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Finland Basic Income Trial Left People 'Happier But Jobless' (bbc.com)
Giving jobless people in Finland a basic income for two years did not lead them to find work, researchers said. From a report: From January 2017 until December 2018, 2,000 unemployed Finns got a monthly flat payment of $685. The aim was to see if a guaranteed safety net would help people find jobs, and support them if they had to take insecure gig economy work. While employment levels did not improve, participants said they felt happier and less stressed. When it launched the pilot scheme back in 2017, Finland became the first European country to test out the idea of an unconditional basic income. It was run by the Social Insurance Institution (Kela), a Finnish government agency, and involved 2,000 randomly-selected people on unemployment benefits. It immediately attracted international interest - but these results have now raised questions about the effectiveness of such schemes.
It did not reduce unemployment, but it reduced the stress of that situation for people. That social impact of that cannot be ignored. In addition, this was only 2,000 random people out of 400,000. That is not enough to determine the economic impact on any sort of measurable scale.
This experiment it is a starting point, not a failure.
What happened to the crime and traffic rates?
What is the cost of living in Finland?
Not enough info in the story.
The results from experiments with a random selection of 2000 people cannot be extrapolated to a hypothetical situation of Universal Basic Income. Job dynamics when everybody has a guaranteed source of income would be... interesting.
This is actually a really shitty test. Give wage slaves a year of guaranteed pay and of course they will take the year off, it's the only time in their lives they'll get a year-long vacation before they've gone senile. Basic income tests which don't last for life are invalid (to say nothing of their non-randomized selection of candidates.) This whole study was propaganda to keep plebs thinking they need to spend every waking hour of the good parts of their life working for someone other than themselves.
If you read the article, you'd see that the people enrolled in the pilot had similar rates of employment to a control group. It isn't that they don't bother -- they bother just as often regardless of whether they have a basic income.
If it were reported accurately, this would alleviate the fear that you just parroted, that people would stop working.
Is there anything dumber in this world (that are still recognisable human) than socialists?
I would say capitalists, but they are not still recognisable as humans. Darn.
I know people on welfare that get small checks like this each month
No you don't. Welfare hasn't given "checks" in a LOOOOONG time. Hell, about the only way you are getting any welfare *money* is TANF. It is very temporary, you have to be practically homeless, and it isn't enough to cover even a fraction of basic necessities
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
A lot of people like to point out that basic income will not motivate people to work, yet we're subsidizing that laziness, and that's certainly true. However, the mistake is assuming that we aren't paying for it already. I would rather use a basic income to replace all of the existing social programs that we spend billions of dollars on per year. It's far better solution in that it's more adaptive (food stamps are useless if you need to repair your car to get to a job) and less expensive to administer since it's a single program.
But it's also necessary to look at it in terms of other costs it might help prevent. People without money or any way to obtain it aren't going to sit and starve. More often than not they turn to some form of crime. It costs a lot of money to hire a police force necessary to deal with that crime and to incarcerate the criminals who perpetuate it. If $700 a month stops us from having to pay almost four times that amount to lock that person up in jail, we're recognizing cost savings there as well.
I think that large scale government wealth redistribution schemes are folly, but a basic income is the best way to go about doing it. From a utilitarian point of view, we're already spending massive amounts of money on these types of programs. I think it's a good compromise because the left gets their government program and the right gets a smaller government.
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Read the article: "while some individuals found work, they were no more likely to do so than a control group of people who weren't given the money."
IOW, the UBI did not reduce their willingness to find work. It had no apparent effect at all.
I do not have a signature
I'm on the fence about the whole thing but I find it interesting that there's an assumption that the result was a bad thing. I don't believe in an afterlife so you're born, you live, you die. The only thing that makes much sense during that period is to try and be happy and this study seemed to improve their happiness.
Now, one might say 'fuck that, I paid for their happiness which makes me unhappy' which makes really good sense.
The real question is, is there sufficient free energy in the system that we can provide food and lodging for humanity if they don't contribute *IF* we also provide increasing incentives to contribute. So you get a basic income for doing nothing and more and more for actually contributing to the system.
I've seen no compelling objective modeling either way.
Yeah, they should learn to code and then they can work for themselves.
Is there anything dumber in this world (that are still recognisable human) than socialists?
Yes. Trump supporters. Though the ones in the KKK and the nazis are hard to recognize as human.
More seriously, it was an experiment. Relax. Yes the outcome was fairly predictable but sometimes what seems obvious actually isn't correct. So you run an experiment to find out. It was possible we'd find out something unexpected. This sort of data is why I think people who talk nonsense about a "post scarcity society" are talking complete nonsense because most people don't want to work if they don't have to.
Thanks, after reading your comment I went and read the article more closely. It says
Mr Simanainen says that while some individuals found work, they were no more likely to do so than a control group of people who weren't given the money.
As you say, that's an incredibly disingenuous summary. The big worry about UBI is that people won't work. The test is "do people work less?" and even on this very limited test, the answer is no. That's the unexpected (by anti-UBI people) answer that makes this test a resounding success. The fact that it's being sold as anything else is Finland's government and the media being dishonest.
A few things:
1 - They did not get employment more than their counterparts (it doesn't help 'em find jobs).
2 - They did not get employment less than their counterparts (they don't take the money and slack off).
3 - They were collecting this instead of unemployment or other benefits (which may have different bureaucratic ramifications one way or another depending on program implementation overhead).
4 - They were happier.
5 - This is a successful experiment - it produced data in a controlled manner which can likely be replicated.
There are a few narratives left to be explored. Here are some samples of such stories:
(PRO) "UBI, as implemented, costs less than the collection of unemployment, food stamps, housing assistance, and other assorted benefits. Giving poor people money through a unified program decreases administration costs and allows for individual choice regulation in the marketplace without affecting employment outcomes."
(debatable-PRO) "UBI, as implemented, is more expensive than unemployment costs in implementation, but results in happier and less stressful citizens."
(neutral) "UBI, as implemented, did not result in people just sitting about the house."
(debatable-CON) "UBI did not result in additional risk-taking, business-starting, or other activities, as hypothesized."
(CON) "UBI cost the taxpayer money to pay people to be happier while they sat at home doing nothing productive."
"You want more joblessness, you give out rewards (in the form of cash payment) for being jobless."
And the best part is that the solution is in your post:
"You want people to smoke less, you put higher taxes on cigarettes"
We need to put higher taxes on people who are unemployed. That'll solve unemployment. It's so obvious I wonder why its not in every school textbook.
I'm in a well paying job that I'm not particularly fond of (though it's not terrible). I'd love to branch out and start my own business doing something I enjoy however that's a lot of risk, especially when I have a young son at home.
If I was guaranteed a small basic income that may give me the safety net I need to get something started.
But that's just my take. Every person would be different.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
You really shouldn't live like you are. To say you can't change that is a lie you tell yourself. Cut one minor expense or two a month and you can have thousands saved over years of working. Take serious stock of your expenses and you can save many thousands. To say you can't do that is an idiotic lie you tell yourself.
My household income is >$200k but my cable, movie and video entertainment bill is literally $0 out of habits formed when my income was not this high. I go to the library and check out TV shows and movies and watch youtube. I had netflix once until they decided to make it all about minorities. Now I have an extra $120 a year to save. Over 30 years, cancelling netflix alone is $3,600 without accounting for investment earnings.
Reduced stress.... good
Happier... good
Don't have to find a shit job.... good
I should note that all of the people selected for the experiment were jobless at the start. Is it a surprise that they were jobless at the end? Some of them did find work in spite of being paid not to work.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Not every business owner is wealthy... something the liberal left believe...
Nevertheless "free money" to "wealthy business owners" or to lazy people only results in inflation eventually.
Granted, I live paycheck to paycheck and have a small savings to take care of minor emergencies. But nothing to cover a single month of expenses.
Why the hell are you doing that? It seems like you recognize the folly, but yet you choose to continue to do so.
I thought that one of the big benefits of UBI is that it replaces a bunch of other complex, difficult-to-manage and costly programs. TFA does not state if they saw any cost savings from running the program. People who want to work are going to eventually find jobs. People who want to abuse the system are going to abuse the system. The question is if UBI is easier and cheaper to manage than supposed programs to encourage people to go back to work.
I am not interested in articles about life extension advancements.
No one says that UBI makes people work more, just that it is not an impediment to people working. I'd say the result they found is completely what would be expected for a successful test.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Yet, they back you up and help you because they want to get your movement and warp and distort it to their true goal.
I don't know if you noticed, but the political systems we have don't exist in a vacuum.
There is the old and dreadful monarchy trying to get back, its the natural human system and it sucks. All capitalism does is promise every greedy piece of lard on this planet the chance of being a king, but then yanks it, unless the system gets corrupted enough one gets to buy it which is what is happening.
The socialism you defend is a LOT weaker at holding back kings, which is why you always end up with one such as castro, mao, chavez etc..
So naturally, the megacorporations want you to replace capitalism by socialism, so it's easy to put a bullet on your head after you finished and become kings.
But i'm not saying capitalism is a perfect system, far from it, it is atrocious at times, just not as atrocious as the monarchy that want to come back, and a better system would be one that is better at keeping the kings at bay than capitalism, not one that just surrender to em like socialism does.
The problem with this basic law is that it is a grade school level understanding of the pattern. It isn't obvious or self evident, it is a super simplified misunderstanding of game theory that no one who has studied the field in any depth takes seriously. It only appeals to people who don't know any better and want something 'obvious' to validate their ignorance.
Well yes and it was given to people who are unable or unwilling to work now. Make it a decent sum and give it to working class people who are at least 25 and make a similar amount now. See if their investments, wealth, and income increase across the group over five years.
So, if I understand what you're saying, handing out free benefits to people (instead of them earning them) makes them feel better but essentially doesn't improve their condition so you're left with a largely dependent group of people who cannot fend for themselves?
http://www.hup.harvard.edu/cat...
Who'd a thunk it?
-Styopa
There isn't enough info, and I doubt a 2k test run will yield statistically detectable changes in crime and traffic rate.
(Aside: what if crime rates actually went up due to UBI?)
The biggest problem with 2k doing the test is; that's not enough people to tank the economy if this turns out to be economically important.
That said, I would say that happiness in life is ultimately the most important thing. Happiness is what makes life worth living; but if the economy collapsed because of UBI, I don't think people would be happy for long.
You can't experiment with UBI on 2000 people- you need to do it with a whole region, or country... I wouldn't want to be living in one of the first test places though in case it went wrong.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
The point of UBI is to make people happier not have them work more. The problem is that there isn't enough work.
And another problem is that there's not enough money.
We don't advocate feeding wild animals since it introduces long-term, bad behaviors such as a lack of foraging skills, attracting too many animals to an area, and increased reproduction rates due to an abundance of food. It also increases the risk of a disease outbreak due to more animals in the area. So why do we promote basic-income programs for younger, healthy people?
Don't we already have a similar situation in the USA - people who win a lottery? That would be an interesting group to study, to see what people do when they get a pot of money that isn't transformative (i.e. hundreds of millions), but sustaining (i.e. gives them what amounts to an annuity of something resembling a UBI, or is enough to basically replace their pre-winnings salary).
Probably... although the majority of winners do take the whole pot of money... and the majority of them are back to their old wealth levels within 3 years.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
There is one modifier to that I'd add.
Statistically, the people that are most likely to win the lottery are the ones that play the most. Which would have a high correlation with people with gambling addictions. Winning a lot of money for a gambling addict means they can gamble more at a higher level.
If you only followed people who won the lottery who previously only bought 1 ticket a week, they would be closer to the average person.
The main theory behind a UBI is reducing the diminishing returns from going from unemployed to employed. The loss of benefits (unemployment, food stamps, disability, etc) often is as much or close to the income from an entry level job. So instead of getting paid ~$12 / hour for work (after taxes, etc.), you're only seeing a ~$1-2 /hour increase. For many people it's not cost effect to get work when they already on some programs.
The UBI is basically supposed to say "Go get a job, look at all the extra money!"
[Not that I agree/disagree. It has has some interesting ideas, and I think experiments like this is a good idea. But, people are selfish bastards, so I'm not optimistic.]
"We can't just generalize "people" because there are some which have virtually no chance of getting a job."
No but we can generalize currently unemployed people and know they have a higher probability of having a disadvantage in job seeking. A more useful test might have been to give a decent UBI to a group that makes a sum on par with that UBI. In 5-10 years are they living on the UBI, continuing to earn twice the income (and probably reach a higher tax bracket even if you don't tax the UBI itself but only count it for that purpose. Have they increased their wealth and earnings at a greater rate than the control group who doesn't have the UBI?
It's the same clueless problem again and again a UBI might organically eliminate the need for many social programs (it should be high enough that nobody qualifies for them) but it isn't charity or a gift to the poor.A UBI is to provide a stronger position for workers to negotiate. Lower the risk of opportunity exploitation and ultimately to provide a means to ensure workers have a fallback when the jobs go away. If you match the UBI dollar per dollar to earned income you provide double incentive to upward advancement and move millions of people into a taxable range. That will make taxation less top heavy and you'll be enabling the growth of massive investment wealth, the returns will generate more taxes, provide for retirement and stimulate the economy. That also leads to a substantially more solvent social retirement program like social security.
The test is "do people work less?" and even on this very limited test, the answer is no.
The article said no such thing. It said that some of the participants found work, and that they were not more likely to do so than the control group. While many people seem to be taking this for granted, the article never said that participants were just as likely to find work as the control group. The full results of the study will not be released until next year. My impression from the article was that they are admitting that they didn't get the results they wanted (more employment) but at least for now are avoiding the subject of just how much negative impact the experiment had on employment rates among the participants while attempting to refocus attention on other aspects like the participants' reported "happiness".
Regarding those who did get jobs: All the participants are well aware that this experiment won't last forever, so it makes sense to plan for what happens after it ends. How might that change under a true UBI, where they can count on receiving payments for the rest of their lives?
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
Have you considered the stress that people experience when they need to pony up the money when taxes are being paid?
If this causes you as much stress as "my children are starving and homeless", you need to re-evaluate your life.
The trial is limited by its length as well as choice of participants.
From the article:
From January 2017 until December 2018, 2,000 unemployed Finns got a monthly flat payment of €560 (£490; $685).
Very few people would stop looking for work, or even consider a career change for the equivalent an $8000 check. If I wanted to start a business, I would need at least 2-3 years of savings, and if the business fails, I'd want something to tide me over until I find a new job. If I were to change careers to do something I think is beneficial to mankind, but doesn't pay much, such as teaching, I'd want enough to last me to retirement.
The other problem is that unemployed people are already looking for jobs. The reason they don't have one is because they can't find one. Giving them money makes no difference. To see the economic effects of UBI, you'd have to give it to the entire population, which in turn stimulates demand and thus business and job growth.
If they want to do a proper study, it should be 20 years, with a representative sample of individuals from all walks of life. An effort should be made to track spending habit changes, which would inform us on the potential wider economic impact.
I would say the goal should be healthiness and fitness for work, which is closely related to hapiness.
I (and I suspect others as well) have a fundamental disagreement with this argument. My happiness in life is, at best, tenuously related to my work. I have a job that pays quite well, has an acceptable level of stress to me, and whose activities I find rewarding and engaging. Despite all this, the happiest times in my life are, without question, not related to my work. They're spending time with my wife, my family, and my friends. Or pursuing my hobbies. Or traveling. Or exploring new interests. I work where I do, doing what I do because it is the optimal way the society I exist in will allow me to enjoy those things the way I want to. I am at peace with how this has worked out for me, but I am not willing to concede that the situation cannot be improved for both myself and society at the same time.
I accept that the ability to perform work is what you believe will end up bringing people happiness. And, for you, maybe that is indeed true. Maybe for you work is intrinsically rewarding and a goal in and of itself. For me, it is not.
This is actually a really shitty test. Give wage slaves a year of guaranteed pay and of course they will take the year off, it's the only time in their lives they'll get a year-long vacation before they've gone senile. Basic income tests which don't last for life are invalid (to say nothing of their non-randomized selection of candidates.) This whole study was propaganda to keep plebs thinking they need to spend every waking hour of the good parts of their life working for someone other than themselves.
Year long vacation??? You are seriously overestimating what a luxurious al life you can lead on $695 dollars per month and it makes you sound like one of those clueless conservatives who think single mothers are living the high life on 7.25 dollars an hour working 16 hours a day 7 days a week while raising three kids. Speaking for myself 695 dollars per month would not even be enough to pay for rent or pay off the mortgage, even if I downgraded to a dirty cockroach paradise of a living space, not even close. If I wanted to prioritise not starving to death over paying off the mortgage on that UBI, I'd have to settle for housing in the form of a nice cardboard box under a bridge, that way, 695 dollars would do me fairly well for food, washing and clean clothes. If somebody held a gun to my head and made me choose between this $695 UBI, and working somewhere as a dish washer (instead of what I usually do, which is coding) I'd pick the dishwasher job in a heartbeat because even a crappy job like that just pays much better.
Sudden wealth that you're not used to dealing with is nowhere similar to handling a small sum that's less than average wage. You also don't suddenly have to deal with all the new "friends" that show up wanting a piece of the pie.
Just another day in Paradise
The reporting so far is both preliminary as well as pretty biased. One of the things that's not coming out of this so far is the personal and societal cost savings due to that happiness and reduction in stress.
We know that stressed, unhappy people don't preform as well at work or as parents, they tend to be sicker and have more chronic illnesses, and in general are less willing to take risks. If UBI doesn't change their ability to get a job in the short-term, it might in the long-term. It might also let them take care of some medical or mental issues which will cost more to deal with in the future. It might let them be better parents and thus raise kids who are better adapted to be engaged and employed citizens. It might let the employed stay employed, either through better performance or allowing them to get through a hardship like a vehicle accident or illness.
Looking at this just through the lens of "did more take jobs" is ignoring what UBI is supposed to be doing: It's supposed to be replacing most of our social safety nets. If it turns out that it's reducing the need for recipients to access those services, and if they are less of a cost burden on society than they would be without it, then it's doing its job.
Simply focusing on jobs like the GP troll which started this thread did is a really dishonest measure of whether or not it's successful.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
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Why stop there? Disable all trade outside of a normal walking distance. Why should I in California have to deal with products made with substandard wages in Alabama? Why should Broward County have to deal with imports from Dade county? Why should the Bronx have to deal with uppity Manhattan?
The bulk of the homeless, maybe even the majority, are mentally ill. Reagan shut down the mental hospitals (aka insane asylums) in the 1980s with the idea that the states should fund them like they did every other medial expense except Medicare. The states never picked up the tab, so they closed down, and all those people got dumped on the streets.
A lot of the rest are probably like you (I assume, since you don't give any financial details). Smart, well-educated, and capable of doing a decent job at work. But financially illiterate. I worked for a couple years at a job making $30k. I was shocked by how many of my co-workers at the same salary range lived paycheck-to-paycheck. Their MO seemed to be to deposit their paycheck in their bank account, and pay their monthly bills. After those were covered, they'd use money for impulse buys until the ATM said their bank account was empty, Then they'd hunker down and try to make it until the next paycheck. "The ATM says I don't have any more money" was a phrase I heard all too often. I never understood how those paycheck advance loan places stayed in business until I saw how common this lifestyle was. And it explained why so many people go into credit card debt (I pay mine off every month and thought everyone else did too, until I saw how my co-workers lived).
In the meantime, I (on the same salary mind you) was scrupulous, maybe even paranoid, to save what money I could. I didn't go to movie theaters, preferring to rent a video with friends so we could all watch it together. I rarely ate out, taking the time to prepare most of my own meals, and tried to encourage my friends to hold potluck-style get-togethers instead of eating out. When I did eat out, I always drank water instead of ordering a $2 soda or coffee. Speaking of which I never paid more than $1 for a beverage, and the first time I walked into a Starbucks and saw the prices, I was so shocked it almost ruined the date. On road trips I'd always try to arrange as many people as we could squeeze into the car to go along so we could share fuel, entrance, and parking expenses. All while paying for my own health and dental insurance (paranoia helped there). By the end of the year I'd saved up enough to buy myself a couple thousand dollars worth of new photo equipment as a Christmas present to myself, which still retaining a savings buffer big enough to cover almost 6 months of expenses.
I look back on my high school education, and what was missing, what's badly needed, was a semester-long course on financial management. How to balance your monthly expenses (used to be balancing your checkbook). The importance of creating a monthly budget (which is trivial now that you can run a spreadsheet on your phone for free). What the interest rate on your savings account means long-term. How those little maintenance and late fees build up over a year to eat a sizeable chunk of your savings. The power of compounding interest, and why it's better to save up and wait to buy a big ticket item, rather than take a loan to get it immediately. How insurance works and when it is/isn't a good idea to use it (if you can't afford to pay for a failure, you need to buy insurance). The difference between gambling, insurance, and investing in stocks (yes there's a difference - if you think there isn't then count yourself among the financially illiterate). Taxes, how to file them, the different options (standard deduction vs itemized), common deductions and exemptions so you know what kinds of spending are encouraged by our tax code, heck, what the difference is between a deduction and exemption and credit. And a brief tutorial on investing, so you know how to compare all the different options like a savings account vs CD vs money market fund vs mutual fund vs stocks vs municipal bonds. Your credit report, what helps you get good credit, what gives you bad credit, and how you can detect and expunge wrong info from your report. What all those terms and conditions mean when taking out a loan/mort
"Yeah, I guess ... where does government get the money from then?"
The federal reserve tap is one option. Money is already being pumped out to banks for lending, just pump it via UBI instead. Ideally don't give the new money away directly though, give the task of investing it and keeping it solvent to the Fed. Since the Fed will be investing that money it will boost the economy. It'll do wonderful things to tax revenues. I wouldn't tax the UBI but I'd count it toward SS tax and your tax bracket. Probably add additional brackets as some have suggested.
The additional funds will mean wealth and investment growth in the middle class which will also boost the economy. The idea here is that as automation increases and jobs disappear without replacements they replaced with an income stream derived from the growth and profits of the companies which cut the jobs.
fixes benefit cliffs that make it better to not work
That is by far the strongest appeal of a system like this. It all removes the inefficient black markets that foodstamps create. If I could ever believe this would be done instead of all the existing welfare programs and EITC, I'd be all for it.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Well, actually there is enough money. Or, rather, resources. If the goal is just to fulfill the foundation of the pyramid of needs, we're more than capable to do this. We can actually give people food&shelter.
What we can't give everyone is a job.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
But, what do you do with the significant number of people that, rather than spend their UBI on food, shelter and other necessities of life....they BLOW it on drugs or other bad choices?
What if they do this for 2-6 months or more in a stretch?
Do you then let them starve on the street? What about their kids, these people fuck too you know.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
In most places in the west, you can have all the necessities and then some with minimum incomes (either unemployment or otherwise). The rates are calculated based on the price of bread, income, communications etc.
In most parts of the US, actually in all parts of the US, it will provide for a BASIC rent if the state doesn't outright pay your rent (like NY and CA where rents can be outrageous in the cities).
Plenty of people live at the minimum income range across the entire US, whether or not they have a job, the majority of them does not end up stealing their way through life. This notion that you are required to steal from the rich because you are poor is a myth and extends well into the left mythos, where even if you do well, you are encouraged to steal from the rich because they don't "deserve" their wealth.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
My wife and I have a household income of right about $200K, and we live in a 3-bedroom house within city limits, on a mortgage payment of $12K/year (I.e. not expensively). I am almost 50 and she is 43.
If the govt guaranteed us $100K/year free and clear of taxes for the rest of our lives, we would quit our jobs instantly and never look back.
We would gladly give up money for time to fuck off.
Consider this. Your are currently unemployed. You receive welfare (which, admittedly isn't a glamorous life), but you make due with what you have. You could get a low paying job to pay your own way, but that would reduce your welfare benefits significantly. So you can either not work and get by, or work 40 hours a week for a slightly better paycheck. Now introduce UBI. If you don't work, your shitty welfare life remains the same. If you do work, you get your paycheck + the old welfare benefits (UBI). Definitely an incentive to work. All sounds wonderful, except people forget the part where taxpayers STILL pay the UBI for working people, the same as the freeloaders. Where does this extra money come from??
They starve to death and cease being a problem? If a person has the means to survive and chooses a drug-addled death instead, I don't see how that's anyone else's business. These sorts of programs are generally conceived to alleviate the gross inequalities of capitalism and bad luck, not make unfortunate adults into wards of the state who are denied the right to exercise free will. And I would imagine that begging would become *far* less effective (and thus appealing) when everyone knows that you had plenty of money for food and shelter but chose to blow it all on other things instead.
There's also already a range of voluntary boarding homes available for people incapable of taking care of themselves - an honest one would automatically deduct food and housing expenses from your monthly stipend on the day it was deposited and leave the rest of your money alone, or dole it out as a daily or weekly allowance to avoid major shortage problems toward the end of the month.
For kids - free meals at school is an extremely effective solution once they reach school age. Infants and toddlers are a trickier problem, but one that can fairly effectively be attacked from the opposite end of the age spectrum by making free birth control available to everyone - in my experience most junkies don't actually want kids, they just can't be bothered to avoid them. So, free IUDs or implants for women, and free Vasogel or similar for men (once it's approved) - you don't want to use something that they can easily mess up, nor anything permanent that they might choose to avoid. That also has the added benefit of largely preventing children from being born with drug-related problems.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Doesn't productive activity have to be involved somewhere?
It's usually done by the people that aren't satisfied with taking home $600/month.
People don't work if they don't have to, news at 11. I mean, this is common sense, no? Easily 9 in 10 people wouldn't lift a finger if they could have shelter, food, and healthcare without lifting a finger. I would, but there's no way I'd work on anything I'm not interested in.
There isn't enough info, and I doubt a 2k test run will yield statistically detectable changes in crime and traffic rate. (Aside: what if crime rates actually went up due to UBI?)
The biggest problem with 2k doing the test is; that's not enough people to tank the economy if this turns out to be economically important.
That said, I would say that happiness in life is ultimately the most important thing. Happiness is what makes life worth living; but if the economy collapsed because of UBI, I don't think people would be happy for long.
You can't experiment with UBI on 2000 people- you need to do it with a whole region, or country... I wouldn't want to be living in one of the first test places though in case it went wrong.
The closest to a real life test of the sort you're talking about was communal farms where everybody got an equal share of the harvest--regardless of how much effort they put in.
Turns out that many people are very lazy and will put in as little work as they believe they can get away with...which meant the harvest was bad, and a small group of people did the bulk of the work for functionally nothing, because they got as much as the person who didn't as much as twitch a finger to help. Which meant they stopped contributing labor--since they got the same as somebody who contributed nothing, they had no incentive to not match the minimum contribution--which meant that the fields just simply went unworked and the only people who ate were those who thought to raise food for themselves.
Oh, and we got ideas like those who won't work, won't eat. (Those who can't work generally would get charity--even if it was in the form of the community finding some kind of work they could do, especially when it was seen as demeaning to not be given some job, no matter how symbolic it was.)
This also is pretty common in cultures which aren't that far away in time from having been running on subsistence--somebody who doesn't contribute and isn't basically an investment is a parasite on their community, if they don't have that many basic resources to spare.
You really should look into answers to your own questions as there is a great deal of accessible literature devoted to exactly this problem...unless of course you just want to bash UBI programs. If that is your intention, well done!
A UBI is not intended to fix drug addiction issues. If you want to address that problem, you should be looking at policies intended to do just that. The best policies I'm aware of are legalization of all recreational drugs and prescribing drugs as part of a universal healthcare system.
Most of the issues surrounding addiction are made much worse by current laws and enforcement strategies. The social costs to users and the people they victimize are almost completely eliminated through legalization by both prescribing and providing them with appropriate and safe drugs, including the very narcotics they are addicted to, as part of a treatment program.
Doesn't the US have an old age pension system? Aren't there a lot of parallels between such a system and a UBI? Isn't a pension system supported by tax dollars basically just a UBI for the elderly? Don't we see these systems as having an overwhelmingly positive effect?
I desperately want UBI rolled out as I see it massively increasing the efficiency of the work-force by removing the dead-weight... No. The negative weight. You know what I'm talking about: That guy who spends three quarters of his day wandering around talking to people and therefore wasting 1.5 equivalents of time.
In other words, if you really want to test UBI, deploy an UBI set instead of something which doesn't resemble it in the slightest.
> But, what do you do with the significant number of people that, rather than spend their UBI on food, shelter and other necessities of life....they BLOW it on drugs or other bad choices?
But ... that's their problem, not yours. It's not the job of other citizens to morally police how other people spend their money.
"The closest to a real life test of the sort you're talking about was communal farms where everybody got an equal share of the harvest--regardless of how much effort they put in."
That's make sense on a society where labour makes a difference, but we are heading to a society were labour means shit and what really meets ends is ownership of increasingly labour-less means of production. A totally different scenario.
Key phrase here is "heading towards." Until we have a 100% post-scarcity system that can maintain itself indefinitely without a human twitching a finger, labor does not mean shit and the last thing anybody who does not expect to be part of the ruling class should want is to have the state have control of the means of production and the distribution of goods. You want this to end well? Every bit of the system needs to be not scarce--including the means of production and everything one might need to run it forever--so as to ensure no group could get a monopoly, and the state itself needs to have slightly less power than a dead cockroach.