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Finland's Basic Income Experiment Shows Recipients Are Happier and More Secure (yahoo.com)
An anonymous reader quotes Bloomberg:
Unemployed people derive significant psychological benefits from receiving a fixed amount of financial support from the state, according to a landmark experiment into basic income in Finland that highlights the disadvantages of the country's existing means-tested system.
Initial results of the two-year study had already shown that its 2,000 participants were no more and no less likely to work than their counterparts receiving traditional unemployment benefit. Thursday's set of additional results from the social insurance institution Kela showed that those getting a basic income described their financial situation more positively than respondents in the control group. They also experienced less stress and fewer financial worries than the control group, Kela said in a statement... They had more trust in other people and social institutions, and showed more faith in their ability to have influence over their own lives, in their personal finances and in their prospects of finding employment
Finland is the first country in the world to test universal basic incomes at national level.
Initial results of the two-year study had already shown that its 2,000 participants were no more and no less likely to work than their counterparts receiving traditional unemployment benefit. Thursday's set of additional results from the social insurance institution Kela showed that those getting a basic income described their financial situation more positively than respondents in the control group. They also experienced less stress and fewer financial worries than the control group, Kela said in a statement... They had more trust in other people and social institutions, and showed more faith in their ability to have influence over their own lives, in their personal finances and in their prospects of finding employment
Finland is the first country in the world to test universal basic incomes at national level.
financial security makes people feel financially secure.
It's a fascinating study and i applaud Finland for this experiment. But i wonder if the psychology of these people will change as they get use to this basic income, and then, over time, they take it for granted and even forget it is there. In other words, will they return to a state of depression over time?
2k participants from a cherry-picked sample set is not a national level test.
There are no atheists when recovering from tape backup.
It wasn't even a proper UBI.
The people who received it had some marginal taxes reduced, not eliminated.
They had some beuracracy for claiming their benefit reduced, not eliminated.
The only representative experiment would be if they would offer:
- a living wage,
- until the end of their lives,
- for minimum wage workers.
The amount of people who quit their jobs should tell you if UBI is feasible at all, or not.
Whose to say it won't?
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They take money from me and then give it back sans what they give to other people who aren't working - and, of course, a processing fee.
As automation improves and less work is needed, we need to get over this ancient idea that one must work to make a living. Work is necessary for our mental health, but meaningful work - work that we find interesting and engaging - is what makes us happy.
And it funny how many people have a problem with lower class people not having to work, but a someone who inherited billions and site back and does nothing and collects dividends from their investments in say student loan lenders is A-OK: they still aren't working.
Wouldn't it be wonderful that instead of taking that job in corporate America that just continues to damage society in order to make a living and pay student loans, we can actually do something that helps society?
I knew quite a few law grads that dreamed of working for environmental causes only to end up at ExxonMobile because they got to pay those loans. Or wanting to help people who got screwed over by Wall Street only to have to work for them.
Or graduate with that CS degree wanting to be a FOSS dev only to have to sell your soul to facebook because the loans to go to Stanford are killing you.
This live to work attitude in the US is just twisted. And one day, you wake up old fat and sick and cast to the curb because your employer doesn't want you anymore. Oh, entrepreneurship is no easy street. For every successful person out there, there are many who failed and lost it all and now are working a second job cleaning bathrooms are WalMart - thanks to the new banking laws that makes failure a lifelong burden.
UBI will actually boost the economy because it will allow more people to take risks and increase the chances of new organizations that will hire people - increasing the tax base for cool social programs like this and single payer healthcare. Which is another topic: Let's change it so that medical care isn't a luxury like it is in the USA.
How would you construct the study?
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Until it tells you "no"
Now bend over.
Why? Seriously, what's the resulting benefit from unemployed people worrying about money?
I suspect that you think people cannot be motivated to find jobs unless they worry about money. Now as a Finn who if his taxes only paid for UBI would pay for at least two UBI recipients here, I'm inclined to think that people can be just as motivated and certainly more capable of finding jobs if what drives them is not desperation to survive but a desire to have more of the extras you can get with money once your basic needs are covered (basic in a First World country being food, a home, health care and internet access). Extras being things such as holiday travel, a bigger home, new car etc... Or simply put: Did you stop trying to get a raise once you could pay your rent and buy food? If not, why do you think unemployed people would be content with the minimum and not try to get more too? The idea of UBI is not to make people choose not to work. It's to ensure through a simple mechanism that everyone has the basics (It's sort of in the name UB...).
So I don't have to support them with my efforts.
How would you construct the study?
Ask the participants to give each other a paycheck.
It's cute that you're spouting your random opinions as if they were facts.
Aside from the scaling issue, do you have any significant and credible evidence to back up what you're saying?
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Initial results of the two-year study had already shown that its 2,000 participants . . .
Whether people receiving UBI are more or less happy is irrelevant. Giving away free money to 2,000 people is easy. Giving it to 100 Million people, not so much.
Giving a meaningful amount of money to a large percentage of the population is unsustainable. Period.
Interestingly, most welfare programs decrease total costs to the taxpayer.
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...how do the taxpayers feel about it?
I would rather have my tax dollars pay for UBI than pay for prison.
None of those ever had UBIs, you dense clod.
The problem is that any job under the UBI scheme would be heavily taxed, because that's where the UBI money is coming from.
That is not necessarily a problem.
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I mean, why is it that when Donald Trump got rich he kept doing business deals? It's been shown that if he just stuck the money his dad gave him in an index fund it would have outperformed his business deals by a sizeable margin and with less risk.
Why is it only poor people getting financial security that ends all drive to do anything else? I mean, nobody ever calls the Job Creators out for that behavior because they don't do it. It's almost as if yes, you can motivate people with starvation but, no, you don't need to.
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but also a healthy respect for it being offered.
In other words, a reminder of who your benevolent overlords are, to whom you owe allegiance.
Have gnu, will travel.
> Why? Seriously, what's the resulting benefit from unemployed people worrying about money?
Because if they're not desperate, they can't be exploited! How can I underpay and overwork my employees if they have the financial security to quit on the spot! Or worse... take their time finding a job that's right for them! They might even try to start their own business and compete with me!
All I'd have left to keep the proletariat in check is employer-provided health insurance, and they're trying to rob me of that, too!
=Smidge=
OP here....
I'd construct it by taking a random sample of the population and enrolling them, rather than only those who benefit. Wealthy, poor, everybody.
The participants wouldn't have any choice about their participation.
The taxes on those that pay taxes would be increased by the amount needed to fund the UBI as well as the administrative overhead required to run it. If they don't wish to participate, send cops with guns to take their property, arrest them, or if they still refuse, kill them. (Because that's how we enforce tax laws. Escalating force up to and including death if you don't obey)
Then measure the sample population and determine if the result is positive or negative.
Talk about a strawman.
Neither of those had any kind of UBI, nor did any communist country ever. They had something more akin to the Republicans' work for welfare (yes, I know it was signed by Bill Clinton, but it was part of Gingrich's Contract with America). You weren't given money, you were given a job, which you had to take - hence the communist countries' boast that they have zero unemployment. The jobs were based not so much on your preferences or skills, but on political activity and/or family ties. If you refused the job you were given, you ended up in work camps.
How is that a problem? Your basic needs are covered, so even if the government takes 70%, all the money you take home is gravy.
"Whether you stand or you lay, three thousands is the pay", "we fake we work, the government fakes it pays us". For everyone except dissidents, there was effectively a guarantee of employment. Even if you were drinking at work every day, you didn't get fired as long as you showed up. No one cared about the quality of work. There were also organized vacations, etc. Any consumer goods were at a permanent shortage, and even if you actually found them in a shop (after queues of truly epic length), many common items costed you ~1000 times the work time as for a worker in the western world. But basic food was obtainable, and no one starved.
Many shortages were intentional, sometimes due to cartoonish villainry on the part of the government. My grandpa was a sailor, and once his ship got held at the port's approach for two weeks because their cargo included a load of oranges, and the govt didn't want oranges to be available for Christmas -- they were supposed to be for New Year. The oranges spoiled. Orwell didn't invent this part -- many parts of 1984 were depictions of actual life in the soviet world.
So the population was held at sustenance level, with any luxuries (even such as toilet paper) being hard to obtain and a cause for celebration. But the sustenance level was kept -- if you were neither in the Party nor a dissident, you lived a poor but safe life, neither above nor below sustenance.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Seriously, why is this a thing that keeps showing up on slashdot? There are have been many articles about this, showing that unshockingly it does not work. It is not some profoundly new idea. It is merely welfare, with a new name. While welfare can really help people in the short term, what is found is that people need more than just food, they need purpose. UBI fails at this.
So I have to ask: Given all this, why does it keep coming up on these forums again and again. This seems to be a classic case of the NPC meme, where some just repeat what some influence tells them. No thought is given, just that someone with supposed authority says so. I find that immensely sad on these forums. We are better than this. We are supposed to be source of good ideas, not a parrot repeating stuff.
"Liberalism is a very noble idea, currently controlled by some very bad people. Be sure you do not get the two confused.
Your basic needs are covered
Great. So why do I need a job?
so even if the government takes 70%
Wouldn't I be better off doing something that I enjoy rather than working and handing 70% of my wages over to the government? I could grow my own crops. And trade the excess to my neighbor, who's hobby as a seamstress can provide me with clothes.
Have gnu, will travel.
"free" money is fine...until you keep TAKING money away from the people who EARN it, the corporations that EARN it. In the latter, they can LEAVE the country, but most people cannot.
Just giving a couple of people some money called UBI instead of a similar amount of money as "unemployment benefit" is not "a test of UBI at the national level". UBI in different incarnations has many implications, and without adding it all together the test doesn't really test UBI...
You have brought up some good reasons why past attempts of communism had failed. Unfortunately for the people who read the whole thing, this has nothing to do with UBI, nor does it rule out different implementations.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Yet as someone mentioned before, this study proves that UBI does not remove the incentive to work. What do you have against people being happy?
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Why does it matter to you? Your "efforts" will be making you far more money and a far more comfortable life. The UBI payment they get is basically just enough to keep them from robbing you.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
I don't even understand why we are discussing this, when the whole point of the article is that people are just as productive with UBI as without it.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
That's the point. Do whatever makes you happy. In this study they found that people tended to keep doing the job they had that gave them the life they wanted instead of suddenly taking up farming.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Why are people always so concerned with what 'others' are getting. It doesn't matter to you.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
My stress and worry increases as tax rates increase, but since I'm not getting UBI my happiness doesn't matter, does it?
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It was too expensive because they didn't do it right.
Yeah, just like REAL socialism or communism has never ben tried either!
Nice to have another one to add to the list.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Yeah: SIMPLE MATH. Try it sometime.
Objection often isn't based in economics, but in morality. People feel deeply unhappy with the idea that their hard-earned money might be going to people who didn't work nearly as hard for it.
Disagreeing with me does not give anyone with moderation points the right to mod me a "Troll". Fuck off UBI fantacists, it's NEVER going to happen and rightly so.
A UBI scheme covers your basic needs. That's all. Enough to get a minimally comfortable home and essential needs met. Life above the poverty line, but not by much. If you want more, you still have to work for it - but you get to decide how much more, and you don't have to worry that unemployment will lead you to ruin.
Knock off the 'magical thinking', you're not going to get a free ride through life courtesy of the government. Better keep your resume updated you'll need it, and be sure to put enough away for your retirement otherwise you'll be in an alleyway eating dogfood when you're 90.
Initial results of the two-year study had already shown that its 2,000 participants . . .
Whether people receiving UBI are more or less happy is irrelevant.
It very much is not. Takes 2 braincells to rub together to see that and you are obviously lacking. People that are happier are less sick and more willing to buy stuff, both which are of significant benefit economically.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Are you functionally illiterate? The research project found that IT MAKES NO DIFFERENCE. You want people to suffer for no good reason. Makes you evil scum.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Where did you read that it had no effect on productivity? It makes sense simply from a psychological perspective that if a person is happier, they are generally going to be more productive than someone who is similarly employed, but is always stressed about finances.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Attention Rick Schumann: Have a look at actual numbers before you disgrace yourself. For example, the Swiss have them.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
The people who are proposing the radical program are the people who must explain why they are correct to take resources from people at the point of a gun in order to redistribute them.
It's still wealth redistribution at the bottom.
As such, there's no real incentive to achieve.
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there simply won't be possibility for that many people to be productive
Bullshit.
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THANK GOD!!!
Why? Seriously... if they are being paid fairly for the work that they are doing, what difference should it make that money is being given to others for doing less? It does not devalue the work they do in any way, and I would suggest that any unhappiness one might feel about it would be more likely tied to disatisfaction in their current position unless they are predisposed to displaying an overdeveloped sense of entitlement.
Which I suppose I can't dismiss the possibility of being common, but honestly, if people are going to act like immature little pricks when they are being objectively fairly treated already just because someone who might be less fortunate is getting something for less work than they had to do, I think that's their own problem.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Yes, those tried to make things work before we were on the brink of having robots do everything for us.
Let's try it again once humans aren't actually needed for most kinds of manual labor.
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You need a job so you can afford the newest cell phone, computer upgrades, those really juicy steaks from the butcher and so on.
Having enough money to get by without worrying about starving or being homeless next month is not the same as living a life of wild luxury.
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How do you figure? Getting a trickle of free money doesn't remove your incentive to achieve. Would you really just stop working if you started getting a $1000 UBI check every month?
Of course not, not unless you're a complete slacker with low standards. So long as contributing to society lets you improve your standard of living substantially, most people will do so. What removes the incentive to achieve is a system where working harder either has no effect, or actually causes a reduction in your standard of living - the current so-called "welfare cliff" that is faced by virtually anyone trying to get out of poverty in a wealthy nation.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Yes, there is.
95% of all people in the "welfare business" will be obsolet. So you safe more money by simply paying UBI then paying your welfare apparatus.
Combine that with a tax reform, 90% of all civil servants working in the tax related ministries are obsolet, too.
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And if you're unwilling to work, the only way you survive is on the charity of others.
There are quite a few things wrong with this statement.
First, the assumption that poverty's unique cause is "being a lazy fuck", when all it takes is "willingness to work". Unfortunately this is absolutely wrong - and pretty much invalidates the rest of your argument. There are lots of cases where willingness is not enough. You need to be of the right age, be relatively healthy, have no major handicaps, have the skills that happen to be in demand, and live in an area where jobs are available and pay enough to live. Just willingness won't help if you're too young or too old, if you're sick, if you simply don't have the capability to do some jobs. Not everybody can lift heavy loads, for example, or be a coder or a musician, or whatever. And, with technology automating more and more jobs, many people will simply be left behind - no matter how willing they are to work, the available jobs won't lift them out of poverty. This becomes more and more of an issue - and brings us to the second fault with your statement.
Your second wrong assumption is that charity is the only way to survive. It's not. When pushed too hard, when too many people become impoverished, they will not "STARVE" quietly in a corner. Instead, they'll turn to the other way to survive: they'll take what they need from the people who have it in surplus - via theft, revolt, revolution. The resulting social upheaval will impact everybody - even you.
Great. So why do I need a job? ... ...
To go to the cinema.
To have booze for the weekend.
To make a 2 weeks vacation trip to where it is warmer.
To have Christmass presents for your family or friends.
To buy a book.
To go out eating instead of eating at home
And so on
Are you retarded?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Here is a better article about this experiment:
https://medium.com/basic-income/what-is-there-to-learn-from-finlands-basic-income-experiment-did-it-succeed-or-fail-54b8e5051f60
What are the strings attached to "traditional" unemployment benefit in Finland?
So you can't do basic arithmetic? I'm not surprised.
Perhaps not, but why is that a problem if it is a convenient side effect? Particularly given the positive impact that feeling more secure and happy about life in general is liable to end up having on their productivity?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
However you are trolling this forum with your anti UBI posts ... perhaps every of your posts should be modded "troll"?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Participants were no more and NO LESS likely to look for work than those receiving traditional unemployment benefits. So the incentivisation designed into traditional welfare systems has zero effect, but has a high cost to administer. So we should remove it, because it makes no difference and society would be just as productive, plus happier, without it.
Your argument isn't evidence-based. The counter-evidence to your point is presented in the article summary: recipients of the UBI were no less likely to work than those on unemployment benefits with a you-must-look-for-work component. Your point: already debunked by the study in question. Go get better evidence if you think you know better. If you think this study is wrong, all the more reason to have more studies to prove that. So far, no UBI study backs up your point.
The main thing here is that giving UBI is significantly less-expensive than hiring the army of petty bureaucrats needed to police the poor to make sure they're looking for work. Making them jump through hoops doesn't in fact make them more likely to get a job, so that component is actually a waste of time and taxpayers money (paying a basic allowance isn't a waste of taxpayers money BTW because the alternative is to house much of the poor in prison, which costs about 10 times as much as just giving people basic food and housing and letting them take care of themselves).
If you don't support people with basic food you'll end up paying even more taxes to support sticking way more people in prison. USA has 2 million inmates, who cost between $30000 - $60000 each to house per year depending on what state you live on.
If you let people starve to save money, some of them will turn to crime to survive. You'll end up paying a lot more in increased taxes for prisons, police etc. Your community becomes more militarized, and you end up with beggars everywhere, street crime etc. So you end up having to pay more in both taxes, and have to spend more on personal security that you would other wise.
TL;DR: starving the poor is a foolish way of "saving money".
East Germany would have wanted to know why a person was not working and why they rejected work.
What they where doing all day and why they had felt they had the freedom not to work.
The gov would show extra interest in that person, their friends and everyone connected to that person.
They would have to accept work offered.
The person would be working.
Not accepting what East German offered would have not been accepted by the gov.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
People that are happier are less sick and more willing to buy stuff, both which are of significant benefit economically.
If you give away a trillion dollars, of course the people receiving it will be happy and spend it.
But the people paying the taxes to fund it will be less happy and have less to spend.
We had a trade deficit of $621B last year. That is the gap between what America consumes and what we produce. "More spending" is the last thing we need especially when much of it is going to Asia. We will just have less investment and even bigger deficits. Incentives to be productive would do a lot more good than incentives to consume more.
Means test https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Working? No UBI unless income falls to poverty level.
Part time work? No UBI unless hours fall and income is reduced.
Not working for any reason? UBI.
Gov approved education? UBI and extra support.
Citizenship tests for all UBI payments. UBI only goes into an approved new type of bank account with photo ID and gov ID.
No getting the UBI outside of the nation.
That would reduce costs to the working tax payers of a nation and let people with no ability to work have the UBI security they need.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
There's also the fact that low-income people spend almost every cent they receive. In terms of GDP growth, that's a good job-creator. A dollar isn't just a dollar: every time that dollar is spent that's GDP that's created. Google "fiscal multipliers". $1 in food stamps was found to create about $1.75 in extra GDP. That's because if you give $1 to a poor person who wouldn't have had that money otherwise, then they spend all of it, and it creates jobs as it's spent and passed around. It makes the most economic sense to increase taxes in areas with a LOW fiscal multiplier and spend them on areas with a HIGH fiscal multiplier. It just happens that money earned by the ultra-rich has a very low fiscal multiplier and giving money to the ultra-poor has a very high fiscal multiplier. So, you can justify taking money out at the top of the wealth pyramid and injecting it at the bottom on a purely rational self-interest basis for the working and middle-class, without even appealing to any ethical or emotional sentiment. If you told a computer "maximize GDP" it would increased taxes on the rich and give the money to those who otherwise wouldn't have money to spend.
the wealthy show that people can and will do things even when they don't have to work to survive. Complete Ne'er do wells are the exception among the wealthy, not the rule.
The only thing the constant threat of death does is keep people in their place. It drives people to be conservative (that's little 'c' conservative, i.e. opposing to change, not "Politically Conservative", meaning far right wing and leaning towards or outright celebrating authoritarian leaders in the oligarchy). This lets the folks at the top cow tow us all and keep on taking 50, 60, sometimes even 80% of all wealth generated by society for themselves. And even with all that it's not enough, they want more.
Humans will do things even if they don't have to. A scientist is just plain going to get bored sitting around all day. They're not scientists out of fear, they're scientists out of curiosity. Once we started down the path of automation that was mechanical farming we started making the non-stop struggle for existence obsolete. At this point we're just doing it out of fear, hate and short sightedness.
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Nice try, comrade.
In the Soviet Union, the most productive plots of land by far were the small family plots that the Party allowed people to maintain. Without these, there would have been far more starvation. And as for the seamstress, let HER decide whether her time is better spent trading straight across for food (and other goods that local 'hobbyists' produce) or working for the system at 30 cents on the dollar.
Take 70% of a people's earnings away from them and people will just step outside of the current economic system. Let the idle bums in the cities starve waiting for their UBI checks. Which won't buy much once farmers concentrate on their own gardens and let the cash crops die.
Have gnu, will travel.
Long-term effects on labour supply cannot be inferred. Though the experiment was intended to test short-term labour supply effects as compared to current welfare schemes, design issues led to unclear results. The zero difference between treatment and control group in employment tells us little about the relative effects from abolishing the welfare trap and eliminating conditions to access welfare The treatment and control group were also not sufficiently different, which might have biased results towards zero. Moreover, the fact the policy tested is not revenue-neutral,undermines its value as policy guidance.
There was no difference in employment at all; if you were more productive, you could increase your value of employment. But that wasn't found.
What was found, though, was it spent a lot more money to do UBI and unemployment, so it's net expense to be paid somehow...
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I'll save all the basic needs UBI money I would have spent on food and clothes by growing and making my own. Then I'll go out and buy books, movies and vacations. I get to keep 100% of the labor I put into doing for myself. You city folks can figure out who will kick in their 70% to feed you.
Have gnu, will travel.
Costs. We spend about $600 billion a year on income security (welfare, unemployment insurance, etc) at the Federal level. There are about 217 million people between the ages of 18 and 65 - UBI recipients. Give each of them $630 per month (the equivalent to 560 Euros - as in this experiment), and we'd spend around $1.6 trillion - an increase of 173% in income security spending. We just added another $1 trillion to the national debt, every year.
Is making sure everyone feels good about themselves (with dubious benefits from that) worth blowing another $1 trillion annually in spending?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Nonsense. Your education might have been based on family ties, you never got a good job based on it, if you lacked the education.
You're so full of it, I can't even believe. I spent the first half of my life in a former communist country for chrissake, and you show up with this nonsense.
Look - the better the jobs, the more the political clout mattered. In particular, you couldn't get a leadership job without being a party member in good standing. Yes, many skilled people did play the political game as a necessary step in the search for a good job, and make no mistake: it was the political activity that got them the jobs - that they were any good was not a requirement, but at most a bonus. In some cases, it was even a point of suspicion.
Here's an immediate counter-example to your "never get a good job if you lacked the education": Romania's Elena Ceausescu. Her highest education level was primary school - when she tried to go to night school she got expelled for cheating. Despite being an absolute intellectual nullity, she got a job as a research scientist at ICECHIM (the National Institute for Chemical Research) - a really good position for somebody in the field of chemistry. She even got a PhD and got elected to the Romanian Academy - her title (that she never got tired of repeating) ended up being "Academician Doctor Engineer".
the U in UBI means universal. everyone gets it.
and everyone pays for it, but what you pay is proportional to your income and what you get is fixed, so if your income is lower than mean (which most people’s are; mean is usually a lot higher than median) you see net benefit and only if it it’s above it (which most people’s aren’t) do you see net loss.
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With iron-clad reasoning and command of the facts such as this, you can tell the world is in very good hands.
Interesting, so what is your solution for automation, shoot the uneeded workers, still less cruel than starving them so death. With all those dead works though, what will the robots do, eat their masters I suppose.
A universal basic payment, is a payment for the denial of access to a subsistence survival. What right does anyone have to claim ownership of any resource and deny access to others for the needed elements of survival. What right do you have to claim a fruit tree and kill anyone who attempts to eat that fruit. For that right to exist, other citizens must be recompensed for their loss, what you have stolen from them.
You logic, you own that tree and have a right to kill them to stop eating that fruit, the same logic implied they have a right to kill you to eat that fruit.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
The article is both meaningless and misleading.
Of course people with a safety net are happier and feel more secure. Anybody who needs to do a study to find that out is brain-dead.
BUT... this is NOT the first national-level UBI system to be tested. Their neighbors in Sweden implemented a very similar -- but not exactly the same -- program back in the 1970s. For practical purposes it was a UBI: if you were not working, you simply got a check from the government, basically no questions asked. And it was a decent, living-wage amount, too. A Swedish employee of our company said, "Man, you people work HARD. I like that. Back home, if someone doesn't want to work, they just don't. They get a check from the government anyway."
As a result, over a period of about 20 years, Sweden's per-capita GDP went from 4th in the world to 14th.
This illustrates that a short-term "test" is probably insufficient for a real measure of the program.
And lest anyone doubt it was cause-effect, in the 90s they realized that their system was causing productivity issues, so they cut it way back. Over time (about another 20 years) their per-capita GDP went right back up where it was in the early 70s.
Lesson learned. Or it should be, anyway. All other trials of similar systems have resulted in a conclusion of "unsustainable".
Agree with Bill.
Plus, offshoring of manufacturing and so on not only leads to trade deficits, but a notable secondary effect is loss of jobs in the same industries at home.
For some reasons most economists don't talk about that one very much, but it's very important.
It doesn't matter how cheap your goods are, if you don't have a job to pay for them. Yes, employment is booming now, but part of that is because many manufacturing jobs have been brought back home.
If you know the money is part of a study and that it can and will go away some day, your incentive to keep working is different.
UBI is like vaccination -- as long as everyone who can work is working, it's OK. As soon as productivity starts to drop, you have problems. We see the exact same thing with vaccination. There are measles outbreaks around the world now because enough people felt that they didn't have to vaccinate if everyone else is doing it.
Did the participants know the study could end at any time? How was this knowledge controlled for?
Given that UBI is always subject to the whims of the authorities, it's probably better to have that reminder than not.
Well, we are talking about the Netherlands rather than America... but even in the old USA I really don't think so. Seriously - any middle class person who can arrange to work part time could work only a few hours a week for a $1000/month, but how many people do you see actually trying to do that? Not that many people live below the poverty level by choice, it's really not a very pleasant place to be.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Uh....it will all get spent. Macro wise it is a net gain.
Sweden implemented a very similar -- but not exactly the same -- program back in the 1970s. For practical purposes it was a UBI: if you were not working, you simply got a check from the government, basically no questions asked.
That's not UBI. The "U" means universal, which means you receive it even if you work.
The fake UBI that you described doesn't give anything to working people, which results in perverse incentives. Be a lazy bum and everything's good, but if you put in some effort, the system stops helping you. It actively discourages people from working.
You have to consider that the UBI won't exist in a vacuum and will most likely get distorted by the mega corporations to reach their goals.
So the first question you have to ask is, "what exxon mobil will try to use it for?".
I think they will try to use it as a bludgeoning tool to remove smaller corporations from existence by erasing jobs that can be automated, but only if you're a mega billionaire company with budget to spend on this automation.
It's not actually hard to do it. In Finland, significantly higher transfers than that of ~600EUR per month occur to millions of people, in the nation of just five million. It's just that much of it is in money budgeted in services rather than just money itself. So the easy way would be "cut the budgeted services, and just give people the difference".
Effectively none of the problems are in the process of giving itself, provided nation has low corruption rates. High corruption, yes, that would hamper those efforts into effective impossibility. And none of that has anything to do with sustainability of UBI. That is simply a different topic.
It helps to know the meanings of the words you use before you use them.
There are about 217 million people between the ages of 18 and 65 - UBI recipients.
We're not giving anything to illegal immigrants and visa holders. Maybe not even to permanent residents (though some might naturalize anyways to get the benefit, which is not a bad thing).
Give each of them $630 per month (the equivalent to 560 Euros - as in this experiment)
It's not necessary to spend that much. Cost of living is much higher in Finland than most of the US. Not to mention you completely excluded state welfare spending, which if converted to UBI as well would significantly reduce the need to spend it at the federal level.
Is making sure everyone feels good about themselves (with dubious benefits from that) worth blowing another $1 trillion annually in spending?
Please define "benefit". Keep in mind that all material wealth become useless when you die.
You know cities pay way more in taxes than rural areas right?
I'm impressed that you want to jump straight into limited implementation, though you seemed to have left out all the positive potential benefits that a true implementation might convey. I'm thinking of less crime, more art, new businesses created by those who feel less risk averse.
Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon. -- Susan Ertz
Broken window fallacy?
No sig today...
How are the benefits dubious? The study concluded that UBI did *NOT* discourage people from working.
The fact that it did not appear to encourage people to work any more than they already did is irrelevant... while there is otherwise a very well known correlation between a person's sense of well being and satisfaction with their life and work with their productivity... so given that there was no decrease in employment, I'd say that the benefits are obvious, not dubious.
Indirect, perhaps... but definitely very obvious.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
The quality of the comments have gone down the drain. I was a daily /. reader for over 15 years, the idea that I would see a swastika in the comments would not even have occurred to me before. I rarely read the comments now ðY
Indirectly, it was... it specifically mentioned that there was no decrease in employment. There was no increase either, but that means that insomuch as employment is concerned there was no measurable difference. It *did* specifically mention that the recipients were happier and less stressed, the latter point being a major incentive for UBI.
And basic human psychology will tell you that a happier person will generally be more productive at their job than a similarly employed individual that is stressed out or dissatisfied with aspects of their life.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
If you really want to test it, pick a small city and implement it there, with it being funded entirely by only the city's working population. And even that won't be a truly accurate test since the people will know the test will end, and will be reluctant to quit their job for fear of having difficulty finding a new job when the test ends.
The closest thing to a real national test of a UBI that I can think of is Venezuela. The government there has promised all its citizens a certain level of free social services. The rampant inflation there is a result of the country's productivity level falling below the amount of productivity necessary to provide those services. Productivity is conserved - everything that's consumed must be produced. When you're producing $100 worth of services but people expect to receive (consume) $200 in services, the economy corrects the inequality by devaluing your currency so the $100 you're producing is now priced at $200 thus equaling what people expect to consume. But since productivity hasn't actually increased (only the pricing ofthe currency has), the people are still receiving $100 worth of services, it's just priced at $200.
Here's an idea - instead of first taking it from me (via taxes), and then giving it back (with the overhead associated), how about just cutting my taxes by the UBI amount? Let me keep it in the first place.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
As such, there's no real incentive to achieve.
Your example has failed to describe UBI because of the following (check all that apply):
[ ] Not Universal
[x] Not Basic
[ ] Not Income
Your comment is irrelevant due to the following reasons (describe in 250 words or less):
The point of UBI is that income is "basic". People in general aren't content with "basic". If they were the rat race wouldn't exist and we'd all be content slumming in our own filth. Basic income is a social safety net that prevents you from being homeless and dying of starvation in the street. Nothing more. A life will still require achievement, something you can now do as your "basic" need is met.
There are about 217 million people between the ages of 18 and 65 - UBI recipients.
We're not giving anything to illegal immigrants and visa holders. Maybe not even to permanent residents (though some might naturalize anyways to get the benefit, which is not a bad thing).
Actually, we do. In fact, immigrant households use nearly twice the benefits as citizens.
Cost of living is much higher in Finland than most of the US.
Actually, the costs are really quite similar.
Not to mention you completely excluded state welfare spending, which if converted to UBI as well would significantly reduce the need to spend it at the federal level.
So we're going to spend more at the State levels? Or is UBI to replace all existing welfare plans?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
UBI didn't do anything. That's the point. It was another cost, that didn't move the needle either way. Sure, people felt better about themselves - but there was no measurable impact based upon that. Other than an expenditure of 560 Euros per month per person, that is...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Except your claim about more productivity wasn't seen. The report actually said nothing resulted either way. Other than an extra 560 Euros per month was spent per person.
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Mate I could have a far easier job for a lot less money but I don't. Why? Because I want a better life than that income would buy me. The idea that everyone would stop working because the government gives them a relatively small amount of money is laughable.
I don't remember UBI in any of Orwell's work and all of us are dependent on the state to some degree.
And, picking single examples makes not your original statement true.
That you have to be a party member is obvious.
Not every job is just given away by "connections". And in limits you can switch job as you which. Might have been more difficult in your country, but it is not the "general rule" of communist countries that you get forced to do certain jobs and have no choice.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
First your description is off, second you draw conclusions not supported by your "data". Was going to post some real information but then realized who you are - no reason to waste any time.
> Finland is the first country in the world to test universal basic incomes at national level.
That's simply not true. France has created the RMI more than 30 years ago (1988), which is basically equivalent to an universal income, except it was not only for 2000 people but for anyone aged 25+ (1.3 million people benefited from it in France in 2010). It's been replaced by the RSA in 2009 and is now at 559,74 €, identical to Finland's universal basic income (more if you're in a relationship or you've children). The difference with the RMI is that the RSA now forces people to actively seek work, which has always been the goal in the first place.
We've had 70 or so years of not letting the poor starve and we've seen unparalleled improvements in technology, lifespan and standard of living as people who could've died young are now creating things. I don't understand why these morons want to throw that away.
Not true.
That *IS* something.
Which doesn't mean that there wasn't a benefit they didn't measure.
All other things being equal, a happier person *WILL* be more productive than someone who is stressed out. The fact that there was no decrease in employment during this trial is almost certain evidence that if they had been looking for more indirect benefits they would have found it.
Now perhaps that's not worth the expense, and it's fair to argue that.... but it's still not nothing.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
No, the report said that there was no increase or decrease in employment.
But the report *also* said that recipients felt more secure, and while that might not have been the point of UBI, that doesn't mean that's not going to have a societal positive benefit. In particular, when everything else is equal, a happier person will generally be more productive at their job than someone who is always stressed out. I would expect that the report doesn't mention it because it wasn't something they were specifically looking for, and a happier person isn't going to necessarily *notice* that they are actually more productive at work with the improvement of their mood or disposition, so the recipients weren't really in a position to report that like they could about how they felt about life in general. If they actually wanted to measure any changes in productivity, they'd have to also ask the employers of the recipients who were employed if there were any changes, but there is no indication that this study did that.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
No, people are not featureless interchangeable spheres of uniform density. Taking 2000 from a dude with 1,000,000,000 and giving it to a dude with 10,000 means it will get pumped directly into the retail economy and benefit lots of people in the short term, as opposed to being pumped into the financial product casino, where it might benefit people over the long term but will more likely be chipped away into the pockets of other already rich people and serve primarily to make their net worth dick measuring contest tick over here and there, only occasionally entering the economy in a meaningful way.
The world you experience is only a close approximation of reality.
If you think happiness is irrelevant you have failed to understand even the very basics of running a civilization. Most people are not like you. Your system, to be elegant, has to account for that.
The world you experience is only a close approximation of reality.
Don't give them fish, teach them to fish.
Maybe someone will invent some sort of gas that can drug the populace to calm people and weed out aggression. Nothing could go wrong from that.
So you can figure out how to tax each other 70% to pay for my UBI. Meanwhile, I'll eat.
Have gnu, will travel.
No one wants to let the poor starve. But there's a difference between handing them $1000/month and hoping they buy wholesome, nutritious food for them and their kiddies instead of smokes and beer (or worse), and saying "Here's your coupon for a 20 pound sack of rice, a 20 pound sack of beans, and some multivitamins. If you run out, we'll give you some more." The arbitrage value of rice and beans is pretty much nil, so gaming the system to get more rice and beans is unlikely to be an issue.
Why do you think they'll suddenly stop lying, cheating, and stealing just because you hand them a stipend?
You do realise that trade deficits and deficit spending are entirely different things, don't you?
"So long as contributing to society lets you improve your standard of living substantially, most people will do so."
Citation needed, unless simply asserting things makes them true.
Who exactly said "everyone"?
"It makes sense simply from a psychological perspective that if a person is happier, they are generally going to be more productive than someone who is similarly employed, but is always stressed about finances."
I wonder if you accept arguments from people who disagree with you and say that it "simply makes sense"?
And why would you expect otherwise? The welfare cliff means that they can sit on their ass and get free health care and a nice range of income supplements or they can go out, bust their ass 40-60 hours per week, and be substantially worse off. What sort of sane person would take that deal?
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Actually, we do. In fact, immigrant households use nearly twice the benefits as citizens.
That's pretty misleading. They use it twice as often. It doesn't mean they're using twice as much. They also don't qualify for federal benefits until they're almost able to get citizenship, so it's not relevant to this discussion.
Cost of living is much higher in Finland than most of the US.
Actually, the costs are really quite similar.
You need to compare different states. CoL in Mississippi is a lot lower than California. Since we're talking about federal UBI, nothing prevents those who find it too difficult to live on $500 / mo. in San Francisco from moving to Jackson.
Not to mention you completely excluded state welfare spending, which if converted to UBI as well would significantly reduce the need to spend it at the federal level.
So we're going to spend more at the State levels? Or is UBI to replace all existing welfare plans?
We already spend on welfare at the state level. That spending can be used by each individual to supplement UBI from the federal level to reach a livable income. E.g. if states already provides $200 / month in food assistance, then the federal government only needs to spend $300 for a combined total of $500.
People work best when they are healthy, and there is proven correlation between stress and negative health effects, so the conclusion is that all other things being equal, a happier person will be more productive than a person that is unhappy. The reason that this would not have been reported in the study despite probably being measurable is that because they were not looking for it, they would not have asked the people who were actually most objectively qualified to answer it - the coworkers and employers of the subjects of the study... one will not, generally speaking, be capable of perceiving any measurable changes in their psychological health and its impacts on productivity unless they were explicitly looking for it, which clearly nobody thought to do.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
So giving them free money to buy "stuff" helps the economy? LOL thanks for the ECON-100 lesson, AOC.
picking single examples makes not your original statement true.
What, did you expect an exhaustive list? What would be the point if I told you some guy was named a professor of Political Economy, then got a PhD and, to boot, became a general too, despite having only completed seven years of school (that was Ilie Ceausescu, BTW)? Or that some Suceava county prime-secretary got the job even though he hadn't even finished high school? You'd have no way to verify whatever I'm writing. By contrast, Elena Ceausescu is well documented - heck, she even has a page on Wikipedia -, so you can check yourself and see I'm not just making things up. Moreover, your statement is absolute "... never get a job ...", so a single counter-example is enough to falsify it.
Not every job is just given away by "connections". And in limits you can switch job as you which.
Not every job, sure. But most of the good ones. If you weren't politically active, or had relatives abroad, or had parents that had been priests, or "bourgeois", or, god forbid, you were a person of interest to the Securitate - then it was very difficult to get a good job, no matter how skilled you were. And that's the point I was trying to make. Communists countries didn't have UBI, as the grand-parent suggested - they just stuck you in a crappy job and boasted about zero unemployment.
Expert calculations show that very little additional taxpayer money will be needed and it may also come down to none at all. The idea that this requires a significant raise in takes is a red-herring. Who do you think currently pays for all the social programs that become obsolete with an UBI? Who do you think pays for the vast administrative overhead? Who do you think pays for people turning to crime, being homeless or getting sick because they do not have money? Right.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Free money? Don't you mean somebody else's money?
Does anybody else find it amusing that Swedes are funding their own demographic replacement with their high taxes?
That's pretty misleading. They use it twice as often. It doesn't mean they're using twice as much. They also don't qualify for federal benefits until they're almost able to get citizenship, so it's not relevant to this discussion.
False, they do get Federal benefits:
Undocumented immigrants may be eligible for a handful of benefits that are deemed necessary to protect life or guarantee safety in dire situations, such as emergency Medicaid, access to treatment in hospital emergency rooms, or access to healthcare and nutrition programs under the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC).
You need to compare different states. CoL in Mississippi is a lot lower than California. Since we're talking about federal UBI, nothing prevents those who find it too difficult to live on $500 / mo. in San Francisco from moving to Jackson.
So then let's compare Helsinki and Los Angeles, the two largest cities. We find that Los Angeles is more expensive than Helsinki. Again, the facts are that if you do UBI in the US, you'll need to spend a lot more to have "parity" with this experiment. For the LA/Helsinki comparison, it would be about 35% more - so about $1000 per month to equalize the data.
We already spend on welfare at the state level. That spending can be used by each individual to supplement UBI from the federal level to reach a livable income. E.g. if states already provides $200 / month in food assistance, then the federal government only needs to spend $300 for a combined total of $500.
Except we need to spend quite a bit more than $500. But let's say it's just $500. And let's say that of the 217 million 18-to-65 adults in the US, only 180 million are citizens. So we need to provide $90 billion a month in UBI. Guaranteed spending. Over $1 trillion annually. That's the plan?
Remember, the Federal Government took in $1.4 trillion total in income taxes in 2018. So we'll need to up the tax rates by a solid 80% - meaning your Federal income tax load just about doubled. Ready for that?
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Not true.
True. The summary stated as much, in terms of tangible results. You claim otherwise - where's your data, other than an assumption it would be better? Any facts you can point to?
That *IS* something
So now the concern is about feelings? Why don't you give every penny you make to others, that will make them feel better! Fabulous result, right?
All other things being equal, a happier person *WILL* be more productive than someone who is stressed out.
You keep stating this, but without any proof or substance. Just an assertion. Making it worthless.
The fact that there was no decrease in employment during this trial is almost certain evidence that if they had been looking for more indirect benefits they would have found it.
There was no increase in employment, either. Meaning people didn't change their behavior at all. That's the fact, if you'd actually get beyond just caring about feelings.
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I would stop working if I get $200,000 a year.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
No they don't. Not in countries where everyone isn't a selfish entitled asshole who can't see past their own picket fence.
It's OK Bender, there's no such thing as 2.
State should ideally provide UBI and promote https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Casteism
You are trying to apply a purely rational analysis to human behavior, something which is only partly rational. People do love to judge.
Why does the US use food stamps, rather than an equal value in currency? Because if people were able to spend their government benefits on anything other than the essentials of survival, there would be outrage. Newspapers would constantly run stories about how your tax money is being used to pay for cigarettes and alcohol for people too lazy to work.
False, they do get Federal benefits:
Read your own damn link. They don't get federal benefits until they've lived in the US as a legal permanent resident for 5 years. That's the same requirement as getting citizenship.
Undocumented immigrants may be eligible for a handful of benefits that are deemed necessary to protect life or guarantee safety in dire situations, such as emergency Medicaid, access to treatment in hospital emergency rooms, or access to healthcare and nutrition programs under the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC).
That's not welfare. Even tourists get that. Even you get that if you got injured in another country, even in a lot of third world countries. I'll give you WIC, but at $5.3 billion, most of it going to citizens, it's not relevant to the discussion.
So then let's compare Helsinki and Los Angeles, the two largest cities. We find that Los Angeles is more expensive than Helsinki. Again, the facts are that if you do UBI in the US, you'll need to spend a lot more to have "parity" with this experiment. For the LA/Helsinki comparison, it would be about 35% more - so about $1000 per month to equalize the data.
What's wrong with Jackson, MS? Too cheap? There's even cheaper cities in the US, and even more cheap small towns. Also, LA is a lot smaller than NY.
If you wanted a cherrypicked city, you should've picked Menlo Park. UBI would have to be in the $10k / month range to support someone living next to Mr. Zuckerberg.
And let's say that of the 217 million 18-to-65 adults in the US, only 180 million are citizens. So we need to provide $90 billion a month in UBI. Guaranteed spending. Over $1 trillion annually. That's the plan?
Remember, the Federal Government took in $1.4 trillion total in income taxes in 2018. So we'll need to up the tax rates by a solid 80% - meaning your Federal income tax load just about doubled. Ready for that?
So you don't want to cut any existing programs? Seems like you're proposing a doomed-to-fail strawman plan just so you can win an argument.
UBI doesn't go into a black hole. It's subject to income tax. A lot of people would get UBI, but then immediately pay a third of it back in taxes. It's also subject to sales tax when it gets spent, and later on, when the store pays its employees, it's taxed again. You can easily stay revenue neutral by raising taxes just enough that on average nobody is getting any benefit from UBI (yes, the math works, just think about it for a second).
UBI is not magical, it's simply a transfer of spending power from the richest to the poorest. It's just more efficient than existing programs.
Given how one of the benefits of a properly implemented UBI is supposed to be much less overhead than the current crapshow, is your issue truly with UBI itself or are you just expecting the government to make a half-assed mess of it too?
And a UBI does nothing to change that. Only difference is that it means the poor can work to get ahead, instead of just to survive, and don't have to worry about having their meager savings being completely wiped out by the interval between when they lose their job and when income assistance and kicks in.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
No. Like a child, you're assuming there was only ever one complaint.
Nice try though!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
You're trying to stretch my finite argument into something else completely.
If you are unemployed through no fault of your own, you deserve some form of social safety net. BUT NOT FOREVER.
If you are unemployed because you're simply too lazy to go out and find a job. STARVE.
So no. Your attributed motive is incorrect. Thus, so is your declaration of the invalidation of my argument.
What I'm saying is that there are a group of people that, if you give them the option to not go to work, WILL NOT GO TO WORK.
And the rest of the labor force SHOULD NOT be forced to support these people.
And yes, I left the "turn to crime" option out.
The problem with that is, you run the risk of trying to rob the wrong person and you wind up a lifeless lump of meat.
Granted, some people ARE lazy enough that they'd prefer death to actual labor...But hey, that's their choice.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
More than that, the poor will then have more of a choice which job they *want*, rather than being chained to a job they *need*. Maybe others are different, but I am always more motivated when I'm at a job that energizes me instead of just giving me enough to eat.
Indeed - and that's the rationale often used to tie UBI to eliminating the minimum wage. If nobody *needs* a job, then the power imbalance between low-wage employers and employees is greatly reduced, and artificial market distortions are unnecessary (or at least less so). Few people are going to be willing to work long hours at an abusive, unpleasant job for $4/hour if they aren't depending on it for survival, but they might be willing to work shorter hours at something that's enjoyable or contributes to their community.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
it does me heart good to know somebody out there picked up on this idea.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
it's _not_ human nature. Humans have no trouble finding reasons to do stuff, especially really smart ones. The greatest discoveries in the world weren't made by billionaires unless you stretch back so far that only the ultra wealthy had access to even books let alone time to think about something besides food, shelter and war for the king.
Warren Buffet makes a lot of money, but what he doesn't do is advance civilization in any meaningful way. For that you turn to a few tens of thousands of folks at Public Universities making around $120k/yr if they're lucky. Those same guys could go to Wall Street for 10x the pay. Money and survival don't motivate anything but fear, which isn't, as it turns out, all that useful.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
As was pointed out to you before I replied:
You're not going to be robbing too many people if you're a lazy layabout who has trouble getting out of bed or off the couch.
Self-supporting criminal activity is as much a job as anything.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
We already have UBI in the form of welfare, SNAP and HUD. Travel to our inner cities and rural areas and you'll find a significant number of people that are just fine living at the bottom. Literally every government handout available to them they grab while jobs nearby sit empty. Of course free makes many people happier. The USA even has a number of people that willingly give up their freedom to spend their entire lives in prison, when they get out they smash something or attack someone and just wait for the cops.
> recipients of the UBI were no less likely to work...
One problem with that is that this was (as they always are) for a limited duration and for a limited number/type of people within the context of the rest of the world running "normally."
If I suddenly became part of a UBI program, I wouldn't just give up working both because of that gap on my resume once I had to find a job again, but hopefully also because I liked my job and the people there and wouldn't want to abandon them.
However if the circumstances were correct, I may start job hunting for something better or more seriously consider starting my own business. Neither of those would necessarily mean I would work less, just differently.
Of course I live in the U.S.A., so just the health insurance costs discourage many possible routes to working.
I do actually propose exactly that. I would have UBI implemented by making tax refunds paid out in monthly installments instead of one lump sum (and let payments be made in monthly installments too, to be fair), then offering everyone a refundable tax credit of the UBI amount, and appending a new flat tax equal to that amount divided by the mean income. So if you make exactly the mean income, you see no change whatsoever. The further below the mean income you make, the faster your taxes drop. At some point they hit zero, then go negative, and when your income hits zero the taxes you "pay" are negative that refundable tax credit UBI amount, i.e. you get that much money, so nobody ever ends up with less than that much to live off of.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
This entire article is Bullshit.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/f...
There were multiple articles denouncing the failure of this program. Do the media cunts that host this site actually think people don't fucking pay attention?!
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
But ... that's already taken into account when they've calculated the fiscal multipliers. The delta-value of GDP for a dollar added in one place or taken away in another place is what is worked out by economists. With that correct information, you can make the decision where to extract or add dollars to increase GDP growth. This is *evidence based* reasoning.