Basic income would not reduce people’s willingness to work

> My spouse worked for the state government as part of a benefits/disbursement program. She took phone calls from benefits recipients. Some who are disabled, on unemployment, or generally within the states bar to qualify for tax payer aid. > The pay was slightly above minimum wage. My spouse quit after about a year, during which my souse constantly suffered from verbal abuse and even callers who didn’t qualify threatening to murder my spouse unless they received cash from the state.

This feels like a particularly unfair anecdote in the context of what we're talking about. Imagine for a second that the tables were turned and your spouse was disabled and unable to work: Everything is harder – they can't leave the house without someone to give them a ride; maybe they have to use a wheelchair, which makes everything twice as difficult. They're in survival mode every day.

Not only do they rely on the state for money to eat, to pay rent, to keep the lights on, but doing anything enjoyable is challenging. They have to navigate a byzantine system that is DESIGNED to make qualifying for support extremely frustrating, and then have to stay on top of getting their benefits regularly. The system has literally trained them to react to any issue with anger because they know that whenever a problem occurs, it could be weeks or months until they get the money they need to survive.

I'm not saying that your spouse's experience was justified in any way – dealing with that requires a hell of a lot more than minimum wage! – but (theoretically) this particular problem would go away with something like basic income, where most of these people would have their basic costs covered. They might still have "disability" to help pay for all the other stuff disabled people have to deal with, but at least they aren't relying on a sclerotic bureaucracy to eat, yunno?

> As I said, I'm all for welfare/assistance given generously to those in need, but that's different from funding non-working lifestyle of those who have good working options and simply don't want to work.

I don't really know if that's worth worrying about. We're not living in a subsistence economy where if someone isn't carrying their weight the whole tribe dies. I think it's perfectly acceptable to have a certain amount of non-participatory portion of the population, we should make sure it doesn't get to the point of unsustainability but trying to police absolutely everyone in society is a recipe for disaster.

> But let's not take money from people who need it just so a group of people can quit their job.

The people who need that money aren't going to bear the majority of the burden - when you get down into the range of poverty wages people are already exempt for non-transactional taxation and end up receiving more money than they pay. I don't think it's fair to paint any new expenditure as "But how will the poor bear this cost" - when, in the end, the middle and upper classes are where we look to for funding.

The 1980s perpetuated the idea of a "welfare queen" that we should all be really mad at - there are folks that take advantage of the system but it's such a small cost that, honestly, whatever. Most people can't enjoy that kind of a lifestyle so if a few people get to live content lives that would otherwise be ground into the dust I'm perfectly happy for them.

Last year’s APF dividend was $1100. That’s a figure for the whole year, not monthly. Food stamps pay more than that.

What I dislike about these studies is that what they are measuring maps badly to real-world experiences. There was another study before, not long ago, where participants were asked what they would do if they had this and this much UBI. And from that they drew their conclusion. I don't know how and whether they corrected for obvious biases (who would honestly say that they would sit on their ass? People deceive themselves all the time!), but doing a study on imaginary situations just looks pointless to me. You want to do a study, you randomly select people from different walks of life and give them their money for a long enough time for them to feel secure and plan long-term. That's how you know. Yeah, you'd need to get money from somewhere, but who says it's gonna be easy?

I would certainly spend at least a month goofing around. Maybe two. Maybe I'd become a freaking train driver, who knows. Take up a shitty job, blog about it without fear of being fired. Or maybe I'd decide that I should spend the rest of my life goofing around. How should I know? Give me my money and see what I do, not what I say I'd do.

Inflation more than negated any increase in wages.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q

Fewer workers means fewer goods and services. If demand remains constant or increases, you get inflation. The pandemic caused supply chain issues, but this wouldn't have been as big of an issue had demand been artificially pumped with the stimulus. In many places, such as the ports, productivity is at an all-time high, but they're still bottlenecking consumers.