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

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

#71

Post by magduf »

privacypoller wrote: post #57
dev_dull wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's absolutely what it is at the core. The problem with it's application has been proven over and over again; the very wealthy have the means and motivation to avoid it while the burden falls on the same segment of the population over and over again.

The solution is simple: legislate so the very wealthy can't avoid it, while remaining in the country. It's really not that hard: if they have assets here and reside here, then you tax them, and seize them if necessary. The only reason this isn't done is because too many people vote for politicians who pass laws favorable to the very wealthy.

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

#72

Post by russdpale »

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.

It would be possible with a blockchain based system that included a crypto currency. No one would need to be taxed, and in fact current taxes could be dramatically lowered.

How much is the data of a nation worth? For some, it could be incalculable. Not just government for and by the people, but also its data and computations.

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

#73

Post by scryfish »

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…

How is this different from unemployment checks?

An issue with that approach is that you may end up giving more $$ than the person could earn from any job they could take, effectively forcing them to stay jobless

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

#74

Post by magduf »

dahdum wrote: post #35
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…

What are you going to do with flour, rice, etc.? You need a way to cook it. That means you need an apartment, with a kitchen, with working electricity or gas. Those are the things that really cost people. Giving a bag of flour to a homeless man isn't going to help him.

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

#75

Post by jaggederest »

prostoalex wrote: post #59
dev_dull wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not wealth, income.

Indeed. I think that probably a fairer way to allocate taxes for this sort of purpose would be either a wealth tax or a georgist land tax.

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

#76

Post by epicureanideal »

jaggederest wrote: post #46
gtCameron wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That assumes that the GDP would not be positively impacted by redistributing the funds to those who will spend it. A revenue-neutral taxation and distribution system should be more or less free of bias and significant negative effects on the economy, and that's what such ... socialist luminaries ... as Friedman proposed in the form of negative income tax brackets.

GDP isn't the best measure though of the actual health of the economy. In the current situation maybe doing what you're suggesting would work, somewhat... but I could imagine situations where it wouldn't.

For example, Elon Musk is rich. If we just redistribute all his money to "people who still spend it" (the poor), we get a bunch of people buying slightly better cars instead of getting significantly better rocket technology. At that point it's less of a clear benefit.

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

#77

Post by Retric »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #43
bryanlarsen wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Maybe not. Rich people are more likely to invest it; the economy also needs that.

Owning stock is not investing in economic terms. Companies are going to maximize profits independent on how much individuals pay in capital gains because nothing about capital gains changes the companies costs or profits.

Buying existing properties is the same thing. If no assets are created then it's not an economically useful investment.

VC money is often thought of as rich people investments, and it is an investment in economic terms. However, Pension funds, endowments, charitable foundations, insurance companies, sovereign wealth funds, and large corporations are more often than not the source of these funds.

Generally rich people are rich because they have invested their money they don't simply sit on piles of un-allocated resources.

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

#78

Post by RangerScience »

dahdum wrote: post #35
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…

The additional complication is problematic, as is the additional control / disempowerment.

Such as: - Who decides the list of goods? - Who provides them? - Who delivers them?

Ex: Pizza as a vegetable.

Sure, you'll have people make shit decisions - but part of the point (IMHO) of UBI is that a shit decision this month doesn't have to screw you next month.

My brother also always points out that "shrinkage" (from retail) is a really good concept to apply to welfare programs: The cost to 100% anything far outweighs the benefit to 100% that.

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

#79

Post by pacbard »

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…

The reference chain for the Namibia experiment is an Huffington post article[1] and a report by Bignam[2].

It looks like "Otjivero-Omitara was selected for its manageable size, accessibility, and poverty situation" (p.19). Ask yourself, could any of those characteristics impact the reduction in crime regardless of UBI?

Also, I wasn't able to find a control (or comparison) group for those results. The time series that they provide seem to indicate that there are positive economic trends (see the reduction in poverty reported at page 49) in Namibia during the study's time frame (2007-2009). If these trends are not accounted for (e.g., using a difference-in-differences approach), you risk to conflate outside factors with UBI.

Another issue is attrition in the study. Their 40% result only takes in consideration the people who were present in the village for the 2-year study. Now, we could imagine that unemployed people might have migrated out of the village, mechanically pushing crime down thus biasing the UBI results. (see page 56 and 71)

The moral of the story is that social research is hard, especially research that wants to be causal. I would be skeptic of all click-baity results unless backed up by strong evidence.

[1]: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-santens/universal-basic... [2]: http://www.bignam.org/Publications/BIG_Assessment_report_08b...

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