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A New Report Finds No Evidence That People Will Work Less Under a Universal Basic Income (theoutline.com)
Economists Djavad Salehi-Isfahani and Mohammad H. Mostafavi-Dehzooeifrom for the Economic Research Forum have released a new report on the results of a basic income scheme launched in Iran in 2011. "In 2011, in response to heavy cuts to oil and gas subsidies, Iran implemented a program that guaranteed citizens cash payments of 29 percent of the nation's median income, which amounts to about $1.50 every day (about $16,000 per year in the U.S.)," reports The Outline. Here are the key findings: The report found no evidence for the idea that people will work less under a universal income, and found that in some cases, like in the service industry, people worked more, expanding their businesses or pursuing more satisfying lines of work. The researchers did find that young people -- specifically people in their twenties -- worked less, but noted that Iran never had a high level of employment among young people, and that they were likely enrolling in school with the added income. The evidence presented in the paper is compelling, but the anecdotal belief that handing people money will make them lazy is hard to shake. "The findings in this paper do not settle this question," the report's authors point out. "What we have accomplished is at the very least to shift the burden of proof on this issue to those who claim cash transfer [sic] make poor people lazy, and to show the need for better data and more research."
I would work less if I didn't have to work for my income. Am I the only one?
per year extra hell yah I'd still work (Mind you I own my own business) but still $1200 extra per month is a lot of money to do things lots of people wouldn't be able to do other wise. Hell with $1200 extra I could use that to run a second online business.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
The argument against basic income is not about laziness, it's where the money comes from. Gather 5 of your friends and implement basic income. Those who earn less than the BI gets paid by money collected from those who earn more than the BI. Post back the results. Do it among 10, 20, or 30 of friends, all without the need for any government or politicians. Good luck.
it's basically 4 trillion dollars so they would have to double the federal budget to pay for this. Bare minimum, everyone's tax rate doubles. This is based on total outlays vs total income. Remember that FICA is just another source of income for the feds, an effective ~15% tax before any income tax is considered. Then there is all the excise, corporate, etc taxes. It's easy to say they can get the money, but there are not enough rich people to just stick with the bill. It will land on the middle class like every other tax increase does and we will be stuck with a standard of living much closer to those on universal basic income.
Rich are fine and the middle class gets their standard of living dragged far closer to those on UBI. It is a fact that the rich can not pay the bills, they are too large. The middle class will be the ones who pay for this.
Slashdot headline reads "A New Report Finds No Evidence That People Will Work Less Under a Universal Basic Income" yet quoted in the article "The researchers did find that young people - specifically people in their twenties - worked less"
Sooo... yea. I realize Slashdot has become a new social justice platform but c'mon, this is at least the third universal basic income propaganda post of the week and it's certainly stretching the boundaries of legitimate.
If anything, employers will need to raise salaries, since potential employees will have less incentive to work.
Employers would need to get better in all parts. When the populace no longer fears for their lives upon losing their job, they would be far more apt to quit a shitty job to find something better. Over a generation or two it'd weed out bad businesses, making the country more efficient with higher quality output and faster economic growth.
But I don't know what I'm talking about. Walmart would probably find a way to game the system like do currently.
I acquired a passive income 15 years ago that was roughly equivalent to a UBI. I left my job and let someone else have that income while I developed a new business that I never could have built otherwise. Awesome result with one big caveat: After 10 years my passive income started looking less secure and I suddenly realised I'd been kidding myself about how hard I'd been working. I doubled my productivity instantly.
I had become less productive with a guaranteed income, but even so the effort has given our community a new business that brings in tourist dollars.
May be the perfect formula doesn't actually require 40 hours per week. Maybe we can afford for most people to be a bit less productive (call it more lazy if you like).
I say we should give UBI a try - at least throw a moderate budget into some more thorough research.
You've got cause and effect backwards. People largely abuse drugs and alcohol to cope with things like their shitty jobs.
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The drastic reduction in desperate workers gives employers less leverage.
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I think you're thinking of welfare. You still get your full UBI regardless of how much money you make, dramatically increasing the incentives to work.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Why though? The idea of UBI is that it doesn't change if you get paid for a regular job. You'd get your UBI plus whatever you earn for working.
I guess you could say you're getting out of paying taxes, but how is that any different from the current system where you work at a job and pay taxes on that income? There's no additional incentive from the existence of UBI specifically. I suppose you could argue that payroll taxes are needed to fund it, but that's a big assumption, and many of the cases for UBI assume it's coming from something else (since it often comes in scenarios where there just isn't enough work/jobs for everyone due to automation or such).
Except that one big problem with our current welfare system is that if you work, you lose welfare benefits, and this creates a disincentive against working. A Universal Basic Income would come with no such restrictions.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
There was no evidence that people who got paid some cash allowance didn't work, except for the age group where the amount was material (the young).
That's quite a different conclusion than the headline would suggest.
That right there is the fly in the ointment. Simply working isn't enough. You have to do work producing something other people want, not necessarily what you want. Work has value because it produces something other members of society are demanding. If a UBI allows you to quit a productive job in order to start an unproductive one (e.g. artist), the net result is that the country's productivity decreases, and the standard of living drops. (Which means the UBI has to be increased to keep it at the level of "basic", starting a vicious cycle of continuing productivity declines and UBI increases.)
As an extreme example, nobody wants to collect garbage, repair toilets, clean septic tanks, etc. But because it's needed, society pays a lot for it - enough to entice some individuals to live with the stink and do it for a living. If a UBI causes some of these people to quit and take up more "satisfying" lines of work, the prices of these services will go up, resulting in less income available for people to spend on other things, resulting in the UBI not buying as much as it used to, resulting in the government increasing the UBI to compensate for its decreased purchasing power, resulting in more people switching to more "satisfying" work, resulting in more prices going up, etc.
The economy wants to price things according to how much society values it. Attempting to thwart that with a UBI or minimum wage doesn't make that tendency disappear. The economy just interprets that as damage to the system, and routes around it - by devaluing the currency to lessen the impact of the fixed value of the UBI or minimum wage on prices.
"What we have accomplished is at the very least to shift the burden of proof on this issue to those who claim cash transfer [sic] make poor people lazy,
No you/they haven't. Burden of proof to support a costly program or scheme does not work that way: You have the burden, and your concept doesn't have merit until you've proven it ---- showing a little bit of evidence doesn't change the burden of proof to someone else's. The burden of proof remains to show that Universal Basic Income provides more value than it costs in order to justify this radical scheme.
As for the evidence that providing Food or resources without having to work for it promotes Laziness or failing results ---- the strong exemplars of this happening are readily available throughout history. Communism/Socialism to any degree reduces production and doesn't create sustainable economies; history's littered with numerous examples...
Oh please. I made no such allusion at all. Using your logic, we have a panel of dictators here in America. They're called The House, The Senate, and the Supreme Court (and we don't even get a choice with these judges). That is ridiculous. The raiding of the state's coffers is the issue. And I mean actual raiding, as in stealing. Taxes, entitlements, subsidies, etc are not stealing. That is wealth that is recirculated in the general economy. I mean when people like Maduro take the money and buy themselves a new mansion or a yacht or whatever. That is to the benefit of a single person as opposed to the general welfare of the nation.
Also please explain how the following sentence is not correct: "The Right's target, and the dictator's target, is always the same: "Here's something that takes precedence over individual rights"." I'm 40. The right has never, not once, given the people any individual rights as you claim. Name one. They're always taking them away. We've been sliding into said hell here in the US and its worst incarnations so far (cause it started way earlier) are because of the Patriot act. That was a Republican thing. All the stuff conservatives bitch about the Dems doing have been proven time and time again to be exactly what they are doing themselves. Guilty dogs bark and they bark a lot and loudly. Keep barking so we know where you guys are, ok?
yea becouse I'd believe anything coming out of Iran ... not. /. is really stretching here.
Right. I mean, they probably even disregard the scientific method and still fight over things like whether global warming and evolution are real.
Real lawyers write in C++
... also another major point is that Venezuela has had an unprecedented drought that's stuck since 2013. That's not hard to check out, and it's crippled agriculture. Coupled with the sustained drop in oil prices, these two factors have in fact devastated food production and imports simultaneously.
The other side of the coin is in fact a thing called "price controls" and those aren't necessarily a socialist measure, they're a tactic used by many governments when inflation is getting out of hand. This is the really big mistake Maduro made. Price controls cause a discrepancy between the official price and the black market price, leading to hoarding and speculation, which causes further inflation, and necessitates rationing of the controlled-price good, thus leading to long queues. The insidious thing about price controls is that they *create* shortages even if there's plenty of production, because they can create a speculative bubble in the price-controlled asset.
Saying that the "greater something" is more important than individual rights is leftist now? "You are nothing, your people is everything" and all that?
Wow, and they told me at school that Fascism was a right wing ideology...
Please understand finally that extremism wants to take your liberties. Left or right doesn't really matter here, any extremist ideology puts the ideology over your personal freedoms.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You're totally ignoring the inflation that would happen when people suddenly have this "extra" money.
You still get your full UBI regardless of how much money you make, dramatically increasing the incentives to work.
No, because employers don't want to dramatically increase the incentives. They are getting enough employees with the current system, so with UBI, they can lower the wages, and still get enough people.
*Whoosh*
They're not talking about "incentives from employers". They're talking about the personal incentive ("incentive (n): something that incites or tends to incite to action or greater effort, as a reward offered for increased productivity.") to work. Aka, under most welfare systems, there's a "welfare cliff" where if a person works more, their income actually drops as they lose their benefits - and thus there's a disincentive to work past that cliff. Under UBI, there is no such cliff - the more you work, the more you earn.
It's a serious issue. A lot of people who are on benefits for various physical or mental disabilities have "marginal" ability to work. Many want to work, but are afraid that if they take on a job, lose their benefits, and then it ultimately turns out that their condition prevents them from fulfilling the job requirements (a very real risk), that they'll be screwed. It keeps a lot of people who might actually be able to work out of the job marketplace for no good reason.
We gotta go to a crappy town where I'm a hero.
and that they were likely enrolling in school with the added income
That single line torpedoes their entire "study". To rephrase the article summary in more honest words: "we found that people did work less, but we're just going to assume that they're going to school instead".
You can prove anything you want when you're willing to hand-wave away any data you don't like.
Because your drinking may cause you to lose your shitty job, or the stress/boredom of not being able to move forward socially or accomplish goals can drive you to drinking. Hence, why alcoholism and opioid addiction are often found in towns where industry has died.
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Please understand finally that extremism wants to take your liberties. Left or right doesn't really matter here, any extremist ideology puts the ideology over your personal freedoms.
Thank you. Glad to see someone gets it.
People like to say that the whole R/D thing is just like sports, where you cheer your own team and boo the other one.
But in sports, you're not rooting for the complete, total, and eternal annihilation of the other team. You play the game, you win or lose, no hard feelings (well, not many) and you come back again for a rematch. And again next season. The team is important, but the game is everything.
Ideology is a game for idiots. And far too many people are obsessive players.
Why are you still talking as if the GP was talking about employer-provided incentives when the GP was very clearly talking about personal incentives? It's almost looking as if you were trying to make a point about something else and decided to inject it into the conversation here because someone used a word you felt you could chain off of.
And yes, low-end wages can be expected to go down with UBI - as they should. Minimum wage should disappear, because it's just one of the many pieces of a patchwork currently in use to approximate a UBI. In turn, corporate tax rates can rise (compensating for the windfall to employers for not having to pay as much), in turn helping pay for the UBI.
That said, your notion that people would tend to only try to work up to $1200/mo take-home income (far below the US poverty line) is silly. And contradicted by the study that forms the basis of this Slashdot article.
We gotta go to a crappy town where I'm a hero.
There are also certain sectors of the population where, with enough children, a person simply MAKES more off welfare and benefits than they could possibly make off even a decently paying job.
And it's seeing cases like this that we know welfare for the truly broken system it is.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Salaries will drop, such that the personal incentives for work stay just as modest as they are now.
Not necessarily. Salaries will only drop if people are willing to work for less, which is not a given. A possibility equal to your scenario is that, with UBI place, people who feel more secure when employment lapses will not be willing to work for less and will demand more. Also possible, as the article alluded to, is people who feel they are not offered high enough wages may be more able to seek education or training so that they can move into a new job market that pays more, which would put upward pressure on wages. Markets are complicated.
You dont understand what UBI is. UBI is not promising prosperty for all, it is promising the basics (literally the "B" in the acronym). People have to give up all their liberties under UBI? You're just making up undesirable atributes for UBI now. What liberties would be lost under a policy of UBI?
You also decided to completely ignore my point that the failed states you mention used COMPLETELY DIFFERENT SYSTEMS and then you just repeated yourself. UBI is the same as these failed state communist policies because they both try to help people? Are apples the same as oranges because they're both food? What about social security, public education, public roads or any one of hundreds of other policies that exist to help people that exist in every successfull country in the world?
There are no negative examples for UBI because there are literally no examples of UBI in any form of meaningfull practice.
Your only valid point is that there are no positive examples of UBI which certainly does not mean it's doomed to failure as it is an untested idea. It only means it is not garunteed to succeed which I would certainly agree with.
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Part of the problem is that once you get a job benefits stop entirely. So if you don't get a job that pays enough, you're better off not working at all.
We could fix this by simply having benefits reduce in accordance with income rather than having them cutoff entirely.