I wonder if UBI actually allows the economy to become more efficient. It could be the case that an abusive employer would be more severely punished by the labor market if the economic cost to the worker is diminished by a UBI (i.e. My boss is a jerk, I'm just going to quit and find an employer that treats me better). I would assume then that satisfied employees, with good employers, would then be more productive than their dissatisfied counterparts.
It also seems reasonable to assume that workers would also be more likely to create new businesses entirely if the personal financial risks associated with doing so were diminished by a UBI.
This seems like the biggest win, to me. When your employer represents your important but nonessential income, while your basic survival is guaranteed, it becomes far easier to tell an asshole boss to stuff it while you go looking for new work. It becomes easier to move to a new location without getting a job in advance. It becomes easier to start your own enterprise. It even makes more sense to work part time while developing more in-demand skills or just taking a partial vacation. It opens up so many freedoms of choice that are currently only afforded to people who can make lots of excess money and stash it away as savings.
Ya, I think these are the most important arguments for UBI. It incentivizes risk taking. We want to socialize risk-taking by entrepreneurs. We want to socialize investment in your own skills, and your own development. The only real question, IMO, is if we can afford it. We may or may not be able to today, but one day, we will be able to provide the basic necessities for all citizens as a human right. And on that day, we will reap enormous productivity gains, for exactly these reasons.
For these exact same reasons, you also don't need a minimum wage. And you don't need laws about hiring/firing people. If you get fired, it's a hit, but not an existential crisis that requires government intervention. If, as an employer, you offer too low a salary, people simply won't take it. We don't need to ensure that the minimum wage meets some basic standard of living, because you're already guaranteed that by virtue of your humanity.
A UBI raises the minimum to a level where government intervention in the workplace is no longer required to ensure decent treatment of human beings. In so doing, it eliminates deadweight loss of all kinds, from every corner of the market.
The flip side of this is abusive workers who will refuse to put in good effort because the cost of getting fired is lower.
Of course, we could argue that workers should be more motivated by the promise of a good reward, but it looks like evidence from behavioral economics suggests that fear of loss is approximately twice as powerful as the hope of gain. So let's not underestimate the power of fear to generate productivity.
By the way, I am generally supportive of the UBI, just wanted to point out a potential cost. Over the long run I think the UBI's benefits would exceed its costs, but I can't deny that there are real costs to an UBI (beyond the simple direct costs).
I would suspect that for a lot of people their debts (particularly mortgage debt) would grow with their income leaving them unable to just quit and fall back on UBI.
If workers quit working for abusive employers, then you end up having more job-seekers, which makes it more difficult to find a job. That only becomes irrelevant if you have a parallel increase in entrepreneurship.
One of the reasons why UBI appeals to the HN crowd is because the HN audience leans towards entrepreneurs and wannabe entrepreneurs. But for the economy at large, far more people would rather try to keep their heads down and get home to their families.
Most people are not responsible financial stewards. They don't take their excess income and put it into investments, they take their excess income and put it into improving their standard of living. That means using the extra income generated from a day-job goes to higher rent, car payments, and other liabilities not easily released.
Most middle-income people will end up in the same place - unable to leave their jobs due to the difficulty of finding a new one. Upper-income people will pay more in taxes essentially to end financial insecurity among lower-income people living paycheck-to-paycheck.
> an abusive employer would be more severely punished by the labor market if the economic cost to the worker is diminished
> workers would also be more likely to create new businesses entirely if the personal financial risks associated with doing so were diminished
What kind of UBI are we talking about? If it's the one funded by dismantling the social safety net then no - you won't get more income when losing your job, because the same money is now spread among more people (most of whom still have a job). If it's in addition to the existing safety net, you'd get more of the same advantages by expanding unemployment benefits instead (make them higher / longer lasting / easier to obtain).
The thing that always concerns me about UBI is that the government controls your salary. This is sort of true already on that they have the power to raise our lower taxes, but lowering UBI would affect far more people
For example USA does not have government mandated paternity leave and hence a lot of people value that 3 month salary over staying at home without pay. This means the McDonald on corner is able to have necessary staff and the Comcast technician is able to come to your house on a Saturday.
People leaving jerk boss is not always a good thing because Jerk is a value between 0 to 1. UBI simply tilts it in employees favor which is exactly same as against society's benefit.
Iranian expat with some insight into this program here; any study that doesn't isolate confounding factors will be inconclusive at best, especially since the Iranian economy has been changing drastically in recent years. Hyperinflation during Ahmadinejad administration, economic embargoes, and the nuclear deal affected people's lives so much more than a measly basic income.
Also, a fraction of the average (or even median) income is not a good indicator, because of high class division in Iran. It certainly doesn't translate into what $16K can give you in the US. E.g. if you're an unemployed youngster living with your parents in Tehran, it can help you with your entertainment budget, but it's in no way a life-changing amount.
These studies have been popping up on HN, and they're all pretty interesting, yet all seem fairly inconclusive to me.
This one started in 2011, and I'm guessing since the article doesn't say they stopped, that it is still going on?
> The report found no evidence for the idea that people will work less under a universal income, and found that in some cases, like in the service industry, people worked more, expanding their businesses or pursuing more satisfying lines of work.
but yet they say:
> The researchers did find that young people — specifically people in their twenties — worked less, but noted that Iran never had a high level of employment among young people, and that they were likely enrolling in school with the added income.
It seems like tracking how many people who are enrolled in school would be fairly easy to track to verify this. They do say in the paper that youth does have a reduced labor rate, but then they say it might be education (but provide no numbers):
> While there is no evidence of a negative supply response for
the average worker, male or female, there is one for youth in their twenties. If one were to
expect a strong negative impact it would be for youth, who have weak job attachment, can stay
in school longer, or enjoy more leisure, though we do know which of these options they choose.
While I do think there's value in looking at the micro circumstances, I do wonder how culture will change and shift because of UBI, and how that will also affect its outcome.
For example, if we say that we believe in UBI, that means that basically everyone should have enough money to live. We're offering an entitlement to which people will feel entitled. Over time, how will that change society?
One past example of this would be college education. Nowadays everyone goes to college, but it wasn't always so. Would as many people to go college if society didn't push them that way? One other such cultural shift might be women entering the workforce, or desegregation, and how that lead toward the fight for civil rights.
Since many things happen in that period this is not a controlled experiment so you can't have strong conclusions, they can notice some correlations at most such as the program did not increased the number of unemployed people, maybe something else balanced this program but this was not found so the authors are challenging others to look at the data and find things that support the idea that unemployment would rise or other bad side effects.
If I'm reading that right, Iran basically tried to swap fuel subsidies with "universal grants" (aka "basic income"). The grants were a lower amount than the fuel subsidies so it was a strategy for the government to reduce overall spending.
What's not clear is if people kept working to help pay for the shortfall in fuel subsidy or compensate for spending on other goods that the higher fuel subsidies allowed. Maybe this clarification is in the researchers 31 page pdf but I haven't had a chance to read the whole thing.
Having lived in Iran, the program is not a UBI, but a "replacement" for the petroleum and energy subsidies that were provided to all.
So, instead of the government paying for your gas - which subsidies consumption - the idea is to pay a fixed subsidy primarily to benefit the very poor.
This income has a large benefit for the very poor parts of society, but they still have to work to make ends meet. If this amount of money makes a difference to you, you probably have no disposable income.
This is more akin to a tax reform than a UBI program, though.
Even though I am sympathetic to the idea of Universal income, the fact the Iran's economy experienced inflation as high as 45% the rapid rise of which correlates closely with the start of this program[1], should make this a worrisome rather than promising case study.
The inflation coincided with the introduction of stricter US sanctions, which also coincided with this study's finding that over that same winter poor people who'd just seen prices rise (and lost massive food/fuel subsidies the program replaced) didn't rush to quit their jobs in the face of a more uncertain future. Even Basic Income campaign groups seem to accept that the program helped accelerate the inflation[1] but I'd be hesitant to draw any strong conclusions about BI - good or bad - from the period over which Iran first introduced it. Longer term studies might be a little more interesting if they exist, but there are plenty of other secular trends in the Iranian economy.
An even bigger issue for it as a case study might be the present Iranian government's keenness to phase the program out.
Maybe a dumb question, but I have always wondered this.
Won't UBI just shift the poverty line to a value above whatever it is now(0 maybe), without changing the income inequality/wealth difference. In a hyper-simplistic hypothetical scenario, if it's assumed that a person is poor if he has $0, with UBI, he'll have $X/month, making him above the poverty line. But now the entire country, rich and poor, have at least $X/month, which might translate to an increase in cost of all goods/services by $X, rendering the poor as poor and rich as rich.
It's unlikely for $0 pre-basic income and $X post-basic income to have the same value. The former is, well, nothing, and the latter is, well, something.
> Won't UBI just shift the poverty line to a value above whatever it is now(0 maybe), without changing the income inequality/wealth difference.
As far as I can tell this keeps coming up because the answer is "no" but the explanation is complicated.
The are two types of inflation.
One is industry-specific and happens when the government subsidizes something. For example, if the government provides education subsidies then the cost of education increases compared to other things like food or transportation.
The other is currency-specific. When the government prints a lot of new currency, the value of a dollar goes down. Prices go up not because there is more demand for products but because there is less demand for dollars.
A UBI doesn't do either of those things. It doesn't subsidize any specific thing and it doesn't create any new money.
The closest you can get is that there is a theory that higher income people spend less of their income than lower income people, so anything that transfers money from higher income people to lower income people is equivalent to creating new money, because the money in the hands of higher income people was effectively out of circulation.
That general form has nothing to do with a UBI. It applies equally to any government program that produces per-capita public benefits from sales or income tax revenues. The rich pay a tax and the poor get public schools and housing subsidies, which means the poor have the money they didn't spend on schools or housing and can spend it on something else.
Moreover, the effect is small (most people aren't rich enough to never spend their money), and it's simple to compensate for it -- the government is constantly creating new currency because more currency is required as the economy grows. So if you want less inflation, print less money.
And that's assuming that moderate inflation would be a problem, but in fact it's a benefit. The country is in a debt crisis. People have too much mortgage debt, too much student debt, too much credit card debt. The government itself has too much public debt. The prices of housing and education and medicine are too high, but lowering nominal prices is very difficult because everyone has mortgages and contracts that assume the existing prices. The US balance of trade has been out of whack for decades. Lowering the value of the dollar helps with all of those things because it lets the nominal price of those things stay the same while reducing their actual cost back to sane levels.
My concern about UBI is not the initial situation, but what happens in a democratic society, when the majority of citizens can continually vote for increases in the level of UBI, which will be paid for by the small number of the richest in society. If $20000 UBI annually is good, why not vote to increase it to $40000? Or $60000? Or $1,000,000? And will "the rich" be happy to keep paying more and more, while their level of work remains the same? Isn't there some level of taxation at which those people would quite rationally either work (and earn) less, or go live in another country that doesn't have a similar tax burden?
I feel there is something very different between the richest 80% choosing to tax themselves more to support the poorest 20%, vs the poorest 80% or 90% forcing the richest 10 or 20% to hand over an ever-increasing amount of money. Even if you think that is morally correct, I don't think it would work
This article is really bad. M. Friedman has nothing to do with UBI. What is the origin of the money given ? No one seem to talk about it.
From the paper "Assuming that leisure is a normal good, economic theory predicts that an increase in unearned income reduces labor supply [...] In this paper we study a large cash transfer program in a developing setting, one that has come under criticism for its potential negative labor supply effect"
Why would reducing the labor supply be a bad thing ? If we can live the same lives and work less, that's definitely a good thing.
I agree. Milton Friedman says; "Instead of giving non-cash benefits like food stamps, housing vouchers and education we should calculate how much those benefits cost per person distribute that to people as negative income tax." Government spends tons of resources running these programs and leads to corruption and unfair distribution for a lucky few, "bucket is leaking". Every single UBI proposal/experiment I have seen keeps all the benefits and then adds an extra basic income payment, which works fine in a small experiment but quickly becomes unaffordable if you scale it to the whole country.
The article says, “In the U.S. such a measure would translate to about $16,000 per year.”
No.
$1.50 per day per household is not the same as $45.00 per day.
I see what they did. They zeroed in on 29% of median income. That’s a nice trick to make their argument stronger, but it makes no sense.
$1.50 per day is $1.50 per day regardless of the median income.
This article tells us what would probably happen if you gave a family $1.50 per day. It says absolutely nothing about what would happen if you gave them $45.00 per day
I was going to argue with this, but looking into it, it seems the cost of living is only about 50% of the US, so it's really more equivalent to $3/day or so in the US, which would be about $1k/yr. So yeah, I'm a lot less impressed by this now.
It looks like you'd be able to maybe cover basic staple foods in Iran with this income, without anything left for shelter or other necessities. But that said, it means the median income is only about equivalent to $3k/yr US in spending power, which is incredibly depressing, and makes me wonder if I'm doing some math wrong, since surely half the population can't be poor to the point of homelessness. Perhaps the numbers I'm looking at don't factor cost of living in rural vs urban areas, and there is an order of magnitude difference?
I disagree to call this a UBI. No one in Iran was ever able to live from this in any way. It is like the 193€ child support the German state pays to every parent: it is helping, but I could not pay even the lowest rent in the country with it. I know this "UBI" from Iran because of my relatives there and essentially it was considered a joke and no one cried a tear when it went away.
To be honest, the idea of universal income appeals to me because it sounds like free money.
So one could simply decide not to work at all and use that UBI money for housing, food, and habits and everybody would be fine with that.
I can see how that would have appealed to my 20-something year old self; and it's not much different than how it appeals to my 30-something year old self.
You lost me with the "and habits". Bill Gates has said he wants his kids to have enough money to do anything, but not so much they can do nothing. Which is to say you can get a good education, but at some point you need to do something with your life other than gamboling, drugs and prostitutes [you can substitute/add whatever wasteful habits you want here]. It is quite obvious (almost a straw-man) that if everybody did that society would collapse.
I want enough of a fall back that people survive. I want it uncomfortable enough that people decide to get a more productive job if they can. (leaving only the disabled to actually live on the basic income)
Of course I don't know what your habits are. If they are walking around the park you can do that cheaply, I'm willing to take the risk that you won't get bored quickly doing that.
The money would not be enough for you to have a decent live, maybe if you already have your own house and living is cheap, but in some countries I know that if you benefit from such program you will have to work for the community, dirty jobs like cleaning garbage from the fields or whatever the community needs, so is not free.
Specifically they found that generally people didn't work less, although young people did and they aren't sure if they are just not working, or if they are going to school. They counter that observation that employment in young people is also low in general. (presumably allowing for systemic unemployment of some form).
There is a consistent outcome from many BI tests, which is that just knowing there will be some money each month can mitigate stress and anxiety in people. People with reduced stress and anxiety are both more productive and more functional.
I think you can judge success of UBI only over decades and generations of people. People who grew up in a world of UBI will have a totally different view on life than current generations.
I am not saying it's good or bad but I think it will be very difficult to figure out what the eventual outcome of UBI will be in a few decades.
The biggest problem is that, as per the law of rent, rents will rise by the amount of the dividend once the market has time to react to it.
There would be constant compulsion to raise the basic incomes at the cost of greater and greater public debts or taxes on production... and all the corresponding deadweight loss.
However, if it were funded by taxing land by value, then the rising rents would produce a sustainable public surplus.
I believe UBI would lead to changing the fundamental nature of money as it goes from scarcity based to rate-of-flow based in its value basis. It will work as long as people who receive UBI spend that money, as opposed to horde it. That mens UBI should be given to people who have no other sources of income, not to those who will likely just accumulate it with no intent to spend it.
There's a significant gap between the bottom end of people with other sources of income and those who will "accumulate it with no intent to spend it". Further, even if you give it to everyone across the board, most of the people who don't need it for basic expenditures and have no intention of saving for a big purchase at some point in the future (e.g. a down-payment on a car or house) would likely be making enough money that the UBI is less than their taxes.
>The report found no evidence for the idea that people will work less under a universal income, and found that in some cases, like in the service industry, people worked more, expanding their businesses or pursuing more satisfying lines of work.
>The researchers did find that young people — specifically people in their twenties — worked less, but noted that Iran never had a high level of employment among young people, and that they were likely enrolling in school with the added income.
Seems the authors' agendas are leaking through, these two consecutive paragraphs from the article essentially contradict each other and the premise of the article.
What I read: "we found evidence that young people did work less, but we hand waved it away with a seemingly plausible and totally unsubstantiated assumption."
The linked report makes the distinction a little clearer:
> For the most part, we focus on the labor supply of poorer workers, who are more likely to
reduce their labor supply as a result of a modest increase in unearned income. Our results do
not indicate a negative labor supply effect for either hours worked or the probability of
participation in market work, either for all workers or those in the bottom 40% of the income
distribution. We do find a negative labor supply effect for workers 20-29 years old for their
hours worked.
[+] [-] Endama|8 years ago|reply
It also seems reasonable to assume that workers would also be more likely to create new businesses entirely if the personal financial risks associated with doing so were diminished by a UBI.
[+] [-] bryondowd|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] darawk|8 years ago|reply
For these exact same reasons, you also don't need a minimum wage. And you don't need laws about hiring/firing people. If you get fired, it's a hit, but not an existential crisis that requires government intervention. If, as an employer, you offer too low a salary, people simply won't take it. We don't need to ensure that the minimum wage meets some basic standard of living, because you're already guaranteed that by virtue of your humanity.
A UBI raises the minimum to a level where government intervention in the workplace is no longer required to ensure decent treatment of human beings. In so doing, it eliminates deadweight loss of all kinds, from every corner of the market.
[+] [-] tryitnow|8 years ago|reply
Of course, we could argue that workers should be more motivated by the promise of a good reward, but it looks like evidence from behavioral economics suggests that fear of loss is approximately twice as powerful as the hope of gain. So let's not underestimate the power of fear to generate productivity.
By the way, I am generally supportive of the UBI, just wanted to point out a potential cost. Over the long run I think the UBI's benefits would exceed its costs, but I can't deny that there are real costs to an UBI (beyond the simple direct costs).
[+] [-] makerofthings|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] solatic|8 years ago|reply
One of the reasons why UBI appeals to the HN crowd is because the HN audience leans towards entrepreneurs and wannabe entrepreneurs. But for the economy at large, far more people would rather try to keep their heads down and get home to their families.
Most people are not responsible financial stewards. They don't take their excess income and put it into investments, they take their excess income and put it into improving their standard of living. That means using the extra income generated from a day-job goes to higher rent, car payments, and other liabilities not easily released.
Most middle-income people will end up in the same place - unable to leave their jobs due to the difficulty of finding a new one. Upper-income people will pay more in taxes essentially to end financial insecurity among lower-income people living paycheck-to-paycheck.
[+] [-] greglindahl|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zeteo|8 years ago|reply
> workers would also be more likely to create new businesses entirely if the personal financial risks associated with doing so were diminished
What kind of UBI are we talking about? If it's the one funded by dismantling the social safety net then no - you won't get more income when losing your job, because the same money is now spread among more people (most of whom still have a job). If it's in addition to the existing safety net, you'd get more of the same advantages by expanding unemployment benefits instead (make them higher / longer lasting / easier to obtain).
[+] [-] e40|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] roryisok|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Certhas|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] branchless|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jaggi1|8 years ago|reply
For example USA does not have government mandated paternity leave and hence a lot of people value that 3 month salary over staying at home without pay. This means the McDonald on corner is able to have necessary staff and the Comcast technician is able to come to your house on a Saturday.
People leaving jerk boss is not always a good thing because Jerk is a value between 0 to 1. UBI simply tilts it in employees favor which is exactly same as against society's benefit.
[+] [-] pesfandiar|8 years ago|reply
Also, a fraction of the average (or even median) income is not a good indicator, because of high class division in Iran. It certainly doesn't translate into what $16K can give you in the US. E.g. if you're an unemployed youngster living with your parents in Tehran, it can help you with your entertainment budget, but it's in no way a life-changing amount.
[+] [-] bryondowd|8 years ago|reply
Just curious what the amount of money could cover, in terms of food and shelter.
[+] [-] cbanek|8 years ago|reply
This one started in 2011, and I'm guessing since the article doesn't say they stopped, that it is still going on?
> The report found no evidence for the idea that people will work less under a universal income, and found that in some cases, like in the service industry, people worked more, expanding their businesses or pursuing more satisfying lines of work.
but yet they say:
> The researchers did find that young people — specifically people in their twenties — worked less, but noted that Iran never had a high level of employment among young people, and that they were likely enrolling in school with the added income.
It seems like tracking how many people who are enrolled in school would be fairly easy to track to verify this. They do say in the paper that youth does have a reduced labor rate, but then they say it might be education (but provide no numbers):
> While there is no evidence of a negative supply response for the average worker, male or female, there is one for youth in their twenties. If one were to expect a strong negative impact it would be for youth, who have weak job attachment, can stay in school longer, or enjoy more leisure, though we do know which of these options they choose.
While I do think there's value in looking at the micro circumstances, I do wonder how culture will change and shift because of UBI, and how that will also affect its outcome.
For example, if we say that we believe in UBI, that means that basically everyone should have enough money to live. We're offering an entitlement to which people will feel entitled. Over time, how will that change society?
One past example of this would be college education. Nowadays everyone goes to college, but it wasn't always so. Would as many people to go college if society didn't push them that way? One other such cultural shift might be women entering the workforce, or desegregation, and how that lead toward the fight for civil rights.
[+] [-] simion314|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jasode|8 years ago|reply
If I'm reading that right, Iran basically tried to swap fuel subsidies with "universal grants" (aka "basic income"). The grants were a lower amount than the fuel subsidies so it was a strategy for the government to reduce overall spending.
What's not clear is if people kept working to help pay for the shortfall in fuel subsidy or compensate for spending on other goods that the higher fuel subsidies allowed. Maybe this clarification is in the researchers 31 page pdf but I haven't had a chance to read the whole thing.
[1] https://books.google.com/books?id=MPahDQAAQBAJ&pg=PT162&lpg=...
[+] [-] darioush|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tezka|8 years ago|reply
[1] https://d3fy651gv2fhd3.cloudfront.net/charts/iran-inflation-...
[+] [-] a-priori|8 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Security_Counci... http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/02/world/middleeast/irans-dou...
[+] [-] notahacker|8 years ago|reply
An even bigger issue for it as a case study might be the present Iranian government's keenness to phase the program out.
[1]http://basicincome.org/news/2012/05/opinion-irans-citizens-i...
[+] [-] intopieces|8 years ago|reply
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/04/world/middleeast/us-adds-...
[+] [-] oarla|8 years ago|reply
Won't UBI just shift the poverty line to a value above whatever it is now(0 maybe), without changing the income inequality/wealth difference. In a hyper-simplistic hypothetical scenario, if it's assumed that a person is poor if he has $0, with UBI, he'll have $X/month, making him above the poverty line. But now the entire country, rich and poor, have at least $X/month, which might translate to an increase in cost of all goods/services by $X, rendering the poor as poor and rich as rich.
[+] [-] Chinjut|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AnthonyMouse|8 years ago|reply
As far as I can tell this keeps coming up because the answer is "no" but the explanation is complicated.
The are two types of inflation.
One is industry-specific and happens when the government subsidizes something. For example, if the government provides education subsidies then the cost of education increases compared to other things like food or transportation.
The other is currency-specific. When the government prints a lot of new currency, the value of a dollar goes down. Prices go up not because there is more demand for products but because there is less demand for dollars.
A UBI doesn't do either of those things. It doesn't subsidize any specific thing and it doesn't create any new money.
The closest you can get is that there is a theory that higher income people spend less of their income than lower income people, so anything that transfers money from higher income people to lower income people is equivalent to creating new money, because the money in the hands of higher income people was effectively out of circulation.
That general form has nothing to do with a UBI. It applies equally to any government program that produces per-capita public benefits from sales or income tax revenues. The rich pay a tax and the poor get public schools and housing subsidies, which means the poor have the money they didn't spend on schools or housing and can spend it on something else.
Moreover, the effect is small (most people aren't rich enough to never spend their money), and it's simple to compensate for it -- the government is constantly creating new currency because more currency is required as the economy grows. So if you want less inflation, print less money.
And that's assuming that moderate inflation would be a problem, but in fact it's a benefit. The country is in a debt crisis. People have too much mortgage debt, too much student debt, too much credit card debt. The government itself has too much public debt. The prices of housing and education and medicine are too high, but lowering nominal prices is very difficult because everyone has mortgages and contracts that assume the existing prices. The US balance of trade has been out of whack for decades. Lowering the value of the dollar helps with all of those things because it lets the nominal price of those things stay the same while reducing their actual cost back to sane levels.
[+] [-] lastyearman|8 years ago|reply
So the important questions are: does UBI increase or decrease productivity and how is wealth divided after UBI.
[+] [-] ghufran_syed|8 years ago|reply
I feel there is something very different between the richest 80% choosing to tax themselves more to support the poorest 20%, vs the poorest 80% or 90% forcing the richest 10 or 20% to hand over an ever-increasing amount of money. Even if you think that is morally correct, I don't think it would work
[+] [-] flukus|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] neilwilson|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ttoinou|8 years ago|reply
From the paper "Assuming that leisure is a normal good, economic theory predicts that an increase in unearned income reduces labor supply [...] In this paper we study a large cash transfer program in a developing setting, one that has come under criticism for its potential negative labor supply effect" Why would reducing the labor supply be a bad thing ? If we can live the same lives and work less, that's definitely a good thing.
[+] [-] gorkemyurt|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ende|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kangnkodos|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bryondowd|8 years ago|reply
It looks like you'd be able to maybe cover basic staple foods in Iran with this income, without anything left for shelter or other necessities. But that said, it means the median income is only about equivalent to $3k/yr US in spending power, which is incredibly depressing, and makes me wonder if I'm doing some math wrong, since surely half the population can't be poor to the point of homelessness. Perhaps the numbers I'm looking at don't factor cost of living in rural vs urban areas, and there is an order of magnitude difference?
[+] [-] thaumasiotes|8 years ago|reply
Sure, this is reasonable.
> $1.50 per day is $1.50 per day regardless of the median income.
No, the relevant concept here is PPP (purchasing power parity) adjustment.
[+] [-] geff82|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tuxidomasx|8 years ago|reply
So one could simply decide not to work at all and use that UBI money for housing, food, and habits and everybody would be fine with that.
I can see how that would have appealed to my 20-something year old self; and it's not much different than how it appeals to my 30-something year old self.
[+] [-] bluGill|8 years ago|reply
I want enough of a fall back that people survive. I want it uncomfortable enough that people decide to get a more productive job if they can. (leaving only the disabled to actually live on the basic income)
Of course I don't know what your habits are. If they are walking around the park you can do that cheaply, I'm willing to take the risk that you won't get bored quickly doing that.
[+] [-] simion314|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ttoinou|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ChuckMcM|8 years ago|reply
There is a consistent outcome from many BI tests, which is that just knowing there will be some money each month can mitigate stress and anxiety in people. People with reduced stress and anxiety are both more productive and more functional.
[+] [-] maxxxxx|8 years ago|reply
I am not saying it's good or bad but I think it will be very difficult to figure out what the eventual outcome of UBI will be in a few decades.
[+] [-] matthjensen|8 years ago|reply
https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/UBI-working-p...
[+] [-] nwah1|8 years ago|reply
There would be constant compulsion to raise the basic incomes at the cost of greater and greater public debts or taxes on production... and all the corresponding deadweight loss.
However, if it were funded by taxing land by value, then the rising rents would produce a sustainable public surplus.
[+] [-] idibidiartists|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vizeroth|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nnfy|8 years ago|reply
>The researchers did find that young people — specifically people in their twenties — worked less, but noted that Iran never had a high level of employment among young people, and that they were likely enrolling in school with the added income.
Seems the authors' agendas are leaking through, these two consecutive paragraphs from the article essentially contradict each other and the premise of the article.
What I read: "we found evidence that young people did work less, but we hand waved it away with a seemingly plausible and totally unsubstantiated assumption."
This is politicized science.
[+] [-] swampangel|8 years ago|reply
> For the most part, we focus on the labor supply of poorer workers, who are more likely to reduce their labor supply as a result of a modest increase in unearned income. Our results do not indicate a negative labor supply effect for either hours worked or the probability of participation in market work, either for all workers or those in the bottom 40% of the income distribution. We do find a negative labor supply effect for workers 20-29 years old for their hours worked.