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

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

#791

Post by bluGill » Fri, Mar 06, 2020, 7:19 PM UTC

dwaltrip wrote: post #625

bluGill wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe. What will you do with that free time? Most people will give an answer that depends on having toys they can no longer afford.

I don't think that is true. Here a few things people might do: * Spend valuable time with a young child * Relax at the park * Spend time with family and friends * Take care of household chores or administrative life tasks that one has been procrastinating on * Go hiking * Read a book * Watch a show or movie * Learn a new skill or start a new hobby * Build a website or start a blog that isn't profitable but adds value…

I didn't say there weren't options. I said that people would prefer options that need more money.

MrMoneyMustache retired at 30 because he was willing to forgo a lot of toys. He is willing to go without those toys.

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

#792

Post by dahart » Fri, Mar 06, 2020, 8:00 PM UTC

blackflame7000 wrote: post #789

dahart wrote: post #784

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Education is not making them that much more productive. It’s certifying them as already being more productive. How do you measure productivity? And (asking again, since you didn’t answer) how do you measure social waste? Where is the evidence of your claims? If what you claimed is true, then if the rate of education were to go up, then the income premium for education would go down, because you’re saying the income…

>How do you measure productivity? And (asking again, since you didn’t answer) how do you measure social waste? Where is the evidence of your claims? That's the entire point. We can't quantify if education actually makes people more productive and if it does, is that productivity applied to helping or hurting society. For example, an aspiring software dev could get educated in computer science which would increase the…

How do you define productivity? Why can’t you define it? Why can’t you quantify it? If you can’t quantify it, why do you believe it? Maybe it’s not quantifiable because it’s not true?

If you define educational productivity as GDP or income, or in financial terms, then the evidence is pretty clear and very strong that education doesn’t hurt. For education to not improve “productivity”, then you must be defining productivity some other way that you’re expecting me to intuit. I’m only hearing some rationalizing for why you’re ignoring the data we actually have.

The Fed study I posted does attempt to quantify the causal effect of education, and so do quite a few other studies. I recommend doing some research about what has been done to find out how this issue has been quantified already. I have looked into quite a few of these studies and their methodologies, and I haven’t seen a single one claim that education has zero or negative causal effect, even when their summary leans toward the income premium being more correlation than causation. All of them conclude it’s a mix, and there’s a positive contribution from the act of attending school, learning history and skills, gaining independence, etc. I don’t think education is by any means 100% efficient, whatever that would even mean, but claiming it’s zero or negative is really extreme, especially if you can’t produce any evidence.

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

#793

Post by nybble41 » Fri, Mar 06, 2020, 8:24 PM UTC

AlexanderNull wrote: post #666

zazaalaza wrote: post #636

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"UBI is a political decision which is renewed with every government" If this is true than implementing UBI will be more problematic than I thought. All UBI proposals so far call for all other financial safety nets to be removed in order to finance UBI. Managing that will be a nightmare if you can just cut off UBI, then you have to spin up everything else again. I imagine UBI to be something similar to how the pension…

This is why the "Universal" aspect of it is so important. It's ridiculously easy for people to vote for defunding services that "other" people benefit from, and politicians can always whip up support by scapegoating some minority group as the root of all of our problems. But if the benefit is shared by everyone then it becomes near political suicide to suggest cuts to it. How many politicians successfully can campaig…

> But if the benefit is shared by everyone then it becomes near political suicide to suggest cuts to it.

The benefit isn't shared by everyone, though. The payouts may be equal but the taxes to support those payouts are not. If a majority of voters are paying more in taxes than they receive in payouts (as is likely) then it shouldn't be hard to sell them on the idea that reducing or dismantling the program would be in their own self-interest.

On the other hand, if it would be difficult to dismantle the program even knowing that it benefits a vocal minority at the expense of the majority, that should make us think twice about instituting it in the first place.

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

#794

Post by nybble41 » Fri, Mar 06, 2020, 8:28 PM UTC

rapind wrote: post #731

cbhl wrote: post #658

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently, Ontario used to have a much large welfare program prior to 1995: https://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/august-2018/ontario... So I guess that suggests that even if a UBI is implemented that it could be cut or repealed in a future government.

Welfare isn't UBI. Give everyone the same amount and you'll have a hard time convincing the people earning 70k to vote against another 12k... That's the secret formulae.

People earning 70k will vote against "another" 12k if it reduces their taxes by 16k. That money isn't free—a minority will see a net benefit, with everyone else footing the bill. If you're earning 70k then you're unlikely to end up on the "net benefit" side of the equation.

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

#795

Post by nybble41 » Fri, Mar 06, 2020, 10:35 PM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #128

whatshisface wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem with this argument is that it proves too much. It's true of anything that causes the poor to have more money. Lower unemployment would be associated with a greater availability of goods and services, so that would get it out of the trap. Higher wages would also be associated with a supply increase if they came with increased productivity, but if you raised the minimum wage then prices of low-end product…

> Lower unemployment would be associated with a greater availability of goods and services, so that would get it out of the trap. That's assuming the goods and services are locally consumed, which in a global economy they're commonly not. A jet engine factory that moves in and hires a bunch of people reduces local unemployment, but that doesn't mean any of the local workers are in the market for jet engines. > Higher…

> If [UBI] comes from collecting taxes then the people who receive it have more money, but the people who pay the tax have less, which more or less cancels out.

It doesn't cancel out because the people receiving the UBI tend to buy different goods than the people paying the tax. Fewer people bidding up prices on yachts and capital, more people bidding up basic goods and services.

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

#796

Post by chillacy » Fri, Mar 06, 2020, 10:40 PM UTC

pingyong wrote: post #761

chillacy wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You threw out $1000 a month, any reason? Different proposals use different amounts, $1k a month happens to be in the Yang proposal (Freedom Dividend) which was funded largely from a consumption tax: https://freedom-dividend.com/ A conservative proposal ($6.5k-$10k a year, Charles Murray) might be largely funded on cuts to existing programs: https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-guaranteed-income-for-every-a...

> You threw out $1000 a month, any reason? Well I think it needs to at least be high enough that other social spending can largely be cut (except for healthcare maybe), and that seemed like a reasonable value. Unfortunately I can't read the link you posted since I don't have an account there.

You can usually google articles and it goes around paywalls, otherwise you can just google for Charles Murray's UBI plan.

There are a bunch of UBI plans, which all vary across the political spectrum. Some are financed entirely with progressive wealth taxes, others nearly entirely with cuts to existing programs. The math usually works out decently through some trick or another, like limiting recipients to only {kids, adults} or phasing out by income.

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

#797

Post by mkl » Sat, Mar 07, 2020, 1:26 AM UTC

nojvek wrote: post #724

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…

What’s SSI and SSDI ?

American social support payments: SSI = "Supplemental Security Income", SSDI = "Social Security Disability Insurance".

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

#798

Post by AnthonyMouse » Sat, Mar 07, 2020, 1:54 AM UTC

ChrisLomont wrote: post #772

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #606

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ????? Everyone gets the UBI, not just people who don't work. If hypothetically fewer people were to work, more people wouldn't start receiving it because everybody gets it either way. > Less time worked correlates with less things made. In general this goes the other way. The history of progress is to make more stuff in less time. If people had more "disincentive to work" then companies would have to pay them more…

>If hypothetically fewer people were to work, more people wouldn't start receiving it because everybody gets it either way. That money comes from taxpayers. If less people work, less pay into it. >In general this goes the other way. If less people work today, less will get made today. When a few percent of people suddenly don't have work, we have a recession, tax revenues fall drastically, raising deficits. The last…

> That money comes from taxpayers. If less people work, less pay into it.

But none more receive it.

> If less people work today, less will get made today.

What do you expect companies to do if some of their employees quit? Give up? No. Either they'll pay higher wages to get employees again or they'll automate the job.

There are millions of jobs that could be automated right now, this year, except that the automation equipment costs slightly more than paying current wages, so they pay the wages instead. If it becomes somewhat more attractive to not work and employers have to pay higher wages, some of them will get automated instead. The same work gets done with fewer people.

> When a few percent of people suddenly don't have work, we have a recession, tax revenues fall drastically, raising deficits. The last recession makes this perfectly clear.

Tax revenues fell and deficits rose because they cut taxes and increased spending. The reduction in GDP (i.e. the tax base) was, again, only ~3% and only for one year.

> The UBI experiments so far have around 10% of people stopping work. That would be devastating to any modern economy.

I have already explained this. If you give one person a UBI and not everyone, they don't need work as much, but everybody else still does, so employers don't have to pay higher wages since they can still hire any of the other >99% of people who didn't get the UBI and pay them the existing wages.

If you give everyone a UBI, employers do have to pay higher wages to retain employees, so they do, and then more people stay working.

Someone else also pointed out that your 10% also mostly "stopped working" so they could go to school. Which is obviously not a permanent condition and generally precedes taking a better job, which pays more and generates more tax revenue.

> Because people were getting back to work.

The unemployment rate went from 5% in 2007 to 9.9% in 2009. It was still at 9.3% in 2010 when GDP had fully recovered. Apparently the economy did just as well without the other 4.3%.

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

#799

Post by saint_fiasco » Sat, Mar 07, 2020, 8:27 AM UTC

free652 wrote: post #588

z9e wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be insane for her family to not take her into their home and take care of her, which unfortunately the US doesn’t do as much as other cultures.

So right now she is independent, but under UBI she has to beg her family? Is that what you call a success of UBI? That's just income redistribution from the most vulnerable, right wing would love this.

She is not really independent right now. There is no way a grandma can live comfortably in one of the biggest cities in the world without massive subsidies in the form of rent control, for example.

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

#800

Post by chillacy » Sat, Mar 07, 2020, 4:56 PM UTC

diffeomorphism wrote: post #756

chillacy wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With basic income you make $4000 + $1000, which removes the discontinuities associated with means testing. Whether increased taxes used to pay for the UBI end up eating up your UBI depends on the plan and how much you make/spend. Some UBI proposals are paid for with a wealth tax, others with a consumption tax, others by cutting most of the existing programs). They usually end up being redistributive in the grand sche…

> With basic income you make $4000 + $1000, which removes the discontinuities associated with means testing. No, you don't. It is completely unrealistic to assume that UBI won't effect salaries in any way. Of course this is hard to test in a small scale study, but "you introduce UBI and everything else stays exactly the same" make no sense.

It's equally unrealistic to assume that UBI will exactly affect salaries by canceling them out. You're right that there will be effects, and they're likely to be dependent on job as well.

For instance basic income may mean salaries go up for the jobs nobody wants to do as people are given an alternative, while salaries go down for jobs that are intrinsically motivating.

I can't say for certainty though. My best guess is that it's going to be better than the hodgepodge of social welfare (and its complex effects) we have today.