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Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

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Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#261

Post by moduspol »

geor9e wrote: post #56

I am not sure how small studies can account for the inflation wide rollout could cause. Consider this hypothetical: If you give 1 of 1000 renters $100, 1 landlord will leave the rent alone because they don't know. If you give 1000 of 1000 renters $100, word will get to 1000 landlords, who will all increase rent $100, because the market will bear it. I'm not saying this will happen, just that a small study enjoys the…

They also don't account for the way these decisions would be made, if done at the government level.

Put simply: I'm looking forward to the study where the participants get to vote every year to decide how much money they should be getting from the people running the study.

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#262

Post by rustcleaner »

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.

>Some people then do that way past the point they need to, and end up at risk of being caught for tax evasion.

Only because we tax people's income. Instead, tax only the income of corporations and other shareholder based limited liability entities. Income tax should be the insurance premium business pays to limit the legal liability to the owners and shareholders of the business.

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#263

Post by nehal3m »

throwaway22032 wrote: post #256
nehal3m wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure, someone needs to do something, but due to automation we need less labor for the same value, even if it isn’t fully automated luxury space communism (yet?).

That excess time could be spent on leisure, instead the insatiable hunger for more is driving us to drudgery.

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#264

Post by fngjdflmdflg »

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…

How do you know how old he is?

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#265

Post by [deleted] »

legitster wrote: post #5

This is a pretty generous reading of the study. One result they are missing out is that the income actually reduced overall employment compared to the control group, and ended up decreasing household earnings: https://www.nber.org/papers/w32719 Even with a generous reading, it was an extremely expensive study. And similar proposals like the Negative Income Tax would cost far less money and have none of the presented…

[deleted]

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#266

Post by kjkjadksj »

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…

We have plenty of ubi tests taking place as we speak in the form of people with their own trust funds.

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#267

Post by BobaFloutist »

beejiu wrote: post #28
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…

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.

I read it as all the human essentials are covered without work (sufficiently nutritious food, safe, clean, shelter with sufficient heating and water for basic needs, basic healthcare, basic internet, and a small extra for discretionary spending) with the assumption that most people will happily do some work to upgrade their circumstances and get more fun and interesting food/entertainment/shelter.

If quitting your job doesn't put your life or your ability to get another job (because you're not capable of maintaining basic grooming, for example) at risk, then the "free market" model of employment can actually work, and people can opt out of jobs that treat them poorly or underpay them. At that point all the most essential/difficult/unpleasant jobs would actually have to pay the most, and cushier jobs with more reasonable hours could pay less, and people could do the amount of work it takes to get the amount of money they want. Think of how hard people work just to make a bit more money even when they're financially stable, just because they want a house or a cool car or a nice vacation. Why would that change if you didn't have to bleed yourself dry just to eat and sleep under a roof?

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#268

Post by kjkjadksj »

andy_xor_andrew wrote: post #77

I'm dumb and have no real education in economics. But even my dumb self makes the correlation that in 2020/2021, we handed out free money to keep people afloat (a very good thing), and then immediately following there was a surge in inflation. So I guess I don't understand, how do you give out free money without devaluing the currency? Am I making an incorrect correlation between the stimulus checks and the subsequen…

The stimulus checks were too small to move the needle any appreciable way. It was basically a larger than usual tax return. Having like $2500 extra isn’t why goods went up so much in price. That was from supply chain disruption.

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#269

Post by roughly »

whimsicalism wrote: post #248
roughly wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 dr…

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

I’ll cop to that, but there are a lot of people commenting here who seem to be latching on to the relatively small decrease in working hours as a primary takeaway, and I’ve seen enough motivated reasoning around this topic elsewhere to have a theory on why they’re doing so.

And, for what it’s worth, I’m not trying to critique the study itself or the conditions it was performed under.

Re: Unconditional Cash Study: first findings available

#270

Post by ixwt »

Majromax wrote: post #180
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 seems a very easy way to wean people off of welfare. That money is already tracked by the IRS (unless you're getting paid under the table). That's a more gradual phase-out, but it still is an effective marginal tax rate of 50%+ – a level that wealthy earners would complain about to no end. In light of this study…

> That's a more gradual phase-out, but it still is an effective marginal tax rate of 50%+ – a level that wealthy earners would complain about to no end.

Yeah, my wording could have been better. The suggestion that I've seen for UBI is $12k/year (which is clearly not enough to live on in today's economy), with the $2:$1 reduction being only for the UBI, and then standard taxes starting after that.

This system was actually proposed a looong time ago (like 1970s, I think). Just by giving everyone a massive tax credit to start with.

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