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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

#41

Post by ghaff »

XorNot wrote: post #13
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 nicel…

>ideal candidate group would be older, poorer people (say, in there 40s)

Perhaps. That helps determine if older people who don't make a lot of money anyway will just decide to stop working.

However, perhaps the bigger question is if it's offered to younger people, will a lot of them simply never get a job after school and, by the time they realize they need more than UBI, it's too late.

Re: Universal basic income to be tested in Wales

#43

Post by trentnix »

Drakim wrote: post #12
mc32 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> 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.

...because the government is paying them not to work. That's the point. And that means no skills are being trained, no discipline is being developed, and no experience is being attained learning customer service and the basics of business economics.

I worked in a convenience store for minimum wage ($4.25/hour) for four years when I was younger. A little more than a decade later I owned my own retail store. Believe me, it's a long trip from stocking a drink cooler and scrubbing the toilets (what I did on my first day) to opening your own retail establishment. But that story is quite common - many dishwashers become restaurant owners, line cooks become chefs, and stockers become store managers.

Your point about wages isn't really cogent. I'm a degreed Computer Scientist and software professional with decades of experience and I'll flip burgers for the right wage. But most won't be able to afford to buy them and they certainly won't find the cost-value appealing. And when the cost of those burgers goes up, UBI and whatever other creative ways we justify paying people not to work will have to go up too.

Re: Universal basic income to be tested in Wales

#44

Post by sonograph »

Drakim wrote: post #12
mc32 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> The issue is that they can't find anybody willing to work for the wage they are offering

While this is accurate, it ignores OP's point that they were willing to work for those wages pre-pandemic, but now the government is paying them something equivalent to 'sit around' (per OPs point).

Is it the job of the employer to raise wages or the government's job to pay people to work vs sitting? Maybe we should bring back the Civil Works Administration

Re: Universal basic income to be tested in Wales

#45

Post by janandonly »

YetAnotherNick wrote: post #24
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…

> for or against this pilot project before the results are known > all with “positive” results. Call this lack of self awareness. Do you have any study that looks into the long term effect of this scheme with data. AFAIK, there had been multiple programs of UBI going all the way to 1960s[1] and each time government cancelled it for some reason, so calling it one word positive if got cancelled is bit of overreach. [1]…

Because a rational government would never cancel anything that is positive?

Well, by thayt standard this planet has zero rational governments.

Re: Universal basic income to be tested in Wales

#46

Post by christophilus »

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…

I used to agree, but it’s hard to argue that the temporary US covid unemployment benefits haven’t changed behavior. It’s obviously not a perfect test, but maybe it’s better than we thought?

Re: Universal basic income to be tested in Wales

#47

Post by zajio1am »

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 is useful to ask what you are trying to achieve with an UBI?

Remove poverty trap and improve dignity in social programs. Many social programs already offer equivalent money but they are means-tested. Effort to get more income may lead to not being eligible for these programs, which is essentially equivalent to very high effective marginal tax rate, discouraging people to try.

Re: Universal basic income to be tested in Wales

#49

Post by tnzm »

Shugarl wrote: post #26
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…

People usually don't particularly care for the truth, they care for what they think is the truth, and what support their opinions. As for suggestions : It's pretty vague, but how about doing projects in things that you're interested in ? Like maybe creating a prototype for an energy drink, buy a lot of different ingredients to find new recipes, or buy tools for drawing and create a comic... Or read up on a problem yo…

>they care for what they think is the truth, and what support their opinions.

I'd take this one step further and say that the majority of people don't have consistent opinions about what the truth is, they only care for receiving the informational stimuli they've been conditioned to perceive as pleasant.

UBI is therefore an experiment in nomenclature. The reality of governments giving money over long periods of time to citizens whose labor is not market-competitive is nothing new. What's being tested is how it's branded: "welfare, benefits" is a humanistic, "socialist" way of branding it while "universal, basic, income" are words more in line with the rationalistic, "neoliberal" memeplex.

Re: Universal basic income to be tested in Wales

#50

Post by smaryjerry »

Drakim wrote: post #12
mc32 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

For unemployment at least in our state you don’t even have to show you are looking for a job. Anyone hiring can tell you how hard it was to get people back to work, we’re talking people making $25 per hour refusing to work because unemployment was 60% of their salary plus $600 a week. A person making $30,000 per year was making the equivalent of $49,000 per year instead, and didn’t have to do anything for it. Now it is that plus $300 per week and someone making $30,000 is now still making about $33,000 per year, again without actually having to work or even look. If they do come back they refuse to work more than about 15 hours per week so they can continue to claim unemployment for the rest and get their extra $300 per week.
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