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The First Basic Income Experiment in Germany Will Start in 2019 (basicincome.org)
Basic income is going to be tested in Germany next year. From a report: The setup of the experiment will be similar to the one now ending in Finland, which means there will be an unconditional cash transfer to 250 randomly selected people among those already receiving benefits (250 others will act as the control group), and evaluate the impact in terms of labor market behavior, health and social relations. Behind this initiative, to be initiated in May 2019, is the Sanktionsfrei organization, a non-profit managed by volunteer professionals from administration, IT-tech, communications and law. Sanktionsfrei (meaning "free from sanctions"), with headquarters in Berlin, specializes in helping sanctioned citizens by the Hartz IV social security system in Germany. It will conduct this experiment in Berlin, for a 3-year period, accepting volunteers who may apply for it through their website.
"unconditional cash transfer to 250 randomly selected people among those already receiving benefits (250 others will act as the control group),"
Oh, the honor!
Participating in the unconditional cash test and being in the control group who doesn't get a dime. That's love of science.
The program is similar to the one now ending in Finland, which means it will fail on purpose and there will not be a permanent UBI program in Germany and by extension the EU.
The people who run the world have announced their intention to starve us to death when our jobs are automated. If you live somewhere it's legal, buy guns.
You can't tell how it actually works unless everyone gets it and the society is given enough time to adjust to it.
"Citizen get in line for your rations, and watch what you say online, we are monitoring and scoring you. As always we do this is for your own good, and remember to praise your superior leaders."
Paraphrasing Dinesh D'Souza: I would rather have the ladder to climb, and yes its 'harder', but at least its not the rope controlled by someone else to be just holding on to and hoping.
So where does this leave Merkel's decision that other European countries needed 1 million young Syrian male migrants? Are they needed or not?
This experiment will be a yuuuuuge failure, like Trump and his wall.
Oh how lovely.
Give the masses just enough income so that they do not take notice of your ill gotten wealth and tyranny and rise up and hang you in your guilded enclave. We can not allow people to actually contribute to society, work and profit from their own endeavors and be independant could we?
Oh heavens forbid no!
Merry Xmas slaves and Happy New Year!
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
Is a sensible, logical, rational, cheap way to run a society, and gives the electorate the power to hire or fire those controlling the supply.
It doesn't make people lazy, all evidence says the opposite. Every scrap of evidence shows that crippling people's ability to work is what makes people lazy but that UI facilitates work.
It also facilitates good work, employers can't risk unsafe or abusive conditions. Furthermore, healthy people with adequate resources can - and probably will - work harder as a result.
Real work is about feeling fulfilled and productive, deep inate human needs, not about surviving to the weekend and dying young from work-related conditions.
There are other philosophies. Other countries are welcome to them, so long as they keep them to themselves. Every country should be free to live as it pleases, not as some other country's pet.
Will Germany's program meet the requirements? Doubt it. It's not a scale invariant concept, the numbers aren't statistically useful, the Germans are too rightwing to think collectively.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
i dont understand how this scheme is supposed to work.
people get money from the government for free. ok. i think we tried that before. the problem is that this concentrates power in the central bureaucracy and people wind up having no influence on the policies of the state. this results in a deficit of feedback loops so supply and demand of things like food and clothing go out of wack, everyone has cash but the stores are empty, for example, and then like in Poland, the govt eventually decides to cut payments, and the people rebel.
how is this going to solve unemployment? the problem with having no job is not just that you have no money - the problem is that you have no power, no position in society, and no voice. money is just a means for life, it is not life itself.
FTFA -- it's not the best translation but doesn't feel like a translation issue:
Participants will receive unconditionally the amount from whatever sanctions they will be subject to by job centers (e.g.: by not responding to certain job offers or refusing to get suggested training actions); Sanktionsfrei will always try to recover the sanction money through legal action, and if it does, the participant will transfer the contested amount back to Sanktionsfrei. Otherwise, each participant gets, for the whole time period of the experiment, the full amount of their social security benefits, no questions asked.
It would be really interesting if two people who disagree on the likelihood of success could agree on how to measure the success of this experiment.
Anyone have any suggestions on how to measure success of this experiment in a year or two or three, such that those who think it's a good idea AND those who think it won't work can both agree it's a reasonable way to measure success?
Posts above mine claim that all UBI studies have failed, and that UBI proponents always say "the study had to fail because not everyone in the country got it". If that's not true, is there any UBI proponent here who can imagine any way this study could support their position? What outcome of this study would you consider "success"?
Personally, based on history I think UBI is a really bad idea, but I'm open minded enough to look at the results of a study. What positive results should I be looking for? If you make a reasonable suggestion, I might agree that the result you suggest would in fact indicate a degree of success.
Like every Leftist "science" effort, the result is pre-decided and then work back from there.
But the truth is it will be a total failure.
Doesn't self-selection - or even preliminary self-selection - ruin such trials? Your sample doesn't then reflect the average population and you can't extrapolate from it accurately.
Ezekiel 23:20
^^ This same idiot complains about his taxes funding education. "Keep em stupid, keep em on Trump's payroll, and keep Trump on Putin's payroll - Republicanism will rise again!"
Nazi homosexual recruiter RAY MORRIS pushing debunked Nazi propaganda even after corrected, #ROPE
I would love to see this happen in the states as a program of the Federal Government but it will not happen any time soon because of the prevalent Libertarian ideology of no safety net whatsoever. Short of a major economic catastrophe, things will continue to lumber along in the new year much in the same way they have done this year.
That would perhaps be because there has never been a UBI program, and this is not one?
Or to you not understand what Universal means, and cannot read: 'which means there will be an unconditional cash transfer to 250 randomly selected people among those already receiving benefits'
This is just 'giving more to those already receiving government money' - ie: those least likely to use it well (note I am not commenting on their need, just their likely motivation/ability to work).
Why is it not a TRULY random selection of 250 people? Because the people designing it want it to fail. They cannot accept the possibility that they will lose control of the state dependent level of society where they can basically buy votes in return for welfare.
Simple, really.
"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results."
besides the desperate struggle for survival. Sure, you might be shallow to want any of them, but what about the rest of us? Folks who can be content to study, read, play video games, write music, paint, write software.
There's this Puritanical belief, crammed into your skull by various ruling classes, that the only thing that gives meaning to human life is desperately working to survive. We'd shook it off in the 60s and 70s, at least in the nerd community, and were looking forward to a life without constant toil and desperation. And somehow, against all odds, we sucked it down again.
I don't get it. In 2018 we shouldn't be struggling to survive. And we sure as hell shouldn't be romanticizing a desperate struggle for survival. I mean, I get that it's easy to fall for propaganda (that's kinda D'Souza's thing, he's a propagandist) but you'd think we'd have grown out of that too. It's not like we don't know what it is.
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Anyone have any suggestions on how to measure success of this experiment in a year or two or three, such that those who think it's a good idea
I don't think it's possible to measure the success or failure of something like UBI at year 2 or year 3 because I think it takes longer than 3 years to see actual changes in people's behavior. I think the bare minimum needs to be 5 years so that it at least gives someone enough time to go back to college. If we want to see actual results then look at the many smaller lottery winners with 20 year payouts. Does getting an extra 1k or 2k a month cause long term changes in behavior?
What continuously astounds me is people who dont understand that true UBI is actually a right wing/liberal concept.
Most people forget that UBI involves the REMOVAL of almost all other state payouts.
No pension, no unemployment, no housing, no sickness/disability benefit, no parental benefit, etc, etc.
State medical care is a gray area..
That is the reason UBI can function, because it removes a huge amount of corruption, bureaucracy, fraud, and inefficiency from the system and replaces it with something almost trivial to administer and deliver.
It removes the punishments for trying to succeed.
Politically, Socialists generally HATE UBI (at least those who understand it) as they believe the state is the best at decising how everything is distributed, and UBI is exactly the opposite of that.
Unfortunately it ALSO removes the states ability to reward and punish based on cash payouts to voters.
That is why it is never actually tried, and probably never will be, at least by a state - since it lowers their control.
The definition of Trump supporter is being too dumb even to understand the need for scientific study, factual verification. Just trust the old reductive slogan out of context. Slogans can't lie!
They import 2 plus million people, very few of which can work or will work.
This will simply reduce the value of money. So if you don't get a fairly immediate pay increase when this goes into effect, you're suddenly losing money.
This is kind of like qiantitive easing. Not good for the middle class at all.
Very basic economics and logic really. Very basic.
Humanity has tried nationwide UBI - USSR, Cuba, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, various native American reservations, Alaska - you CAN get guaranteed basic income until the money runs out. In case of Cuba it was using USSR money and Saudi Arabia and Alaska is using oil reserves to fund its population, native American reservations kind-of-work (although being blamed for alcoholism and other issues) until the casino goes bust.
In every case, everything works until you run out of - literally - someone else's money.
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I believe something needs to be done to keep society functioning if, as many expect, automation will lead to a fall in the demand for labour.
But I am skeptical of universal basic income, and there are aspects that for some strange reason never seem to be discussed:
1. Whose definition of basic? Is it subsistence, or some minimum of material comfort?
2. There are people with light mental illness who will still need social workers intervening in their management of adult responsibilities.
3. What happens if there's a change in technology or other societal change (could be global warming, or something else) that leads to a massive labour shortage?
4. Will there be inflation? Will changes in housing costs force people to relocate against their will?
5. Will people really be able to lead meaningful lives without employment? (Maybe you will, but will everyone?)
that finding meaning is remarkably easy. Especially in a civilization where so few are needed to do actual work .
Also, you have completley misunderstood basic income. BI means giving everyone enough for food, shelter healthcare, education and a modicum of entertainment. This has enormous society consequences. Here are a few:
1. People don't have to live in major cities just to have work. Housing prices will drop as a result.
2. The wealthy can no longer leverage their wealth into power as easily. They lose the threat of starvation and death from lack of medical care.
3. People can't be frightened into turning on each other by demagogues. Society as a whole becomes more stable.
4. The bad decisions people make when stressed (multiple studies have shown pressure does _not_ make diamonds, it makes garbage more compact) stop.
I can't overstate the impact of #2 and #3. And these are just the most obvious. Keeping our entire society except a lucky few at the top in a constant state of mild terror at the prospect of losing everything has far reaching consequences.
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> If we want to see actual results then look at the many smaller lottery winners with 20 year payouts. Does getting an extra 1k or 2k a month cause long term changes in behavior?
That's an interesting idea. That might be worth looking at. I haven't looked at it. I wonder what sample size we could find - winners of $1,000-$2,000 month for which we have long term information from a credible, unbiased source. It's time for me to get my daughter ready for bed, so I can't go hunting for that right now, but that may be a good thing. Without knowing the results, I'd be willing to say that would be an imperfect but useful sample, in order to get some idea of what the effects of UBI might be on recipients. Obviously it doesn't take into account the costs - every dollar of the money would have to be taken from someone else.
Without having seen any studies on people who won long term lottery payouts of $1,000-$2,000 / month, I'll willing to predict / guess that in most cases it didn't profoundly affect their lives. Anyone care to predict that it did?
Of course another limitation is that we don't know how their lives would have gone if they didn't win. We'd have to compare their improvement to the average improvement. As an example, consider of we find that 15% of recipients got a degree while getting the payout. Sounds good. But 20% of people who didn't win got a degree. So people getting the payout were LESS likely to get a degree than if they didn't get the payout.
If you make $32,400 per year you are in the top 1% of the wealthiest people on the planet:
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/050615/are-you-top-one-percent-world.asp
I would bet that many in the world think that you too are hoarding all of the wealth.
I've volunteered to do all those jobs actually. For a society to be able to, they need to have their needs met first. "All profit motive" doesn't go away because the poorest have basic income taken care of, DERP lol.
Where did you get that idea lol? Universal BASIC income. It does not mean nobody is going to work and earn a shitload more money than that. Maybe this is where 1/2 of these retards below are going so wrong, lol.
Ask Elon Musk. He tried to completely automate a car factory and couldn't get it done.
Do you really believe that all plumbers will be replaced by robots in 10-20 years? If so, put your money where your mouth is and invest in robotics companies.
I'll bet in 20 years time, we still have humans installing and maintaining pipes in this country - as well as many many other things.
Capitalism with a poverty safety net seems to be the best of both worlds. People and companies push themselves to work hard and find efficiency while those that become disabled are protected from extreme poverty.
We've built a system where even poor people are fat. Poverty used to mean starvation and death. Now poverty means using an old telephone and living in a bad section of town.
Poverty ain't what it used to be - and capitalism made that possible.
It's always a rope held by someone, whether honestly or not, whether accountable or not.
Incorrect. It can be a rope of that is the life you choose.
But if you are careful, rung my rung you build a ladder, that only you yourself is in control of.
You're welcome to your choice, just don't get in the way of mine.
You are welcome to your choice as long as you are not stealing from those working to build in order to simply sustain.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This is not a federal program - it's tantamount to random philantropy (though calling it that is a stretch), and about as 'scientific'. Welfare doesn't work, period. What does this millennial nonsense have to do with tech news, Slashdot editors?
Nobody is "voting" on this, moron. Republicans need to learn how to read. Seriously, if there were a warning on your ass, you'd still get your head fully stuck. Illiterate Republicans cannot be saved, sorry. Be best instead!
The Germans do realize that this has failed in every country that has tried this right?
Looks good on paper, at least to marketing and sales types, but in reality it really doesn't work all that well and is far from being efficient. Only really works properly if you believe in magic. So it goes with so-called 'Universal Basic Income'; simple math shows that it would quickly bankrupt any country that tried to implement it on a scale encompassing the majority of their population. I'm just surprised that a country like Germany is willing to entertain this nonsense, I assumed they were smarter than this.
I'm sure all of these people illegally migrating will be horrified at the prospect of being given money for nothing. They will all stop coming tomorrow.
Germany already has a professional unemployed class who collect "hartz 4".
These people already know all the tricks to keep getting their benefits and to rarely pay rent and not get kicked out.
If you are a property owner in Germany, the first rule is NEVER rent to a person on H4. While they are on H4, you are paid by the unemployment center. If the people get a low paying job or a part time job, then they have to pay you and not the H4 office. Which means you will likely never see a cent.
Then, since they are on H4, it is almost impossible to get them out of your building.
Even if they are literally destroying your building, you still need to start a long and costly legal battle which can take months to finally get them removed.
Then, the parasites move to the next victim.
Are there people who need a helping hand? Of course. Should we, as a society help them? Of course.
But we also need a common sense way of doing it. Why are people allowed to just keep popping out more and more babies so they never have to work?
I know many people who took a chance on H4 people and nearly every single one of them got totally screwed over for trying to help them out.
The only thing more money in their pockets will do is let them buy more stuff. Which I guess is great for the local liquor markets.
Since she is not long for power, she is finally signalling all the easties who have been placed throughout Germany proper that the night of the long knives approaches and Socialism Shall Rise Again! or is that The East Shall Rise Again? I get my slogans mixed up sometimes...
Italy as well will start a very extensive measure by allocating 7 * 10^9 € for the F.Y. 2019 and erogating up to 780 €/month to all people with an income lower than a given threshold (about 10.000 €/year). All that money will be tracked (e.g. cannot be used for lotteries and other uses defined "unethical") and the payee is compelled to attend training courses and the right to benefit from it will expire after 3 rejected job offers.
Actually, Alaska has what is known as a "permanent fund". Oil money goes into the PF, and payouts are from the dividends of the fund, and are averaged over several years of income. The payments are currently around 1/3 to 1/6th what even I think a UBI should pay out for the states.
It is structured such that the money should never run out.
From what I understand of the studies done on the Alaska PFD, it has been moderately successful at limiting poverty, limited by how much it is and that it is only paid out once a year.
I don't read AC A human right
It would be really interesting if two people who disagree on the likelihood of success could agree on how to measure the success of this experiment.
They could start by agreeing on the goal of the experiment. For starters don't call it an experiment of UBI if what they are testing isn't Universal, isn't Basic, and isn't Income.
I'm a libertarian who supports an UBI program:
My general plan:
Around $6k/year, paid in monthly installments of approximately $500 per person. This happens to be the federal poverty line for a household of 4. I'll also listen to proposals for $8k per adult, $4k per child(perhaps sliding by age?).
Eliminate all other non-medical welfare payments.
Restructure the tax system. It was neater before Trump changed things up, but basically eliminate the first two tax brackets and bump up the 3rd by 1-2% to pay for it. You don't need the lower tax brackets with the UBI providing initial support.
Payments are limited to US Citizens who are in country for a similar period as required eligibility for the Alaskan PFD. Non-Citizen legal residents and citizens who fail to meet the eligibility requirements get an equivalent non-refundable credit.
The goal is mainly to streamline the welfare system, eliminating welfare cliffs that encourage people to NOT work. With a proper UBI, you are always better off earning more money, as I'm only taxing it back at around 25%, could be as high as 33%, once you figure in state adjustments. Yes, this means that you'd only start paying federal taxes at $24k of income per person, maybe as low as $18k. Remember, this is per person income, not household. So the system is quite heavily progressive.
1. My definition is closer to subsistence. Basically, I'm for $6k/year, which is the federal poverty line in a grouping of four. Since I'm agnostic about somebody's actual living circumstances under the program, obviously some will be able to have more material comforts than others. The way I look at it, paying more for single person households, per person, just encourages people to live alone. The idea is to give them unrestricted money, allowing them to maximize their happiness/comfort with their specific situation, rather than having the government trying to tell them how to live. IE food stamps - you MUST spend $X on food, even if that is more food budget than you need, but you need to fix your car more urgently, etc...
2. This is tricky, I generally toss this stuff over to the medical side. IE you'd get social workers from medicare/medicaid, not through the morass of different welfare systems. My libertarianism is for great freedom and responsibility for competent adults. If they aren't a competent adult, such as you describe, or children, of course they need to be taken care of and protected.
3. Look towards WWII, I guess. Massive labour shortage there. Basically, as long as you haven't indexed the UBI too tightly to inflation, what would happen is that wages would start rising, inflating the cost of goods and services. The relative wages for working would rise, the relative lifestyle solely dependent upon the UBI would fall, and more people would get jobs.
4. Implementing a UBI as I would have the program should result in minimal amounts of inflation. Changes in housing costs forcing people to relocate? Probably. I'm mean like that. I'd compare it to being on a sinking ship, if you can no longer afford the rent you'll probably find yourself being unable to afford the other stuff shortly enough. You SHOULD move in such cases, as it is ultimately better for all. States and cities may, at their discretion, supplement the UBI with their own programs, of course.
5. This is a philosophical question where my first thought is "how many people live meaningful lives with employment?" I'll point out that "employment" is a fairly new thing. Even then, years ago you had around half the population solely concerned with running the household, and many of them found it meaningful. I guess it is up to the individual.
I don't read AC A human right
this is a joke. 25 participants is NOT a reasonable sample this is a flawed test from the start.
And then I'd use the next few payments to afford to take two weeks off and go on an additional vacation!
It would probably take years before people start snapping out of doing nothing and become productive even though they don't have to.
We have no idea what we're doing.
The impact of this type of thing on the human genome itself will result in degradation.
Humanity should be striving to perfect itself, not generate inefficient humans who only exist to languish.
This system will only serve to perpetuate a reliance on government and a perpetual state of childishness and lethargy.
This type of system will never work while government is corruptible and while humanity doesn't default to productivity.
That's like people saying Communism hasn't been tried.
They're too ignorant to see that Communism is the collective failure it always will be.
UBI is foolish and will result in mass corruption and mass murder, look at any communist nation for reference.
or the like. It's either that, communism, or dystopia. We're fast approaching a time when the wealthy and the ruling class just plain don't need us. If you want to see what happens to folks who aren't needed in our current civilization cast your eye to the Indian Reservations pre-casinos or to large swaths of Africa.
I don't see anything wrong with these taxes either. The people who'd be paying them aren't doing any work either, they're letting robots and a few engineers do all the real work. They're not workers, they're owners. The only value they add is "leadership". Anyone who's ever stat through a meeting with their company's upper management knows exactly what that's worth.
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If you give any subset of people money, those people will have RELATIVELY more money than they did before.
If you give everyone money, NOBODY will have more money RELATIVE to anyone else.
Ergo: All UBI "experiments" done on subsets of people will APPEAR to work, and are propaganda.
A proper universal basic income study must be random and long term. It should be set up something like this:
Randomly select a large sample of participants from the population under the age of majority. Upon reaching the age of majority, they are guaranteed for life to receive universal income payments, that are enough to cover average basic shelter and nutritious food costs. However, they become permanently ineligible for any other welfare programs. Provide an opportunity to opt-out upon reaching the age of majority, before receiving any payments. Any participant having a child should get additional payment, that is enough to cover child's basic shelter and nutritious food costs.
Observe their academic and career advancements and achievements. Over the course of a few decades it should be pretty clear how UBI recipients compare to the rest of the population in terms of their health and well-being, tax contributions and community engagement.
The EU will soon put an end to that silly experiment. Italians need to understand and accept that they cannot decide for themselves any more.
When this goes nationwide, I'll bet they'll steal the assets from the middle classes and upper lower classes to fund it. That way the 1/10 of 1% get to keep theirs. Rise up and kill their leaders now.
Itâ(TM)s back.
Look into brunei.
Its said they r really really taking care of the citizens due to the oil to country size ratio.
Also they are absolutely unremarkable compared to nearby Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand.
The concept of Quantitative Easing is sort of worn out at this point so the next logical step are trials for helicopter money all around the world disguised as UBI.