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Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

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Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#241

Post by roughly »

whimsicalism wrote: post #195
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…

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?

It shows they work 1.5 hours less per week. That’s one day off every six weeks, and I’d frankly bet that’s going to taking care of all the other uncompensated labor a person must do to survive. I don’t think I’d draw a lot of conclusions about people’s preference for work from a ~4% reduction in working hours following a roughly 20% increase in income.

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#242

Post by throwaway22032 »

rbanffy wrote: post #35
beejiu wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have different definitions of UBI, but in my mind 'basic' doesn't translate to quitting your job and not working. People in a functioning society still have to work.

> People in a functioning society still have to work Why?

Have you ever interacted with a free rider?

You know, those guys who always dodge their round at the pub, they never pay you back that fiver, they always need somewhere to crash?

Hell, have you ever dated someone like that, or known a friend that has? One person goes to work, cooks, maintains the home, the other just spends their time on highfalutin' ideas like their photography project?

UBI to me sounds like a way of hiding that behind bureaucracy. I don't want to support people who don't do anything useful and purely consume resources.

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#243

Post by treebeard901 »

Many might not think about the costs of every day basic items for a minimal level of survival.

After seeing the system in use, I think it would be best if general relief type programs like you have in California, do not allow cash withdrawals. It is a factor in the ongoing fentanyl crisis. The pattern of behavior is enabled by the free cash.

Instead a debit card that can be used anywhere except for cash is ideal. While many use the money for necessary things this is a factor in what is seen in inner cities.

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#244

Post by Kamq »

genrilz wrote: post #146
willcipriano wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could have worked under the table. Babysitting would make sense in particular if you are available during the day and have children of your own that you are already watching. A lot of poor people are really good at convincing themselves they have no choice but to do the thing they wanted to do anyway. It wasn't until I broke free of this attitude was I able to escape myself.

I am certainly glad that you managed to escape. I don't think our society's response to the welfare cliff should be to tell people to break the law though. Surely we should redesign the law to lift everyone up instead instead?

> I don't think our society's response to the welfare cliff should be to tell people to break the law though.

I think you could make an argument that it should be. Getting people to break the law in a lot of small ways seems like it would be a good way to stop them from following the law to really stupid conclusions.

You should probably remove the welfare cliff to, but having a standing policy of "break stupid laws" seems like a tenable position for a society to take.

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#245

Post by renewiltord »

mandmandam wrote: post #205
renewiltord wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my mind, society C is the basic standard. Anything less is living in a late-stage capitalistic dystopia that is inherently anti-human. All progress depends on the unreasonable man. And I am more unreasonable than everyone.

I'll take that as a 'yes' then. It's not that utopian to want a society where people aren't made homeless if they don't work. Finland did it - it worked great. It wasn't even that hard. Also in a society where just eight people own as much as 4 billion . Maybe making 'jokes' denying that we're in late stage capitalism is an odd choice? Like, yeah, we're headed for destruction.. It's funny the way Ralph Wiggum's "I'm…

Finland is a nightmare dystopia. I've been there and they have no nanobots.

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#246

Post by smileysteve »

harimau777 wrote: post #155
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…

I've heard negative income taxes suggested as an alternative to our current approach. I'm not an expert on them, but it might be worth looking into for people who are interested in ideas for improving our system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax

Re-introducing progressive tax rates would be a small start;

Though, allegedly, a majority of Americans don't comprehend progressive tax rates.

Many state income taxes reach the top income tax rate before the federal poverty rate (ie The federal tax rates are poorly graduated; the first, 10% rate, cuts at $11,600 over to 12%; and then we jump 10% to 22%, only for the next bracket to have only 2% bracket gap again. Imagine if the first bracket was 0% and went all of the way to welfare levels - approximately $30k, the US could effectively eliminate the additional complication of the Standard Deduction (also a paint point of illegal filing and fraud). Imagine if every bracket was easily defined at ~10% - that could make predicting and filing easier. This is addition to payroll taxes being flat and regressive - when they could be built into the income tax.

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#247

Post by s1artibartfast »

nehal3m wrote: post #213
throwaway22032 wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

Alright, I'll concede the numbers, let's say some fraction of people are employed not because they see value in their work but because they're economically incentivised (in other words, to make ends meet). I'm saying that given the choice, those who are forced into spending their time in a way that is detrimental to themselves in any other term but economic would not do so, and furthermore, that humanity owes it to i…

>I'm saying that given the choice, those who are forced into spending their time in a way that is detrimental to themselves in any other term but economic would not do so

You cant have the fruits of labor without the labor.

People make this calculus every single day, and nearly unanimously decide that it would be more detrimental to go without the fruits of labor (especially those that must be incentivized).

It is obviously worth exploring how to make work less miserable, or better fit the interests of a worker, but that is a genuinely difficult matching an allocation problem.

A "do what you want" policy would not result in the tasks people want done getting done.

The closest equivalent to a system without transactional incentives is individual subsistence farming where one has to work for oneself so they don't die.

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#248

Post by whimsicalism »

roughly wrote: post #241
whimsicalism wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It shows they work 1.5 hours less per week. That’s one day off every six weeks, and I’d frankly bet that’s going to taking care of all the other uncompensated labor a person must do to survive. I don’t think I’d draw a lot of conclusions about people’s preference for work from a ~4% reduction in working hours following a roughly 20% increase in income.

> I’d frankly bet that’s going to taking care of all the other uncompensated labor a person must do to survive

Good thing they had the participants complete a time journal so we can see that it mostly went towards leisure time and socializing. Again, I'm not making a moral judgement here - for a similar amount of money relative to my salary I would also shift towards more leisure at the margin.

> I don’t think I’d draw a lot of conclusions

The point of the experiment is precisely so we can draw generalizable conclusions about how money around this quantity impacts people's behaviors/incentives. Many welfare programs offer similar quantities of saving.

I think your reasoning is a bit motivated - this is a pretty good social science experiment that was very careful to preregister their analysis.

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#249

Post by fdr »

TheChaplain wrote: post #169

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 s…

UBI is generally not metered by "%" but some flat quantity of money, whether nominal or real. That is, like a "head tax," but...negative.

In that common formulation, it would compress consumption by the entire tax+benefit base, that is, everyone would move towards median consumption by some amount, keyed to the magnitude of the UBI, if funded by any kind of proportional taxation (including a nominally regressive proportional tax, like consumption tax/VAT).

Politically, it has tough problems: 18% of the population [over age 65] already has a "MeBI" in the form of Social Security that they can vote to increase, and 22% of the population is below the age of 18, and can't vote. So that's 40% right there. Of the remaining 60% in their working years that produce the output split among themselves and that 40%, quite a few would rather not be compressed towards median consumption: the voting population is shifted higher in the consumption deciles, and people are not often so disposed to think they might find themselves luckless in the future. There's a thicket of "tax expenditures" that can form a "MeBI" for the electorate at the upper-half, like the mortgage interest deduction.

If we look at the difficulty in gaining electoral support in splitting consumption to the benefit of minors (thus, future labor) to even things out a bit, in the form of the semi-recently expired expanded child tax credit, we see the magnitude of the political problem.

Personally, I prefer to see UBI as tax reform to avoid crazy wiggling in effective marginal tax rate. But there are many reasons why it's unlikely that the electorate would see it that way, or approve of it even if they did.

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#250

Post by aeturnum »

superfrank wrote: post #232
aeturnum wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's super fair and I think you are absolutely right that it's an obvious question. Generally when people get more money for some reason the people who they buy from don't know it - but in this case they would know it! It would be foolish to ignore it. I don't have a pat answer to your concerns, but I also want you to think about what stops your landlord from raising your rent by $1000 / month right now. Like, why…

> I also want you to think about what stops your landlord from raising your rent by $1000 / month right now. Like, why not just go for it? Answering as a landlord (I have one property I used to live in that I rent out), the reason I don't just keep raising rent is mainly because I like my tenant and want to be fair to them. Having had bad tenants in the past, a good tenant is worth their weight in gold. More relevant…

Thanks - I hadn't thought to mention the risk of trying to raise rent but it's a good note. I was mostly getting at how the conditions in the UBI scenario ("everyone could pay $1000 more in rent if I insisted") is often true now and the 1:1 rent raising wouldn't happen under UBI for similar reasons that it doesn't happen now.

I also think people tend to under-rate the softer side of landlord / tenant relationships[1]. It's better to have a tenant who you get along with and who cooperates with how you want to rent a place. It's nice not to fight with your landlord. There's some economic value there too, but it's hard to quantify. I'm kind of interested in housing interventions that ban large companies from holding too many units of housing. It mostly "puts a ceiling" on how much profit one company can derive from many rental units, but actually I'm not sure I care - and trying to maximize the human connection between the person who owns the building and the people who live in it seems sensible.

[1] To be fair, when push does come to shove, a reason to under-rate them is the landlord looses some months of rent while the tenant becomes homeless. It pushes people towards strategic thinking.

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