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Universal basic income to be tested in Wales

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Universal basic income to be tested in Wales

#11

Post by lr4444lr »

mc32 wrote: post #5
LatteLazy wrote: post #3

[flagged]

By balls, you mean money. Look at the difficulty the service industry has now hiring people who would rather receive government relief and sit around the house than work a marginally better paying job—it’s not like they are using this time to pursue productive hobbies (pursuing their passions)... and look at the inflation and debt we’re incurring from free money

I do think this is important data, but you've gotta steel-man the UBI argument better: the increased unemployment benefits is not really UBI in that the benefit totally disappears if these people take jobs. UBI is a floor: not an eligibility benefit.

Re: Universal basic income to be tested in Wales

#12

Post by Drakim »

mc32 wrote: post #5
LatteLazy wrote: post #3

[flagged]

By balls, you mean money. Look at the difficulty the service industry has now hiring people who would rather receive government relief and sit around the house than work a marginally better paying job—it’s not like they are using this time to pursue productive hobbies (pursuing their passions)... and look at the inflation and debt we’re incurring from free money

> Look at the difficulty the service industry has now hiring people

It's easy to hire people, you just have to offer better wages. The issue is that they can't find anybody willing to work for the wage they are offering, which is very different from not being able to find people to hire.

> it’s not like they are using this time to pursue productive hobbies

Any studies on this?

Re: Universal basic income to be tested in Wales

#13

Post by XorNot »

GordonS wrote: post #9

I'm going to assume it won't be "for life", but will instead be for some fixed period, such as 1 or 2 years. Scotland has been proposing doing a similar experiment too. But I'm not sure what these very small scale experiments are meant to tell us, especially since several such experiments have already been done. I can't help but be cynical and think this is governments offering platitudes to those in favour of UBI, r…

This has always been my problem. If we're going to test UBI, then we really need to run a test over a reasonable time-frame (20 years) or so and commit into it.

So we move some people off the existing schemes we have, onto UBI and let that study run. I suspect the ideal candidate group would be older, poorer people (say, in there 40s) who we would otherwise expect to coast onto a pension later. It timeframes it nicely, and if it works starts making the case for trying it with younger cohorts.

Re: Universal basic income to be tested in Wales

#14

Post by s3tz »

janandonly wrote: post #6

Interesting how political parties are for or against this pilot project before the results are known. What happened to gathering evidence first and then making up one's mind? There have been other projects in Canada, Finland,Kenya and the Netherlands, all with “positive” results. It is useful to ask what you are trying to achieve with an UBI? * lift people out of poverty? * save money on other social schemes, like pe…

It seems like many politicians have a very emotional reaction to these kinds to experiments, seemingly afraid that the results will contradict their beliefs or that they'll somehow be at a loss.

And it's not just one or the other side either, since it looks like UBI could address a lot of issues (ie overall govt waste) the entrenched bureaucracy is by default resistant to it.

Re: Universal basic income to be tested in Wales

#15

Post by brink »

Is it actually going to be universal? Because if it's not, don't call it "universal". I see a lot of articles stating that "universal basic income was tested with massive success" when there was nothing universal about it.

There's a big difference.

Re: Universal basic income to be tested in Wales

#16

Post by s3tz »

jpxw wrote: post #10
s3tz wrote: post #7

I'm curious, can we determine from small scale tests like this whether the data we get from them is scale independent?

You can’t. But UBI-supporters don’t let that get in the way.

I think these experiments should use a better name if that's the case, ie limited basic income.

Re: Universal basic income to be tested in Wales

#17

Post by bjackman »

janandonly wrote: post #6

Interesting how political parties are for or against this pilot project before the results are known. What happened to gathering evidence first and then making up one's mind? There have been other projects in Canada, Finland,Kenya and the Netherlands, all with “positive” results. It is useful to ask what you are trying to achieve with an UBI? * lift people out of poverty? * save money on other social schemes, like pe…

Part of the reason for this lack of interest in the actual outcome is that state benefits are one of the main battlegrounds in the UK's culture war. A lot of the Tories' base comes from the ideological position that poorer people don't deserve to receive aid at the expense (via taxes) of richer people. Whether or not UBI achieves any of its stated aims is totally irrelevant once you see things that way.

All the arguments about disincentivising work are, IMO just convenient filler. If you categorically disproved them, their proponents would surely just find another macro-economic rationalisation for their beliefs, which are in truth fundamentally moral.

Re: Universal basic income to be tested in Wales

#19

Post by notahacker »

sokoloff wrote: post #4
LatteLazy wrote: post #3

[flagged]

Do we know that it works? Including accounting for sourcing the funds and the amount of demand-driven inflation that might result?

This. So far we've repeatedly tested that if you give people in an area a small sum of money paid for from central government funds for a couple of years, they won't change their habits much but will be a little better off financially, which should be of absolutely no surprise to anyone. A real pilot would - as a minimum - be making the local tax rises and welfare cuts necessary to make the scheme revenue neutral, which might actually challenge UBI advocates' certainty that it works...

Re: Universal basic income to be tested in Wales

#20

Post by QuesnayJr »

janandonly wrote: post #6

Interesting how political parties are for or against this pilot project before the results are known. What happened to gathering evidence first and then making up one's mind? There have been other projects in Canada, Finland,Kenya and the Netherlands, all with “positive” results. It is useful to ask what you are trying to achieve with an UBI? * lift people out of poverty? * save money on other social schemes, like pe…

I think that for most people most of the time, economics falls in the category of things that they evaluate using their moral sense, rather than their practical sense. The important question for them is not whether the UBI works to achieve a specific goal, but whether it is moral or immoral.
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