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Basic income would not reduce people’s willingness to work

universiteitleiden.nl

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Re: Basic income would not reduce people’s willingness to work

#161

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

quotemstr wrote: post #17
gruez wrote: post #9

>They simulated the reward structure of different forms of social security in an experiment. ‘We got people to do a task on a computer,’ says De Kwaadsteniet. ‘In multiple rounds, which represented the months they had to work, they did a boring task in which they had to put points on a bar. The more of these they did, the more money they earned.’ "short term experiments done in a lab" seems to be psychology's equival…

Yep. Meaningless. Yet the paper will be blasted from one end of the earth to the other by people who care more about their agenda than the universe's frequently unhappy truths. Probably the same people who said that increasing the money supply wouldn't cause inflation because MMT or some other tendentious garbage.

Is it a truth though? Or is it merely a stubbornly persistent instilled cultural belief? The whole point of experiments is to separate the two.

Re: Basic income would not reduce people’s willingness to work

#162

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #86
bryanlarsen wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UBI might cover your food and rent, but it won't cover much past that. So if you want some beer money or a new videogame or whatever, you'll need to work. And since after UBI every dollar after taxes goes to luxuries, a low income provides a lot more luxuries than it does before UBI, so it's actually a lot more appealing to work -- you see the benefits directly.

Are you saying you'd be more encouraged to work to buy a video game than to not be homeless? Why wouldn't regular minimum wage workers just be homeless and spend their money on luxuries if this was the case?

If you're homeless, what luxuries are you buying?

What use is buying the new video game if you don't have a place to put a TV to play it on?

Re: Basic income would not reduce people’s willingness to work

#164

Post by rottencupcakes »

pc86 wrote: post #60
ChrisLomont wrote: post #12

Multiple studies of where basic income was tried in the real world found it to reduce work. For example, "Manitoba, Canada experimented with Mincome, a basic guaranteed income, in the 1970s. In the town of Dauphin, Manitoba, labor only decreased by 13%, much less than expected" [1]. There are plenty of others. I expect a targeted need use of scarce resources (tax money) is a much better use for helping those who need…

UBI without the U is just welfare, which is fine, but it's kind of odd to say that UBI would be better if we just did "thing that makes it by definition no longer UBI." I totally agree with you on re: inflation, though. Some organization, presumably government, will need to manage any UBI implementation, and government is nothing if not an inefficient allocator of its resources. I worry any broad national UBI system…

Assuming we don’t want to MMT / money printer this, to keep a balanced budget, any UBI system would have to be accompanied by an increase in taxes.

These taxes would presumably be very progressive.

This effectively would end up more than negating the effect of UBI on the richer people, thus turning it into a directed welfare program.

UBI and directed welfare are essentially same same.

Re: Basic income would not reduce people’s willingness to work

#165

Post by wizzwizz4 »

_-david-_ wrote: post #144
staticassertion wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If my job requires menial labor or involves getting berated by customers (many retail jobs), personally I would absolutely not work. Maybe that's a good thing. It's insane how people in service industries are treated - like they're less than human. Shifting some power to them and giving the job a little more of an air of dignity or status would probably help a lot. And the pay would obviously go up. People would be…

>And the pay would obviously go up. Maybe. Many jobs can be automated, but it was cheaper to just hire minimum wage people to do a job. If the pay required to find people got to be too high, automation would happen more rapidly.

Then roll on automation. Not even the Luddites had a problem with automation; just with the quality of the result and with who reaped the rewards.

Re: Basic income would not reduce people’s willingness to work

#166

Post by jeremyjh »

lbj wrote: post #33

Well, in Denmark we have the equivalent of Basic income and I'd say we have a major problem with peoples willingness to work. Some families are on welfare for generations now.

In Denmark I don't think everyone gets payments from the government regardless of need do they? The welfare system is just for people who are unemployed/disabled right? This doesn't really tell us much about how UBI would work since losing welfare benefits is a disincentive to work that you don't have with UBI.

This article says UBI has been controversial for a long time in Denmark but is on the political agenda again recently:

https://basisindkomst.dk/basic-income-borgerloen-in-denmark-...

Re: Basic income would not reduce people’s willingness to work

#167

Post by y4mi »

_-david-_ wrote: post #144
staticassertion wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If my job requires menial labor or involves getting berated by customers (many retail jobs), personally I would absolutely not work. Maybe that's a good thing. It's insane how people in service industries are treated - like they're less than human. Shifting some power to them and giving the job a little more of an air of dignity or status would probably help a lot. And the pay would obviously go up. People would be…

>And the pay would obviously go up. Maybe. Many jobs can be automated, but it was cheaper to just hire minimum wage people to do a job. If the pay required to find people got to be too high, automation would happen more rapidly.

Sounds like a net positive if they're getting basic income and thus don't have to suffer through the abuse anymore

Re: Basic income would not reduce people’s willingness to work

#168

Post by emteycz »

throwawayffffas wrote: post #59
lbj wrote: post #33

Well, in Denmark we have the equivalent of Basic income and I'd say we have a major problem with peoples willingness to work. Some families are on welfare for generations now.

One could argue that welfare is the symptom not the cause.

How do you know that, and how do you explain that more people get on welfare as it gets available to them, even though they have good employment options?

Moreover, why does that matter at all - how is it fair to those still working, who are forced to pay for those who don't want to? I'm all for welfare - helping people in need. But I'm not going to fund someone's lifestyle.

Re: Basic income would not reduce people’s willingness to work

#169

Post by lr4444lr »

staticassertion wrote: post #69
ozzythecat wrote: post #4

A link to the actual research paper would be helpful. In this experiment, what amount was given to the treatment group that received basic income? How often? How does that amount compare to the cost of living in their city? > ‘It’s sometimes said that people will sit around doing nothing if you give them free money.’ I’m not an academic, so take this with a grain of salt. If my job requires menial labor or involves g…

> If my job requires menial labor or involves getting berated by customers (many retail jobs), personally I would absolutely not work. Maybe that's a good thing. It's insane how people in service industries are treated - like they're less than human. Shifting some power to them and giving the job a little more of an air of dignity or status would probably help a lot. And the pay would obviously go up. People would be…

Much as we might agree these workers overall have more money - from whatever source - it does not follow that the pay would go up for crap jobs. The pay need only be high enough above the post tax increase from the UBI baseline to fill the spots. Maybe it won't they populated by people who need to feed their family anymore, but perhaps by college grads who need to feed themselves because UBI is eaten up by their student loan repayment. All we can guarantee really is shifting the bracket of the likely talent pool's need for a few extra dollars. Humans aren't alike in the level of income above which they're no longer in desperation for a few extra bucks.

Re: Basic income would not reduce people’s willingness to work

#170

Post by beardedman »

For me these studies are utterly meaningless without real world long-term data.

> would not reduce people’s willingness to work

> The psychologists also found an indication that people with a basic income look for work that suits them better.

Note how the authors use the word *willingness" to work. 0 people want to clean toilets or public restrooms for a living. Or be waiting staff at a restaurant. Yet those "grunt work" jobs are often formative in developing grit, social skills & long term prioritisation skills (instant gratification vs. long term payoff). I shudder to think what the consequence would be of participating in a society where you are free to skip the "hard stuff" because it's inconvenient.

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