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Is giving people cash working? Six months of Denver's Basic Income Project

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Re: Is giving people cash working? Six months of Denver's Basic Income Project

#181

Post by kouru225 »

ProjectArcturis wrote: post #84

I'm actually amazed at how little basic income helps people. The study had a control group which only received $50/month in aid (vs treatment groups that got $1000 a month or $6500 upfront and then $500 a month). The control group improved nearly as much as either of the treatment groups! In terms of housing, the $1000 a month group only improved by 6% more than the $50 group. That is to say, even if you just give pe…

I think you’re confused here. The $50 group (Group C) is the control group. That sum was chosen because it was assumed it wouldn’t actually meaningfully change their lives, and therefore we can use their response as a baseline for how to judge Group A and Group B. This would imply that universal basic income makes 20% of people feel like they’re doing better (placebo effect), and 6% of people actually do better.

Re: Is giving people cash working? Six months of Denver's Basic Income Project

#182

Post by itishappy »

Detrytus wrote: post #178
itishappy wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Poor people, however, will stay poor. Right, so it's always in people's best interest to work harder, but $2k buys a lot more pizza than $0, regardless of price. > You cannot fix the poverty by giving everyone money if you do not increase the amount of goods available for purchase in the market at the same time. Supply is elastic. Increasing demand should indeed increase supply.

> Supply is elastic. Increasing demand should indeed increase supply. That's some Keynesian bullshit, supply is constrained by a lot of factors, demand alone can't increase it. And even when it does, the intermediate step is, guess what? Raising prices.

Right, demand influences pricing influences supply.

Re: Is giving people cash working? Six months of Denver's Basic Income Project

#183

Post by deathanatos »

pseudalopex wrote: post #156
deathanatos wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any UBI proposal is means-tested pretty much by definition.

What definition of means testing includes everyone?

UBI is cannot be truly universal: you have to pay for it, which is sort of what I mean by saying it is means-tested isn't too far from the truth. Those who pay "into" UBI more than what they receive from it are "failing" the means-test here; those who get more UBI than they pay into it in taxes are "passing" the means test.

(Now, obviously, taxes are kind of a grab-bag: it is hard to see, directly, how much of your tax dollars go to any one particular appropriation. But the point stands, and I think an easy approximation would be taxes paid * (UBI paid out / total appropriations) or so.)

UBI is essentially equivalent to having a negative tax bracket, and that bracket would only apply to some people. Necessarily to compensate for that bracket, some or all of the upper brackets must go up, in order to fund the lower bracket.

I.e., if the government writes everybody a $10k check, but due to doing that I now owe $15k more in tax obligations each year … I've not in any material way received UBI, even if there's a $10k check in my account.

Like, if you just wrote everyone a $10k check per year the resulting national debt alone would be absurd…? How would that work?

Re: Is giving people cash working? Six months of Denver's Basic Income Project

#184

Post by stouset »

pdonis wrote: post #174
stouset wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> …why is universal basic income needed for this? And how does it avoid the obvious problem of increasing these same problems by reducing people's incentive to produce goods and services? For the simple fact that working and gaining an income will always improve your standard of living, unlike means-tested programs today with benefits cliffs and perverse incentives. We can even potentially reduce or eliminate minimum…

> working and gaining an income will always improve your standard of living Do you mean now? Or under UBI? Or under UBI plus the necessary changes in the tax code to make sure adding more income never puts you in a higher tax bracket that reduces your actual take home income? Even the last wouldn't necessarily make your claim true, since working has costs as well as benefits--paying for your daily commute, for exampl…

> Do you mean now? Or under UBI? Or under UBI plus the necessary changes in the tax code to make sure adding more income never puts you in a higher tax bracket that reduces your actual take home income? Even

Under UBI, but we can end this discussion here since you seem painfully unaware of the basic facts around this topic and so I cannot assume we’re operating under the same general basis of understanding. The U.S. uses marginal rates, so increasing your income cannot reduce your take home pay, full stop. This is a sadly common misconception, but it is quite simply completely untrue.

> Nobody wants to be the one who takes away any perceived benefit.

Sorry, but I can’t help myself here. Nobody? Not even the major political party for whom—if they still had an actual platform—this is a major component of their party platform?

Re: Is giving people cash working? Six months of Denver's Basic Income Project

#185

Post by pdonis »

itishappy wrote: post #179
pdonis wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They were given a basic income. Under UBI they would also be given a basic income. It seems crazy to me to suggest these are entirely uncorrelated. I can't tell if you are trolling or are actually confused. The issue is not that the homeless people were given a basic income. The issue is that everybody who wasn't homeless was not given a basic income. So only a small fraction of people were given a basic income in…

> So only a small fraction of people were given a basic income in this study. That is what makes it invalid as a study of universal basic income. You're arguing with a strawman. It isn't a study of Universal Basic Income. This is a study of Basic Income and it's effects on homelessness, so the results of this study should reasonably apply to other situations where Basic Income is provided to homeless individuals (as…

> You're arguing with a strawman.

No, I'm arguing with what you actually said at the start of this subthread. See below.

> It isn't a study of Universal Basic Income.

According to you, it is valid input to decisions about UBI. Here is the original post of yours (responding to Detrytus) that I responded to in this subthread:

XXXX

> I think someone, soon will try to use this project as an argument in favor of UBI, which is ridiculous.

Why's that ridiculous? Testing a small scale trial on the people most likely to be effected by a larger scale program seems pretty reasonable to me.

XXXX

Your contention that the study is a valid "small scale trial" of UBI is what I and others are disagreeing with. Nothing you have said changes that disagreement in the slightest; you just keep repeating the same contention we have already disagreed with, without addressing the issues we have raised at all.

> "the results" are the effect of basic income on homelessness, and only the effect of basic income on homelessness.

Which has nothing whatever to do with UBI. Nor is it a "small scale trial" of UBI. It's a study of the effect of providing basic income to homeless people and only homeless people. You can't use the results of that to conclude anything useful about what would happen if you provided basic income to everybody. This has already been pointed out to you multiple times in this subthread.

Re: Is giving people cash working? Six months of Denver's Basic Income Project

#186

Post by itishappy »

pdonis wrote: post #185
itishappy wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So only a small fraction of people were given a basic income in this study. That is what makes it invalid as a study of universal basic income. You're arguing with a strawman. It isn't a study of Universal Basic Income. This is a study of Basic Income and it's effects on homelessness, so the results of this study should reasonably apply to other situations where Basic Income is provided to homeless individuals (as…

> You're arguing with a strawman. No, I'm arguing with what you actually said at the start of this subthread. See below. > It isn't a study of Universal Basic Income. According to you, it is valid input to decisions about UBI. Here is the original post of yours (responding to Detrytus) that I responded to in this subthread: XXXX > I think someone, soon will try to use this project as an argument in favor of UBI, whic…

> Your contention that the study is a valid "small scale trial" of UBI is what I and others are disagreeing with. Nothing you have said changes that disagreement in the slightest; you just keep repeating the same contention we have already disagreed with, without addressing the issues we have raised at all.

Sigh. I've been very deliberate with my wording, and I did not say Universal anywhere in my original comment. If this caused confusion, my follow-up comments should have made things abundantly clear, and I'm still waiting for a rebuttal.

If you insist on putting words in my mouth, know that you are arguing with a strawman.

Re: Is giving people cash working? Six months of Denver's Basic Income Project

#187

Post by psd1 »

pdonis wrote: post #176
psd1 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha, my reading comprehension fail - I missed that GP explicitly said food. I apologise for saying you were straw-manning, your comment was apposite. I think where you and I differ is that you define action by any organisation, be it pharma corp or city government, to be ipso facto collectivist, whereas I will characterise actions by organisations and individuals as individualistic or collectivist on a case-by-case ba…

> you define action by any organisation, be it pharma corp or city government, to be ipso facto collectivist No, I define actions that are dictated from the top down based on collective information (such as population statistics) to be collectivist. Of course not all actions taken by large organizations are collectivist in this sense. Nor are all actions taken by individuals not collectivist in this sense. > It only…

This is a prank. Well played, I guess, but I didn't like it.

Re: Is giving people cash working? Six months of Denver's Basic Income Project

#188

Post by M95D »

Detrytus wrote: post #167
M95D wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Do humans still feel compelled to work when their income is guaranteed" Yes! Exactly. They will not work shitty jobs. Isn't that a good thing?

The problem is: those humans still need to rent apartments, pay their bills, buy some clothes and food. A person who has UBI + salary will always be able to outbid a person who only has UBI when buying all those goods and services (which are limited in quantity, so you have to compete for them. That's how economy works, at its core: it is a way of managing scarcity). Which means that after short adjustment period, th…

True, but shitty jobs will pay a lot better and they will enable those workers to find meaningful lives outside their jobs. Having some money vs. no money at all makes a big difference.
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