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Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

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Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#251

Post by whimsicalism »

TeaBrain wrote: post #224
ixwt wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a podcast or video about this exact same issue in... Sweden? Some anecdata from people receiving welfare, but couldn't start a job or a business because if they received any money, they get nothing from welfare and wouldn't be able to support themselves. This resulted in people that were trying to start a business not get paid for their work (I believe one of the anecdata was a photographer) because doing s…

>Personally, I'm a big fan of the "for every $2 you make, you get $1 less from UBI/Welfare" concept. This idea is called a negative income tax.

you're not describing a negative income tax

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#252

Post by whimsicalism »

milesskorpen wrote: post #218
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…

In this specific experiment, people earned $0.20 less for every $1 they were given mainly due to working fewer hours. Those hours were primarily shifted to leisure. (This is not a value statement, just what the study found.)

yeah clearly nobody on this thread read the findings

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#253

Post by nehal3m »

treebeard901 wrote: post #243

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. Whi…

Buy prepaid credit cards with your debit card, cash them. Buy commodities and sell them at a loss.

People will find a way around it, especially desperate people with addiction issues. This will just add overhead. If you want to stop the fentanyl crisis then attack the root cause, don’t make life more difficult for the poor for a marginal benefit.

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#254

Post by jncfhnb »

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…

A lot of people have this weird cognitive dissonance that lets them understand a “partial UBI” is a universally guaranteed income that does not meet basic needs, and then that a “full ubi” is one that does; but then fail to understand that if it’s not full UBI it’s not UBI.

A universally guaranteed income that does not meet your basic needs is of course a thing. But it’s not a universal BASIC income. It’s a subset. The games people play on semantics is very strange

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#255

Post by m3kw9 »

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…

Nice is always relative to what most has, if you compare to 1700s any apartments would have been called nice, this is why UBI may not work as well as people think. When everyone has the same quality of life they take it for granted

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#256

Post by throwaway22032 »

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…

It's not Star Trek, even in very automated industries someone has to do the things.

If you don't get in the tractor and plough the field you don't get the wheat.

Economic value is no less real. If anything, it's much more real at the low end in fast food, the supermarket, labouring jobs etc than it is in Uber for dogs.

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#257

Post by karmajunkie »

Kamq wrote: post #239
karmajunkie wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

or for the ridiculously wealthy to be taxed at a very high rate. which is why they reject the notion of UBI so fervently.

The numbers don't line up for that. The sum total of the wealth of all the billionaires in the US in 2021 was ~$4.1 Trillion [0]. That's about the same as the government budget in a normal year pre-pandemic, or about 2/3 of the government budget post-pandemic. Assuming a $1000/month and a population of ~350 million, you're looking at $4.2 Trillion per year. You could almost fund it for the first year by taxing all of…

just curious, but why is there always an implicit assumption in this debate that we only tax the wealth of billionaires? is the money of a half billionaire somehow less green than a full billionaire?

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#258

Post by ianbicking »

jncfhnb wrote: post #254
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…

A lot of people have this weird cognitive dissonance that lets them understand a “partial UBI” is a universally guaranteed income that does not meet basic needs, and then that a “full ubi” is one that does; but then fail to understand that if it’s not full UBI it’s not UBI. A universally guaranteed income that does not meet your basic needs is of course a thing. But it’s not a universal BASIC income. It’s a subset. T…

How far is it from meeting basic needs? "Basic" should imply very modest living, not even "normal" living standards.

For a living situation "basic" implies a shared space (family or otherwise). For food it would imply enough food to be healthy, but nothing about the form of food.

I think $1000/month/person probably is "basic" income. You can survive on that indefinitely.

(Healthcare is the other big expense, but I don't think UBI can reasonably cover healthcare, it's to complex and variable)

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#259

Post by jncfhnb »

ianbicking wrote: post #258
jncfhnb wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people have this weird cognitive dissonance that lets them understand a “partial UBI” is a universally guaranteed income that does not meet basic needs, and then that a “full ubi” is one that does; but then fail to understand that if it’s not full UBI it’s not UBI. A universally guaranteed income that does not meet your basic needs is of course a thing. But it’s not a universal BASIC income. It’s a subset. T…

How far is it from meeting basic needs? "Basic" should imply very modest living, not even "normal" living standards. For a living situation "basic" implies a shared space (family or otherwise). For food it would imply enough food to be healthy, but nothing about the form of food. I think $1000/month/person probably is "basic" income. You can survive on that indefinitely. (Healthcare is the other big expense, but I do…

Kind of tangential. The thing that annoys me is people saying payments that they don’t believe cover basic needs still counts as UBI.

I think $1k does count as sufficient for basic needs, personally.

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#260

Post by karaterobot »

steelframe wrote: post #128

If you were to hand out $1k a month to everyone in my area an immediate result would likely be that rents would increase by somewhere close to $1k a month. Everyone needs somewhere to live. Everyone wants to live closer to where they work and where there friends and family are. Housing is in limited supply. If everyone had more purchasing power, then everyone's going to collectively bid up what they're willing to pay…

This is the basic uncertainty I have about UBI, and I've never heard an argument against it that went step by step and explained how that wouldn't happen. It seems intuitively like it would. In response, I've hear the equivalent of "don't worry, they've thought of that already, and the math still works". Maybe, but I'd feel a lot better if somebody could walk me through it.
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