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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

#451

Post by ajuc »

godelski wrote: post #372
ajuc wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

i.e. > just with the quality of the result and with who reaped the rewards. Maybe we should leave terms like capitalism and socialism out of the discussion because no one can agree on their meanings so they just become fighting words and their usefulness to the conversations are less than meaningless.

That's why I specified unlimited IP laws. Basically who licences the robots and AIs - owns the world.

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

#452

Post by throwawayboise »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #116
mjburgess wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends if you just end up paying people not to work. Money doesnt just have some "value" you can share like a pie. The value in money is just the productive capacity of an economy. If you're paying large numbers to do nothing, the value of that money plummets and people will starve. Recall: 50% of the country make less than the median wage... UBI is going to have to be way below this to preserve the very wealth w…

>If you're paying large numbers to do nothing, the value of that money plummets and people will starve. We already pay large numbers of people to do nothing, retirees.

Ostensibly, we are paying them back the Social Security taxes + interest that were withheld from their pay when they were working, supplemented by any pensions or savings they may have.

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

#453

Post by moosey »

kcplate wrote: post #339

I personally used to be a proponent of UBI, but after 2020 and watching some of the impact of Covid and what increasing government financial payouts has done to employment malaise and to the economy, my skepticism has increased. I am not convinced that the benefits outweigh the costs like I once did.

This ignores data that shows how many older people retired, and how large that effect is.

Sum up the number of people who died, were injured, retired, our found better work, and it had a much greater effect than the government payouts. Otherwise, these problems would have already largely resolved already. Those extra payments are gone.

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

#454

Post by notahacker »

Aunche wrote: post #410
Dylan16807 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 leve…

And the closest Western equivalent is the pension system. Also not a perfect comparison since pensioners are obviously older and have more assets on average, and some have large private payouts at the time state pensions kick in. But few people carry on working full time, and the system relies almost entirely on the labour of people who are not entitled to pensions to sustain it, to the point pensionable ages are needing to increase because healthier, longer lived people don't retire any later.

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

#455

Post by taubek »

I totally agree with this "The psychologists also found an indication that people with a basic income look for work that suits them better.". If I would have enough money for all my needs I wouldn't stop working. I'm lucky that I'm already doing what I love. I'm not doing my job just to get payed.

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

#456

Post by HideousKojima »

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.…

I'm about as anti big government and anti welfare programs as you can get, but the overhead costs of most welfare programs isn't nearly as much as UBI proponents seem to think they are. Food stamps, one of the more inefficient ones, costs about 15 cents in overhead for every dollar in benefits. Most other programs like social security etc. range between half a cent to 5 cents for every dollar of benefits.

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

#458

Post by throwawayboise »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #412
respondo2134 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

then why are so many UBI proponents surprised when those who would bankroll this experiement fight it so hard?

It is expected, just disappointing. "I got mine, fuck you" is not exactly the kind of thinking we wish our fellow citizens engaged in. And for the record, I would appear to be in the group bankrolling it rather than receiving from it, and I'm completely cool with it.

I don't think that's the mindset. The mindset is, "I worked for what I have, you can do the same"

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

#459

Post by dathinab »

Most people strife to life a life better then "just basic".

Many people are driven by more then just money. Tbh. I don't know if anyone would become a nurse in a hospital for monetary reasons (if they have another choice). Or a care taker of old people. At least where I'm from. (As it's severely under-payed for the work you do.)

Similar a lot of people love to compete with wearing brands, having fancy things or having the harder to get in job.

A lot of people are prevented from being able to do what they want because of money. Sometime because they can't afford to take some time off for education, sometimes because the job they want to do doesn't pay well.

So I'm sure you can have a well working society with basic income.

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

#460

Post by yes_really »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #412
respondo2134 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

then why are so many UBI proponents surprised when those who would bankroll this experiement fight it so hard?

It is expected, just disappointing. "I got mine, fuck you" is not exactly the kind of thinking we wish our fellow citizens engaged in. And for the record, I would appear to be in the group bankrolling it rather than receiving from it, and I'm completely cool with it.

It's not "I got mine, fuck you". It's "I got mine. You got yours. Now you want to take mine, fuck you".
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