you measure productivity? And (asking again, since you didn’t answer) how do you measure social waste? Where is the evidence of your claims?

That's the entire point. We can't quantify if education actually makes people more productive and if it does, is that productivity applied to helping or hurting society. For example, an aspiring software dev could get educated in computer science which would increase their productivity (provided they actually learned something which is not a given). However, they could become a white or black hat hacker with differing effects on society. Another scenario is that a person doesn't know what they want to do and so they take a variety of courses until they find something they like. A lot of that education is wasted energy that doesn't help anyone if they can't use it.

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

#790

Post by thereare5lights »

Thorentis wrote: post #726
thereare5lights wrote: post #722

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrong again. Parent framed their argument as > All studies so far show a pretty consistent ~10% work disincentive. This is what all the detractors say when they say it disincentivizes work. When the parent invokes the detractors, it brings up the arguments that all the detractors use, saying that UBI will turn people into lazy freeloaders that do not want to work. That it will lead to people just living off the gover…

Wrong again. You assumed a lot about the parent comment's interpretation. "Disincentivizing work" can be interpreted to mean more likely to study than work. This doesn't mean lazy. Nothing in the parent comment called people lazy for leaving the workforce, just that it disincetivized participating in the workforce.

Incorrect.

> You assumed a lot about the parent comment's interpretation. "

No I did not. That the THE primary argument detractors make when they say that UBI disincentivizes work. Read enough on the arguments against UBI and you will realize that for yourself.

Your interpretation indicates that you have not been steeped in debates about UBI, otherwise you would know this already.

Interpreting the parent's remarks, ESPECIALLY when they bring up the existing "detractors" as simply meaning "not working", instead of what is the primary argument the existing detractors make is absolutely disingenuous.

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