Basic Income caused crime to drop by 40% and strengthened workforce? • Hacker News Board

Re: Basic Income caused crime to drop by 40% and strengthened workforce?

#31

Post by JorgeGT » Wed, Aug 01, 2018, 5:31 PM UTC

The part about people not leaving the workforce is based on a non-peer reviewed working paper arguing that the Alaska Permanent Fund, which pays ~$2000 per person, has not decreased employment: https://www.nber.org/papers/w24312.pdf

I doubt any rational person would quit a job for $2000 a year. Or for a temporal UBI that may last a few years, leaving a gap in their career. I'm curious, does anyone know of any UBI test in which the amount was enough to live decently, and was assured for the lifetime of the recipients?

Re: Basic Income caused crime to drop by 40% and strengthened workforce?

#32

Post by trothamel » Wed, Aug 01, 2018, 5:31 PM UTC

bryanlarsen wrote: post #11

lbriner wrote: post #4

"a quora member answered when asked about the UBI" And at that moment, any semblence of legitimacy disappeared... The main question about UBI is who pays for it and how. In the UK, a back-of-a-napkin calculation showed that all current benefits equally divided into a single BI would be around £4K, way below anything that most people would consider enough to live on.

So to get a BI of £12K, average taxes would have to go up by £8K per person. And since about 2/3 of the adult population are taxpayers, that gives £12K per taxpayer, which balances the payout they'd receive from BI. People with above average incomes would pay into BI, and those with below average incomes would net from BI.

Assuming we're talking about the UK here, that would require £517,000,000,000 - or about 70% of current tax revenues.

Re: Basic Income caused crime to drop by 40% and strengthened workforce?

#33

Post by dev_dull » Wed, Aug 01, 2018, 5:32 PM UTC

bryanlarsen wrote: post #11

lbriner wrote: post #4

"a quora member answered when asked about the UBI" And at that moment, any semblence of legitimacy disappeared... The main question about UBI is who pays for it and how. In the UK, a back-of-a-napkin calculation showed that all current benefits equally divided into a single BI would be around £4K, way below anything that most people would consider enough to live on.

So to get a BI of £12K, average taxes would have to go up by £8K per person. And since about 2/3 of the adult population are taxpayers, that gives £12K per taxpayer, which balances the payout they'd receive from BI. People with above average incomes would pay into BI, and those with below average incomes would net from BI.

In other words, legally redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor. Not saying there’s anything wrong with that, but that’s what this program is.

Re: Basic Income caused crime to drop by 40% and strengthened workforce?

#34

Post by aaron-lebo » Wed, Aug 01, 2018, 5:32 PM UTC

pacbard wrote: post #28

Every time you want to evaluate results from social research, you need to ask yourself two questions: 1. Are the results internally valid? That is, did the authors reasonably control for factors other than the treatment (in this case, UBI) that could affect the observed results? Turn out, that this is actually difficult to do outside of randomized control trials. Quasi-experiments and natural experiments all lack ran…

Yes, this is unfortunately pretty lazy research used to push an agenda.

Related to that, the main claim: the 40% reduction in crime (no link, why?) is in Namibia. Is there anything about Namibia which makes it different from a developed economy like the US?

I know it comes off as pedantic to complain about such stuff, but there's gotta be higher standards for evidence, otherwise you don't really trust your own argument.

Re: Basic Income caused crime to drop by 40% and strengthened workforce?

#35

Post by dahdum » Wed, Aug 01, 2018, 5:32 PM UTC

curtis wrote: post #14

There ought to be a name for a minimal UBI that can allow people who are normally just scraping by to bridge short periods of unemployment, unexpected expenses etc. £4K wouldn't be much for the average Hacker News reader, but for people on minimum wage it could make a real difference. You can't really call this "Basic Income" though, because that term comes with the build in assumption that it's enough for a person t…

I've always thought there should be an essential basics program, where you can always receive an adequate amount of flour, rice, beans, corn, and other basic foodstuffs to survive. I'd also add toothpaste, soap, and other sanitary items.

We can still have food stamp programs that allow people to spend as they please, but the guaranteed floor ensures literally no one need go hungry.

Sticking to basics keeps the costs far lower than trying to subsidize processed foods, and the extent we susbsidize our farmers also subsidizes the program.

Re: Basic Income caused crime to drop by 40% and strengthened workforce?

#36

Post by anoplus » Wed, Aug 01, 2018, 5:33 PM UTC

devoply wrote: post #5

Ontario recently cancelled their experiment with universal income. Which points me to the fact that even if UBI becomes reality at some point, it's only one government away at any time from being cancelled or adjusted. So your livelihood at any given time is dependent upon government balancing its books. Considering how bad many modern developed governments are at doing this, it gives me little hope of UBI being any…

I agree. govs are not trusted because public knowledge is broken. I believe we have to fix it. Also, I think inequality must be kept under control (taxes?) to protect democracy from private hands with too much capital. But taxes are useful only when public knowledge is fixed. When gov is transparent and trusted.

Re: Basic Income caused crime to drop by 40% and strengthened workforce?

#37

Post by zdragnar » Wed, Aug 01, 2018, 5:33 PM UTC

dragontamer wrote: post #15

devoply wrote: post #5

Ontario recently cancelled their experiment with universal income. Which points me to the fact that even if UBI becomes reality at some point, it's only one government away at any time from being cancelled or adjusted. So your livelihood at any given time is dependent upon government balancing its books. Considering how bad many modern developed governments are at doing this, it gives me little hope of UBI being any…

What's wrong with having UBI for 2 years and then suddenly having it cut off? Jack London, the famous homeless / hobo writer of "Call of the Wild" and "White Fang", was only able to write his first book because of the support of community libraries and random strangers who gave him a bed occasionally. Eventually, he was able to pull himself out of poverty and become one of the most famous writers ever. If you can hel…

You are trying to use a universal solution to a specific problem. Furthermore, visible homelessness is often a presenting symptom of other, non-homelessness problems. Look no further than San Fransisco or Seattle for how little throwing money at something will change the outcome.

Or, look at the education system in Washington DC- highest expenditure per pupil, with sub-par results.

Giving everyone for an undefined, but definitely finte, period a lump sum of cash will certainly help a small number of people. Others will not leverage the windfall and will once again be destitute when the charity ends.

What do we do then? I would rather have a more systematic solution [edit: set of solutions] to help people whenever they are in need, rather than a blanket solution.

Some arguments I've seen boil down to "well, let's do both!" at which point all they are arguing for is sticking with the same broken system, but throwing more money on top of it. It doesn't change the fact that what we have isn't working, and isn't going to be solved by further crippling the middle class (since "the rich" typically adjust income strategies whenever taxes change, they're not going to be affected in the way "tax the rich" folk expect).

Re: Basic Income caused crime to drop by 40% and strengthened workforce?

#38

Post by bryanlarsen » Wed, Aug 01, 2018, 5:33 PM UTC

gtCameron wrote: post #25

3pt14159 wrote: post #8

It might be politically unpopular, but maybe we should just raise taxes and index them for measures of inequality. The GDP per capita of most modern economies can easily handle a basic income sufficient for all but the most expensive cities.

That assumes that GDP would not be impacted negatively by the massive tax increase. I'm sure there are many theories, in both directions, of what would happen to the total tax revenues if you were to raise rates significantly, but it's surely far more complicated that your idea makes it sound.

Moving money from rich people to people much more likely to spend it rather than hoard it should result in a significant GDP boost.

Re: Basic Income caused crime to drop by 40% and strengthened workforce?

#39

Post by setr » Wed, Aug 01, 2018, 5:34 PM UTC

bryanlarsen wrote: post #11

lbriner wrote: post #4

"a quora member answered when asked about the UBI" And at that moment, any semblence of legitimacy disappeared... The main question about UBI is who pays for it and how. In the UK, a back-of-a-napkin calculation showed that all current benefits equally divided into a single BI would be around £4K, way below anything that most people would consider enough to live on.

So to get a BI of £12K, average taxes would have to go up by £8K per person. And since about 2/3 of the adult population are taxpayers, that gives £12K per taxpayer, which balances the payout they'd receive from BI. People with above average incomes would pay into BI, and those with below average incomes would net from BI.

I thought BI was equal distribution across the population; how can you charge less than its value per person, and pay it off?

Re: Basic Income caused crime to drop by 40% and strengthened workforce?

#40

Post by xkjkls » Wed, Aug 01, 2018, 5:35 PM UTC

aaron-lebo wrote: post #34

pacbard wrote: post #28

Every time you want to evaluate results from social research, you need to ask yourself two questions: 1. Are the results internally valid? That is, did the authors reasonably control for factors other than the treatment (in this case, UBI) that could affect the observed results? Turn out, that this is actually difficult to do outside of randomized control trials. Quasi-experiments and natural experiments all lack ran…

Yes, this is unfortunately pretty lazy research used to push an agenda. Related to that, the main claim: the 40% reduction in crime (no link, why?) is in Namibia. Is there anything about Namibia which makes it different from a developed economy like the US? I know it comes off as pedantic to complain about such stuff, but there's gotta be higher standards for evidence, otherwise you don't really trust your own argume…

I wouldn't necessarily call it "lazy research". It's imperfect, but there aren't exactly that many natural experiments in UBI that provide you great data. Sometimes you have to piece together insights from imperfect data.