and with no cliff to punish those who do seek work, it's at least slightly better than some alternatives.
Did you even read the summary? This study proves that the "cliff" didn't affect anything. They removed it, and no more people got jobs than they would have with the cliff in place.
The real benefit, though, would be administrative simplicity. That's why it's only worth doing if it replaced multiple other programs. Otherwise, there's no clear advantage.
And while administrative simplicity was the original purpose of UBI, I have never heard any of the recent proponents talk about a plan that would do that. All of them are means tested in some way, which quals all that administrative overhead that UBI is supposed to avoid.
News flash, not all people are the same. Some people got jobs while on UBI. That is not the same as confirming that no other people would quit their job to be on it.
Yes, impoverished people can get by without crime, however it has been proven repeatedly that when poverty in an area goes up, so does crime.
It's not that being poor makes you a criminal, nor does being rich prevent you from being one. Things aren't always black and white though, we like to think that some people are inherently good or bad, but there's a shade of grey in there where some people are more likely to commit crimes as they get more desperate. in the simplest form we think of the person stealing food to feed their starving family, but it can also be the person who falls in with a gang because they promise a life that now seems otherwise out of reach.
I'm not saying that crime is acceptable. But it's a fact that crime rates go up with poverty rates, so you either deal with it one way, or another. More policing? More social programs? More crime? You're going to have to accept at least one of those 3. You seem to advocate the "more policing" method ("hold all citizens... to a basic standard") however it's not always the most cost effective method, nor always the most effective.
The original proponents of UBI declared that it would be paid for by efficiencies in the system. Basically you spend the same amount on UBI that you currently spend on unemployment benefits, welfare, retirement benefits, etc. But you don't bother to do all the administration to decide who qualifies for which, and police who might be abusing each as everyone simply gets UBI without all the overhead. You also theoretically save money in the health care system, and in policing, as you reduce the number of people who "fall through the cracks".
Now I'm not sure I believe that you could really find enough efficiency there to fund a meaningful UBI, but if you actually could, it would be the one (and only) way that you might be able to avoid the inflationary impact (as you're effectively transferring income from the civil servants to the general population rather than creating new money, or taxing existing workers more).
The one thing I will say though is that even in that proposed scenario, we've never seen an actual trial of a UBI system, so it's hard to gauge the real effects of one.
It's not like basic economic theory in this area is that hard to grasp either. In any area with higher average earnings, prices of basically everything go up. Basic supply/demand. UBI would cause inflation of a specifically measurable amount, an amount exactly equal to the UBI.
It's too early to judge because there has never been even a single study where UBI has actually been tried.
Ths study wasn't UBI because it was means tested and not universal across the region. And these are the 2 places that basically every UBI study falls down.
You can't test UBI while keeping it means tested, and you can't test UBI unless you look at the effects across an entire region to see the effect on inflation, and workforce participation.
And even if you do manage to do a study that addresses those 2 points, you still need to find a way to fund it, and that would require a study where it is done across the entire jurisdiction of the government that funds it.
So get back to me once a study has been done that actually tests UBI. Until then, I'll look to what economics tells us: - Whenever extra money is distributed evenly over an area, the cost of living in that area goes up by an almost exactly corresponding amount. This is supply and demand. We can see this in any area with a higher or lower average income, accomodation, and food, will tend to be higher or lower to match. - Whenever you allocate money to one place, it has to come from another. So you either print it (causing inflation which almost exactly negates the amount of the extra money, see the first bullet), you raise it in taxes (again, removing the same amount of money from the economy as you just put in to it (actually more as no transfer is 100% efficient)), or you find it in efficiencies (this is the only one that has some potential, and was actually the impetus behind the original UBI concept, but I'm skeptical that you can find that amount of efficiency to cover the outlay and still end up with a reasonable amount to distribute)
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.
Except that's not really the question. Advocates for UBI point out that current means tested benefits are a disincentive to finding employment because your benefits end if you find a job. The argument is that people are more likely to find work if they don't have to worry about their benefits being clawed back.
This study disproved that assertion because even without the clawback, people still weren't any more likely to find work.
Meanwhile, this didn't study any of the really contentious issues, such as: - If everyone gets money, what happens to the cost of living? according to almost any basic understanding of economics and supply/demand, the cost of living will go up by almost exactly the same amount as the extra money people are given, regardless of how much/little that is. But you can only test this if a large enough percentage of the population has the extra money. - What happens if you give the money to people who are already employed? will they all stay employed? or will some chose to leave their employment? - Who pays for all of this?
Not enough info, because there was not enough of a test.
UBI is predicated on several factors that this study didn't bother to test: - everyone gets it, in a large enough geographic area so that we can see it's effects on inflation - there is no means testing, doesn't matter if you're a millionaire, or living on the street, everyone is eligible
This also didn't address the elephant in the room, of who pays for it if you actually did the other 2 points...
And this study proved that aspect to be worthless as the people didn't suddenly get jobs now that the benefit cliff argument was negated. So if the strongest argument for UBI is now disproven, even without actually trialling an actual UBI, when do we finally give up on this horrible idea?
And yet, in the past year or so I've noticed that almost everyone I work with, in 2 completely unrelated industries, wear one, as does almost everyone I interact with socially.
Sure, it's popular to hate on the people wearing one, until you realize that it's no longer only a couple of early adopters. The fact is, these devices provide useful functionality to people which they value. Despite pretentious idiots who want to pretend they're superior simply because they DON'T have one.
It's actually the reverse. A smartwatch that depends on a monthly data plan from a carrier to be useful is a dead end. We all have phones in our pockets anyway, it would be pure insanity NOT to use that as your means of connectivity.
The models could be 100% wrong, and they would keep trying to fix them, because the core physics says *the planet must be collecting thermal energy somewhere*
Except the models ARE wrong, that much has been proven repeatedly. But instead of trying to fix them, they try to fix the data that proves them wrong. It's not science, it's religion.
Unfortunately far too many "scientists" are trying to invent new physics rather than admit their computer model is wrong.
In fact your entire post is exactly the opposite of what we keep seeing. When scientific models disagree with reality, the correct answer is never to assume reality is wrong and adjust the measurements, the correct answer is ALWAYS to adjust the model to match reality.
Instead we see models that are provably wrong because they don't match reality being touted as absolute truth.
You can't make one thing faster without making something else slower. That's just how the internet works. So if throttling wouldn't be allowed, but prioritization would, you've just made a contradiction as they are exactly the same thing.
Interesting that you are putting words in my mouth. I never said it wasn't warming. But no favours are done by exaggerating it for sensationalist stories, and when actual measurements are changed to fit models, instead of the other way around, a LOT of credibility is lost.
If we were talking science instead of religion, it would be possible to have an intelligent discussion on the subject, however in the alarmist religion, even questioning the tiniest detail in a sensationalized press release gets you instantly labelled a "denier" instead of simply someone who wants high quality science on a very important topic.
To go back to your analogy, we put 2 steel balls in the opaque container, shook it, and then counted the balls that came out. There were still only 2, but the model said there should be 3 now, so we told everyone that there were 3 even though only 2 were actually present. There were still 2 steel balls, it was important that there were 2 steel balls, but because we lied to the world and claimed 3, many people decided that we must be lying about the whole thing and refused to admit that there was even a single ball. We then blamed them for questioning our authority instead of admitting that we exaggerated our results for political gain.
When your gun has tens of thousands of rounds, even if one of them finally does turn out to be live, russian roulette stops being so risky, and people lose interest awful quick.
There are far more things we could be worrying about, with science that makes far more accurate predictions. It's a shame so much money is going to this instead of places that could make a real difference in quality of life on this planet.
Already happened. Global warming is never talked about anymore. But currently all the money is in promoting AGW. You literally CANNOT be published unless you follow the doctrine. It's religion. Not science.
The problem is, how do you figure out which one of thousands upon thousands of BS predictions will actually be correct? We're getting awful tired of the wrong ones.
Apparently these "scientists" didn't learn anything from the story either.
You obviously haven't been in Alberta long. I've been here my whole life, and the -34c in winter is normal. the +5c in winter is also normal. That's Alberta weather for you. If anything is unusual this winter it's not the temperatures, it's the slightly lower amount of precipitation, but even that happens some winters, and has for decades. The temperatures this winter are well within the normal range for Alberta (and sure, there may have been a record broken here or there for a specific day, but if the same temperature had happened a few days earlier or later it probably wouldn't have broken the record.) Alberta just has lots of variability in winter, it's the predominant wind currents from the west, combined with the mountains to the west that allows this all to happen in this way.
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and with no cliff to punish those who do seek work, it's at least slightly better than some alternatives.
Did you even read the summary? This study proves that the "cliff" didn't affect anything. They removed it, and no more people got jobs than they would have with the cliff in place.
The real benefit, though, would be administrative simplicity. That's why it's only worth doing if it replaced multiple other programs. Otherwise, there's no clear advantage.
And while administrative simplicity was the original purpose of UBI, I have never heard any of the recent proponents talk about a plan that would do that. All of them are means tested in some way, which quals all that administrative overhead that UBI is supposed to avoid.
News flash, not all people are the same. Some people got jobs while on UBI. That is not the same as confirming that no other people would quit their job to be on it.
Yes, impoverished people can get by without crime, however it has been proven repeatedly that when poverty in an area goes up, so does crime.
It's not that being poor makes you a criminal, nor does being rich prevent you from being one. Things aren't always black and white though, we like to think that some people are inherently good or bad, but there's a shade of grey in there where some people are more likely to commit crimes as they get more desperate. in the simplest form we think of the person stealing food to feed their starving family, but it can also be the person who falls in with a gang because they promise a life that now seems otherwise out of reach.
I'm not saying that crime is acceptable. But it's a fact that crime rates go up with poverty rates, so you either deal with it one way, or another. More policing? More social programs? More crime? You're going to have to accept at least one of those 3. You seem to advocate the "more policing" method ("hold all citizens... to a basic standard") however it's not always the most cost effective method, nor always the most effective.
Those people are called thieves, or government, sometimes I can't tell which one is being referred to...
The original proponents of UBI declared that it would be paid for by efficiencies in the system. Basically you spend the same amount on UBI that you currently spend on unemployment benefits, welfare, retirement benefits, etc. But you don't bother to do all the administration to decide who qualifies for which, and police who might be abusing each as everyone simply gets UBI without all the overhead. You also theoretically save money in the health care system, and in policing, as you reduce the number of people who "fall through the cracks".
Now I'm not sure I believe that you could really find enough efficiency there to fund a meaningful UBI, but if you actually could, it would be the one (and only) way that you might be able to avoid the inflationary impact (as you're effectively transferring income from the civil servants to the general population rather than creating new money, or taxing existing workers more).
The one thing I will say though is that even in that proposed scenario, we've never seen an actual trial of a UBI system, so it's hard to gauge the real effects of one.
shhh!! you're contradicting the groupthink!
It's not like basic economic theory in this area is that hard to grasp either. In any area with higher average earnings, prices of basically everything go up. Basic supply/demand. UBI would cause inflation of a specifically measurable amount, an amount exactly equal to the UBI.
The participants all started jobless, so it only tested half the equation.
Nobody checked to see if giving the money to people who were employed would cause them to quit their jobs.
It's too early to judge because there has never been even a single study where UBI has actually been tried.
Ths study wasn't UBI because it was means tested and not universal across the region. And these are the 2 places that basically every UBI study falls down.
You can't test UBI while keeping it means tested, and you can't test UBI unless you look at the effects across an entire region to see the effect on inflation, and workforce participation.
And even if you do manage to do a study that addresses those 2 points, you still need to find a way to fund it, and that would require a study where it is done across the entire jurisdiction of the government that funds it.
So get back to me once a study has been done that actually tests UBI. Until then, I'll look to what economics tells us:
- Whenever extra money is distributed evenly over an area, the cost of living in that area goes up by an almost exactly corresponding amount. This is supply and demand. We can see this in any area with a higher or lower average income, accomodation, and food, will tend to be higher or lower to match.
- Whenever you allocate money to one place, it has to come from another. So you either print it (causing inflation which almost exactly negates the amount of the extra money, see the first bullet), you raise it in taxes (again, removing the same amount of money from the economy as you just put in to it (actually more as no transfer is 100% efficient)), or you find it in efficiencies (this is the only one that has some potential, and was actually the impetus behind the original UBI concept, but I'm skeptical that you can find that amount of efficiency to cover the outlay and still end up with a reasonable amount to distribute)
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.
Except that's not really the question. Advocates for UBI point out that current means tested benefits are a disincentive to finding employment because your benefits end if you find a job. The argument is that people are more likely to find work if they don't have to worry about their benefits being clawed back.
This study disproved that assertion because even without the clawback, people still weren't any more likely to find work.
Meanwhile, this didn't study any of the really contentious issues, such as:
- If everyone gets money, what happens to the cost of living? according to almost any basic understanding of economics and supply/demand, the cost of living will go up by almost exactly the same amount as the extra money people are given, regardless of how much/little that is. But you can only test this if a large enough percentage of the population has the extra money.
- What happens if you give the money to people who are already employed? will they all stay employed? or will some chose to leave their employment?
- Who pays for all of this?
Not enough info, because there was not enough of a test.
UBI is predicated on several factors that this study didn't bother to test:
- everyone gets it, in a large enough geographic area so that we can see it's effects on inflation
- there is no means testing, doesn't matter if you're a millionaire, or living on the street, everyone is eligible
This also didn't address the elephant in the room, of who pays for it if you actually did the other 2 points...
And this study proved that aspect to be worthless as the people didn't suddenly get jobs now that the benefit cliff argument was negated. So if the strongest argument for UBI is now disproven, even without actually trialling an actual UBI, when do we finally give up on this horrible idea?
And yet, they still didn't work, which just proves that the "benefit cliff" isn't actually what's keeping these people out of the labour market.
And yet, in the past year or so I've noticed that almost everyone I work with, in 2 completely unrelated industries, wear one, as does almost everyone I interact with socially.
Sure, it's popular to hate on the people wearing one, until you realize that it's no longer only a couple of early adopters. The fact is, these devices provide useful functionality to people which they value. Despite pretentious idiots who want to pretend they're superior simply because they DON'T have one.
It's actually the reverse. A smartwatch that depends on a monthly data plan from a carrier to be useful is a dead end. We all have phones in our pockets anyway, it would be pure insanity NOT to use that as your means of connectivity.
It's too bad your source uses "adjusted" numbers and refuses to use actual measurements.
The models could be 100% wrong, and they would keep trying to fix them, because the core physics says *the planet must be collecting thermal energy somewhere*
Except the models ARE wrong, that much has been proven repeatedly. But instead of trying to fix them, they try to fix the data that proves them wrong. It's not science, it's religion.
Unfortunately far too many "scientists" are trying to invent new physics rather than admit their computer model is wrong.
In fact your entire post is exactly the opposite of what we keep seeing. When scientific models disagree with reality, the correct answer is never to assume reality is wrong and adjust the measurements, the correct answer is ALWAYS to adjust the model to match reality.
Instead we see models that are provably wrong because they don't match reality being touted as absolute truth.
You can't make one thing faster without making something else slower. That's just how the internet works. So if throttling wouldn't be allowed, but prioritization would, you've just made a contradiction as they are exactly the same thing.
Interesting that you are putting words in my mouth. I never said it wasn't warming. But no favours are done by exaggerating it for sensationalist stories, and when actual measurements are changed to fit models, instead of the other way around, a LOT of credibility is lost.
If we were talking science instead of religion, it would be possible to have an intelligent discussion on the subject, however in the alarmist religion, even questioning the tiniest detail in a sensationalized press release gets you instantly labelled a "denier" instead of simply someone who wants high quality science on a very important topic.
To go back to your analogy, we put 2 steel balls in the opaque container, shook it, and then counted the balls that came out. There were still only 2, but the model said there should be 3 now, so we told everyone that there were 3 even though only 2 were actually present. There were still 2 steel balls, it was important that there were 2 steel balls, but because we lied to the world and claimed 3, many people decided that we must be lying about the whole thing and refused to admit that there was even a single ball. We then blamed them for questioning our authority instead of admitting that we exaggerated our results for political gain.
When your gun has tens of thousands of rounds, even if one of them finally does turn out to be live, russian roulette stops being so risky, and people lose interest awful quick.
There are far more things we could be worrying about, with science that makes far more accurate predictions. It's a shame so much money is going to this instead of places that could make a real difference in quality of life on this planet.
Already happened. Global warming is never talked about anymore. But currently all the money is in promoting AGW. You literally CANNOT be published unless you follow the doctrine. It's religion. Not science.
Why do an actual experiment when you have computer models? If you find data that disagrees, it's the data that must be wrong, never the model.
How loudly would you proclaim your prediction if there was a 90% chance you'd be wrong?
The problem is, how do you figure out which one of thousands upon thousands of BS predictions will actually be correct? We're getting awful tired of the wrong ones.
Apparently these "scientists" didn't learn anything from the story either.
You obviously haven't been in Alberta long.
I've been here my whole life, and the -34c in winter is normal. the +5c in winter is also normal. That's Alberta weather for you. If anything is unusual this winter it's not the temperatures, it's the slightly lower amount of precipitation, but even that happens some winters, and has for decades. The temperatures this winter are well within the normal range for Alberta (and sure, there may have been a record broken here or there for a specific day, but if the same temperature had happened a few days earlier or later it probably wouldn't have broken the record.) Alberta just has lots of variability in winter, it's the predominant wind currents from the west, combined with the mountains to the west that allows this all to happen in this way.
Some people own Teslas because they like the tech, not because they're trying to make some social/political statement.