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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

#241

Post by lordnacho »

augustuspolius wrote: post #220
lordnacho wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

UBI would lower the effective tax, because it wouldn't put off everyone who might be able to work.

Denmark having high tax in general is another story, but at least with UBI not everyone who is getting paid will be thinking "hmm I lose all that income if I take a job, plus I can't be at home so much".

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

#242

Post by ChrisLomont »

rwmj wrote: post #85
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…

> Multiple studies of where basic income was tried in the real world found it to reduce work. Isn't that a good outcome? Humans get more leisure time.

A lowering of work means a lowering of goods means society, including those not working, get less.

Sure, more leisure time is good, but mostly only so if mankind still gets the goods and services they are used to. UBI would not do that.

When national productivity drops a few percent, it's a recession, and people notice the lack of goods and services.

People can already work less. But people also like goods and services.

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

#243

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

log4shelled wrote: post #172
quotemstr wrote: post #29

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…

No. No no no. I make six figures and hardly work at all. As a dishwasher I used to bust my ass and make 7 dollars per hour. In my experience, the less you work, the more money you make. Everyone I've talked to in real life, who has worked both shitty jobs and high paying jobs, has the exact same experience.

I agree. I am paid more now than I ever have been in my life and I work less than I ever have. One of my roomates has worked in kitchens all his life and I assure you he works a hell of a lot harder than I ever did, yet makes a pittance.

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

#244

Post by smallcrustacean »

beardedman wrote: post #170

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 w…

Is the only "hard stuff" in life found in employment?

What about losing a friend? Learning who you are in relation to your parents? Attempting to cooperate with a partner? Sacrificing your goals for your children?

Life is much richer than the lessons learned by doing menial labor.

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

#245

Post by nightski »

sschueller wrote: post #21
quotemstr wrote: post #7

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…

So poor people are lazy and the rich aren't? Maybe all these people don't want to work these kinda of jobs and are moving into other sectors. Maybe working conditions and pay need to be drastically improved in those jobs.

I have relatively poor parents. They work extremely hard, but for some reason they choose to work super hard on all the wrong things. It's almost like they are obsessed with busy work. I try to help them but it often falls on deaf ears.

I don't believe poor people are lazy. I think it's just very hard to make the mental shift needed to pull yourself out of that situation (which they are likely not even capable of doing on their own without help - very few are).

This is just my personal opinion, but people need more than money thrown at them. They need help. If we are going to help the poor in society it's going to take time investment and personal relationships. That's what so few in America (even myself, I'll admit it) want to hear.

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

#246

Post by overrun11 »

inglor_cz wrote: post #142
gamerDude wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also think in general all the research around basic income misses an incredibly important piece that is being proposed in policy changes. Basic income experiments usually game it like this: We will give you x years of payments monthly for just being alive. Then they see what happens. The problem is, policy has one huge difference. It doesn't end. The difference between, I'll give you 2 years of payments monthly and…

"It doesn't end." To be more precise, it has no specific end date, but in a democracy, it can be repealed again with every new parliament. Or possibly via a ballot initiative. At which moment the net recipients are in for a major shock.

There's not been enough thought on this. UBI is basically irreversible. If it ends up not being good policy you're still stuck with it forever.

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

#247

Post by bryanlarsen »

listenallyall wrote: post #198
bryanlarsen wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Housing: UBI lets you move somewhere cheap, eliminating the leverage that landlords hold, letting housing prices go down. Food: Foods are commodities, meaning that the price is the marginal cost. The price of a bushel of rice is set by the buyer, not the seller.

You've learned nothing the past two years

I didn't learn that food prices go up during a global drought because I knew that already.

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

#248

Post by sintaxi »

fma wrote: post #229
missedthecue wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I'm receiving $1000 a month for a six month program run by a university research group, which states very clearly that the program will end after six months, I'm not going to go quit my job. That's the problem with these "studies". They are completely different from a permanent government program. They can't tell you the impact on inflation, the impact on the labor market, or if it is affordable over the long term…

20+ year year old permanent program https://www.wired.com/story/free-money-the-surprising-effect...

Again, inflation isn't accounted for.

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

#249

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg »

missedthecue wrote: post #119
kevingadd wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There have already been real world basic income experiments with similar outcomes

If I'm receiving $1000 a month for a six month program run by a university research group, which states very clearly that the program will end after six months, I'm not going to go quit my job. That's the problem with these "studies". They are completely different from a permanent government program. They can't tell you the impact on inflation, the impact on the labor market, or if it is affordable over the long term…

I also wonder if we can't make some conclusions from real world data over the last two years. Yes, the pandemic is a bit of a confounding variable, but from what I've been reading we have at least strong reason to believe that the support payments from unemployment both substantially contributed to inflation, and also reduced marginal propensity to work.

Fortunately or unfortunately, I think there's not much of a chance of this getting implemented in my country during my lifetime. We can't even agree to give people universal healthcare. I think if anything the pendulum seems likely to swing in the opposite direction given the political landscape nowadays. But even if I could decide this unilaterally . . . I'd probably want some other country to try it first, and see how it goes. It doesn't obviously seem like a good idea based on what I know today.

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

#250

Post by [deleted] »

wefarrell wrote: post #185
criddell wrote: post #100

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.

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