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Comment by JoeAltmaier | Hacker News Reader

These experiments confuse me. Haven't we already seen the result of UBI? Pensions, states that issue money (from state oil income etc), allowances, annuities?

The world doesn't come to an end; the people don't all become listless and stop contributing. The currency doesn't inflate uncontrollably; prices don't change at all. The cost of living is unchanged (because economics doesn't work that way).

All the FUD produced over this is astonishing. I admit, I had questions to begin with as well. But it takes only a little reading and thinking to get over it.

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> the people don't all become listless and stop contributing

Well, in the US two groups that do get state distributions - residents of Alaska and those on Native American reservations - do have disproportionate rates of substance abuse (mainly alcohol).

As far as seniors who get pensions, what is your definition of "contributing"? In many cases they are eligible for those pensions only once they declare themselves retired.

> residents of Alaska

Probably a bad example to bring up.

The Alaska fund distributions amount to roughly ~$1.5k a year. Not quite the same as a pension or UBI. I'll probably get egg on my face for saying this, but I highly doubt anyone in Alaska lives solely on fund distributions.

Further, as noted [1], the "dividend had no effect on employment, and increased part-time work by 1.8 percentage points (17 percent)... our results suggest that a universal and permanent cash transfer does not significantly decrease aggregate employment."

1: http://www.nber.org/papers/w24312.pdf

One of my intern friends a few years ago was from Alaska. He said all that money practically goes towards heating because it gets so freaking cold in the winter.

There are also plenty of retirees and rich people that get money for not working.

I think a good cohort to look at would be trust fund recipients, specifically those who receive between $10-50k/year from their trust. Oftentimes these trusts are first available in young adulthood, so they are a good proxy for UBI. Of course the major confounding variable would be that these recipients are likely to be wealthier, and thus more educated, than the general population

This. Go ahead and make whatever arguments you like about how people should not get money for not working, just as long as you're prepared also to apply that to the workings of compound interest in savings accounts :)

There should be no income whatsoever merely from already having money. Go get a job :)

> Well, in the US two groups that do get state distributions - residents of Alaska and those on Native American reservations - do have disproportionate rates of substance abuse (mainly alcohol).

Both of which had those problems before the distributions, so this appears to be the worst kind of correlation to causation argument, the pre hoc ergo propter hoc argument.

Are those groups anomalous though: alcoholism has a generic factor I gather, and colder climates appear to have more substance abuse. With those factors accounted for does providing "pensions" increase substance [ab]use, and is the use problematic.

Isn’t Saudi Arabia an example where citizens did became lazy, and the government had to introduce incentives to go to college, start businesses, etc? And they still need cheap migrant labor for everything from childcare to construction, so automation has a long way to go.

I've never seen any evidence to suggest that people paid a living income off state pensions or oil funds are anywhere near as productive as those who aren't (even after controlling for demographics), and not having an enormous drop in productivity is integral to the possibility of UBI being fundable in the foreseeable future.

How did you come to those conclusions? I've never seen any such study.

>Pensions

>The currency doesn't inflate uncontrollably

Seeing the costs for pension homes in Germany, I disagree. There is a ton of fraud and abuse (in the billions) and the prices are outrageous. Old people are an easy target and we have a general problem with crime, so that no doubt contributes to it, but overall the example seems to be a bad one if you're in favor of UBI.

Perhaps because they are 'pension homes', which can be a closed market and an easy target.

A UBI is universal. You can't tell those dollars from any other dollars being spent. Prices, in fact, should drop with more demand and thus flexible supply adapting. Cheaper by the volume.

> Prices, in fact, should drop with more demand and thus flexible supply adapting. Cheaper by the volume.

Housing isn't a flexible supply and isn't much cheaper by the volume (if anything, it can become more expensive because of the space).

Personally that's my biggest issue with UBI. If it's not taken together with incentive to build suburbs/other cities that will make people want to go further away... most of it will go toward rent because you will all compete for a better location (I don't know for you but I waste 2 hours a day to go to works, I could lower that to 30 minutes a day for less than 1000$ a month, that's for sure).

We already see this effect in the cities that attracted startups. They got higher wages (which can be seen as "basic income" essentially because there was already a similar job done for less money close to there), which made housing price to go much higher.

> Haven't we already seen the result of UBI?

Nope.

> The world doesn't come to an end; the people don't all become listless and stop contributing. The currency doesn't inflate uncontrollably; prices don't change at all.

That’s exactly what has happened. Inflation has been masssive. From food to services to education. Everything is expensive, and poor people spend their lives watching Netflix, playing video games. That’s what I see all around me.

Americans are too good pick their own food or perform such labor, and politicians of all varieties are happy expanding the national debt to support this depressed lifestyle while shitting on the people who actually do the work.

No one understands the value of a dollar. The things you can get on the global market for a dollar are huge, but Americans will buy bottled water or Gatorate for two dollars. Then they’ll tell you they’re poor. People put down $2.15 for a tiny cup of guacamole at Chipotle like that’s not completely insane. As if that’s how life intrinsically works.

People say you can’t afford housing like you could in the 1950s but if you showed them the average 1950s new American ranch home they’d think it was a shanty hovel. Everything is fundamentally inflated, the whole developed world is a bubble that shows no respect for humanity, the environment or what is appropriate to have and to want.

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