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Results: Finland’s Basic Income Experiment Help Us Build the Post-Pandemic World

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Re: Results: Finland’s Basic Income Experiment Help Us Build the Post-Pandemic World

#61

Post by nabla9 »

notahacker wrote: post #54
nabla9 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems that you are confusing marginal tax rate and effective marginal tax rate. UBI and NIT (Negative Income Tax) are designed to increase incentives. That's why free market economists like Friedman fiercely supported it. Milton Friedman - The Negative Income Tax: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtpgkX588nM

You can insert the word 'effective' into my sentence above, and it remains true. It is entirely possible to design tapered benefit withdrawals without resorting to unconditional basic incomes. (It's also theoretically possible to design tax brackets for a UBI/NIT system which imply effective marginal rates at 80%+, though I'm not sure why anyone would actually want to do that)

> design tapered benefit withdrawals

Tapered benefit withdrawals are the exact reason for high effective marginal tax rate. You can't use them.

You can design welfare system effective marginal tax rate decreases smoothly, but you can't make it linear. (unless you make the taxation incredibly complex and effectively same as UBI/NTI)

Re: Results: Finland’s Basic Income Experiment Help Us Build the Post-Pandemic World

#62

Post by notahacker »

nabla9 wrote: post #56
moralsupply wrote: post #34

Where's the money for the UBI experiment coming from? There's no free lunch, folks...

It's not free lunch, it's wealth distribution system. Everyone gets UBI, then it's gradually taxed away as income increases. If some part of UBI is taken from corporate taxation, it can be thought as subsidy from companies that employ few people to companies that employ more people.

> If some part of UBI is taken from corporate taxation, it can be thought as subsidy from companies that employ few people to companies that employ more people.

Or a subsidy from companies which pay people properly to companies who pay people below subsistence levels, or a subsidy from companies that produce stuff to people who choose not to even look for opportunities to produce anything...

Re: Results: Finland’s Basic Income Experiment Help Us Build the Post-Pandemic World

#63

Post by luckylion »

Ensorceled wrote: post #46
luckylion wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The most persistent objections to UBI (or welfare or unemployment for that matter) is that they cause dependency and lazyiness; that they destroy the self-confidence and ambition of the receivers. And that's not conflicting with reporting less financial stress during an intervention. The self-reported consequences from eating some candy are very different from the consequences of using candy as a primary diet for l…

There are three claims that the comment I replied to said are obvious; two claims are constantly disputed and one is regularly disputed. None are, therefore, obvious.

My point is that there are differences between a) what people self-report and what the outside world thinks about their situation and b) an isolated short-term experiment and a long-term domestic/global thing.

If you won $1bn in the lottery, you'd be quite rich and, in so far that money can make you happy, probably also quite happy. If literally everybody won the lottery at the same time and got $1bn, you'd be back where you were before winning the lottery, as your $1bn wouldn't have the same relative value. Sure, you have a billion, but bread now costs $100k and your rent is $100m.

Re: Results: Finland’s Basic Income Experiment Help Us Build the Post-Pandemic World

#64

Post by notahacker »

neilwilson wrote: post #49
moralsupply wrote: post #34

Where's the money for the UBI experiment coming from? There's no free lunch, folks...

It comes from spending the money. If you don't understand that, then time to get the book and learn how the money system works https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07YM2K8F3

Even Wray and Mitchell aren't radical enough to argue that money printing without work incentives is sustainable...

Re: Results: Finland’s Basic Income Experiment Help Us Build the Post-Pandemic World

#65

Post by nabla9 »

HPsquared wrote: post #38
nabla9 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UBI is just redistribution scheme. There is no increase of price level because aggregate income stays the same.

What happens to production?

It's subsidy for labour incentive production, small businesses and startups. Everyone gets x amount of seed money per person per month.

Re: Results: Finland’s Basic Income Experiment Help Us Build the Post-Pandemic World

#66

Post by pasiaj »

diekdnk wrote: post #11
ornornor wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can’t we ever design one such experiment right? It’s as if we were giving ammunition to those opposed to it by conducting trials that have flaws! Would it really be so hard to run a proper test that follows all the best practices and isn’t biased/flawed so that we could once and for all point at it and say “we can conclusively say UBI is/isn’t viable based on this experiment”? I mean if a country goes all the way…

The test was conducted by a popular right wing party "Kokoomus", which is heavily opposed to the system. This might affect the design of the test

"Kokoomus ... is heavily opposed to the system"

There is no "system". There is an endless number of possible implementations of UBI on a spectrum that ranges from communist to libertarian.

One of the main UBI stalwarts in Finland is the pinnacle capitalist ideolog and banker Björn Whalroos, who wants UBI to replace ALL other welfare-state programs, including universal health care.

On the other end of the spectrum are proposals for UBI with a purpose to solve issues caused by globalization, patch-work employment, etc.

Kokoomus has strong proponents of UBI and if I recall correctly, the party approved a resolution for studying UBI 13 years ago in their 2007 national convention.

Re: Results: Finland’s Basic Income Experiment Help Us Build the Post-Pandemic World

#67

Post by eeZah7Ux »

Meta: countless fiscal policy changes are made in weeks.

But for UBI, decades of experiments and data-driven validation seem to be required.

Why is it acceptable that UBI requires such huge burden of proof?

Don't tell me that it's more radical than other reforms: when used as a replacement for welfare and other subsidies at comparable cost, it is pretty mild.

Re: Results: Finland’s Basic Income Experiment Help Us Build the Post-Pandemic World

#68

Post by notahacker »

Ensorceled wrote: post #48
notahacker wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The claim is that UBI could create a permanent dependent underclass, and evidence that a cohort of unemployed people receiving lots of money from the government self-reports greater happiness than a cohort of unemployed people receiving relatively little money from the government over the space of the year does absolutely nothing to address that. It's rather secondary to the real objection to UBI: paying for it.

Quite consistently, at least in Canada and the US, welfare is claimed to cause dependency, lazyiness, and reduce the ambition of the receivers WHILE we are paying for it. I'm saying BOTH that it's good for people AND that it's affordable are still in dispute and that the claims are clearly not obvious.

Sure, and my argument is that proving that welfare recipients who temporarily received a greater subsidy than other welfare recipients self-reported greater levels of happiness than welfare recipients on less money does absolutely nothing to undermine arguments about welfare dependency.

The arguments - with varying degreees of plausibility - are all of the form 'long term welfare dependency is unhealthy for society' not, 'welfare recipients would be happier if their welfare income was lower'.

Re: Results: Finland’s Basic Income Experiment Help Us Build the Post-Pandemic World

#69

Post by KittenInABox »

swebs wrote: post #53
plutonorm wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think science is free from those flaws either. Science advances one death at a time.

There are certainly plenty of fields that have a these problems and are vulnerable to be politically driven. I'd say the further toward the "soft" sciences you go, the more you're able to manipulate results to fit certain viewpoints. 538 has a nice little demo showing off the problem. https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/p-hacking/

Is CS a soft science? There’s a ton of massaging in machine learning IME.

Re: Results: Finland’s Basic Income Experiment Help Us Build the Post-Pandemic World

#70

Post by dogma1138 »

jfindley wrote: post #39
TotempaaltJ wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAIK one component of UBI is that you throw out (most of?) the other welfare benefits you might get. By saving money on that, you could potentially offset or even compensate for the required added income tax.

This sort of thing gets mentioned a lot, but in practice doesn't work. The amount of money spent on welfare benefits[0], plus the cost of the administration, ends up several orders of magnitude less money than UBI wage x Population size. This is the key problem with UBI: making it actually universal costs an unsustainably huge sum of money, and making it not universal just means you've re-invented welfare benefits, b…

It’s also important to note that the direct and indirect benefits of traditional welfare are also considerably higher than even the highest suggested UBI allowances.

For example in the UK housing benefits would be greatly dependent on where you live in some London councils housing benefits can be as high as £400 per week, this alone is more than the highest proposed UBI allowances that aim to match the tax free allowance (currently at £12.5K).

UBI with removal of all other benefits could easily mean that the people that need it the most would be getting less and sometimes much less.

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