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Comment by grecy | Hacker News Reader

This is fantastic, finally we'll get some real-world results so we can see the consequences (good and bad) of UBI at a very large scale and we can put an end to all the speculation about what it might (or might not) do.

Much like legalizing weed here in Canada - it's not about making the perfect decision and going with it, it's about at least trying to improve something. Maybe in 5 or 10 years we'll look back and decide it didn't improve stuff and we'll roll it back, but that's OK. We tried and we learned.

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The current situation is not normal. People are forced into unemployment to control the outbreak. I completely agree that governments need to step in and provide support during this artificially induced economic coma. But I’m not sure any observations would apply to UBI in a normal mode of economy.

If they make the UBI permanent, then in 5 or 10 years (assuming the world is put back together by then) we'll have excellent observations of how it functions in "normal" mode.

It won't be permanent, if it is ever implemented at all, because it is unaffordable.

The feedback loops for UBI will be much longer though. I bet you can tell only after a few generations if it was a success. I also don’t think it sustainable long term unless we change the economic system. After a few years or decades politicians who promise to cut benefits to the people who are doing nothing will be very popular. Let’s start with something simpler like universal health care or affordable education or affordable housing. If you can’t pull that off forget about UBI.

The idea that any government program ever get's rolled back contradicts the reality though. I'm not aware of many, if any, program which ever gets cancelled by the government. Most "cuts" to a program involve cutting the rate of growth of the program

Alcohol Prohibition is, of course, a pretty dramatic example. It's basically what constitutional amendments are for, changing our mind after realizing the consequences of law.

I'm still not convinced 90% of jobs won't go unfilled while everyone sits around and watches Netflix all day. I guess we'll see.

🧐

More opportunity for the rest of us!

This kind of concern crops up in UBI discussions all the time, but I think it gets things backwards.

Instead of asking if some significant number of jobs will go unfilled because people are paid a poverty line level of income by the government, we should be asking:

"Why aren't we paying people who work 40hrs/wk a living wage?"

The decision not to work and live off of UBI is only attractive to people who are currently working many hours and earning about the same as what UBI is offering -- and that should give us pause.

> The decision not to work and live off of UBI is only attractive to people who are currently working many hours and earning about the same as what UBI is offering

The evidence of people usually choosing to retire upon reaching the age they are able to receive much smaller stipends than their current earnings suggests otherwise. Many people value their free time highly, and a poverty wage to a single parent living in rented accommodation can be quite comfortable when doubled and applied to a homeowning couple with savings for rainy days.

Sure you can find an edge case in my general statement.

> The evidence of people usually choosing to retire

The key word in that is "choosing". A huge number of people even in G7 countries comprise the working poor. They cannot, and likely will never be able to "choose" to retire. They work 40hrs/wk, often with two incomes and have no savings.

While we can debate the life choices of some of these people, it remains that working 40hrs/wk should not lead to an outcome where you can only just scrape by.

It's hardly an 'edge case' to point out that in the real world, 90% of people guaranteed to receive a low income for the rest of their life in the form of a pension no longer work. This pretty much unequivocally falsifies the claim that only people on very low incomes would consider accepting a large drop in income in order to cease working.

Well why don’t you work a minimum wage job? If all you want is food, a roof and Netflix, you can get all that for the minimum wage.

As a developer, you could ave your money for 3 years then live the next 10 in a country cabin doing nothing but watching movies.

This is the same choice faced by most people in the real middle class. Yet why do we want more? Not just entertainment, but better schools, and the chance to make an impact on the world.

Sure some people would take the money and do nothing, but many more will take this guaranteed income as a chance to take risks. Imagine, anyone who wants to can go to community college for free now, but can’t practically do it because they will starve without their job. Now anyone can do it.

I've answered this so many times on HN. In Australia it's perfectly easy to get a bit over a grand a month, plus a bit more for rent, forever.

It's note quite UBI, but if the negative consequences were what you're saying, we'd see it in Australia. The fact is less than 5% of people sit around and do nothing, and Australia's economy is doing great.

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