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Basic income would not reduce people’s willingness to work

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

#211
post #195

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…

Agreed, isnt this exactly whats been observed from pandemic financial aid? Increased pressure on employers to pay more and give workers a better work environment? Maybe someone has a better link to back that up but heres one at least. https://www.forbes.com/sites/bryanrobinson/2021/10/14/employ... Also isnt there some possibly-not-totally-fantasy narrative where at least some of these jobs become automated in respons…

There were many anecdotes from employers complaining about unemployment benefits, but the systematic data collection gave mixed evidence. I concluded the impact varied across industries.

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

#212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

I wonder where people get this idea that you should be paid like a rockstar without knowing how to play the guitar.

I wonder where people got this idea that UBI proponents are expecting everyone to be paid like rockstars.

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

#213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do agree with this. Here in France I'm currently unemployed and I have a lot of compensation from government welfare. I'm looking for a job and every time I apply to a job, I have a little voice in my head saying : are you sure you want to work there ? You currently have the opportunity to do what you want and learn whatever you want for free, but if you work there it will be boring af and you will not be able to d…

Doesn't it also make a difference that you lose welfare benefits when you start working? Maybe you could just work part time if all earned income was supplemental with no welfare gap.

currently I'm on welfare. (enough to not have to use money put aside)

If I work (even part time, I will loose all welfare).

If I find a job I will earn only 400-800E more than I earn with welfare.

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

#214

Cool but most psychological studies are not reproducible. I'd be interested to see a large scale trial run.

We've had that in the US for about the last two years, and it had the opposite result.

1) There were some confounding factors, obviously, and 2) Though also polluted by unusual circumstances, didn't we get a bit of a test with this when some states pulled support before others did, and didn't that show little to no effect on employment and job-seeking rates?

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

#215

I strongly suspect that the lion's share of UBI would go directly to landlords or existing property owners.

Why stop at 'Basic income'? Why not 'Basic Housing', 'Basic Food' and others?

Yes, most developed countries have programs for affordable housing and food supplements. UBI helps with that as well.

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

#216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not for the other group who will have products of their labor "redistributed" to pay for other's leisure time?

Gettting rid of serfdom, debt prisons and endentured servitude all reduced work and caused products of labour to be redistributed. Who said that current distribution of products of labour between Amazok and their workers is optimal?

We all fantasize Bezos and Musk should pay for it, but in reality it will be yet another tax on middle class (e.g. run-of-the-mill senior developer from high CoL area, so from Amazon engineer to (would be ex) Amazon warehouse worker).

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

#217
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meaningless. It's not meaningless. It's not enough to prove that basic income will have a long term positive impact, but it is enough to show further experimentation on a larger, more long term scale is worthwhile. It's decidedly unreasonable, not to mention unscientific, to dismiss something because you don't like it.

We've done that experiment. The results are self-evident. This isn't suggestive, valid science. It's the equivalent of setting up a "scientific" contraption that purports to be a perpetual motion machine. You can create a pretty convincing fake perpetual motion machine, but because we have a broader theory of mechanics, we know perpetual motion is impossible, that the purported machine must be cheating somehow (even…

>We've done that experiment. The results are self-evident

I think the real experiment is perpetual consumerism and unchecked global free market capitalism.

Some places that could be considered a UBI welfare state would be Scandinavian countries or parts of Canada, hardly examples of self-evident failures.

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

#218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is fine, because general contractor business owners and roofing company owners do the least arduous work and make quite a lot of money.

The question is whether UBI reduces willingness to work, not whether small business owners struggling agrees with your politics, i.e. it is not “fine” .

It is "fine" actually, because if your UBI competes favourably with the wages you'd otherwise pay, those tiny wages are in some sense risk mitigation. You bank margin so you can ride out when the work or workers evaporate temporarily, then someone sinks the expense when you eventually need to pay or charge more, and it's probably not them because they can't afford roofs in the first place.

My politics have nothing to do with it. I know roofers, roofing company owners, general contractors, construction workers, and others. I am a contractor, and I'm struggling. It's fine

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

#219
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure some will. Some won't. So what? I'm not trying to be dismissive, but this strikes me as a "but some people will be upset!" argument, which seems irrelevant to whether the policy achieves its stated goals or not.

So what? Sounds like you should be part or a dictatorship rather than a democracy. If you support this idea then feel free to donate to the cause. Not trying to be an ass but the so what attitude does not tend to further constructive discussion.

> Sounds like you should be part or a dictatorship rather than a democracy.

What a weird claim. Decisions in democracies upset some people too. That's the whole point of voting on things, to resolve conflicts.

> If you support this idea then feel free to donate to the cause.

Donate to what?

> Not trying to be an ass but the so what attitude does not tend to further constructive discussion.

"Some people will complain" isn't constructive by itself either.

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

#220
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.

The Danish system has the same problem as all other means-tested systems: massive effective tax rate once you start working.

So do you want to have both UBI and a low effective tax?
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