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Basic income would not reduce people’s willingness to work

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

#81

Post by sidibe »

jacobn wrote: post #55
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.

Those who work and thereby pay for the UBI may feel that freeriding is actually unjust, and not the hallmark of a glorious new post-scarcity society?

It's their choice to work. Might take a generation or two to not be outraged based on how we were raised, but that would seem to make it not unjust.

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

#82

Post by brailsafe »

quotemstr wrote: post #29
sschueller wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So poor people are lazy and the rich aren't? Maybe all these people don't want to work these kinda of jobs and are moving into other sectors. Maybe working conditions and pay need to be drastically improved in those jobs.

> So poor people are lazy and the rich aren't? Honestly, yes --- not always, but frequently. I am sick and tired of the mentality embedded in the sentence I quoted. Do you think the rich are rich for no reason at all? That their rewards are unfair? Success is not the universe sprinkling good fortune on mankind at random: success comes from hard work and the courage to take advantage of the opportunities that time pre…

Probably the hardest working people that I've seen are recent immigrants, doing literally the shittiest work in the shittiest conditions for people who probably had a lot of advantages set up for them and never worked remotely as much or with as much abuse, and who are genuine monsters.

The prime minister of Canada is not rich and powerful because he worked hard enough as a teacher. He became a teacher because his former prime minister dad set him up very well, with nothing else to do but fuck around doing dumb peasant things. Ya, he worked hard, but never had to worry about anything from day 1. His former prime minister dad only did the exact same thing after his dad made a ton of money in oil and gas.

Elon Musk's dad was a literal explorer who made his money in... mining.

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

#83

Post by staticassertion »

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…

One thing that's been made clear in the last two years is that even a very very measly increase to unemployment can have huge impact. And unemployment runs out after a while, and the increases have been tiny. And unemployment makes you jump through hoops, is very stressful, and wastes a lot of your time.

I expect that UBI could start off very small and still have huge impact. A quick search shows that median income can range from ~40k-80k state to state. I'd bet you could radically change this country for way less than that.

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

#84

Post by systemvoltage »

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…

My guess is that inflation would go through the roof resetting it back where the UBI wouldn't be enough to sustain basic life. Increasing UBI would further lead to runaway inflation.

We literally just did this with COVID checks.

I would vote for the complete opposite of basic income - invest heavily in education, trade schools, colleges and free access to tools for learning, apprenticeships, etc. Give tools to people to become productive and sustain a good life, by also providing value to the society.

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

#85

Post by rwmj »

ChrisLomont wrote: post #12

Multiple studies of where basic income was tried in the real world found it to reduce work. For example, "Manitoba, Canada experimented with Mincome, a basic guaranteed income, in the 1970s. In the town of Dauphin, Manitoba, labor only decreased by 13%, much less than expected" [1]. There are plenty of others. I expect a targeted need use of scarce resources (tax money) is a much better use for helping those who need…

> Multiple studies of where basic income was tried in the real world found it to reduce work.

Isn't that a good outcome? Humans get more leisure time.

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

#86

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #76
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The more money you have - the less value a marginal dollar has. I think there would be a massive pressure to raise minimum wage. Why would you work for $7.50 an hour and pay $1 in taxes - spending the majority of your day to make ~$50 - that doesn't buy much - and you don't have much time to spend it anyway? When your options are either do that or be homeless and hungry - most people opt for work. But when you have o…

UBI might cover your food and rent, but it won't cover much past that. So if you want some beer money or a new videogame or whatever, you'll need to work. And since after UBI every dollar after taxes goes to luxuries, a low income provides a lot more luxuries than it does before UBI, so it's actually a lot more appealing to work -- you see the benefits directly.

Are you saying you'd be more encouraged to work to buy a video game than to not be homeless?

Why wouldn't regular minimum wage workers just be homeless and spend their money on luxuries if this was the case?

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

#87

Post by inglor_cz »

tda wrote: post #27
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…

> there are plenty of jobs where you absolutely will quit And so what if people refuse to do shitty jobs? Perhaps we as society can do without those jobs. And if we can't, we should value them more

Customer facing jobs are precisely the ones that are shitty. Some people are really entitled and awful.

But you can basically only get rid of them by automating the process and disconnecting human workers from complaintants. How well does it work?

Ask anyone who lost a YouTube channel without learning the real reasons and has no path to appeal to a human. HN hates whenever this happens.

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

#88

Post by godelski »

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…

I'm not sure how this is relevant. I'm sorry for your wife having to go through that. That's a shitty job. But I think the premise is about working in general, not a specific job. As a thought experiment, if you and your wife had a billion dollars, would you still work? Would you still do things that are work? Or would you fly around the world vacationing all day, watching TV, or things like that. If it's not the latter then that's the premise of the article: people find fulfillment in work.
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