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Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

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Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#161

Post by [deleted] »

bko wrote: post #46
ilaksh wrote: post #22

$1000 is not enough to quit their jobs or get a nice apartment. They could move slightly closer to work if they have to commute. It's not enough for a real tuition or to support them to study instead of work. I don't think we've ever had a universal basic income test. We have always missed the universal and basic part. It's below basic and not at all universal. I suspect that you need to get international cooperation…

Why is the goal to get people to quit their jobs and get a nice apartment? Isn't it supposed to be a minimum base level of support? Why do we keep moving the goal posts? And if everyone quits their job and lives in a nice apartment, where is this money going to come from? The problem with welfare today is that its a disincentive to work. Start working, you lose your transfer payments. A lot of people are stuck in thi…

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Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#162

Post by mandmandam »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #75
mandmandam wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in my mind 'basic' doesn't translate to quitting your job and not working In society A, machines and clean energy allow the population to work an average of 20 hours a week. Some, even many people choose not to work at all, but still get access to a basic apartment and have their basic food, social and education, etc, needs met. In society B, machines and dirty energy allow a tiny segment of the population to live…

Doesn't seem like a realistic concern given the current state of economies and the need for human labor. Why are people in society B concerned with the majority working if they are unnecessary?

> Why are people in society B concerned with the majority working if they are unnecessary?

I think that's a great question to ask. Some possible answers:

A - to make money for the yacht class

B - to keep the 99% too busy/distracted to wonder why all the productivity gains of the last 50 years have gone to the yacht class (see graph above)

C - They're not even that concerned - they pay people to be concerned about that stuff on corporate media / in politics / in our Supreme Court.

The point above is that "100% employment" is absolutely not the barrier between society B and society A. There's no good reason for full employment to be "necessary" to a well functioning society.

It could even be argued that one measure of a functioning society is how many people need to work 60 hours a week just to have their basic needs met...

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#163

Post by TeMPOraL »

actionfromafar wrote: post #153
bko wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, exactly. If you pay someone not to work, I can't blame them for not working. Sure it could be short-sighted, but that's not a moral flaw. The system is designed to keep people in poverty and dependent on the system. It's really tragic

If your kids have to live on the street if you take that part-time job, it's not only short-sighted to stay on welfare, it's the rational thing to do even in the long term.

Even more rational is finding an unofficial source of income, which is what people in this situation often do. At scale, this may create a wrong impression that levels of welfare are adequate to guarantee the basics.

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#164

Post by stephenflanders »

skeledrew wrote: post #158

UBI might be an OK stopgap in the beginning when comparatively just a few are losing their jobs. Over time though, in the long run, the core of currency-based systems will need to be replaced as a greater percentage of labor is made valueless by AI, with the resulting increase in bodies not earning anything and decrease in bodies bearing the tax burden. I hardly see any discussion anywhere of what happens when 100% o…

As long as energy isn't unlimited, humans will always have some comparative language compared to AI + robots. Favorite metaphor for this is a lawyer and a secretary. The lawyer is better at everything than the secretary, but there's still a role for the secretary because the lawyer's time is better spent actually doing the law. It'll be the same for humans and AI.

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#165

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

brotchie wrote: post #48

UBI really makes me think of AI-safety-world i-risk. i.e. Ikigai risk (feeling like you have a meaningful purpose in life). Ikigai, or purpose, is a Japanese concept dating back to the Heian period in Japan. The Japanese word “iki” translates to life. Additionally, the “gai” portion of the word comes from the word “kai” meaning shell. Beyond basic needs, Homo Sapiens in their current incarnation need some kind of mea…

Is it not obvious that people would have more time to seek a meaningful life if they spent less time working?

The trick will be figuring out how to get people to actually do that, rather than just using the money to further participate in the same carrot/stick game that they're accustomed to.

How to get them to take a risk and start a business doing sobering w important, versus just buying the next larger SUV because that's supposedly going to make them happy.

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#166

Post by ilya_m »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #102
jimt1234 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back in my college speech class, a woman gave a presentation basically supporting the "welfare today is a disincentive to work" myth, with emphasis on "today" (or current), while totally destroying the notion that welfare recipients don't "want" to work. She was a stay-at-home mom with 2 kids, her husband commit suicide after serving in Iraq and then being pushed out of the military (this was the 90s when the US mili…

This is alternatively referred to as the welfare cliff [1] Here[2] is an extreme case study from Chicago where you would have to jump from an income of 20k/year to 80K/year to make up for the loss of benefits. https://www.budget.senate.gov/newsroom/budget-background/the... edit[2] https://fee.org/wp-content/uploads/articles/welfare_cliff.pn...

What is the link to the Chicago study?

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#167

Post by throwway120385 »

DemocracyFTW2 wrote: post #141
bee_rider wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn’t a problem really with welfare, but a problem with implementing welfare in the dumbest way possible. In general, no policy, like none at all, should be designed to suddenly come into effect when you hit a constant. All functions should be smooth.

Try that argument on a bean-counter, i.e. like everyone holding an elected or decisive office these days. The will think you are crazy, from Mars, an interloper, freerider, or, worse, a communist. At any rate, they will not understanhd you, but, whether they understand you or not they will ignore or silence you. THERE MUST BE LIMITS AFTER ALL!!1!

My elected representatives seem to understand this pretty well. The problem is that people keep electing other people who view anyone not working as leeches. Often the difference between keeping those elected officials and electing someone that represents you is a few hundred or a few thousand people deciding that their vote does matter after all and going and casting it. It's about the population of a rural village or small town. I don't know how we're going to get back to our golden age, but I know that we need to find the motivation somehow.

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#168

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

t0bia_s wrote: post #83

UBI is another tool for make citizen obedient to state. Once implemented, like debts, there will be strong voting mass for system that they could benefit from - with price of less independency.

Not all UBI schemes are issued by the state. Consider CirclesUBI for instance: issued by us for us as an alternative to what the state has for us.

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#169

Post by TheChaplain »

I don't see how UBI can work, on a nationwide scale it means everyone got x% more money and the market would adjust itself accordingly by raising prices?

Also UBI is funded by taxes, which if applied to middle class they will vote against you. And if applied to companies, they push it down on the customer, making everything cost more (and therefore negating the UBI effect).

What probably would be more effective for society would be improved an ACA, a cap on healthcare costs for all if you will and free yearly health checkups.

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#170

Post by aspenmayer »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #157
aspenmayer wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citizenship and a form of retirement through service is a time-honored military tradition, it’s true. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38586918 > I'm not sure we could offer VA benefits to every adult without massively raising taxes. If we eliminated waste and slippage/loss and gained efficiencies of scale by eliminating private health insurance obligations except for high net worth, like is done in some countrie…

> What is this grand democratic experiment even for, if we still suffer from the same failure modes as that which we originally fought to save ourselves from? We treat our veterans poorly, but let’s not lose perspective, that’s still far better than most countries today or in history.

Veterans in countries with free college and health care for all, such as Australia or many European countries have it better still, as they receive their veterans benefits, while allowing those who did not or could not serve to also live free from undue burden or peril.

I do take your point, though, and don’t protest too much. It’s less a matter of how much is enough for our veterans, but rather, how far we have left to go, one and all. In many ways, veterans simply arrived at the limits of political capital before the rest of us, and now that the problems veterans face are similarly butting up against many if not all in some form or fashion, we have economic capital concerns in the form of UBI that has become the stalking horse for larger structural issues largely left unaddressed facing us all.

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