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

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

#491
post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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.

You can't eat money, nor can money cut your hair. refurb's point is that a UBI leads to a decrease in wealth, not in the amount of money in existence.

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

#492
post #237

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…

I know and know of many people who don't want to work or contribute to society. Sitting at home and not contributing to society is kind of a goal. Some groups are negative to those who try to work or contribute. I know families who have passed that on from parents to children. This isn't everyone but it is a segment. I don't see much talk about this. The folks in this segment aren't bound to be on HN. I point this ou…

I don't think an economic system should be used as a blunt weapon to punish perceived immorality.

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

#493
post #238
post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Might it be worth considering that choosing to not work and choosing to contribute to society in other ways could, for some people and in some circumstances, be slightly different decisions?

There are absolutely people who would contribute to society in other ways but there are also people who would not work, not contribute and, sit in their rooms all day not having the will to do anything but debate with strangers on internet forums(lol). In my opinion the problem with UBI is that it would take away the necessity for people to do something to survive and it would make a significant minority of the popul…

I see where the sentiment is coming from, but I don't agree with the premise of "doing something to survive" being what people need. I think it's the relationship of the person to its community through labour that could be missing (Karl Marks writes about how capitalism fetishizes commodities and removes this relationship in Das Kapital. If you're into this subject it's an interesting read).

I know a senior lady, for example, that works fixing clothes. She doesn't need it to "survive", and sometimes work piles on and becomes another worry on top of other things she needs to think about. But she does it, in part as alternative income but also to keep herself entertained and as a way to relate to her community. She is the person you go to if you need mending, and that's a social relationship. People from the neighborhood will look need her and seek her for this. Receiving or delivering work is also an excuse to interact with people.

Would she go to a factory and fix stranger's clothes even if it were for the same amount of time and money? Probably not. She doesn't need it to survive, she needs it to relate.

So in that sense I do worry that UBI could disincentivize forming these work and exchange relationships or finding your place in a community/society. Just like kids given the choice might pick not to go to school, but eventually this would probably lead them to isolation and not growing in other ways, I wonder if a percentage of adults that haven't realized work can be better than no work could isolate themselves from social and mental growth in the same way.

In general thus I think UBI might work better as a compliment to reformed labour laws. Say, a 4 hour week. Or unionization, to push back on crappy management and predatory workplace policies. A goal should be to have as much people working as possible, but not because they are forced to in order to survive, but because they want to.

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

#494
post #471
post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

We currently have intense income inequality in the world - pretty sure we can shave some off the top and the middle to help everyone live a healthier life.

Wealth isn’t fungible like that. A lot of recent wealth inequality was stocks rising.

That doesn’t mean that food production went up, or that more houses get built cheaper, or that new doctors are cloned, or anything of the sort.

It just means stocks went up.

Most of the economy is people providing stuff to other people, or working to import stuff. If people don’t work, you don’t get the stuff they provide.

To a certain extent you can sell off assets abroad and import stuff using a trade deficit. But that doesn’t work forever, and you can’t import haircuts or clean floors or construction labour or nurse shifts. At a certain point work is needed.

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

#495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t understand many jobs, but many I thought were bullshit, I changed my mind after learning more about them. I do know that asking people if their job is bullshit is not a good way to truly understand. It’s natural to hate many jobs, that’s why I’m paid to do them. I once shoveled horse stalls. I hated it. It was. Horseshit job. But if the job stopped existing, it would have negative impact. I think it will be c…

David Graeber talks about this in his book Bullshit Jobs, which has been discussed here previously. He makes the distinction that a bullshit job is one where both the employer and the employed must both pretend that the job is useful even though both of them know that it is not. Under this definition, a lot of dirty or otherwise maligned jobs are still essential to society (including stall cleaning, depending on your…

I think a better framework to think about this is 'Bullshit Businesses', not bullshit jobs. A lot of companies only exist to make the owners/investors rich, provide little to no value to the world, and/or rely on dirt cheap labor for the economics to work. Think spammy call centers, Walmart, amazon warehouses, etc...

If people were not in desperate need of a paycheck and were able to negotiate/hold out for better jobs, or spend more time on career training, then a lot of the business would not exist, or would be forced to treat their employees better.

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

#496
post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Number of hours worked is not equal to production or richness of a society. Productivity equals production. A small team of engineers who design and create a machine to build brick walls en masse, could have the same productivity as hundreds of thousands of bricklayers working 16 hours a day. A good example of this are Silicon valley, Singapore or New York, which are small social groups that have more economic and so…

What makes the people in Singapore New York and silicone valley more productive? The fact that they work in successful businesses and earn lots of money? So what? Tobacco is a successful business. How can you even define more economic output? You can't, you just use a very flawed proxy for economic value, money exchange. I believe a good teacher is 100 times more productive than a software engineer. But that guy that…

It's funny because the post you responded to would be better as a refutation of this post rather than the other way around

OP just explained why people (or rather, the upper middle class tech workers) of these two cities for out produce potentially thousands of people. A team of software engineers who can nail software for flipped classrooms will replace thousands of teachers AND improve educational outcomes

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

#497
post #488
post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That skill is so trivial to learn compared with the skill of surviving and building up income from nothing. Rich people literally just need to not be complete idiots - if you've got 300 million in the bank put it in some low interest stable investment and you'd be able to live off the investment earnings alone. There, I just explained all the life skills you need as a rich person - there is no equivalence between the…

I am guessing that you do not know many people who were born into wealth. There are existential questions that gnaw at some of these people that hinder them from taking the seemingly simple path that you have presented. I would also argue that it is not as easy as you would think to park millions in some "low interest stable investment" that also does not have substantial (for generational wealth) counter-party risk.…

Being a human being isn't easy, many people rich and poor struggle with deep philosophical questions, some people get devoured by questions of relative wealth even when they have very little just because they're among so many people poorer off than them.

That doesn't change the fact that being rich is easy mode for life. Yes, it isn't just a stroll in the continuous orgy park of happiness and funtimes, but there are a lot of difficulties in life that arise out of not having enough money, rich people essentially get a pass on all of these problems.

So, while I'm not saying that rich people never struggle with being a human being and all the existential doubt that can accompany that. I am saying that they never struggle to eat. I think everyone has their own struggles through life and really don't want to minimize problems that can arise in dealing with human issues like poor mental health - but seriously, everything is on easy mode for the rich, and if you don't think that's the case then you should really reach out to other communities and see what low income people have to deal with on a daily basis.

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

#498
Everyone is talking about "receiving money with no-strings attached" however there is a huge string attached, and everyone knows it very well, especially the researchers, and that is the experiment will end.

This means that the experiment is temporary whereas real UBI would be permanent. A temporary experiment where everyone is aware that it will end cannot simulate the same changes that a permanent experiment would do. But I guess that wouldn't be an experiement anymore.

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

#499

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…

> 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.

Sounds good for workers.

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

#500
post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If you consider multi-generational entrenchments of poverty as its own problem, worth serious merit, then the work disincentive could be a disaster." Multi-generational entrenchments of poverty are already a disaster, and not because of fuzzy ideas like "instilling a work ethic", but because many millions of people lack the basic material resources needed to fulfill anything close to their potential. A kid watching…

> millions of people lack the basic material resources needed to fulfill anything close to their potential There is a limited amount of capital in the world. Distributing it now might help those at home, but it does not help the billion people who still lack electricity. There simply is not enough capital in the world to build trillions of dollars worth of infrastructure for free. Investment is a much better vehicle…

UBI doesn’t get stuffed under the mattress, it gets spent, buying electricity, funding investment into electricity networks.

Give money to the poor and most of it will end up back at the rich. It doesn’t work as well trickling down.

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