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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

#271

Post by retrac »

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…

You are correct. But as the Mincome report itself noted, some of the people who were most likely to decrease hours were young parents, especially single mothers, and students who returned to school. At least some of that decrease was a positive social outcome, probably.

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

#272

Post by CoastalCoder »

quotemstr wrote: post #43
onion2k wrote: 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…

People can have different opinions about the generalizability of the lessons from a single experiment.

So let's not be quick to call others' views "stupid".

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

#273

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

bluedino wrote: post #93

Of course it would. Look what a few "stimulus checks" did.

We didn’t lose our entry level employees and warehouse workers because of the checks. But we did lose them to the increased unemployment benefits.

We had guys working for $18 quickly so the math and figure out they would make $24 an hour not working. And they did. Our CFO took covid very seriously and laid them off or did whatever we had to do do they could take advantage of this.

We’re still having trouble getting people to fill those positions now even that the rates are back to normal.

Three guys I know of all started working construction and were being paid cash under the table. So making the $24 plus the cash, and are still doing that. So… I’m not sure about this whole thing.

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

#274

Post by glofish »

otherme123 wrote: post #115
osrec wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Avoiding a particular job is not the same as sitting around doing nothing. It's quite possible for you to get basic income, yet channel your energy to other productive things.

Or other improductive things. The more hardcore UBI defenders talk about paying Malibu surfers to surf all day, or to write haikus. That's pretty much doing nothing at a productive level. One of the problems of those studies are that they are temporal, and everyone involved know it. If I enrole you for two years in an UBI experiment, you'll probably not leave your job, even if you hate it. But if I guarantee you the…

this is a really good point

enrolling in a study is not at all representative of how people would behave if the same were a permanent

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

#275

Post by Dylan16807 »

jopython wrote: post #58
the_real_me wrote: post #5

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?

Well in the US governments should do more to ensure cheap housing exists, and that groceries are available.

But providing it for free is less optimal than a basic income.

Either way it's a pretty direct tradeoff. Basic Housing and Basic Food would mean that a much smaller Basic Income would do a similar job.

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

#276

Post by ksec »

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…

That is the thing. My definition of UBI is suppose to keep people alive. You wont die in starvation and live on street. But it is not suppose to give you Netflix, movies and popcorn. If you want those you need to work. Which is why

>> ‘It’s sometimes said that people will sit around doing nothing if you give them free money.’

this never make sense unless people have different definition of UBI. You will need to work to borderline enjoy life.

And it also shift the power to workers. No more shitty jobs like what you describe just to put food on table. The level of abuse people will tolerate before they quit will reduce. It will fundamentally shift ( or lift ) the power in bottom half of the society.

But no work on UBI have ever provided a solution how they deal with "living". If I have a small flat of 6m2 ( unless you want to live in a cage like Hong Kong, I think 6m2 per person is bad enough to be the absolute minimum ) , enough for a bed and bathroom, and zero rent. Getting yourself fed is easy enough.

Which shift the question from UBI to something else, our biggest problem isn't UBI, but property. How it is both an investment as an asset as well as a fundamental need by human. You could always pop up the property prices so UBI will never be enough. And every time we have a discussion about UBI, it is always about tax, equality, willingness to work and nothing on actual "living".

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

#277

Post by wizzwizz4 »

ajuc wrote: post #200
wizzwizz4 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Automation is good. Automation in a capitalist society with unlimited IP laws results in dystopia.

Not necessarily. Society is made of people; some things can be automated in a non-capitalist way (e.g. free software) even by capitalists. Though, of course, we will have to struggle to avoid the dystopia.

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

#278

Post by augustuspolius »

lordnacho wrote: post #241
augustuspolius wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

Realistically speaking, it sounds like introducing UBI would require a plethora of fundamental reforms (political, taxes, housing, job market) to be successful. While I enjoy thinking about that as a mental exercise, I consider it a complete fantasy - seeing how American politics work.

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

#279

Post by truculent »

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…

So wouldn’t we expect the market to make those jobs more attractive, either through better pay or better conditions?

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

#280

Post by thoughtstheseus »

The idea that UBI alone solves anything is silly and not a realistic policy proposal.

UBI is the government distributing money to people. Normally the government spends money on behalf of people who are expected to contribute toward repaying it. A simple way to reduce the cost of UBI is to have it reduced by the cost of ALL government services you elect to use.

Assuming such a UBI covers basic needs, eliminate minimum wages. Wages no longer need a lower bound as everyone has sufficient income.

The root problem is an unfavorable distribution of wealth and income toward asset holders. Stop taxing labor.

Companies need to broaden the distribution of wealth gains- the plumbing for this is still uncertain.

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