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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

#231
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.

> universe's frequently unhappy truths.

This phrase is usually used to force through otherwise unpopular economic policies. But here’s the thing, this isn’t actually an argument. You’re unilaterally asserting that you’re right and that anyone who disagrees with you is a child that refuses to accept “hard truths”. But you have offered literally no evidence for your assertions, only bluster. This is mere abuse of rhetoric, not an argument.

Oh, and it’s funny how only other people have an “agenda”. As if you aren’t also expressing a policy preference too.

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

#232

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.

If a job doesn't need doing, why waste a human's labor on it?

Though that said, I remember not too long ago a lot of people saying "oh if minimum wage goes over $15 we'll just automate the jobs" and now the McDonalds by my house is offering $23/hr for entry level work and robots are nowhere to be seen.

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

#233
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So poor people are lazy and the rich aren't? Honestly, yes --- not always, but frequently. I am sick and tired of the mentality embedded in the sentence I quoted. Do you think the rich are rich for no reason at all? That their rewards are unfair? Success is not the universe sprinkling good fortune on mankind at random: success comes from hard work and the courage to take advantage of the opportunities that time pre…

> Do you think the rich are rich for no reason at all? No, social immobility and generational wealth transfer. > That their rewards are unfair? Often, yes.

>muh generational wealth Gone in two or three generations - irrelevant to policy decisions. Handing out these (false) mental crutches is unproductive and just creates resentment in the wrong places. Some people take a risk and are rewarded for it. Some people just work hard. Some people got a shit hand. You come across as one of those load voices clamoring for some policy without any appreciation for nuance.

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

#234
The study aside, it would reduce MY willingness to work and I have to imagine there are a lot of people, working a lot shittier jobs, out there who feel the same. In the end, the jobs still need to be done, so wages will need to go up, and the cost of the thing these jobs produce will go up, and then, inflation. Isn't that obvious?

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

#235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I expect a targeted need use of scarce resources (tax money) is a much better use for helping those who need it That might be true but it also might not be true. If you add a bunch of rules to the program it can increase the administrative cost a lot and leave you with less money to distribute. I'm not sure if it's true, but when I was a kid I heard that Canada's baby bonus (Canada Child Benefit) was made universal…

Exactly. Part of the appeal of UBI is that it doesn't come with a ton of bureaucratic overhead.

Look up and demonstrate this "ton of bureaucratic overhead". All US programs have efficiency ratings you can find. There is not the overhead you (and UBI people in general) claim.

Pick the system you think is most inefficient, then look up to find admin budget versus money paid out. I've done all this, under the same initial belief you have, and it's simply not true.

And UBI will also require the same overhead to collect and dole out - it is simply a different tax redistribution method than current ones, and will not be zero overhad.

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

#236

Yes it would. Look: we just went through a massive worker shortage caused by overly generous stimulus benefits and rent subsidies. Have we forgotten already? What am I supposed to believe? A microfoundations paper from a field with infamous replication problems on one hand, or, on the other hand, common sense and my own lying eyes? Of course UBI would reduce propensity to work. Only people with an axe to grind can se…

"went through" is an understatement. We're still in the massive worker shortage.

"Worker shortage" is capitalist propaganda. There is a well-paying job shortage.

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

#239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if the landlord and food companies just raise the prices now that they know people have at least X dollars a month to spend on rent and food. Then people start advocating for universal housing and universal food.

They can only do that if they collude, which is illegal. On the other hand, if food and rent are paid for mostly with UBI money, and supply was more elastic than demand, then prices would surely increase.

Did they collude to raise rents 10% this year?

People will bid up apartments because they have more money.

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