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Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

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Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#191

Post by throwaway22032 »

nehal3m wrote: post #106
s1artibartfast wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cards on the table: I think the vast majory of people would do less, and perhaps very little socially productive work without the current financial incentives. > Would paying more to the people who now don't need to work, but are willing to, suffice? This is not possible because you cant simultaneously pay workers more (as a whole) and have them subsidize the non-working. I admit it may be possible to reallocate comp…

> Cards on the table: I think the vast majory of people would do less, and perhaps very little socially productive work without the current financial incentives. I don't disagree, but aren't you implicitly admitting here that the vast majority of people don't want to spend their lives doing work? We get a few laps around the sun, once, before we return to oblivion. It seems a tragedy to me to force almost everyone in…

"Increasing shareholder value" is a meme.

In both the US and UK over 30% of households are owned outright with no mortgage.

The economy is made up of us, it's not (predominantly) a downtrodden serving a tiny elite.

Most people work and do useful stuff for each other. Yes, there are bullshit jobs, but it's a huge exaggeration to pretend they all are.

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#192

Post by tivert »

stephenflanders wrote: post #164
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.

> As long as energy isn't unlimited, humans will always have some comparative language [advantage] compared to AI + robots.

The truth of that really depends what you mean by "humans"...

All humans? Probably not, as there are a lot of people who aren't especially capable or talented, and every conceivable economic activity they could do can be done by a machine with an AI with a below-average human intelligence and a capable robot body.

Also, IIRC, solar panels are already more efficient than plants, so I doubt there's a dystopian "humans are better for manual labor" loophole.

Most humans? Still probably no, given that AI seems to be making the most progress against white collar work right now.

Some minority of humans? This might be true, as there are people who are extraordinarily smart and talented. It seems most likely that AI will be unable to replace the people at the very tops of their fields, but there are very, very few people in those positions, and most people just plain don't have the ability work at that level.

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#193

Post by BobbyTables2 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #159
david38 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me, this is the single biggest problem with welfare. The woman wants to work, yet cannot because she can’t guarantee how fast she will move past the “no welfare and very little money” transition until she gets promoted to full time work. Her only recourse is to stay on welfare. Now the real issue comes to her children. If she managed to really instill in them the need to never be on welfare themselves, great, they…

That's how you breed shadow employment. People on welfare who can work often will find jobs that pay some, or all of the salary, under the table. The attitude this instills in children is that of having to work hard, while scheming against the taxman, to improve your life. Some people then do that way past the point they need to, and end up at risk of being caught for tax evasion.

I also shudder to think what types of employers would be complicit with such a scenario.

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#194

Post by highcountess »

Is there anyone else in here that sees UBI is the "left's" equivalent to flat-earth or chemtrails? No matter how much you explain the most basic and fundamental realities that are adjacent to the laws of physics, they simply cannot or appear to be psychologically incapable of accepting the reality of the matter and are baffled.

It's like those flat-earth people who did that experiment with the extremely sensitive gyroscope that proved that the earth was rotating and spherical; and were caught on recording saying "well, we clearly cannot accept that" and I think eventually simply deliberately ignored and suppressed it from their minds.

Do not ever underestimate certain human's capacity for self-delusion.

The bigger problem though is that this UBI cult is very authoritarian and tyrannical at its core, consistently increasing the insistence that they must take and use ever increasing amounts of other people's money to prove that UBI works, coincidentally making the researchers and the common NGO types scam artist operatives huge amounts of money in the process.

UBI is simply a con job, a fraud, a lie, theft, and even slavery ... theft of resources and services against their will and under threat of violence and harm in order to support the lives and livelihoods of others.

You want UBI? Great, sign up to have your income taxed to pay for it.

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#195

Post by whimsicalism »

DemocracyFTW2 wrote: post #134
bko wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> The problem with welfare today is that its a disincentive to work No. The reason you say that is because you're young and you believe what you've heard. You will soon cease to be the former and then presumably, likely, stop to do the latter. People want to work, they want to be useful. And yes, if I support you but threaten to stop supporting you as soon as you get to work for money—suddenly working for money looks…

i mean this study clearly shows that people work fewer hours and increase leisure time when given money.

i don’t think that is a bad thing necessarily but i think we can be relatively confident of the empirical reality of the effect (at least in the short-term) for quantities of money like this?

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#196

Post by highcountess »

jimt1234 wrote: post #79
bko wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

Ignoring all the fallacies, you are correct about one thing; the recipients are of course not the problem, the problem are the proponents of such nonsensical, fantastical, infantile, and even outright immoral and unethical concepts like UBI or even welfare.

All we have to do to convince you that UBI and and welfare is immoral is to simply make you pay for that which you support and not force people who do not support it to have to pay for the cost against their will and under threat of government terror.

Immediately you will be converted from a supporter of getting and giving other people's money when you have to pay an additional 30% of your income to support others who you don't even know.

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#197

Post by DemocracyFTW2 »

ahahahahah wrote: post #173
DemocracyFTW2 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem with welfare today is that its a disincentive to work No. The reason you say that is because you're young and you believe what you've heard. You will soon cease to be the former and then presumably, likely, stop to do the latter. People want to work, they want to be useful. And yes, if I support you but threaten to stop supporting you as soon as you get to work for money—suddenly working for money looks…

That's a rather smarmy response for someone who clearly lacks reading comprehension. I'd recommend: (1) look up the definition of "disincentive". The parent didn't say anything about people not wanting to work or not wanting to be useful. And even then, you actually agreed about it being the disincentive ("if I support you but threaten to stop supporting you as soon as you get to work for money—suddenly working for m…

?so?

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#198

Post by xp84 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #163
actionfromafar wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, and worse, the incidents of unreported income like that also create a narrative to be spoon-fed to the public, that “welfare cheats” are taking advantage of everybody’s goodwill. I’m sure it actually happens. Everything gets abused by some. But people who are doing what you describe are usually not doing it out of greed, but to work around that broken system.

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#199

Post by vharuck »

BobbyTables2 wrote: post #193
TeMPOraL wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's how you breed shadow employment. People on welfare who can work often will find jobs that pay some, or all of the salary, under the table. The attitude this instills in children is that of having to work hard, while scheming against the taxman, to improve your life. Some people then do that way past the point they need to, and end up at risk of being caught for tax evasion.

I also shudder to think what types of employers would be complicit with such a scenario.

You're right to fear employers who want to avoid claiming employees so that they don't have to comply with, for example, safety laws. But shadow work also includes situations with "casual" business relationships, like a couple who hires a nanny to watch their kids 40 hours a week. Both parties may feel that complying with tax and labor laws is too much of a burden.

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#200

Post by campl3r »

superfrank wrote: post #143
aeturnum wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Someone who's yearly income is in the 5th percentile is still earning in the 5th percentile. Isn't this an intended feature of UBI? The idea of UBI is that some level of material support should be guaranteed. It's about bringing "up" the floor, not really re-arranging relative equal and unequal positions. Plenty of people dislike that about it, but it's an intended feature. That said, this is basically inflationary…

> Isn't this an intended feature of UBI? The idea of UBI is that some level of material support should be guaranteed. It's about bringing "up" the floor, not really re-arranging relative equal and unequal positions. Plenty of people dislike that about it, but it's an intended feature. Absolutely, but I guess I don't see how just giving everyone money brings that floor up. Maybe I'm looking at this naively, but I don'…

Globalization/imports and competition prevents many prices from raising as much as the floor is raised.

granted this doesn't work for all goods, such as housing, but even then you would be better of with it just working for some goods.

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