Yeah how many of these have we had now? Literally every test and study about UBI comes back with similar data: it improves lives, reduces stress, and nobody becomes a drain on the system. It doesn’t matter. The people who oppose it aren’t looking at the data, they just don’t want "my tax dollars" going to support people struggling to get by.
We already have something that resembles a basic income in developed countries. It's called retirement pensions. And what we see there is that most people, as soon as they are eligible for their pension, they stop working. Sure, they may volunteer a few hours a month here and there, but their productivity plummets compared to the previous year when they didn't collect that pension. I don't blame them one bit -- it's exactly the same thing I did once I retired.
So what happens as we lower the age at which they receive a pension? Different countries and companies have sometimes offered pensions to some of their senior workers to reduce their workforce -- the results were the same. Most people stop working as soon as they have a lifetime guaranteed income that allows them to afford life's essentials, even if they are in their forties.
A pilot where the participants know or suspect that the money will soon stop flowing won't capture the real-world effect of this decades-long experiment that we call pensions.
And if people don't work, or don't work nearly as much as they did before, then how is the system going to be sustained?
The system that is killing our planet, that exploits and ends up killing the majority of its unwilling participants? Yeah, I don't think the loss in productivity will be a bad thing. Maybe people will consider the effect of their work before doing it a little more when they don't have a gun to their head.
> And if people don't work, or don't work nearly as much as they did before, then how is the system going to be sustained?
I think people and markets would just adapt to a lower level of consumption and amount of work. The work that people find truly important, like growing food, construction of housing, healthcare, etc. would remain in demand. The demand for things that people don't really want to work to create, or work to consume, would be reduced. So salaries for work that actually matters to people would increase and people would still do that work, and salaries for work that produces things that people don't really need would be reduced. In the end we'd have a society that only does the work that people actually want and need to get done and consume only things that have enough value to justify working for it. Less work, less consumption, probably happier people.
Elderly population not working is _hardly_ the equivalent of UBI. Besides; in most developed countries you are actually _penalized_ for working while retired; and furthermore most elderly people on pension tend to still do work such as handling childcare for grand kids.
What do you expect after a life of forced labour?
Do they stop helping their families on the daily tasks? I think these questions should clarify your thoughts.
I'm sure there is already much discussion about this, but I feel like basic income pilots will never show the true impact. Someone who knows they'll have guaranteed income for the rest of their life is more likely to stop working than someone who is told they will receive guaranteed income for a few years. Especially when this pilot is cancelled and now people won't trust that future ones will last even for the few years specified.
For those fortunate enough to have made absurd amounts of money, think of what you did when you had it. You kept making for whole different reasons. You kept making, kept doing.
The only thing that stops is tolerance of actual garbage bosses, abusive companies and saying “yes” to decisions that require you to be immoral.
If we could get rid of social security, Medicaid, food stamps, and all forms of welfare, and replace them all with a UBI equally given to every citizen, the trade off might make something as inherently idiotic as UBI worth it.
I realize UBI has been a popular topic on HN, answer me this...
UBI, if implemented, would move O($10T/year) around the economy.
We've seen a lot of small scale studies, which basically boil down to giving people money == life improvements. However, I do not see how a small scale study could possibly answer the open macro questions, like inflationary collapse (e.g. increased velocity without direct economic output), even if the whole "will people work anymore" question is moot.
Without answering those questions, it would be a USSR scale experiment, which is incredibly dangerous. Improving peoples lives would be great, but I cannot see how one could be an advocate for UBI without having solid answers to those questions.
> (e.g. increased velocity without direct economic output)
Transfer payments don't really increase the velocity of money because they're not associated with any direct economic output.
If Alice has $100,000 to spend and Carol has $25,000 to spend, there is $125,000 in actual spending, i.e. demand for something that has to be produced. If you then do a transfer payment of $10,000 from Alice to Carol then Alice is spending $90,000 and Carol is spending $35,000, it's still the same $125,000.
Maybe they'll buy different stuff, maybe one would be more likely to buy business investments and the other would be more likely to buy college tuition, but that has no more likelihood to cause problems than if Carol got a raise and Alice had to pay for it.
Why not strengthen need based assistance? Why give everyone $X/mo when you could give just those who need it the money? Why not strengthen programs like SNAP or affordable housing programs? UBI solves the issue of changing requirements and confusing/embarrassing applications, but I'm not sure it's better overall.
Why not guaranteed employment, not UBI. Subsidize minimum wage jobs that produce social good without being soul-crushing. (Raise the minimum wage while you’re at it).
This is a 2020 news article and should have the (2020) tag added.
The study has also been picked apart for the methodology issues and the enormous amount of spin applied to the results. From what I recall, the link to the results didn’t lead to an academic paper, it led to something more like a pamphlet or advertisement with a lot of graphic design, dozens of pages, and lots of spin.
Even this news article shows the amount of spin happening. Read this section and think about what it really means:
> The report shows nearly three-quarters of respondents who were working when the pilot project began kept at it despite receiving basic income
In other words: Over one quarter of people who received the checks stopped working, despite knowing that the program was temporary. This is actually a wild result when you think about it. Contrast this with the title that claims “people kept working” without qualifiers.
The better studies have included a control group that gets a nominal payment but much less than the basic income checks. Something like $50 or $100 per month to fill out the same questionnaire. Giving a single group some checks for a short period of time without any control group doesn’t tell you much.
The entire world of UBI studies is wild. Every time I read the actual data I come away with a completely different interpretation than the news articles and graphic design heavy reports that are produced by the UBI proponents.
>The report shows nearly three-quarters of respondents who were working when the pilot project began kept at it despite receiving basic income.
1/4 of the people stopped working?? That is a huge effect, particularly since it was a short duration experiment. Unfortunately this is also seen in other experiments with basic income. The economist Noah Smith blogged about a large randomized basic income study done in the US where participants received about $1,000 a month for three years:
>...Just $1000 a month made 2% of people stop working! That’s a very large negative effect. It contradicts the results of earlier studies showing little or no effect of unconditional cash benefits on employment. And worst of all, the basic income recipients didn’t seem to transfer to better jobs or go back to school — two of the most powerful arguments for basic income. Instead, people just sat around at home.
I dunno this seems like a not great program and a not great study.
> Its findings are the result of a 70-question, anonymous online survey made available to basic income recipients in Hamilton, Brantford and Brant County. A total of 217 former recipients participated, according to the report.
> Forty in-depth interviews with participants were also completed in July 2019.
> The project worked by recruiting low-income people and couples, offering them a fixed payment with no strings attached that worked out to approximately $17,000 for individuals and $24,000 for couples.
Earlier it mentions the program had 4k participants. So 4k participants -> 217 survey respondents -> 40 interviews. We don't know to what degree there was a selection bias in who decided to respond or was available to interview. Not great in terms of the data the study generated.
> Whatever income participants earned was deducted from their basic income at 50 per cent, meaning once someone hit $34,000 they wouldn't receive a payment anymore, Lewchuk explained while speaking with As It Happens.
> Lewchuk added that while some people did stop working, about half of them headed back to school in hopes of coming back to a better job.
And the program told people up front that it was temporary, and that the marginal benefit of their own work or income would be substantially reduced. If your earning power already wasn't great (which qualifies you for the program) and now your effective wage per hour worked is functionally reduced ... it's kinda shocking that most of them kept working! If the program wanted to keep people working, it wouldn't take away funds from them as they earn.
There's a segment of the population who are vehemently against the idea of undeserving/lazy/the wrong people receiving any kind of welfare benefit, and the concept of UBI really, really triggers that segment. To the point where rational analysis goes straight out the window.
I'm quite certain that all the same arguments were had about every kind of retirement or disability pension everywhere. Many of our societies are producing an enormous amount of resources surplus to our basic needs, often distributed very unevenly. Putting some of that surplus towards ensuring all members are at least housed and fed would not be a bad thing.
You're talking about the "welfare queen" myth. The idea that given any sort of welfare, a large percentage of the population will exploit that welfare and quit being productive.
The question is, what happened to the people who they took the money from or inflated away the value of their savings? The second question is, how much money was "lost in translation".
UBI might be fine in a post scarcity world. Let's maybe think about it once governments eliminate all debt and have run surpluses for a decade.
The problem with UBI is that not only does it give people an incentive to not work (as 25% of people in the study stopped working, even when they presume that the money would stop coming at some point) but, at a national level, it also requires a massive tax hike on the people who do work, which disincentivises work.
It would have an inflationary effect on basic goods and services. If you're renting and everybody is getting an extra few thousand a month then landlords know that they can charge a bit more since everyone has that money. Same with staple foods.
The cost savings don't make sense. An argument is that it will actually save money because the government will be able to abolish disability support and welfare, get rid of free healthcare, etc. But this ignores the fact that a lot of that stuff has unequal demand. You crash your car, your leg gets cut off, go to the hospital, they spend $100k on making sure you survive (specialised machines, a team of doctors and nurses, medicines, recovery and physiotherapy). How's that work under UBI if the government isn't paying for it anymore, who is? Or say you have a child with a disability, it's still going to cost more than the UBI.
Also, regardless of the economic system - could be feudalism, communism, the bronze age palace economy - redistributing income away from producers towards people who don't work (or even work less) is going to have negative effects. There is lot more demand for garbagemen than there are people who really love being garbagemen and wouldn't mind the high taxes. Take a look at the UK: the percentage of the population that are pensioners keeps on rising and the government keeps giving them more money - it's gone from 2% in the 50s to more like 10% now - all money that could be spent on other things that could grow the economy.
> requires a massive tax hike on the people who do work
Net of the benefit they would be receiving, it doesn't. The average person would be paying $10,000 in taxes to fund the UBI and then receiving a $10,000 UBI.
> It would have an inflationary effect on basic goods and services. If you're renting and everybody is getting an extra few thousand a month then landlords know that they can charge a bit more since everyone has that money. Same with staple foods.
There is no extra money. It isn't being printed. There are net transfers for people making more or less than average, but then Alice has a little more money than before and Bob has a little less and it's still the same total.
Also, that's not how prices work anyway. If people have more money, prices only change if the cost of production is non-linear. If it costs $5 each to make a million sandwiches and $5 each to make two million sandwiches, increasing the number of sandwiches people want just increases the number of sandwiches produced instead of increasing the price of each sandwich. Sometimes an increase in demand causes the unit price to go down because of economies of scale.
> But this ignores the fact that a lot of that stuff has unequal demand. You crash your car, your leg gets cut off, go to the hospital, they spend $100k on making sure you survive (specialised machines, a team of doctors and nurses, medicines, recovery and physiotherapy). How's that work under UBI if the government isn't paying for it anymore, who is?
That's the purpose of insurance.
> redistributing income away from producers towards people who don't work (or even work less) is going to have negative effects.
Your premise here is that being paid to do what someone else wants you to do is more productive than doing what you want to do.
Most modern jobs are not "productive" in the sense that they actually produce anything of importance. People waste untold hours in corporate meetings or making things the world would be better off without. Would assigning agency to the individuals instead of the institutional bureaucracies reduce productivity or increase it?
"Them thar's CoMmUnIsM" Can't have that because Murica despises people beneath them getting any support or help of any kind. That's why universal healthcare won't happen without an FDR 2.0. Mamdani is kind of like that but can't become POTUS. Maybe Ro Khanna and AOC, but too many America voters are hostile towards them because the corporate news and podcasters told them so.
Ironically, the Trump stimulus checks provide fantastic and unexpected relief for millions.
35 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 62.7 ms ] threadSo what happens as we lower the age at which they receive a pension? Different countries and companies have sometimes offered pensions to some of their senior workers to reduce their workforce -- the results were the same. Most people stop working as soon as they have a lifetime guaranteed income that allows them to afford life's essentials, even if they are in their forties.
A pilot where the participants know or suspect that the money will soon stop flowing won't capture the real-world effect of this decades-long experiment that we call pensions.
And if people don't work, or don't work nearly as much as they did before, then how is the system going to be sustained?
I think people and markets would just adapt to a lower level of consumption and amount of work. The work that people find truly important, like growing food, construction of housing, healthcare, etc. would remain in demand. The demand for things that people don't really want to work to create, or work to consume, would be reduced. So salaries for work that actually matters to people would increase and people would still do that work, and salaries for work that produces things that people don't really need would be reduced. In the end we'd have a society that only does the work that people actually want and need to get done and consume only things that have enough value to justify working for it. Less work, less consumption, probably happier people.
OK, yeah. They kept working because everyone expected that it would go away
The only thing that stops is tolerance of actual garbage bosses, abusive companies and saying “yes” to decisions that require you to be immoral.
- It says that 3/4 of people kept working; to me, that seems like a big drop.
- Data is based on a survey of people in the program; I distrust data from surveys on principle.
- There seems to have been a reduction in the payment as they earned money, so its not really UBI as typically advocated.
UBI, if implemented, would move O($10T/year) around the economy.
We've seen a lot of small scale studies, which basically boil down to giving people money == life improvements. However, I do not see how a small scale study could possibly answer the open macro questions, like inflationary collapse (e.g. increased velocity without direct economic output), even if the whole "will people work anymore" question is moot.
Without answering those questions, it would be a USSR scale experiment, which is incredibly dangerous. Improving peoples lives would be great, but I cannot see how one could be an advocate for UBI without having solid answers to those questions.
If the government wanted to give people money right now, it would just lower income taxes.
If you have a better solution to mass unemployment, feel free to share it with the rest of us.
Transfer payments don't really increase the velocity of money because they're not associated with any direct economic output.
If Alice has $100,000 to spend and Carol has $25,000 to spend, there is $125,000 in actual spending, i.e. demand for something that has to be produced. If you then do a transfer payment of $10,000 from Alice to Carol then Alice is spending $90,000 and Carol is spending $35,000, it's still the same $125,000.
Maybe they'll buy different stuff, maybe one would be more likely to buy business investments and the other would be more likely to buy college tuition, but that has no more likelihood to cause problems than if Carol got a raise and Alice had to pay for it.
2. Doesn't have to be that much.
3. Alaska issues a yearly dividend from their permanent fund.
The study has also been picked apart for the methodology issues and the enormous amount of spin applied to the results. From what I recall, the link to the results didn’t lead to an academic paper, it led to something more like a pamphlet or advertisement with a lot of graphic design, dozens of pages, and lots of spin.
Even this news article shows the amount of spin happening. Read this section and think about what it really means:
> The report shows nearly three-quarters of respondents who were working when the pilot project began kept at it despite receiving basic income
In other words: Over one quarter of people who received the checks stopped working, despite knowing that the program was temporary. This is actually a wild result when you think about it. Contrast this with the title that claims “people kept working” without qualifiers.
The better studies have included a control group that gets a nominal payment but much less than the basic income checks. Something like $50 or $100 per month to fill out the same questionnaire. Giving a single group some checks for a short period of time without any control group doesn’t tell you much.
The entire world of UBI studies is wild. Every time I read the actual data I come away with a completely different interpretation than the news articles and graphic design heavy reports that are produced by the UBI proponents.
1/4 of the people stopped working?? That is a huge effect, particularly since it was a short duration experiment. Unfortunately this is also seen in other experiments with basic income. The economist Noah Smith blogged about a large randomized basic income study done in the US where participants received about $1,000 a month for three years:
>...Just $1000 a month made 2% of people stop working! That’s a very large negative effect. It contradicts the results of earlier studies showing little or no effect of unconditional cash benefits on employment. And worst of all, the basic income recipients didn’t seem to transfer to better jobs or go back to school — two of the most powerful arguments for basic income. Instead, people just sat around at home.
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/at-least-five-interesting-thin...
Given the chance, many people will quit working. That isn't surprising. Acting like this is UBI's fault is kind of weird.
> Its findings are the result of a 70-question, anonymous online survey made available to basic income recipients in Hamilton, Brantford and Brant County. A total of 217 former recipients participated, according to the report.
> Forty in-depth interviews with participants were also completed in July 2019.
> The project worked by recruiting low-income people and couples, offering them a fixed payment with no strings attached that worked out to approximately $17,000 for individuals and $24,000 for couples.
Earlier it mentions the program had 4k participants. So 4k participants -> 217 survey respondents -> 40 interviews. We don't know to what degree there was a selection bias in who decided to respond or was available to interview. Not great in terms of the data the study generated.
> Whatever income participants earned was deducted from their basic income at 50 per cent, meaning once someone hit $34,000 they wouldn't receive a payment anymore, Lewchuk explained while speaking with As It Happens.
> Lewchuk added that while some people did stop working, about half of them headed back to school in hopes of coming back to a better job.
And the program told people up front that it was temporary, and that the marginal benefit of their own work or income would be substantially reduced. If your earning power already wasn't great (which qualifies you for the program) and now your effective wage per hour worked is functionally reduced ... it's kinda shocking that most of them kept working! If the program wanted to keep people working, it wouldn't take away funds from them as they earn.
I'm quite certain that all the same arguments were had about every kind of retirement or disability pension everywhere. Many of our societies are producing an enormous amount of resources surplus to our basic needs, often distributed very unevenly. Putting some of that surplus towards ensuring all members are at least housed and fed would not be a bad thing.
UBI might be fine in a post scarcity world. Let's maybe think about it once governments eliminate all debt and have run surpluses for a decade.
It would have an inflationary effect on basic goods and services. If you're renting and everybody is getting an extra few thousand a month then landlords know that they can charge a bit more since everyone has that money. Same with staple foods.
The cost savings don't make sense. An argument is that it will actually save money because the government will be able to abolish disability support and welfare, get rid of free healthcare, etc. But this ignores the fact that a lot of that stuff has unequal demand. You crash your car, your leg gets cut off, go to the hospital, they spend $100k on making sure you survive (specialised machines, a team of doctors and nurses, medicines, recovery and physiotherapy). How's that work under UBI if the government isn't paying for it anymore, who is? Or say you have a child with a disability, it's still going to cost more than the UBI.
Also, regardless of the economic system - could be feudalism, communism, the bronze age palace economy - redistributing income away from producers towards people who don't work (or even work less) is going to have negative effects. There is lot more demand for garbagemen than there are people who really love being garbagemen and wouldn't mind the high taxes. Take a look at the UK: the percentage of the population that are pensioners keeps on rising and the government keeps giving them more money - it's gone from 2% in the 50s to more like 10% now - all money that could be spent on other things that could grow the economy.
> Lewchuk added that while some people did stop working, about half of them headed back to school in hopes of coming back to a better job.
But they didn't just stop working, they went back to school
Net of the benefit they would be receiving, it doesn't. The average person would be paying $10,000 in taxes to fund the UBI and then receiving a $10,000 UBI.
> It would have an inflationary effect on basic goods and services. If you're renting and everybody is getting an extra few thousand a month then landlords know that they can charge a bit more since everyone has that money. Same with staple foods.
There is no extra money. It isn't being printed. There are net transfers for people making more or less than average, but then Alice has a little more money than before and Bob has a little less and it's still the same total.
Also, that's not how prices work anyway. If people have more money, prices only change if the cost of production is non-linear. If it costs $5 each to make a million sandwiches and $5 each to make two million sandwiches, increasing the number of sandwiches people want just increases the number of sandwiches produced instead of increasing the price of each sandwich. Sometimes an increase in demand causes the unit price to go down because of economies of scale.
> But this ignores the fact that a lot of that stuff has unequal demand. You crash your car, your leg gets cut off, go to the hospital, they spend $100k on making sure you survive (specialised machines, a team of doctors and nurses, medicines, recovery and physiotherapy). How's that work under UBI if the government isn't paying for it anymore, who is?
That's the purpose of insurance.
> redistributing income away from producers towards people who don't work (or even work less) is going to have negative effects.
Your premise here is that being paid to do what someone else wants you to do is more productive than doing what you want to do.
Most modern jobs are not "productive" in the sense that they actually produce anything of importance. People waste untold hours in corporate meetings or making things the world would be better off without. Would assigning agency to the individuals instead of the institutional bureaucracies reduce productivity or increase it?
Congrats you just made inflation!
This study was always way too small for that. We'll probably only find out for sure the hard way.
Ironically, the Trump stimulus checks provide fantastic and unexpected relief for millions.