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Basic income in Finland did not lead to finding work, researchers said

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Basic income in Finland did not lead to finding work, researchers said

#291

Post by mises »

dragonwriter wrote: post #167
mises wrote: post #48

I still see some big issues with universal basic income, and would appreciate one of its supporters responding to some of them: Cost. $3.8 trillion by many estimates. That's nearly 20% of America's GDP. How is it possible to pull this much money out of the American economy without crashing it? Scope. I am of the opinion that one of the beauties of federalism is that policies can be tested first at the state level bef…

> Cost. $3.8 trillion by many estimates. $3.8 trillion would be about right if you set the benefit level equal to the poverty line for a single-person household, and then gave it to every many, woman, and child in the country, starting at birth, irrespective of citizenship or immigration status, while... > That's nearly 20% of America's GDP. ...nearly 20% of GDP would be accurate for the benefit level you suggested,…

> GDP growth per capita over the long term is more rapid than inflation

At this point, we're down to conjecture. It will doubtless require higher taxes, which will quite possibly counter or outweigh any benefit of more money to spend. It's a big risk to take with the entire country.

> migration for benefits is a problem.

You don't have to have immigration controls, just establish residency requirements with a certain amount of time, holding down a job for however long, etc.

> Means testing is additional bureaucratic cost

Still doesn't make sense to send money to Jeff Bezos.

Re: Basic income in Finland did not lead to finding work, researchers said

#292

Post by mises »

manicdee wrote: post #272
msluyter wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To your list of issues I'd add extraction by rentiers. My (perhaps naive) understanding is that rents tend to rise to a market equilibrium. Infuse the the aggregate market in an area with X dollars, and rents will rise to consume X. I'd be curious to hear counterarguments to that point.

Yes, the rents in popular areas will rise. Since people have a basic income to support them regardless where they are living, they can move to areas with lower rent (thus increasing the rent — and net rental income — of the area they move to). At present, most unemployment benefits systems require the recipient to stay where they are, or move to places with better employment opportunities. This places a large burden…

I figure low-rent areas will have rents go up as well. It may take longer, but it will ripple through the whole economy.

Re: Basic income in Finland did not lead to finding work, researchers said

#293

Post by dragonwriter »

mises wrote: post #290
_rpd wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> UBI replaces all current social welfare programs we have with a single program This is the conservative argument for UBI - liquidate social security and distribute the proceeds; do more good with the same money because we don't have to pay means testing overhead; smaller, less intrusive government as a bonus. The reality though is that every single social security program has been put in place as the result of a to…

> liquidate social security That's not a just action for the government to take. The original premise of social security was pay in money as you work, get it out when you're old. Though FDR started paying out immediately from the younger generation, so it started a generation in the hole. However, it was supposed to be basically forced federal savings, with some sort of safety net component as well. Not fair to tell…

> The original premise of social security was pay in money as you work, get it out when you're old.

No, the premise was always “pay taxes when working, receive benefits based on a formula driven by qualified earnings, with both pre- and post-retirement adjustment factors.” It has never been an investment vehicle with individual accounts, you aren't paying in and getting your money out with investment returns or matching or whatever.

(That said, because it's not a traditional means tested benefit but time-delayed inverse means tested one, it doesn't really make sense to replace it with UBI.)

Re: Basic income in Finland did not lead to finding work, researchers said

#294

Post by mises »

_rpd wrote: post #128
msluyter wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To your list of issues I'd add extraction by rentiers. My (perhaps naive) understanding is that rents tend to rise to a market equilibrium. Infuse the the aggregate market in an area with X dollars, and rents will rise to consume X. I'd be curious to hear counterarguments to that point.

I think this is a key concern. I don't think that there is a good counterargument, but the best that I've heard is that UBI will enable mass migration to rural areas or remote exburbs (including corporate sponsored - welcome to your new Google Home!). Of course some are happy to introduce rent controls or spark an inflationary death spiral with 'cost of living' adjustments.

You're saying I should go live in the countryside, away from everyone? Yeah, teleconferencing is possible, but I don't know that most people would want to.

It's also impractical to build public transportation that far out (you have to build increasingly more for each mile you expand from the nearest city center; distance between angles grows as you move outward), meaning that people would be driving a LOT more (higher gas prices). Or, if you by some miracle built all that transportation, it would be expensive. And people still need to "go to town" for many supplies, so just staying there isn't practical (let alone realistic for most).

Re: Basic income in Finland did not lead to finding work, researchers said

#295

Post by mises »

dragonwriter wrote: post #197
msluyter wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps my wording was poor. I'm thinking of geographical regions, not the economy as a whole. Thus, despite a net zero effect globally, any redistributive effects would be unevenly allocated to various regions. And it's easy to imagine certain areas -- in particular, poorer ones -- having a higher income per capita of renters in particular. Toy example: a population of 100, with one billionaire who owns their house…

Why don't rents consume all the economic growth without UBI? If there is, in a market (of whatever scale, and whether it's housing rental or anything else), a monopoly or coordinated oligopoly that is abused so as to absorb all income growth, that's a problem calling for government intervention independent of UBI. Maybe these exist in some housing markets, but if they do it's an orthogonal problem to UBI that is just…

> Why don't rents consume all the economic growth without UBI?

They sort of do (at least in some cases; see San Francisco, New York, tons of other big cities).

> that is just as important to correct even if we don't adopt UBI. It's not, in any way, an argument against UBI.

The fact that the we need to address it doesn't mean we easily can. And doesn't mean that just blindly doing it is justified, just because there shouldn't be such a problem.

Re: Basic income in Finland did not lead to finding work, researchers said

#296

Post by munk-a »

bryondowd wrote: post #212
munk-a wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Land will always be scarce because it isn't quantity of land (though that too can be a separate issue) but quantity coupled with positioning of land. Most people could afford to purchase four acres of land in Alaska or VT's north east kingdom, but four acres along central park is quite expensive because, due to the location of the site relative to all the services of NYC and the access to greenery, it is rather exclu…

Presumably, if you have unlimited resources, you can create most, if not all, of what makes that land in NYC valuable. You could create enough city districts to meet demand. There's lots of factors that go into the value of land. Available amenities, jobs, being near other people, quality of schools and other resources, transportation, etc. But those all seem to boil down to scarce resources being pooled in one area.…

I don't know if post-scarcity must mean perpetual motion machine. I'm not certain if you're familiar with the societal concept of systems collapse but it may be that attempting to do that would result in a maintenance burden that's untenable... Also I think a large chunk of NYC's value is in its people and I believe there's always going to be advantageous positioning from rarity, maybe this eventual society still has a government that has a capitol building and people congregate specifically around that... or perhaps it's more artificial - if the whole world was a city perhaps it'd get less significant and value would come from living at exactly 0' 0' or 3'14" 15'92" and so on.

I think there's a bit of innate petty jealousy in human beings so land value differentials will always exist.

But, that angle is pretty thin, so maybe I'm just stretching the argument at this point. Quite interesting to ponder!

Re: Basic income in Finland did not lead to finding work, researchers said

#297

Post by sharkmerry »

njarboe wrote: post #263
Frondo wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're all entirely dependent one things outside our control, and it's a worldview that's romanticized to the point of silliness to say anything else. As for the land grant you're talking about, that's a huge, huge give-away right there; and, I'd note, in your hypothetical, you already inverted the sequence of events (be given land => you keep it, work hard => you get $250k). All UBI does is recognize that, given how…

"All UBI does" UBI is a very specific solution to a very real and difficult problem. I think other solutions to the problem of quick technical advances would be better, that's all. The sequence is , you are given a resource for a period of time, see if you can use it well, if you do you get to keep it. Not sure what a good modern equivalent would be but such a scheme seems like a much better mode to the future than a…

What if you're given farmland and have a 5 year drought?

What other solutions are you talking about? Except giving away land?

Re: Basic income in Finland did not lead to finding work, researchers said

#298

Post by nostrademons »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #276
nostrademons wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If humanity lived at the density of Wyoming (5.97/mi^2), we would have to get rid of 50% of the U.S. population or 98% of the world population, because only 147M people could fit on the habitable land on earth. So yes, it is and it isn't. The question is how many people want to live in Wyoming-level densities vs. Paris-level densities, given the elimination of any cost constraints.

> The question is how many people want to live in Wyoming-level densities vs. Paris-level densities. Do they get a choice? I want to live in Disneyland, but there's sadly a distinct lack of real estate available.

That's sort of the definition of a post-scarcity world. If people want stuff but can't have it because there's not enough to go around, that's pretty much the definition of scarcity.

Re: Basic income in Finland did not lead to finding work, researchers said

#299

Post by mcv »

elindbe2 wrote: post #260
dragonwriter wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can I do a few hours work for this guy without losing my unemployment? UBI doesn't really make sense as a replacement for unemployment insurance, unless benefits are really high. If you replace UI with a poverty-support-level UBI, it makes unemployment a lot worse for anyone but the lowest-paid workers. UBI might reduce the perceived need for public funding of additional unemployment benefits in extended downturns…

UBI doesn't really make sense as a replacement to almost any traditional welfare programs for the simple reason that by limiting the money to only those who qualify for it, you can give more. Yet unfortunately UBI is often presented as an alternative that would supplant traditional welfare.

It replaces more than just welfare. There are lots of different programs to prevent people from falling into poverty, whether due to long term unemployment, disability, retirement without savings, or part-time work at minimum wage. UBI can replace all of them. Progressive tax rates tend to have a 0% tax rate for the lowest bracket because people with a very low income need it all to just get by. If they get UBI on top of that, it could be an option to compensate that by raising the tax rate on the lowest tax bracket (and others maybe too).

The point is not simply to give people more money (though in some countries that might not be a bad idea), but to ensure that they don't lose that money if their situation changes. Often it's more attractive to remain completely unemployed than to work part time at minimum wage. With UBI, every bit of paid work you do, leaves you better off financially. It removed disincentives to work, because working people get it too. The costs of UBI are easily balanced with taxes. And because you don't have to qualify for it, you can save a lot on bureaucracy; it leaves people at the bottom of the economic ladder with a lot more freedom in their lives.

Re: Basic income in Finland did not lead to finding work, researchers said

#300

Post by mcv »

snarf21 wrote: post #220
rixrax wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And while doing that, cut the bureaucracy and stigma of having to continuously apply for welfare, food stamps etc. Not that this would offsets the cost of basic income. If we picture a dystopian future where due to the rise of automation, increases in population, lack of education and ability, ~90% of people cannot realistically work in a productive jobs, I think it's a good time to experiment now what and how to kee…

Don't forget that all that bureaucracy is the source of thousands of good paying jobs that now also are worse off even when they get added to UBI. Also, don't forget that now that they have less money, their collective reduced spending means the business they used to patron will have to lay people off. Now those people also need UBI. This doesn't spiral to infinity but their is a huge ripple effect.

Yes, bureaucracy provides a lot of jobs, but they're not jobs that produce anything useful. You're just paying people to check if other people should also get paid. Just pay everybody and be done with it, and maybe let people do something more productive or fulfilling.
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