Basic income would not reduce people’s willingness to work • Hacker News Board

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

#401

Post by munk-a » Mon, Jan 17, 2022, 7:32 PM UTC

yurishimo wrote: post #369

parsimo2010 wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think what it would do is balance the power a little toward an employee’s favor instead of a customer. Right now there are people that have no choice but to work these jobs. So a company can institute a “customer is always right” policy because it keeps the customer around and they really don’t have to consider their employees feelings- they are easily replaced. Customers only act like assholes because they can get…

Also, I think we've all seen the reddit threads about someone standing up to a rude customer and not getting fired. Those employers exist and seemingly are operating their businesses at a profit. Hell, we have professions now that demand respect (cops) and magically, the vast majority of the population seems to be able to grow up and not act like a child when confronted with an undesirable situation. I don't think an…

The fact that "karens" have become a meme is largely due to this. Working retail has always been filled with absolutely terrible customers but in this day and age we're actually shaming them instead of feeding bad behavior with passive silence.

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

#402

Post by colechristensen » Mon, Jan 17, 2022, 7:33 PM UTC

As with many psych studies: false conclusions based on contrived experiments that don’t measure what they claim.

Actual basic income experiment: the large amount of money given to Americans during the pandemic and subsequent labor shortage.

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

#403

Post by josephcsible » Mon, Jan 17, 2022, 7:33 PM UTC

Notanothertoo wrote: post #380

josephcsible wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly where I am too. I thought replacing all of our existing safety net programs with UBI would be perfect until the COVID money happened. I knew some people would choose to just live off of it forever and never contribute to society again, but I didn't realize just how many people it would be.

Where are these people? The benefits ended a couple of months ago.

I don't know, but I definitely still see more "closed today due to lack of staffing" signs today than I've ever seen in my life before the lockdowns. And even places that are open still have noticeably fewer workers.

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

#404

Post by PragmaticPulp » Mon, Jan 17, 2022, 7:33 PM UTC

kwhitefoot wrote: post #315

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If UBI could be implemented in around the same cost as the welfare programs it replaces, it would have a net zero effect on inflation. UBI is, by definition, Universal (e.g. given to everyone). Welfare programs are highly selective and only apply to a small number of people. The only way to make them cost the same is to massively reduce the benefits given to the small number of welfare recipients, then give the bal…

UBI is taxable income. You just adjust tax rates slightly to claw it back from those with higher incomes. No extra bureaucracy required, no means testing needed.

Yep, that's the myth of "universal" basic income: It would actually be taxed away for most of the population.

You may get $2,000/month for "free", but most people reading this would see their taxes go up by $30-40K/year to pay for the program. The money has to come from somewhere.

But that doesn't change the fact that if we pump money into a certain demographic, the assets they're buying will go up in price. In this case, it's the lowest cost housing that will go up in price.

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

#405

Post by Ccecil » Mon, Jan 17, 2022, 7:33 PM UTC

mushufasa wrote: post #284

pkdpic wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

~50 years ago Keynes predicted by now no-one would have to work menial jobs because everything would be automated, freeing up people to work a few days a week and pursue creative endeavors. While we have automated things, we are nowhere close to that today. A lot of current menial jobs CAN be automated today, but the cost of labor is cheaper than designing and deploying automated solutions. Having higher cost of labo…

Many years ago I worked as a solderer/assembler. One day I said to a supervisor "You mean there isn't a machine that can do this job? Seems easy to automate." Their response was "There is a machine...but it costs more than you do."

From that moment on it was very clear to me what my value to the company was. Combine that with the long hours, low pay and constant watching over my clock in times made it very easy to just "walk" from that job with no notice.

The worst part was knowing that there were people who had been there 20 years and had (seemingly) no upward mobility during the entire time. After 6mos I was moved up to QA (with an insignificant pay increase) and I realized that I was as high in the company as I was going to get without someone dying.

I have no issue working...but if I am going to be poor while working 56hr weeks...why do it?

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

#406

Post by tgv » Mon, Jan 17, 2022, 7:33 PM UTC

jhauris wrote: post #80

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…

If UBI could be implemented in around the same cost as the welfare programs it replaces, it would have a net zero effect on inflation. The downside of nearly all current forms of welfare (in the U.S.) is that they largely enforce the poverty gap. You get to a point where a small increase in pay causes a large decrease in benefits, and you become trapped unless you can get a large enough pay increase to jump the gap.…

> There is a tremendous amount of overhead involved in current welfare programs

Take the salaries of the people involved, and divide that over the entire country. Will that suffice? I don't think so, because it isn't as if 25% of the population is involved in distributing welfare.

> If UBI could be implemented in around the same cost as the welfare programs it replaces, it would have a net zero effect on inflation.

Not necessarily. If the government gave everybody a minimum wage extra, landlords could raise their prices further, shops, restaurants, construction firms, etc. would have to increase salaries to maintain lowly paid staff and raise prices, etc. There's a distinct risk of inflation involved in handing out money.

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

#407

Post by thesuperbigfrog » Mon, Jan 17, 2022, 7:33 PM UTC

How would UBI be funded?

We have trouble paying for existing budget items.

Would an existing budget item be cut or would new taxes be needed?

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

#408

Post by loceng » Mon, Jan 17, 2022, 7:34 PM UTC

ChrisLomont wrote: post #242

rwmj wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 servic…

Does your thinking here work if including automation into the equation?

Why didn't society then collapse when automation began - like textile/garment/fabric manufacturing, etc?

You also seem to be ignoring the other side of productivity - if it drops it's arguably, in part at least, that less people are buying - so there's no funds/fuel for the local system. If UBI had to be spent locally and only on "local" goods - within the ststem - then there's no leak, and instead of fueling China and letting the tank run dry locally - you force fuel to be spent locally. This is why major, credible think tanks estimate an immediate 13%+ increase in GDP with implementing a $1,000/month UBI.

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

#409

Post by teakettle42 » Mon, Jan 17, 2022, 7:34 PM UTC

srcreigh wrote: post #36

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.

Would they get any more than the status quo? I suspect the extra support may translate to decreased profits for landowners. Tenants would have more time and money to file maintenance issues and represent themselves in the legal system, which would cost landowners. In Ontario it costs $50 and takes a lot of time and energy to file a complaint to the LTB. Tenants would also have more ability to change their situation i…

This sounds like it would quickly devolve into a very socially unstable state.

For every legitimate complainant, there’d be a hundred entitled moochies with nothing better to do than work the bureaucracy to their own benefit, entirely at the cost of the few remaining people actually doing any work.

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

#410

Post by Aunche » Mon, Jan 17, 2022, 7:34 PM UTC

Dylan16807 wrote: post #148

quotemstr wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a long-term wide-scale UBI experiment? Where? I hope you don't mean any fickle systems tied to covid, and I especially hope you don't mean the unemployment boost the US did; unemployment pay is very different from basic income. And even if something fails, that doesn't prove it's some kind of impossibility like perpetual motion machines.

The closest analogue to true UBI goes on in the oil-rich Gulf nations. Citizens are basically guarenteed a job where they don't even need to show up, which is basically an inefficient form of UBI. Some, like Saudi Arabia are transitioning to true UBI. The result of this is that these nations are completely reliant on foreign labor. Both skilled on unskilled work is dominated by foreigners. The latter have enough leverage to live comfortably. Unfortunately for unskilled workers, they're kept in slavery-like conditions and even have their passports taken away because otherwise, the cost of living would be too high for citizens to live off state income.