Basic income would not reduce people’s willingness to work • Hacker News Board

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

#251

Post by thr0wawayf00 » Mon, Jan 17, 2022, 6:42 PM UTC

ozzythecat wrote: post #189

staticassertion wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If my job requires menial labor or involves getting berated by customers (many retail jobs), personally I would absolutely not work. Maybe that's a good thing. It's insane how people in service industries are treated - like they're less than human. Shifting some power to them and giving the job a little more of an air of dignity or status would probably help a lot. And the pay would obviously go up. People would be…

> Shifting some power to them and giving the job a little more of an air of dignity or status would probably help a lot. I agree, but is this feasible or wishful thinking? As a society, we’re decidedly split on whether we should wear masks or should or should not get vaccines, despite the science or despite whatever seems like a rational decision. (Admittedly I’m introducing my bias here). Would raising pay for retai…

As you pointed out, it's not possible to achieve consensus on things like vaccines and masks, I don't think we should expect any differently in any sort of proposed change. There are always going to be opponents.

If we always chose not to do something because it would be met with resistance, then nothing would happen ever. The US passing the civil rights act was met with vicious resistance as it was happening, should it not have happened because there were critics of the law? Ultimately, I think we do need to raise pay and facilitate a higher level of discourse in those kinds of environments., regardless of what detractors will say.

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

#252

Post by _-david-_ » Mon, Jan 17, 2022, 6:42 PM UTC

jjk166 wrote: post #232

_-david-_ wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>And the pay would obviously go up. Maybe. Many jobs can be automated, but it was cheaper to just hire minimum wage people to do a job. If the pay required to find people got to be too high, automation would happen more rapidly.

If a job doesn't need doing, why waste a human's labor on it? Though that said, I remember not too long ago a lot of people saying "oh if minimum wage goes over $15 we'll just automate the jobs" and now the McDonalds by my house is offering $23/hr for entry level work and robots are nowhere to be seen.

They are rolling out computer tellers all around my area. If they haven't done it in your area it is coming.

There are a few companies working on automated meal makers and they are slowly being rolled out.

It is just going a bit slow right now.

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

#253

Post by PragmaticPulp » Mon, Jan 17, 2022, 6:42 PM UTC

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.…

> 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.

UBI is, by definition, Universal (e.g. given to everyone). Welfare programs are highly selective and only apply to a small number of people.

The only way to make them cost the same is to massively reduce the benefits given to the small number of welfare recipients, then give the balance to people who didn't previously qualify for welfare.

That's never going to happen, politically.

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

#254

Post by CraigJPerry » Mon, Jan 17, 2022, 6:42 PM UTC

bitshiftfaced wrote: post #65

tda wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there are plenty of jobs where you absolutely will quit And so what if people refuse to do shitty jobs? Perhaps we as society can do without those jobs. And if we can't, we should value them more

> And so what if people refuse to do shitty jobs? The "so what" is that basic income doesn't change the ordinal ranking of how much people prefer to do different jobs. Neither does it change people's ability to get those jobs. Better qualified applicants will always have better options. So while basic income might increase the nominal pay of the least preferable jobs, it wouldn't mean you suddenly get to skip over th…

That doesn’t ring true. If you had the capital to make the decision not to work a crap-corp and instead pursue your dream “job” of being painter, musician, rock climbing explorer, artisanal fisherman, etc etc

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

#255

Post by josephh » Mon, Jan 17, 2022, 6:42 PM UTC

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #132

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…

"shows what happens when people get money for free - prices rise to absorb it" A - so prices of $40,000 cars have increased becauae people got $2000 or whatever for free? What is that as percentage of wages, 0.5% How about this massive supply chain and manufacturing disruption, could that somehow be responsible? B - the wealthy and corporations were getting money for free for 20 years, it's called quanittative easing…

It doesn't seem to me that apartment rents going up by $n/month when UBI of $n/month rolls out is an impossible proposition, since everyone can afford extra $n. Can you elaborate as to why this wouldn't happen?

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

#256

Post by schwartzworld » Mon, Jan 17, 2022, 6:42 PM UTC

ozzythecat wrote: post #4

A link to the actual research paper would be helpful. In this experiment, what amount was given to the treatment group that received basic income? How often? How does that amount compare to the cost of living in their city? > ‘It’s sometimes said that people will sit around doing nothing if you give them free money.’ I’m not an academic, so take this with a grain of salt. If my job requires menial labor or involves g…

Employees should not have to take verbal abuse, but must because they will get fired if they stand up to rude customers. I personally was "fired" for standing up to vicious customers more than once, and I only felt comfortable standing up for myself because I was young and single and could afford not to work for a month or two.

But I worked with plenty of people in retail and food service who were older and had families to support and mortgages to pay. They didn't have the luxury of putting their self-respect above their paycheck.

It's ironic to think that people put up with that level of abuse for 8 or 10 or $12 an hour. Now that I'm an engineer, he would be unthinkable for anybody to talk to me like that, but in food service I experienced it from both customers and managers on the daily.

If the only way anybody can stand working someplace is if they're so desperate that they can't afford to leave, that's a job that shouldn't exist.

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

#257

Post by seattle_spring » Mon, Jan 17, 2022, 6:43 PM UTC

seibelj wrote: post #15

We did a type of UBI experiment in the United States with the universal Covid payments. Low income workers got 80% of the salary. Many chose not to work. Why work 40 hours to make 20% more money than the dole? I’m acquaintances with two local business owners, a roofer and a general contractor, and they told me plainly that they were understaffed because their workers were taking a vacation until the Covid payments en…

They "chose" not to work because the whole entire point was encouraging people not to work during a pandemic.

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

#258

Post by bjourne » Mon, Jan 17, 2022, 6:43 PM UTC

ozzythecat wrote: post #4

A link to the actual research paper would be helpful. In this experiment, what amount was given to the treatment group that received basic income? How often? How does that amount compare to the cost of living in their city? > ‘It’s sometimes said that people will sit around doing nothing if you give them free money.’ I’m not an academic, so take this with a grain of salt. If my job requires menial labor or involves g…

> My point is - there are plenty of jobs where you absolutely will quit and not work if the basic income can provide a sufficient substitute.

You have no personal experience with UBI schemes, yet you think you know what people would do based on what you think you would do. A long time ago people thought that heavier objects fell faster than lighter ones. Then Galileo came along, conducted an experiment, and proved them wrong. It seems something similar is going on here. Peoples intuitions about UBI and joblessness are faulty and researchers are disproving them.

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

#259

Post by kube-system » Mon, Jan 17, 2022, 6:43 PM UTC

emteycz wrote: post #168

throwawayffffas wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One could argue that welfare is the symptom not the cause.

How do you know that, and how do you explain that more people get on welfare as it gets available to them, even though they have good employment options? Moreover, why does that matter at all - how is it fair to those still working, who are forced to pay for those who don't want to? I'm all for welfare - helping people in need. But I'm not going to fund someone's lifestyle.

To take a market perspective to this: I think there are some costs that people fail to accommodate for when comparing employment vs welfare. We used to consider homemaking an actual profession, because... it really is. Now that we are expecting households to have dual incomes, we are recognizing that income on paper, when in reality it always was there, it just was not formally recognized.

With the cost of childcare these days, staying home to earn $28,000 in welfare instead of working a job making $30,000 isn't laziness, it's a no-brainer. You have to consider the non-monetary "income".

$28K $30K

And to your second point: being fair is not the only reason to have assistance programs. Even if I don't think assistance programs are not fair I still support them so that there is less crime in my neighborhood, etc.

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

#260

Post by Dylan16807 » Mon, Jan 17, 2022, 6:43 PM UTC

caskstrength wrote: post #129

rwmj wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Multiple studies of where basic income was tried in the real world found it to reduce work. Isn't that a good outcome? Humans get more leisure time.

Not for the other group who will have products of their labor "redistributed" to pay for other's leisure time?

If those people aren't getting paid a very high wage, they can reduce their working hours too.

If they are getting paid a very high wage, then they already had the leverage needed to reduce their working hours, and they were choosing not to. They'll still make plenty of money.