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Basic income would not reduce people’s willingness to work

universiteitleiden.nl

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Re: Basic income would not reduce people’s willingness to work

#481

Post by padobson »

yurishimo wrote: post #389
kwhitefoot wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the Nordics, there are no manual car washes, This is simply not true, at least in the more densely populated parts of Norway. They are simply very expensive.

Which car washes are we talking about? Self service manual washes, or something more akin to a light detail that includes a hand wash? In the US, you can drive up and pay $1~/min and spray your car yourself w/ soap and water. You can also do the drive-thru option for about $10. On the upper end, you can pay $50~ for what might start as a drive-thru, but then someone comes out and does a manual touch up where the mach…

At $100+, you're looking at a hand wash and detail, potentially going up to hundreds of dollars for different aftercare options.

It's also worth mentioning that you've jumped from menial to skilled labor at this point. There's a big difference between hosing off a Prius for the owner's commute and detailing a McLaren for an auto show. The latter is far more satisfying work.

Re: Basic income would not reduce people’s willingness to work

#482

Post by Dylan16807 »

caskstrength wrote: post #376
Dylan16807 wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If those people aren't getting paid a very high wage, they can reduce their working hours too. If they are getting paid a very high wage, then they already had the leverage needed to reduce their working hours, and they were choosing not to. They'll still make plenty of money.

> They'll still make plenty of money. How much is "plenty" and who gets to decide? What if they live in high CoL area? You propose they should sponsor someone else's leisure time instead of buying a house for their family, for example?

That's basically a normal tax question at that point.

Re: Basic income would not reduce people’s willingness to work

#483

Post by surfmike »

staticassertion wrote: post #69
ozzythecat wrote: post #4

A link to the actual research paper would be helpful. In this experiment, what amount was given to the treatment group that received basic income? How often? How does that amount compare to the cost of living in their city? > ‘It’s sometimes said that people will sit around doing nothing if you give them free money.’ I’m not an academic, so take this with a grain of salt. If my job requires menial labor or involves g…

> If my job requires menial labor or involves getting berated by customers (many retail jobs), personally I would absolutely not work. Maybe that's a good thing. It's insane how people in service industries are treated - like they're less than human. Shifting some power to them and giving the job a little more of an air of dignity or status would probably help a lot. And the pay would obviously go up. People would be…

I think this is an honest perspective, but it directly contradicts the article which is saying "basic income would not reduce people's willingness to work." Menial labor or being berated by customers rather clear-cut example, but most jobs have moderate amounts of unpleasantness, and given the choice many people would opt out of working altogether. There's a lot of unpleasant work that needs to be done to keep civilization going!

Re: Basic income would not reduce people’s willingness to work

#485

Post by 91dylwyn »

augustuspolius wrote: post #337
tippytippytango wrote: post #301

You are earning $4000/month after taxes and begin to receive $1000/month. What do you do? Some fraction of people will reduce their workload so their earnings are $3000/month, bringing their total income back to $4000. Some fraction of people will not reduce their workload at all and inflate their lifestyle to depend on $5000/month. The overwhelming majority of people will choose the latter; we already know this, it'…

Why not to increase federal minimum wage instead to, say, $30/h? If you were making $4000 - you are good already. If you were making $1000 - you get an increase.

This seems much more sensible than extra money to those already comfortably off.

Re: Basic income would not reduce people’s willingness to work

#486

Post by thegrimmest »

zozbot234 wrote: post #476
thegrimmest wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There would be a lot more work happening on material things, not less Who will do all the hard, unpleasant work then? Who will pick strawberries, work retail, or do hard labour, for anything less than a fortune? What substitute to the current "don't starve/end up homeless" incentive structure will motivate people to do these jobs? Productivity improvements aren't universal, they're specific. We've not improved prod…

Who picks strawberries today in high-income countries/locations, where strawberry pickers have all sorts of alternatives available? There's your answer. It tends to cost more, but not much more. And the increased cost is offset to a large extent by improved specialization in those lines of work, and the ensuing productivity.

Migrant labourers mostly, and in places where these are not available (like Japan), strawberries cost a lot more, making them a "special occasion" treat for middle classes, and putting them mostly out of reach of poorer people.

Re: Basic income would not reduce people’s willingness to work

#487

Post by 988747 »

More importantly: it would not reduce the NEED to work. Giving everybody free money would just cause prices of everything to skyrocket, and you would still need to work your ass off all the same, to make the ends meet.

You don't see that effect in the small-scale experiments, because they are too small to affect economy as whole.

Re: Basic income would not reduce people’s willingness to work

#488

Post by noogle »

mjburgess wrote: post #72
pc86 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is exactly what will happen. The pay for those jobs will increase, until such a point where it becomes cheaper/easier to just not have the job in the first place. I don't honestly know why whether or not people will work even factors into one's support for UBI. Some people will keep working, some people won't. Nobody will starve so that seems like something in the "pro" column at least.

It depends if you just end up paying people not to work. Money doesnt just have some "value" you can share like a pie. The value in money is just the productive capacity of an economy. If you're paying large numbers to do nothing, the value of that money plummets and people will starve. Recall: 50% of the country make less than the median wage... UBI is going to have to be way below this to preserve the very wealth w…

> Money doesnt just have some "value" you can share like a pie.

The trillions of dollars printed by the Federal Reserve in the past two years beg to differ.

Honestly, if the country is going into deficit, you might as well give it directly to people instead of injecting it via financial institutes.

Society in general may greatly benefit from having people not HAVING to work.

Re: Basic income would not reduce people’s willingness to work

#489

Post by notahacker »

caskstrength wrote: post #216
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gettting rid of serfdom, debt prisons and endentured servitude all reduced work and caused products of labour to be redistributed. Who said that current distribution of products of labour between Amazok and their workers is optimal?

We all fantasize Bezos and Musk should pay for it, but in reality it will be yet another tax on middle class (e.g. run-of-the-mill senior developer from high CoL area, so from Amazon engineer to (would be ex) Amazon warehouse worker).

Would be even broader than that (run-of-the-mill junior dev in high CoL ara to lower middle class homeowner that fancies early retirement)

Re: Basic income would not reduce people’s willingness to work

#490

Post by missedthecue »

nouveaux wrote: post #363
missedthecue wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a luddite. I think that automation is good, but I don't think that it makes humans permanently redundant. The human skill set is too diverse. Automation should be encouraged, not taxed, because it makes society wealthier and more productive.

"I think that automation is good, but I don't think that it makes humans permanently redundant." Technology has already made people permanently redundant in many places and will continue to do so. There is a near zero percent chance that technology will stop advancing to replace people's jobs. As we march forward with new automation, there will be a net loss in jobs. UBI is an attempt to solve that problem.

Can you give me one such example of someone made permanently redundant by automation?
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