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Finnish basic income pilot improved wellbeing, study finds

theguardian.com

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Re: Finnish basic income pilot improved wellbeing, study finds

#61

Post by andi999 »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #36
jriot wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct. An example would be to look around military bases or colleges that cater to the military. Rents are often on par with BAH (Basic Housing Allowance) and college's per credit hour is often near the $750 rate.

A key part of UBI is that the recipient can allocate the funds as they please. If someone goes to a college that costs $500 per credit hour, can they spent the other $250 on whatever they want?

Another key part would be if a college charged 500$ per credit hour, can they now charge $750?

Re: Finnish basic income pilot improved wellbeing, study finds

#62

Post by JoeAltmaier »

andi999 wrote: post #61
rahimnathwani wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A key part of UBI is that the recipient can allocate the funds as they please. If someone goes to a college that costs $500 per credit hour, can they spent the other $250 on whatever they want?

Another key part would be if a college charged 500$ per credit hour, can they now charge $750?

Its a free market. Folks imagine that prices will 'soak up' UBI magically. But the market doesn't work that way. In fact, when demand goes up and volume goes up, prices come down for most things.

Re: Finnish basic income pilot improved wellbeing, study finds

#63

Post by fartcannon »

notkaiho wrote: post #3

> "Aimed primarily at seeing whether a guaranteed income might encourage people to take up often low-paid or temporary work without fear of losing benefits" Turns out people do not, in fact, generally want to take precarious or otherwise unattractive jobs unless forced to economically. Who'd a thunk?

And then the salary for doing terrible work work will increase until people consider it an option again.

win/win

Re: Finnish basic income pilot improved wellbeing, study finds

#64

Post by wonderwonder »

Mirioron wrote: post #33
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, 1950's thinking. Most things are automated now. There's only 13M factory workers left in America vs 20M+ in the 70's, and population has doubled since then. So maybe 20% what there used to be. All that due to automation. And what's left is being automated as fast as humanly possible. After that, we're gonna have a big slug of people out of work, lots of relatively cheap goods, and a few very rich who own most…

> The bankrupt notion that somehow 'were funding those people' is meaningless. The factories pour out the goods. Nobody's slaving away to 'fund' that. Somebody has to create, build, and maintain those factories. Someone else has to manage the output of those factories and distribute it. Someone else needs to work to secure raw materials for the factory. Age you can't produce everything in factories. You don't have a…

We are close to factories that grow food with indoor vertical farming: https://www.plenty.ag/

Any repetitive job can eventually be automated away.

The largest impact is going to be fully autonomous self driving cars. That alone has the chance of eliminating 4 million driving jobs, including truckers and cab drivers. This does not factor in the ~3 million people that drive for Uber and lyft.

These are not people who are going to be able to easily switch to another position. Even fast food is exploring automating their restaurants. As far as building the factories, procuring raw materials, etc. all those jobs already exist and are staffed. With the constant advancement in 3d printing, even those jobs may be reduced.

The target near me used to regularly have 10+ registers open, now it generally has 3 plus 6 self checkout lines.

Re: Finnish basic income pilot improved wellbeing, study finds

#65

Post by gustavo-fring »

nicbou wrote: post #51

Last year, I had something that was very close to basic income (income-generating website that doesn't require active babysitting). I knew a life without work would be amazing, but I never expected it to be this great. I had much more time and energy to enjoy life. There was never a rush to do anything. I woke up when I wasn't tired. I could read in bed for an hour if it felt right. Sometimes I'd just walk 3-5 kilome…

You didn't have UBI, you had a well-paying job. The main UBI proposals for the US target $1k per month and that target means a budget of about 3 trillion per year and does not take into account health insurance.

I don't know about you, but living off $1k a month where I live (and it's a relatively cheap area) isn't feasible. Either you get roommates or you are going to end up in the cheapest most out of the way apartment you can find for $500 a month. If you are eating off $10 a day (which is reasonable, and isn't accounting for the odd pint), you're down to $200 for your monthly budget. You still have to pay for utilities and this isn't taking into account any modern necessities (phones, etc), nor certainly not a car, which you probably need because your cheap apartment isn't close to anything.

You, even with this extreme skimping, basically have no room for anything to go wrong. Hopefully your shoes that you're walking everywhere in don't wear out. Doesn't sound peaceful to me, it sounds like something that would put me always on edge (I've lived making 3x that and it does put you on edge). You felt comfortable because you were lucky enough to have a website that you could make income on by babysitting it. Is that really anything like UBI?

If we're going to discuss UBI, then we need to discuss UBI, not any form of passive income or welfare program, which by their definition are not UBI. Seeing stuff like this get upvoted only leads me to believe that a lot of UBI proponents aren't taking serious how many obstacles there are to overcome actually implementing it, nor what it will look like in practice.

Re: Finnish basic income pilot improved wellbeing, study finds

#66

Post by andrei_says_ »

radu_floricica wrote: post #49
BitwiseFool wrote: post #4

The problem I have with studies like this one is that they only measure the effects of getting a stipend during a limited amount of time with a limited amount of people. It's not universal and it's not basic. From a non-scientific view point, of course giving people free money makes them feel better. But from an experimental perspective, they aren't getting the 'full package' of UBI. The participants aren't seeing in…

Oh, this study was very useful, no matter how the guardian is trying to frame it. There was no clear indication that basic income encourages people to find jobs. You can scratch that one off the list. Other than that, there's absolutely nothing surprising. You give people a money and they feel better. That's like... not exactly new information. And yeah, it will change their choices somewhat, which again is no big fi…

In Utopia for Realists, a book full off UBI case studies, this question is addressed multiple times and yes, UBI is a money saver for governments.

Re: Finnish basic income pilot improved wellbeing, study finds

#67

Post by wonderwonder »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #40
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, 1950's thinking. Most things are automated now. There's only 13M factory workers left in America vs 20M+ in the 70's, and population has doubled since then. So maybe 20% what there used to be. All that due to automation. And what's left is being automated as fast as humanly possible. After that, we're gonna have a big slug of people out of work, lots of relatively cheap goods, and a few very rich who own most…

> " And what's left is being automated as fast as humanly possible. " More likely, the low hanging fruit of automation has already been plucked bare and the rest will require a century or more to figure out. I certainly don't expect an automated plumber or meat processing worker anytime soon.

Fully autonomous vehicles could very easily remove the need for 4 million trucking and taxi jobs as well as affect another 3 million uber / lyft drivers. That technology is not a hundred years away.

Re: Finnish basic income pilot improved wellbeing, study finds

#68

Post by JoeAltmaier »

notkaiho wrote: post #21
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they volunteer? Maybe they turn to hobbies and music? Maybe they have a life? Not everybody measures the success of UBI as "How many folks can we keep slaving away"

This is what I meant - some sort of strings-free income is great in encouraging people to pursue passions and things that fulfil them. Turns out those things are not part-time precarious jobs. I'd say that's a finding worth understanding.

Sure you become more secure, you turn to better things not worse. I don't see any surprise there.

Re: Finnish basic income pilot improved wellbeing, study finds

#69

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o »

radu_floricica wrote: post #49
BitwiseFool wrote: post #4

The problem I have with studies like this one is that they only measure the effects of getting a stipend during a limited amount of time with a limited amount of people. It's not universal and it's not basic. From a non-scientific view point, of course giving people free money makes them feel better. But from an experimental perspective, they aren't getting the 'full package' of UBI. The participants aren't seeing in…

Oh, this study was very useful, no matter how the guardian is trying to frame it. There was no clear indication that basic income encourages people to find jobs. You can scratch that one off the list. Other than that, there's absolutely nothing surprising. You give people a money and they feel better. That's like... not exactly new information. And yeah, it will change their choices somewhat, which again is no big fi…

From an income redistribution standpoint giving $500 and mostly getting less back can make sense. If you give $500 to 10 people and get zero back, but one of those people earns a billion dollars per year, it could be still be fine. Either way, it's an important datapoint. It should be an intentional decision to do it as wealth redistribution if that's the way we want to go, rather than pretending it's something it isn't.

Re: Finnish basic income pilot improved wellbeing, study finds

#70

Post by irishcoffee »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #62
andi999 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another key part would be if a college charged 500$ per credit hour, can they now charge $750?

Its a free market. Folks imagine that prices will 'soak up' UBI magically. But the market doesn't work that way. In fact, when demand goes up and volume goes up, prices come down for most things.

Surely you realize that demand and volume for college has gone up in the US. Also, the US gives out unlimited "free" money to attend. (student loans) And "magically" the pice of college has in fact skyrocketed, or even "soaked up" the excess money.
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