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I don't understand what conclusions you can draw from an experiment with a predefined termination date like this. If I were part of this group, I would realize that in two years, I am back to supporting myself, so I would keep working the entire time. If instead I knew my basic needs would be covered for free for the rest of my life, I might just quit my job and enjoy life.
As someone else posted here a long time ago, a better way to estimate the effects of UBI on productivity is to study people living off a lottery annuity of a similar allowance.
I feel like not everyone plans into the future in detail, and a lot of people make serious life choices using emotion. They might actually get a lot of useful data (though in that case it would be quite mean or exploitative towards the sample group).
Something that just crossed my mind...
I've always been a proponent of a decent minimum wage, because I've argued that eliminating minimum wage would result in a race to the bottom on wages as people become more desperate for work, and the standard of living would hit rock bottom for the people at the bottom.
But with UBI, the dynamic changes. If UBI pays for your basic necessities, people only need to work if they want something better than the bare minimum. The power dynamic has changed, and now all employees have leverage. No longer is it "The job pays next to nothing, but if I want a least two meals a day, I still gotta do it", and instead is "I don't need this job to survive, so they need to make it worthwhile."
In short, I would happily be in favor of dropping minimum wage laws entirely if UBI was implemented and was enough to survive off of.
Who pays the taxes that fund UBI? What happens to that economic activity under UBI? Who grows the food? Who maintains civilization if a not-insignificant percentage of it decide they can't be bothered.
Theoretically, automation takes over much of the manual labor.
Let's be real here. We absolutely have the technology to automate most farming jobs. We just need to build the machines to do it. But right now, it's cheaper to pay a bunch of illegal immigrant workers [0] cash under the table to pick crops than to hire a team of robotics and automation experts to develop a robot that does it.
The money they save in labor costs can be taxed to fund UBI.
Think long term here. Given enough time, most manual jobs can and will be automated. UBI will be a necessity as unemployment goes up as jobs are lost to automation. We're probably still 20+ years away from the tipping point, but it WILL happen.
[0] 41% of farmworkers are not authorized to work in the USA: https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/farm-labor/
A lot of people would want more and therefore stay with their job. Society won't just simply throw their paperwork out the window and become hermits.
The sample size of thirty people is going to be too small and the two year duration is too short.
I expect that participants will be happier than average and feel more secure. On the flip side they will continue working and their lives will not change much because they can see the payments will be terminated reasonably soon.
Even with the small sample size they are splitting the trial between two locations and trying to make it representative (whatever that means). This seems to raise the risk of a lot of anomalies.
I struggle to see how any meaningful conclusions would come out of this.
"Thirty people in the U.K. could soon receive £1,600 ($1,983) each month if the trial by independent think tank Autonomy secures funding."
Yeah, I'm running one of these too, and I'll give people £5k each month if I receive funding. How is this news?
If I get 5 people to fund you, can I get 5k a month? Perhaps we could design a tiered system based on how many people are brought in to fund your think tank, possibly in the shape of a triangle.
I want in on this.
It’s not news, it’s journalism.
Any serious UBI study would look at entire population of a town/county/region, not thirty people. This is beyond useless.
I see every small UBI study as a move to make the idea of UBI more acceptable rather than a study to prove the effectiveness of UBI. In my opinion, these kinds of small steps are needed because gaining political momentum is the hardest thing to achieve when money is involved.
But it was studied many times across large populations. USSR, Cambodia, North Korea, Venezuela, Hungary, Somalia, etc, etc... They didn't use the same euphemism, but they did take it seriously and to its logical conclusion.
As someone who's lived in a communist country, no, that had nothing to do with UBI.
The related communist motto is "From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs"[0]. Basically, you have to work to the best of your ability, and what you'll get is whatever someone on top decides you need. You don't need to go further than that to realize that idea is bonkers.
The idea of UBI is universal basic income with no strings attached. It does not preclude having other income, nor does it require any work to be performed.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_each_according_to_his_abi...
> Thirty people in the U.K. could soon receive £1,600 ($1,983) each month if the trial by independent think tank Autonomy secures funding. The basic income payments are estimated to cost £1.15 million through the duration of the two-year project.
This is much cheaper than other political tactics and obviously these are cherry picked recipients. This is awful.
Care to expand on your thinking here? In what way do you think these recipients would be cherry picked, and what do you think would be the political goals?
If you're running a study like this and want to ensure a certain result to support your take on the issue it'd be easy to pick recipients to reinforce whatever your goals are. IE. only choose people with stable employment who won't all quit their jobs immediately when they start getting checks, or the opposite if your goal is to sink UBI.
This is the political equivalent of paid Amazon reviews. The goal is to be the winning despot for a socialist regime. It's like the lottery, but for power. They're never going to stop these "trials" until anti-bribery laws are updated to include false philanthropy.
Here's how all these experiments should work: first participants volunteer, then everyone who volunteers will pay a special tax to pay benefits for the duration of the program.
Taking outside money and funneling into a closed system is guaranteed to produce distorted results, likely to be made worse because anyone running such an experiment is extremely likely to have a strong pre-existing pro-UBI bias that makes the result even more of a foregone conclusion.
30 people, for 2 years? Just as meaningless as every other time someone has done this. It would need to be for more than 30 people, and funded indefinitely. People are not going to make life changes based on a mere 2 years of guaranteed income.
I don't get how you can trial UBI and get much out of it. Being universal is the key concept. If everyone had it, the entire economy would change direction. Do they do these just to say "look, we tried, and it didn't work"?
Having it time-limited, here two years, is another challenge that gets brought up when trialing UBI. It's more of a temporary bonus than something participants can depend on.
(not making a point one way or another for UBI itself)
Are you saying because everyone gets it, it's a wash? Isn't it more about how the money moves around the economy? Others are pointing out the small sample size, which makes this seem pretty insignificant to impact the economy, and more about the people's experience and change in living/living quality.
Because the concept itself is a lie and panderous ploy for voters. If UBI was universal, nobody would work and UBI would have no funding source since government can only ever be funded by tax revenue by people who work.
I'm running a political party that will give everyone $2000/month at a minimum.
If another party promises more money we will beat it by 15%. We will always give the people more money than any other party.
30 people.. completely pointless, the behavior of the participants would never match actual reality. Truly universal UBI would just cause price increases for everything and will never be possible in a resource scarce society. Sure you might be able to afford necessities for a few months until the market adjusts..
One thing I don't understand: I only spend about 25-30 a year, despite making a devs salary. I think 45-50 ubi is the point where I'd just leave the workforce.
Every time I stumble upon a thread like this one, multiple posters react with "but everybody will stop working!". I always find this reaction to be curious.
Why are we working now if, only by not being afraid of starvation and homelessness, we shall stop doing so? It seems to me only two conclusions follow:
1. It means that the actual labor market isn't free since we are essentially coerced into exchanging by fear of being destitute.
2. It means that the free market does not operate properly since if it was, the price of labor would adjust to find a new equilibrium where employers and employees satisfied by the exchange.
UBI would not induce mass idleness. It would rebalance labor relations.
Startling conclusion: The 30 people who received a substantial amount of free money liked getting free money.
Follow up conclusion: Therefore we should give everyone cash.
Next years headlines "Why did food prices skyrocket?"
Socialism never works, not even this time. Not even next time.
Correct.
Similarly, Food prices have dramatically gone down since they cut out the extra COVID foodstamps in my state. It's not the only reason, but I know people with like $2000 in foodstamps that don't know what to do with it
Do you mean last year's headlines? Or this years?
I'm curious why you think food prices will rise. Governments already fight hunger in various ways, so I assume you don't believe some people have to starve for food to be affordable to the rest of us.
I assume it's from the angle of: whose going to work to farm/sell the food if they get UBI?
Or was yours just a sarcastic knee-jerk response?
Yeah! Because the amount of food you eat is only limited by how much money you have, right?
Socialism works fine for the rich in capitalist countries. The government is always quick to bail them out with everybody's money whenever something doesn't go their way. Remember that funky business of SVB some time ago?
I didn't even mention the number of loopholes and tax exemptions they get.
Maybe extending those benefits to lower castes of society would be a good idea.
Capitalism didn't work either. Maybe we should try a little of both at the same time.
I'm curious why you describe UBI as socialism. I wouldn't think transfer payments would have that deep of an effect on the underlying economic system. Are you suggesting that without fear of starvation the workers will rise up and seize the means of production?
This whole idea is stupid. How about giving proper financial support for parents and covering all expenses for raising a child and not just give away money to lazy people who don't want to work and contribute nothing to society.
The Job Guarantee proposal is much better [1]. At its essence is to guarantee a federally funded job to anyone that wants one with a living wage and full benefits. This would tighten the labor market, put a floor on it, and lift society from the ground up. Firms would then have to provide better jobs than the guarantee if they want labor.
Its just a cynical power play as usual. "Vote for me and I'll give you money" is a platform as old as politics
This whole idea is stupid. How about giving proper financial support for unfortunate and beaten down people and covering all expenses for sustaining life and not just give away money to lazy parents who don't want to work and contribute nothing to society.
Subsiding parenthood is far worse than subsidizing laziness.
The opposite would be better: give financial support to people only if they agree not to waste that money on kids they can't afford to have.
Exactly. Government preferences should be given to people raising children, regardless of race, sexuality, or gender. Much of the social services network is about supporting children. If parents were given job preference over other identity categories it would be a) fair and b) protect children without creating social service costs.
Well, this is a nice change of pace of governments giving money and "get out of jail free cards" to their cronies that belong to the rich elites, who quite often are damaging to society, instead of simply "not contributing".
> This whole idea is stupid. How about giving proper financial support for parents and covering all expenses for raising a child
— like a universal basic income —
> and not just give away money to lazy people who don't want to work and contribute nothing to society.
— like “investors' dividends”.
This argument makes more sense against capitalism than against this.