People kept working, became healthier while on basic income: report • Hacker News Board

Re: People kept working, became healthier while on basic income: report

#461

Post by chillacy » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 6:40 PM UTC

burlesona wrote: post #111

Basic income makes sense to me as a more effective implementation of welfare, but I personally strongly prefer the negative income tax implementation: https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/negative-incom... That seems to address many of the concerns that people are raising in this thread. Namely, it doesn’t require you to work, but ensures that you never have a disincentive to work either.

They can be made the same: https://taxfoundation.org/universal-basic-income-ubi-means-t...

I think UBI has advantages in its universality, where it's not perceived as a rich to poor transfer (even though it really is) and everyone feels they benefit from the program (even though some people don't).

Re: People kept working, became healthier while on basic income: report

#462

Post by coffeecat » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 6:40 PM UTC

refurb wrote: post #438

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #170

From my personal point of view, basic income SHOULD disincentivise work; it's a boost for society, health, well-being, children, etc. Because in the current economy, a lot of people have to work unreasonable hours, multiple jobs, and have all people in a family work to make ends meet, at the cost of personal health and well-being, personal time, having children at all or having more children, getting married and buyi…

Ok, but work (productivity) is how you actually pay for UBI. So by giving UBI, you are decreasing the resources that pay for it.

Give people money, and most of it will get spent. That spending is income for someone, and that income is taxed. I don't understand this argument.

Re: People kept working, became healthier while on basic income: report

#463

Post by TrinaryWorksToo » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 6:41 PM UTC

simonsarris wrote: post #88

This is very misleading reporting. First: All studies so far show a pretty consistent ~10% work disincentive. This is what all the detractors say when they say it disincentivizes work. So how about this one? From actually reading the study's conclusion: > Slightly less than one-fifth were employed before but unemployed during the pilot (17%) So even worse than what we've seen so far. 17% dropping out of the labor mar…

Why would you ever want someone to work? Isn't the ideal that we automate everything, work never, and everyone can get enough?

Re: People kept working, became healthier while on basic income: report

#464

Post by pixelbash » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 6:41 PM UTC

refurb wrote: post #438

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #170

From my personal point of view, basic income SHOULD disincentivise work; it's a boost for society, health, well-being, children, etc. Because in the current economy, a lot of people have to work unreasonable hours, multiple jobs, and have all people in a family work to make ends meet, at the cost of personal health and well-being, personal time, having children at all or having more children, getting married and buyi…

Ok, but work (productivity) is how you actually pay for UBI. So by giving UBI, you are decreasing the resources that pay for it.

With increasing automation less people can do more work and therefore earn more money, this is already causing some of the unemployment issues we see today.

Re: People kept working, became healthier while on basic income: report

#465

Post by rgblambda » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 6:42 PM UTC

xzel wrote: post #268

luckylion wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> From my personal point of view, basic income SHOULD disincentivise work; it's a boost for society, health, well-being, children, etc. Somebody has to do the work though, until robots do everything (and then declare war on us), you need somebody to take away the garbage, pick the fruits and unclog the toilets. Disincentivizing work doesn't make that go away, it just means you'll put that load on fewer shoulders.

A lot of work today is pretty much bullshit/meaningless; I mean look at 85% of the US insurance / medical billing professions are useless and only exist because there is manufactured bureaucracy. Bullshit Jobs is a great book looking into to this. Also UBI shouldn't be disincentivizing work, it should be allowing people to explore more fulfilling pursuits.

Graeber himself acknowledged that most of those job roles were actually well paying and high status. UBI ain't going to disrupt that too much. Also, having read his book, I am highly sceptical of the claims made in it. I believe that there is a certain portion of many jobs that are bullshit but the proportion of fully bullshit jobs is much less than as claimed in the book.

Re: People kept working, became healthier while on basic income: report

#466

Post by CydeWeys » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 6:42 PM UTC

refurb wrote: post #442

CydeWeys wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is simply not true. Giving every person the oft-quoted $1k/month would cost over $4T/year, which is more than the entire current tax revenue of the United States. So we'd need to more than double tax revenue to continue doing everything we are now plus pay the UBI.

The logic of it is that you could increase taxes to pay for it and above a certain income level, 100% (or more) of it would be clawed back in taxes.

The required tax rates would still be unbelievably high though. Way higher than any other developed nation (some of whom already have >50% tax rates).

Re: People kept working, became healthier while on basic income: report

#467

Post by lumberjack » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 6:42 PM UTC

minitoar wrote: post #432

free652 wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where did you get that? UBI won't help people that get free housing in NYC UBI doesn't work with HCOL areas.

Where did you get the idea that all current social programs would continue unchanged if something as radical as UBI were introduced?

There are two versions of the proposal. UBI as a replacement for social programs is fantasy. The UBI cheque would have to be insanely fat to replace the welfare/medicare/housing/food all the other forms of assistance that disadvantaged people need. I know a lot of libertarians support it because it is essentially a round about way of cutting social benefits.

And hypothetically speaking, say the government is spending $10k/year on assistance to a disabled individual. If you instead give $10k/year to that individual in cash he would not be able to buy the same level of care for the same price on the private market. He'd get massively short changed. Welfare is far more efficient, financially speaking, than handing out cash to people and letting them fend for themselves.

Re: People kept working, became healthier while on basic income: report

#468

Post by chillacy » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 6:43 PM UTC

russellendicott wrote: post #314

Couldn't you consider older people living on Social Security to be somewhat of a UBI microclimate? I'd imagine you could learn a lot by sending the same questionnaire to them. A lot of the mental factors are the same: desire vs. ability to work, the changes in routine pre and post income, etc. Also, I wonder if we had UBI there would be facilities that would take care of you if you turned over your income check to th…

We already know that social security greatly reduces poverty https://www.cbpp.org/research/social-security/social-securit...

It's just hard to maintain from a balanced budget perspective.

> One wonders how different this would be than a minimum security prison....

The difference is that hopefully you could leave anytime and go to the facility across the street if it has better perks.

Re: People kept working, became healthier while on basic income: report

#469

Post by rogerkirkness » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 6:43 PM UTC

seszett wrote: post #29

rogerkirkness wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nowhere has universal healthcare. The basic healthcare is bad, so you can pay more to get better access, or go to the US for actual good care.

It seems Americans often believe that, but virtually nobody in Western Europe would even think of going to the US for healthcare. I would assume the same for Canadians. I have no idea if that's actually true, but the widespread opinion is that the ~free (it depends a lot between countries, it's usually simply affordable, rather than free) healthcare here is much better than what a normal person can afford in the US.

I'm Canadian, it's not nearly as good as paid healthcare in the US (especially high end paid healthcare). Giant wait times for things you can pay to do in the US.

Re: People kept working, became healthier while on basic income: report

#470

Post by Ar-Curunir » Thu, Mar 05, 2020, 6:44 PM UTC

simonsarris wrote: post #88

This is very misleading reporting. First: All studies so far show a pretty consistent ~10% work disincentive. This is what all the detractors say when they say it disincentivizes work. So how about this one? From actually reading the study's conclusion: > Slightly less than one-fifth were employed before but unemployed during the pilot (17%) So even worse than what we've seen so far. 17% dropping out of the labor mar…

This “necessity of work” is an evil that we must get rid of. So many jobs are absolutely useless and degrading from a societal and human perspective. If basic income enables one to stop doing these jobs, humanity as a whole is better for it.