Results: Finland’s Basic Income Experiment Help Us Build the Post-Pandemic World
demoshelsinki.fi
demoshelsinki.fi
It represents nothing like real life UBI and needs to be redesigned as a test.
I mean if a country goes all the way to overcoming political and opinion opposition along with securing funding to actually run such a trial, why not go all the way and do it right?
>Specifically, it contains elements of cultural and economic liberalism and social reformism.[30] For example, it supports multiculturalism, work-based immigration, gay rights and same sex marriage.[6][31][32][33] Although formerly considered to have been critical of the Nordic welfare model and campaigning for strict doctrines of economic liberalism, in the 1970s the party shifted to supporting more social liberalism, such as increased social security and a welfare state, justified by increased individual liberty.[34]
They've really pivoted on that issue in the past few decades.
There is no "system". There is an endless number of possible implementations of UBI on a spectrum that ranges from communist to libertarian.
One of the main UBI stalwarts in Finland is the pinnacle capitalist ideolog and banker Björn Whalroos, who wants UBI to replace ALL other welfare-state programs, including universal health care.
On the other end of the spectrum are proposals for UBI with a purpose to solve issues caused by globalization, patch-work employment, etc.
Kokoomus has strong proponents of UBI and if I recall correctly, the party approved a resolution for studying UBI 13 years ago in their 2007 national convention.
If you're only testing the outcome, but not the income, you're essentially allowing "free energy" people to plug their magic machines into a wall socket while you test the energy output of their machines.
Much fewer people will agree to run that test (as it'll negatively affect their bottom line), and I do believe that proponents of UBI will also be more hesitant to run it, as it might prove that adding e.g. 20% to income tax will motivate tax payers to migrate away from UBI zones.
0: Doesn't really matter which country you choose the results will be the same
For example in the UK housing benefits would be greatly dependent on where you live in some London councils housing benefits can be as high as £400 per week, this alone is more than the highest proposed UBI allowances that aim to match the tax free allowance (currently at £12.5K).
UBI with removal of all other benefits could easily mean that the people that need it the most would be getting less and sometimes much less.
If the results of an experiment support your views, then it was a great experiment and proof that you were right all along.
If the results of an experiment contradict your views, then you can fully scrutinize every aspect of the test to come up with reasons why it got such a wrong result.
For obvious reasons, this is politically different to achieve.
- pick participants at random (regardless of employment status) - give money to all the participants - make all participants pay higher taxes to finance
For this to be realistic, the participants would not have a choice whether or not to participate. So yeah, I can't for the life of me think why we "can't ever design such experiment right".
Your sarcasm undermines your point.
If I had a shitty, dead-end job, and someone offered me (eg.) 80% of an average paycheck in my country, FOR 2 YEARS, i'd be happier than before, and use that money to pay off loans, buy a new car, go for a vacation, etc., and keep my curent job.
If I had a shitty, dead-end job, and someone offered me (eg.) 80% of an average paycheck in my country, FOREVER(!), i'd probably quit, and live off UBI, and do other stuff (fun for me, but litle of value to to wider society, and with probably zero tax money to feed the UBI system). ...or, probably move somewhere, where I can get more for that amount of money.
Most countries have lottery systems made up in a way, that you can opt for a bulk sum or get monthly payouts from the lottery... i'm sure, that we could find people, who get monthly sums somewhere in the interesting rage, to check how they're doing now.... but usually, looking at loterry winners does not show results in favour of giving people "free money".
While I do think this might be what some people will do, I think that over time, as we get used to such a thing, this is not at all what most people will do.
I've had periods of years in my life where I didn't have to think about money. After a short period of faffing off, I started doing all sorts of stuff. Some of it of direct value to society (volunteering) and some of it perhaps indirectly so (teaching myself new skills, working on 'products' that could be useful). I mean, even just spending time with others who themselves had it in short supply and valued my company could be considered 'useful to society'.
What I do know is that all of this time spent was generally more useful than a number of years of inane bullshit I worked on for various companies (getting paid well, but not really feeling satisfied with the result). So many projects that just stopped because of some decision higher up. So much work poured into websites that offer no value to society either. And the stress and depressions that goes with it leading to me being a 'burden' on society by using my health care bux on mental health care. I'm not a rare case.
Of course, this is anecdotal. But the assumption that people will just be lazy and offer nothing to society if they can is equally anecdotal, and honestly goes against everything I see in about 99% of the people around me.
People want to be useful. People want to be valued and needed. People want to be creative.
I consider it quite possible, or at least worth properly exploring, a society that provides in the basic needs regardless of whether you do pointless work for pointless company to allow you to spend your downtime on pointless consumption and entertainment (because no energy for anything else).
I'd say no, though. My experience so far has been that my government has had no problems repealing (to various degrees) things like health care, education/student loans, or public ownership of various things. From my limited knowledge this has been similar in much of the Western world, at least.
In slovenia, we still have the "financial crisis" (2008) 22% VAT, which we "temporary" increased back then (from 20%).
But honestly I think it's a great point. Our taxes did not go down, as far as I know. I'll check in one of the coming days, but I'd be shocked to find out it did...
Do those activities generate enough money, so that government collects enough taxes from you, to cover your UBI + all the other costs (roads, schools,...)? If not, you're still a net burden on society.
> People want to be useful. People want to be valued and needed. People want to be creative.
Of course people want to be useful and creative. But peoples usefullness and creativeness has to create atlest 2xUBI of taxes (one that goes back to the worker and one that goes to someone who get UBI but doesnt work) + all the other costs.
If you're capable of doing stuff you like, being creative, liking that work, and creating that much income, why are you not doing it now?
> I consider it quite possible, or at least worth properly exploring, a society that provides in the basic needs regardless of whether you do pointless work for pointless company to allow you to spend your downtime on pointless consumption and entertainment (because no energy for anything else).
Problem with this society is, that it also requires people who are working, to cover the cost of the poeple who are not working. Curretnly most countries do that for a very small percentage of unemployed (welfare), and most people in those countries are already complaining about the high taxes. If you raise the taxes on the people left working, and let others live relatively normal lives without working, you'll get less and less of the former and more of the later. Yes, non-workers will create music, art, will travel, write blogs, etc., but none of that generates enough income to cover even their own cost.
I challenge your assumption that someone's worth to society can be accounted for by tax revenue.
Tax revenue is just a percentage of the income you make.
Is your work/activity/service really worth anything, if noone is willing to pay for it?
Nobody pays for my girlfriend to show affection to me, or spend time with me. Nobody pays... you get the point.
So many of the best things in my experience have not been quantifiable, or in fact even actively hostile to commerce. That guitar player was not getting paid, but he wanted to play because he liked the vibe of the bar. For all I know he was good enough that he usually gets played. I know that some of the top performers in my country (stadium-level audiences) would do so at no cost at this bar, randomly, and if you were lucky it was when you went there for a beer.
I do hope you don't really see the world as a matter of finances and payment. It's depressingly reductive.
You can still do all that, but you're expecting other people to do paid work, the government to take away a huge chunk of that money, and then give it to you, so you don't have to do paid work, and call your mom.
You can still play your guitar (or do whatever) for free, just for the love of doing that. But if you didn't get people to give you money (food, services,...) for your music then, or for you calling your mom, etc., you cannot expect the government to force them to do it on regular basis, if you play/call, or even if you don't.
All the things GP listed were things that enabled him to make money and buy all the things, yet no one got paid for it.
people pay for sex, yet sex workers aren't legally able to report their income and pay taxes.
> If you're capable of doing stuff you like, being creative, liking that work, and creating that much income, why are you not doing it now?
I dunno, it's all speculation of course, but I'd say my 'usefulness' has gone up once I didn't have to bow to my bosses' whims. It's hard to quantify that, of course, but even if I go for a quantifiable measure, I'm probably more of a benefit to society than otherwise: I've been working on various business ideas that could improve the efficiency of other businesses, my volunteering reduced the burden I put on my country's health care system (on account of needing less therapy), and possibly reduced the effect on others around me. The money I make doing 'extra' work, that I wouldn't have to do, has benefitted my younger siblings who in turn might benefit society.
Personally I don't like this kind of thinking though. I'm convinced that a decent chunk of the population is just driven to do and create in a way that is valuable to other parts of the population. Trying to reduce this to 2xUBI is somewhat futile, and honestly not a society I want to actively encourage. In fact, engaging with this thought strikes me as already a bit of a needless capitulation. How much money could we save by reducing the pointless corporate work, military spending, etc, and how does UBI relate to that? At least for a significant experiment I suspect it's not much.
> I consider it quite possible, or at least worth properly exploring, a society that provides in the basic needs regardless of whether you do pointless work for pointless company to allow you to spend your downtime on pointless consumption and entertainment (because no energy for anything else).
>> Problem with this society is, that it also requires people who are working, to cover the cost of the poeple who are not working. Curretnly most countries do that for a very small percentage of unemployed (welfare), and most people in those countries are already complaining about the high taxes. If you raise the taxes on the people left working, and let others live relatively normal lives without working, you'll get less and less of the former and more of the later. Yes, non-workers will create music, art, will travel, write blogs, etc., but none of that generates enough income to cover even their own cost.
I think what I'm driving at is that this 'working' and 'not working' would be redefined. So much work is busiwork. So much 'work' is very tenuously measurably good for society. And, conversely, so much 'work' is not really considered work, but crucial to a functioning society.
In the same way that we (many Western nations) already got rid of having to worry (generally) about some of the most basic needs, UBI is one option to reduce that even further. I think, with the recent decades of insane progress when it comes to automation, that this is possible. And I'd rather see what happens and roll back the changes than just not do it because we can't fully predict the outcome.
Why can't you do that now, by starting your own business and being your own boss?
> Personally I don't like this kind of thinking though. I'm convinced that a decent chunk of the population is just driven to do and create in a way that is valuable to other parts of the population. Trying to reduce this to 2xUBI is somewhat futile, and honestly not a society I want to actively encourage. In fact, engaging with this thought strikes me as already a bit of a needless capitulation. How much money could we save by reducing the pointless corporate work, military spending, etc, and how does UBI relate to that? At least for a significant experiment I suspect it's not much.
We can verify this by observing people who are currently not working and are getting welfare. Somehow, very few of them do so. Some even avoid doing real work (you have to actively look for a job here if you want to receive welfare), by literally coming to interviews and saying that they're there just for the 'stamp' (proof they were there).
> I think what I'm driving at is that this 'working' and 'not working' would be redefined. So much work is busiwork. So much 'work' is very tenuously measurably good for society. And, conversely, so much 'work' is not really considered work, but crucial to a functioning society.
But stuff we deem "crucial" (by our own, individual standards), we're also willing to pay for. Water, food, entertainment, cars, gadget, clothes, vacations, travel, books, music, perfumes, etc. Is something really crucial, if noone wants to pay for that? If someone is willing to pay 100euros for a stinky alcohol-water mix (perfume), and they're not willing to pay for your work, is your work crucial?
> How much money could we save by reducing the pointless corporate work, military spending, etc, and how does UBI relate to that?
Corporations are paying their own money for that work... they'd be the one saving, not you. Military spending can still be lowered, and workers would get to keep more of their own money, why does it have to be given to non-workers? (i'm not talking bout disabled people, etc, i'm talking about able-bodied people, who are able to work, but would choose not to).
> Why can't you do that now, by starting your own business and being your own boss?
I can, because I ended up in a situation where I basically have the equivalent of UBI. My point is that it is indeed what I'm doing, and I believe others would too, given the opportunity.
>> Personally I don't like this kind of thinking though. I'm convinced that a decent chunk of the population is just driven to do and create in a way that is valuable to other parts of the population. Trying to reduce this to 2xUBI is somewhat futile, and honestly not a society I want to actively encourage. In fact, engaging with this thought strikes me as already a bit of a needless capitulation. How much money could we save by reducing the pointless corporate work, military spending, etc, and how does UBI relate to that? At least for a significant experiment I suspect it's not much.
> We can verify this by observing people who are currently not working and are getting welfare. Somehow, very few of them do so. Some even avoid doing real work (you have to actively look for a job here if you want to receive welfare), by literally coming to interviews and saying that they're there just for the 'stamp' (proof they were there).
As I said before/elsewhere, I think this is transitional effect. Not only is welfare avoided by those who would be productive anyways, the very stigma and context of welfare can encourage 'doing nothing'. It's a bit like your employer allowing you to work from home: at first, it's quite likely you'll abuse this freedom to not wear pants all day and pretend to work. I truly believe that changing this to a 'default', over time, makes it less common for the majority of people to actively do nothing. People hate doing nothing by nature.
>> I think what I'm driving at is that this 'working' and 'not working' would be redefined. So much work is busiwork. So much 'work' is very tenuously measurably good for society. And, conversely, so much 'work' is not really considered work, but crucial to a functioning society.
> But stuff we deem "crucial" (by our own, individual standards), we're also willing to pay for. Water, food, entertainment, cars, gadget, clothes, vacations, travel, books, music, perfumes, etc. Is something really crucial, if noone wants to pay for that? If someone is willing to pay 100euros for a stinky alcohol-water mix (perfume), and they're not willing to pay for your work, is your work crucial?
Most people don't want to pay for love, and yet here we are. Most people don't want to pay for a (good) family, and here we are.
Reducing crucial to 'what people are willing to pay for' is, even on a cursory inspection, complete bullshit that nobody who isn't extremely dysfunctional actually lives by.
>> How much money could we save by reducing the pointless corporate work, military spending, etc, and how does UBI relate to that?
> Corporations are paying their own money for that work... they'd be the one saving, not you. Military spending can still be lowered, and workers would get to keep more of their own money, why does it have to be given to non-workers? (i'm not talking bout disabled people, etc, i'm talking about able-bodied people, who are able to work, but would choose not to).
I'm saying the difference between workers and non-workers is something we need to re-assess. You're sort of getting there by making a distinction between 'disabled' and 'able-bodied'. Those are not clear distinctions. Is someone with mental health issues that prevent them from being able to deal with workplace stress 'able-bodied'? Or 'disabled'? What if we experimentally try to do away with that distinction and provide UBI and see how things go?
First off, those that are currently entitled to most benefits would be getting UBI instead, and those that are not currently entitled to (most) benefits would be getting UBI and paying it back in tax.. so in theory its the same cost, less the administration and means testing.
Its also high return as its mostly spent on the basics when it isn't directly taxed back, so the money changes hands (taxed) several times within weeks. But also savings from the health service (10 billion spent each year in UK on preventable poverty related disease) and on courts and police (another 5 billion spent on petty crime directly related to poverty -likely not the full figure). Or as mentioned; the massive possibility for profit as you free up millions from demeaning repetitive low tax jobs to chase their dreams and entrepreneurial ambitions or higher education, as well as a permanent stimulus to the economy replacing much of the bailouts currently needed.
IMO we also really need an automation tax, as more and more jobs are automated the extra profit can't/shouldn't be focused on the few, though this wouldn't be necessary for UBI.
edit; I also want to add that back in the 80s early 90s, the UK welfare system was basically a guaranteed lifelong income. People were still falling over themselves to get work, i remember 10K applicants for 50 ICI jobs (low wage long hours).
How many workers does britain have (percentage)?
In slovenia, a bit less than half of people work (we have a huge amount of pensioners, kids, students, and also some unemployed) + a huge public sector.
With UBI, an average worker would have to pay for two UBIs in taxes, to get one UBI back. And that's not counting the people quittin their jobs due to UBI (and moving to cheaper countries, where that money is worth more).
An average worker would be paying less tax (in real terms) if we moved to UBI than they are paying for the current system.
Its also true that this isn't just going to be payed for in income tax. VAT and corporate tax will contribute as well, meaning people on UBI will be paying for it in part as they spend it(VAT), and as they don't claim some of their other allowances in benefits, healthcare and law enforcement we will save even more.
Try to stop thinking about this as 'the average worker' the country is a good deal more complex than that. systems will pay for themselves in a host of ways if they are needed and efficient; UBI is a more efficient income support system than the one we have.
The median person on UBI would probably be a net burden on society.
The mean? Probably not. Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity was a side project. It'd only take a couple of similar projects to make all of UBI worth it.
Capitalism is unable to recognize the value of lots of kinds of work (that is often done by women), especially when those performing the work aren't the kind to charge for it. Just because work is being given away for free doesn't mean it's worthless. Capitalism has some shortcomings and one of them is that it's unable to support certain business models that provide value to the world.
Wikipedia manages to exist on the largess of wealthy benefactors, and a ton of volunteer labor. Are those volunteers a "net burden" on society?
If not the market, then what? Why do you think resource allocation scheme X would be better than the market overall? Without prices, we're left with the people best at being loud demagogues deciding the application of society's limited resources. Is that really better? Has it ever worked to produce prosperity or happiness?
Yes, economic value reflects social value, and chasing profit produces social good. Every time somebody's rejected this principle, he's produced poverty and death.
Because it’s a huge risk with no safety net - even if I’m 95% confident that I could support myself as a freelancer, that’s 5% odds of ending up without health insurance / homeless / unable to support my family / dead / etc; so I stick with my FacelessMegaCorp(tm) job for now, and maybe I’ll freelance for entertainment after I retire :P
You seem hung up on the idea that "working" is equivalent to "producing value".
We live in a society where the system is frequently optimized to employ as many people as possible. This creates incentives to encourage a lot of work being done to win zero-sum games rather than producing value for the economy as a whole. I would argue that we are already in a situation where the majority of the population can be supported by a minority of the workers. We have long been living in a world where the limits on economic growth is consumption, not production.
If we instead have the need to encourage people to find what motivates them and provide tools to the motivated to maximize that productivity I think you will see very different social structures arise.
Beyond that, I think the removal of the lazy from the work force is actually a net positive. Employers can spend less time filtering the mostly useless to find good workers. The 10x producers among us don't have to spend as much working around the lazy coworkers and managers. Even the "lazy" among us have the freedom to discover their passions and find ways to contribute more to society than they would as a low end wage slave.
> Yes, non-workers will create music, art, will travel, write blogs, etc., but none of that generates enough income to cover even their own cost.
I think you are selling people short here, or perhaps projecting your dreams on others. There is also a great deal of work that people want to do but the value of which is not easily captureable by an employer.
> If you raise the taxes on the people left working, and let others live relatively normal lives without working, you'll get less and less of the former and more of the later.
This is actually a good thing as long as you maintain sufficient production. As production declines, the standard of living provided by basic income declines which increases the incentives of the semi-lazy to work, which then leads to increased production. As long as UBI is carefully phased in, the system should equilibrilize.
Most of these dynamics aren't possible to explore in limited studies like this one. All these types of studies can do is dispell common myths about individual bevaior and the only way to really find out what will happen is to gradually phase in a UBI.
But the biggest benefit of ubi imo is that if you want to spend your time, say, building a new product or clearing your mind in order to be more productive in the future, you will have that option. Tho I do see a lot of people just sitting around doing nothing, and ubi leading to inflation.
Imo the best way to implement ubi is by automating as much as possible, to increase productivity, and to use the extra time and money to reduce the amount of work people need to put in for a living. Thus far automation disproportionately benefited employers and not the society and the workers, money wise. If a robot makes 10 times more shoes, then taxing that bot the equivalent of 5 full time workers is fair.
Therefore, if you're okay with the amount of money you'd get, you'd probably be better off if you're not living in a large city, because, rent aside, city living is a bit more expensive. Also, considering that you're supposed to look for work, living in a city (where the jobs are, if they are anywhere) would increase the chances of you being expected to take a job, which you wouldn't have to in more rural areas.
People still move to the cities, even though the job market isn't promising for low-skill workers there either.
There are certainly many reasons, but some I believe to be involved: it's harder to get an apartment when you're on social benefits (even more so if not in the community you're currently living in), it's harder to live in a rural area if you don't have a car (which you'll likely not be able to buy while on benefits), few people have the means to move when money is tight.
That'd only work on monopolies where the company would actually have a 1000% margin. For most things, you'll invest in some great new automation, but so will your competition. Now you've both increased productivity and if you try to cash in your 10x profits, your competitor will simply take 5x profits, massively undercut your prices and you'll be gone very soon. Productivity gains will typically lead to lower prices, that's why meat, milk etc is dirt cheap these days, if we still had food prices like in the 50ies but with today's productivity, any secret illuminati meetings of the 1% would see a lot more people arriving on tractors ;)
If we somehow took 2k/person/month from some nonexisting trillionaire, who has the money to finance it for everyone, then probably yes, prices would go up, because everybody has now 2k/month more to spend.
It's the (much rarer) high-skill workers whose productivity has shot through the roof by using technology as leverage. The individual low-skill worker's productivity hasn't really increased by a lot, unless you say "we've built a robot that does 95% of the work, but let's attribute all of the output to the remaining 3 humans".
> Furthermore, UBI would reduce corporate socialism and get us back to a free flow of capital, as the wealth would be fairly spread across society.
The issue with "fair" is that it's very subjective. Some may say "it's fair when everyone has the same", others may argue that it's unfair when somebody who works hard gets the same as someone who chooses not to work at all.
We can explore a different mindset where a slice of tech improvements and automation also benefit us as a society in that sense. Is it really that bad a thought that the goal of tech is to finance a society where no one is left without food and basic, decent, shelter? In the sense that we take a radical turn where we don't motivate people through fear but rather through need? The need of having more than just food or shelter as oppose to the the fear of starving or homelessness? Why does it have to be a struggle for so many when we can just build tech that covers basic needs.
By that definition, most of Europe has UBI and then some ;)
> Is it really that bad a thought that the goal of tech is to finance a society where no one is left without food and basic, decent, shelter?
That's a very US-centric view. Food insecurity is a solved problem in Europe and has been for decades. Basic, decent shelter? How about 450sqft, utilities included and we'll buy you a TV, throw in free health care, free higher education and 400€ a month in cash? Yet still, people will claim that this does not allow for genuine self-actualization because somebody else will have 900sqft and two TVs or a car.
> Why does it have to be a struggle for so many when we can just build tech that covers basic needs.
Because people don't want to be limited to basic needs, they want what they see others having. They want smartphones, microwaves, computers, internet, entertainment, transportation etc. And as society, we still need somebody to actually create all of that and keep it running. Incentivizing opting out of contribution is, from society's perspective, counter-productive, and the more you redistribute, the more you encourage the contributing members to leave.
Consider this: Germany is at or near the top for total taxation of working individuals. At the same time, top salaries for high-skilled workers are significantly lower than in the US.
Say we add some more taxes to redistribute more towards the unemployed and remove the rest of incentive to work for low-skilled workers. We'll increase the number of people opting to not work, further increasing the required taxes on those that do. And we'll increase the earning-gap for high-skilled workers compared to e.g. the US, increasing the reward of emigration for that group. That's a vicious circle and it's going to be hard to stop once it reinforces itself.
This pandemic made me realise how fortunate we are for living in Europe - literally any part of the eu, has done a better job at helping people and making sure they dont starve, compared to the US. Thats a great observation! Europe is indeed very close to UBI. The only issue is it finances it through more taxes on an individual’s output and is not universal.
People who want more than basics can demand it as much as they want. Thats not UBI, thats lazy and scrounging. Go get a job. Period.
The point you are making re even more taxation is also spot on - that is why my view is that instead of taxing current workers even more we instead invest in tech that leads to even more productivity growth and we tax the difference in that new productivity gain.
I dread more taxation, as it usually means more taxes for us, less for those who disproportionately benefit from increases in tech and automation, due to the current economic system.
For example if BMW automates 10x more of their assembly lines, then tax the gain in productivity but NOT at a level where it punishes said growth, rather at a level where both BMW and the taxman are happy. Money go into a UBI pot much like norway’s sovereign investment fund.
Tech can be treated like a natural resource that we all own, but none of us have exclusive rights over it, while those who successfully exploit it will get more of the pie.
Apply the same to all sorts of manufacturing, agriculture and anything else that can be automated.
The money in that pot go to everyone in the country, and this is where UBI is radically different from unemployment benefits. Everyone gets a share, meaning those already in employment will get a tax cut and those not in employment don't get the stigma associated with benefits.
Dont worry about people immigrating to the us - the very workers we automate out of jobs dread us highly skilled immigrants, as they dint see the benefits from our work - more than taking pictures with shiny new iphones - and they want us to stay out, by voting for Trump.
TL;DR I guess I have a few random ideas about an ideal world where we use tech for building a star trek like society, where basics are no longer an issue and all we do is advance our society.
I see where you're coming from, but that only works with stable prices. Prices aren't stable. Technology, automation lowers prices (or increases quality). Your 2020 BMW is nothing like the 1970ies BMW, and had you wanted a 2020 BMW in 1970, you would've had to pay outrageous sums of money.
> TL;DR I guess I have a few random ideas about an ideal world where we use tech for building a star trek like society, where basics are no longer an issue and all we do is advance our society.
I believe the general issue is that it wouldn't be an issue at all if everyone was like you. The harsh reality is that most people are not. It's like anyone that read Kant and who felt the categorical imperative resonate with them, and they go "why do we need laws? I wouldn't act in a malicious way". We don't have laws to regulate their behavior, we have laws for the vast majority who didn't read Kant or don't care about what would happen to society if everybody acted like they do.
You likely live in somewhat of a bubble, your friends are usually similar to yourself etc. I have no doubt that a lot of your well-meaning ideas would work great with them. I also have little doubt that they won't with the population at large, because they are very different. It's like a bunch of people who read books talking about information dispersal, not keeping in mind that a large chunk of the target audience is functionally illiterate.
> Dont worry about people immigrating to the us - the very workers we automate out of jobs dread us highly skilled immigrants, as they dint see the benefits from our work - more than taking pictures with shiny new iphones - and they want us to stay out, by voting for Trump.
It's the high-skilled workers in the US who compete with high-skilled immigration, it's a benefit for the low-skill workers, as we'd usually bring know-how and taxes, create jobs and generally improve society. The low-skill workers vote for Trump to stop low-skill immigration, they don't mind high-tech billionaires like Elon Musk or Peter Thiel.
> But the biggest benefit of ubi imo is that if you want to spend your time, say, building a new product or clearing your mind in order to be more productive in the future, you will have that option. Tho I do see a lot of people just sitting around doing nothing, and ubi leading to inflation.
How many "normal" people, above 40, with minimal education, currently packing meat, cleaning the streets, or picking up produce will spend that time to build a new product? You and your 'startup buddies'.. maybe. Most, not.
> Imo the best way to implement ubi is by automating as much as possible, to increase productivity > If a robot makes 10 times more shoes, then taxing that bot the equivalent of 5 full time workers is fair.
But we're already doing this.... a washing machine cost a couple of paychecks here (former yugoslavia), and now i can buy one for less than 20% of an average paycheck (not yugoslavia anymore, but i haven't moved). If we tax the automation "difference", then we have to go back to old, pre-automation prices.
How much profit does VOX make on this: https://www.mimovrste.com/pralni-stroji/vox-wm-1051-pralni-s... 221.90EUR washing machine? 22% of that is VAT, a part of the price pays for "free" transport to the home, then the seller has to earn something, import duties, transport from china(?) to slovenia, manufacturing, raw materials, testing, development + 5 year guarantee (anything happens, a technician comes to your home to fix it... just the cost of that is probably more than the whole washing machine profit). + all other cost (loss, items destroyed in transport, returns, etc. I don't see a lot of profit for the manufacturer here... and and tax would just be moved onto the consumer who'd have to pay a higher price (so they'd need higher UBI, higher tax, higher price,...).
If there was UBI, I'd have completely focused on developing the machine and helping others around me full time.
Here's my project: https://medium.com/endless-filament/make-your-filament-at-ho...
Now my project is successful, I've given away tons of face shields and also made $4000 by selling filament on on e-commerce websites.
It took me a long time to get here, UBI would have definitely made it faster.
For me the argument for UBI is very simple: it's a simpler version of the status quo in most countries in terms of administrative overhead that offers more freedom to individuals. Those are two good things IMHO.
It's precisely for this reason that it's controversial because conservatives on both side of the political spectrum consider the notion that people should do work (no matter how meaningless) part of their core values.
Communism was all about workers and probably the closest we ever got to having UBI in some countries. Work ethos is very much a core value. So the notion of rewarding people for not working is controversial in communist circles. Most would consider communism a failed experiment from an economic point of view because it also included notions of central planning, equally (low) wages for everyone, and little differentiation in terms of skills & value of those skills. I.e. equating the two would be a mistake.
Fiscal conservatives on the other hand argue for a small state and are perpetually worried about "who is paying for this".
The argument for UBI and against both points of view is that we already have it in the sense that most countries provide healthcare, housing, foodstamps, and other benefits for basically everyone, including the homeless people, the elderly, children, and many others that in any case are not part of the working population. Also, in many countries, the working population is shrinking in the sense that unemployment statistics exclude whole parts of the population that are effectively not considered to be working and are therefore not actually unemployed (children, students, married women looking after children, medically disabled people, retired people, long term out of job people, the homeless, etc.). We take care of all these people already and that costs money. It actually is a rather large part of the current budget of whatever country you are in. Where these programs fall short, inevitably it causes a lot of problems and misery. Also the collective programs we have for doing this are a combination of very expensive and inefficient. E.g. some countries spent more on unemployment bureaucracy and programs than on the actual benefits.
UBI is about acknowledging & formalizing the status quo that no matter what, you will have the means to take care of yourself at some minimum definable level. IMHO, it has the potential to vastly simplify things in the sense that it would remove the need for minimum wage, state pensions, etc. and the associated bureaucracy. So there's an upside in terms of less administrative overhead and vastly less complexity & risk for employers & citizens.
The existing system of benefits could be redefined on top of a UBI and would likely get a more optional character. To the point where you could privatize this; which I imagine might be a popular topic in the US and other places with a strong libertarian minded population.
But for UBI, decades of experiments and data-driven validation seem to be required.
Why is it acceptable that UBI requires such huge burden of proof?
Don't tell me that it's more radical than other reforms: when used as a replacement for welfare and other subsidies at comparable cost, it is pretty mild.
Because it costs so much, and is so radically different.
> when used as a replacement for welfare and other subsidies at comparable cost, it is pretty mild
Buzzocks. UK over 18 population is ~52m. Give them each £1,000 a month, and you get a cost of £624,000,000,000, which is 3 times what the UK currently spends on "welfare"[0], and is about 3/4 of the overall UK budget. And you're cutting the payments of a sizeable number of current welfare receipients.
Sure you can find more recent figures, or play around with how much you claim you're going to give, but let's not entertain the fantasy that this is a "mild comparative cost".
If I had UBI, I'd quit my skilled and productive developer job and probably drive a taxi, because it's more satisfying, even though my contribution to the society will be much smaller and in a certain sense, my skills would be wasted. And I'd probably take half a year off on a beach every year.
Because of that, my tax contribution would be much smaller (probably zero), and the country would have less money to treat sick people, buy hospital equipment and build housing for the poor. That would worsen life outcomes for many people and will likely cause additional deaths.
The combo of M4A, UBI, and affordable childcare will lead to an explosion of entrepreneurial spirit, small businesses, and startups.
If I had had health insurance, I would have taken a lot more risks. But I average a major health crisis every two years, so whenever I ran out of savings and COBRA, I had to take jobs just to get insured. (ACA helped by prohibiting exclusion based on preexisting conditions.)
I did manage to work solo twice, with modest success. But the uncertainty freaked my partner out and we needed guaranteed insurance for our family.
Unequivocally. Which is why it won't happen until citizen united is overturned. It would be a major threat to the monopoly powers that exist.
I just don't think we should wait.
One silver lining of the federal power vacuum is cities, states, regions are no longer waiting for permission to take action.
Given the tilt of the entire judiciary stack, effectively locking in the vetocracy, I don't anticipate these circumstances changing for decades.
Of course, the pandemic may hit the reset button for a lot of our power sharing arrangements. But again, I wouldn't wait for permission.
Funnily enough, the western country with the least amount of safety net has the most successfull startup community and entrepreneurial spirit. Must be an anomaly in your theory.
How many businesses are started per jurisdiction over time? What is the trend?
Which businesses account for most employment growth?
https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Economy/New-...
To your point, it'd be interesting to compare more recent data. Please share if you find such datasets.
--
Of course there are multiple factors. Inhibitors and accelerators, advantages and disadvantages. Even between states. Access to capital, quality of schools, real estate prices, labor laws, ad nauseum.
Some are non-obvious. One possible crucial factor between Boston and Silicon Valley was California's lack of non-compete employment arrangements. If true, shouldn't others consider adapting? Why haven't they?
Imagine young professionals have children. Imagine access to reasonable and trustworthy child care is important to those parents. So important it influences their job choices. Imagine innovative companies providing that service to better recruit and retain talent.
You don't have to imagine. Because it's already happening.
Ditto healthcare.
So why shouldn't similarly minded jurisdictions do the same?
Germany's top startups are mostly copy cats, and that's pretty much all VCs will invest in (granted, they're not VC by SV standards, but mostly just investors). We're #51 on that list you posted.
I don't believe that entrepreneurship is significantly encouraged or discouraged by what happens if you fail or whether child care is free or expensive. Imho even regulation and red tape isn't the primary issue, but the local culture's general relationship with risk vs safety. Germans save more than e.g. US citizens, and they don't move to other states within Germany nearly as much (even though it's really not that far, Germany is smaller than California).
> Imagine innovative companies providing that service to better recruit and retain talent.
What you do to get & keep talent (aka "the elite") doesn't necessarily scale to the population at large. If you pay someone $200k, adding $10k for perks doesn't matter as much. It's very different if you're paying them $50k.
I'd love to know if you're right (less wrong) about culture.
How does Finland punch above their weight? Can't we steal some of their fire?
While I advocate for a democratic socialist utopia (Denmark), I'd support anything that moves the needle to the left. When Reagan-era policies are now regarded as marxism, methinks we've gone too far in the other direction.
I mean, Finland fought off the Soviet Union's invasion, punching above their weight seems to be their national pasttime. Maybe size matters, just like small companies will be more agile than large ones, smaller states will be able to pivot easier.
> When Reagan-era policies are now regarded as marxism, methinks we've gone too far in the other direction.
We have essentially the opposite trend in Germany. Social democrat policies of the 70ies and 80ies are considered conservative/reactionary today.
I still believe we should establish some international citizenship trading system. Apparently plenty of Americans would love to get into Europe and I know quite a few Europeans who'd like to emigrate to the US. That'd really allow voting with your feet.
Unfortunately how the insane amount of money was injected in other countries since some months seems to indicate that the rest of the world have absolutely no ambition to build a new world nor share the same vision.
Some results are, however, relevant when assessing them from the world of (post-pandemic) 2020: the participants of the experiment reported 1) less economic troubles and financial stress; 2) Higher confidence in future possibilities; 3) More self-determination and autonomy.
The entire point of UBI is to secure everyones basic human needs, not get them a job (unlike unemployment benefits).
If we were to test UBI also on employed people, and observed their behavior, we might avtually gain useful insight into mechanica with UBI. Perhaps we will see more 6-hour workdays with more people employed?
The important gain would be to give people breathingroom to actually find a job most relevant to their education and skills instead of just jumping on the first available opening to be able to pay the rent. Or even spending some time improving your skills.
In the US I think just introducing universal healthcare would accomplish part of the same thing.
Given that it significantly improved mental health, it seems reasonable to expect that this UBI model would lead to some savings in public health expenditure. Arguably there should also be some savings compared to the administration of the current unemployment benefits that require the person to provide evidence of activity and other such things.
How well it compares in practice to the cash cost nobody knows as the experiments are all too short to really tell.
Do we really need to test that though? It seems obvious that giving someone money without affecting their taxes, the price of goods etc would do this.
The issue is that once you roll it out on the society level, it's not the same any more. It will affect their taxes and inflation. Will they still report less economic troubles and financial stress when they receive $500 a month but their rent has gone up by $500?
Checkout the auto complete in DDG or Google for "welfare causes ...". Look at the arguments in the results.
We can't even have the discussion that you say is "the issue" because society is still stuck at the part you claim is obvious.
It's rather secondary to the real objection to UBI: paying for it.
I'm saying BOTH that it's good for people AND that it's affordable are still in dispute and that the claims are clearly not obvious.
The arguments - with varying degreees of plausibility - are all of the form 'long term welfare dependency is unhealthy for society' not, 'welfare recipients would be happier if their welfare income was lower'.
And that's not conflicting with reporting less financial stress during an intervention. The self-reported consequences from eating some candy are very different from the consequences of using candy as a primary diet for long periods of time.
If you won $1bn in the lottery, you'd be quite rich and, in so far that money can make you happy, probably also quite happy. If literally everybody won the lottery at the same time and got $1bn, you'd be back where you were before winning the lottery, as your $1bn wouldn't have the same relative value. Sure, you have a billion, but bread now costs $100k and your rent is $100m.
I happen to believe they are but this study doesn't establish that; and we are missing a golden opportunity to do some real UBI studies with the billions in aid that are suddenly sloshing around.
Those countries have progressive income taxes and social benefits for those without work. Isn't this the same as what UBI would look like if aggregate income would stay the same?
See my other comment https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=23140692
In your other post you state that Finnish effective marginal tax rate for poor persons is more than 80%. Do you have a source for that?
>Do you have a source for that?
Yes. https://vatt.fi/documents/2956369/3012213/muistio_50.pdf
It's in Finnish, but if you go to page 13 there is a nice graph. x-axis is wage, EUR/month, y-axis is effective marginal income tax in year 2015 for single person household who pays rent 440 EUR/month. Effective marginal tax rate is the red dotted line.
In page 20 you can see even what single adult with a child can have. I was actually wrong, the effective marginal tax rate can spike above 11% in some cases.
How so? I understand the "it's the same, just with less bureaucracy" camp wants everybody to get UBI, but everyone that's not below a certain threshold will essentially pay all of the UBI back via increased taxation.
So if you get $1000 in welfare now and you earn money, this changes the amount of welfare you receive. I understand that. How does that change if you get $1000 in UBI and for every buck you make, you'll pay essentiall $1 in taxes? You'll still only actually have more money when you're > $1000 on income.
Surely that is what the vast majority of people already do?
Compare that to property where there is a limited supply and people are constrained in what they can buy by their salary and ability to get a mortgage.
If you think that is a stupid idea then what is the threshold with a lower amount that this becomes a smart idea?
What evidence is there that whatever threshold you come up with is less stupid than my $100k a month?
We already meet people's basic survival needs because it's cheaper to feed your neighbor than make it impossible for him to raid your fridge. Not taking that basic gift away if your neighbor becomes self-reliant is just removing a disincentive to becoming self-reliant.
It is all very complicated.
The idea is to replace the complication with a simpler UBI in as close to a cost neutral manner as possible.
Taking money from healthcare and putting it in my pocket so I have to pay for it myself doesn't bring me much income you know.
(also Finland isn't part of Scandinavia)
The Scandinavian countries are easy to recognize based on their flags, as we all share the same pattern on our flags, a cross with the center slightly to the left. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scandinavia
Nordic countries: Scandinavia, Finland, Iceland (and Faroe)
There's no free lunch, folks...
The question is: for a given country, what proportion of the population can theoretically be supported by the efforts of those who pay those taxes. This isn't a moral judgement on the basic income idea; it's just required prior basic arithmetic for those planning to introduce BI. Will BI actually work in the long run? I don't know.
idk, you tell me: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/nov/08/bill-gates-...
Gates, Buffett and Bezos are worth a combined $250bn. There are about 210mm Americans over 18. So you can wipe out the entire accumulated wealth of those three and give everyone ... $1,200, one time only.
Not life changing, is it?
No, taxes don't create money. Taxpayers don't print up their own notes and send them in to the government.
> borrowing
That's a bit vague. What kind of borrowing do you mean?
> printing.
Well, at least that one is right :)
> Only one of those relates to the added value otherwise known as wealth creation. The other two ultimately make everyone poorer.
I don't know what you mean by that. None of those relates directly to wealth creation, and they all relate to it indirectly. What did you mean by that specifically?
1. Governments operate in debt-spending mode. So governments issue bonds (glorified IOUs) to banks, which give governments money. Banks then "sell" their bonds to the FED, at which point money is created. Banks use that money to buy more bonds, and the cycle repeats. BTW, to pay for the interest on the bonds, the government uses your taxes -- that's right, your taxes are not used to pay for pretty much anything the government does, it only pays for the debt the previous governments accumulated while debt-spending.
2. Banks receive money deposits, and lend money using those deposits, but not in a 1:1 rate. The rate varies, but, for instance, for every dollar a bank gets in deposits it can lend 10, which means that effectively banks create money. Also consider that this money created out of nowhere is redeposited, repeating the cycle, so in the end a dollar ends up making a thousand. For the record, currently the rate is 1:infinity in the US
If you don't understand that, then time to get the book and learn how the money system works
No, it comes from taxing people outside the experiment.
The real goods and services comes from outside the experiment. Scratch any UBI scheme and you'll find
(i) a tax credit system in disguise because the amount isn't enough to live on (ii) a currency lock with an area that doesn't receive the payment and who fill the goods and services deficit, or (iii) a set of people who don't receive the payment (usually due to a qualifying period), and who fill the goods and services deficit.
The money comes from spending the money. And you can do that right up to the point where you run out of unemployment.
In the vernacular where government spending becomes ineffective.
When someone spends money to buy a good or service, the money recirculates but the actual thing they've bought is consumed. If you pump up the supply of money by taking the same amount of money and recirculating it through the economy more, but without increasing the supply of goods and services, this means that the price of those things has to increase correspondingly just like if you outright printed a load of money and handed it out to everyone. Economically speaking, these two methods of increasing the money supply have very similar effects. (In practice, strong UBI is probably even worse than this if the idea is to make it feasible for people to not work, since the supply of goods and services will actually shrink and employers' labour costs will increase.)
As I said go read the book and learn something. Pro-tip. You completely forgot about consumption and income taxes. And that there is unemployed labour capacity available - anywhere across the world.
There isn't a finite amount of stuff, there is always capacity to expand in a business, but it may take a while, and hardly anything is subject to price auctions (see PPE for details).
What happens when we hit capacity is that there is forced savings. You end up with spending capacity but nothing to buy or nothing you want to buy. In the vernacular your spending becomes ineffective. Excess savings have the same economic effect as taxation.
It's the excess savings that income schemes are trying to offset. But that just moves the problem from the financial sphere into the real sphere - why should I grow you any carrots if you're not contributing your effort to the common good?
Everyone gets UBI, then it's gradually taxed away as income increases.
If some part of UBI is taken from corporate taxation, it can be thought as subsidy from companies that employ few people to companies that employ more people.
Or a subsidy from companies which pay people properly to companies who pay people below subsistence levels, or a subsidy from companies that produce stuff to people who choose not to even look for opportunities to produce anything...
It should also increase bargaining power for low income workers.
Start my taxing the rich. Also consider the money saved from reduced bureaucracy around unemployment benefits.
The money spent on corporate bailouts the past few months would probably be enough to provide UBI for quite a long time.
I don't think it's clear that this is anywhere near enough.
Say you want to pay $1,200 per month to all Americans over 18. There're about 210mm of them. That's just over $3tn per year.
In 2017, the latest year with detailed data, Americans paid about $1.6tn in Federal income taxes.
So the scale of the spending we're talking about is "imagine income taxes increased to about 300% of the current amount". Of course, it's more nuanced than that, because the theory is you make some savings on other programs and fund from sources other than just income tax - but it still gives a sense of the scale.
It is called 'bijstand', is about € 1k a month and you are eligible for all kinds of other discounts and support.
Just request it at your municipality and make sure not to find work.
That's just welfare, not UBI. The U stands for Universal, which means it goes to everyone. Not just the poor or unemployed.
The U is better understood as Unconditional. It doesn't go to everybody or everything, but it doesn't get taken away if you stop working.
These were used pretty much equally until about 2011, when the less accurate one started taking hold:
https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2004-04-11%202...
It has to, because one of the selling point of it is the minimal administrative overhead. In the U.K. we have armies of civil servants to administer our hideously complex welfare system. All of them and the costs of employing them have to go to make it affordable. The good news is that they too will get UBI...
Living wage is shifting the goalposts, anyway it’s a simple calculation, total welfare budget including benefits of all kinds divided by number of adult citizens.
But if we're determining welfare budget by dividing non-pension benefit spend by number of working age adults, the problem becomes that you're dividing around 130 billion by ~36 million, and whilst that's a welcome top up for some people, there are a lot of people who have just lost their housing benefit and disability benefit that won't be able to live on £4k a year...
And the 'average' paycheck is not an 'average' in the term we use now (where we just look at the workers, add up their paychecks and divide by their number), but we also have to add up all the non workers (kids, pensioners, unemployed, studens,...) with "0 EUR" paychecks, and divide by the number of them too, because they'd get UBI too.
If it stays the same for this person, that means he has to pay an extra UBI to receive the UBI. If this person is making basic income right now, he might as wel stop working and still get the basic income, or at least lose less percentage wise when stop working.
The special feature of schemes like UBI and NIT (Negative Income Tax) is that they remove the high effective marginal tax rate from poor people who work.
The problem with conditional welfare payments is that they increase effective marginal tax rate for poor household. The rates are really high 70-100% depending on country and situation.
For example, in Finland effective marginal tax rate for poor person is somewhere between 80-101%. (That 101% is for single parent for low income job). According to Greg Mankiv and others the effective marginal tax rate for the poor can be 70-90 percent in the US.
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/10/business/economy/10view.h...
https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2010/10/gr...
UBI and NIT (Negative Income Tax) are designed to increase incentives. That's why free market economists like Friedman fiercely supported it.
Milton Friedman - The Negative Income Tax: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtpgkX588nM
(It's also theoretically possible to design tax brackets for a UBI/NIT system which imply effective marginal rates at 80%+, though I'm not sure why anyone would actually want to do that)
Tapered benefit withdrawals are the exact reason for high effective marginal tax rate. You can't use them.
You can design welfare system effective marginal tax rate decreases smoothly, but you can't make it linear. (unless you make the taxation incredibly complex and effectively same as UBI/NTI)
In the real world [i] the effective marginal tax rate in for a UBI imposed in contemporary society is still going to be very steep (UK subsistence UBI ~£10k per year, median UK taxpayer under current system has a taxable income of ~£22k per year and many people on sub-median incomes are net taxpayers) and [ii] the conditionality of a benefit is a pretty strong reason to take a job, high effective marginal tax rate or not
Whenever I hear the arguments for UBI, the arguments for personal fulfilment are usually predominant and financial aspects are usually left out. I'm always interested in "how to pay for all this?", which proponents of UBI often classify as a conservative talking point, but that is clearly not the case.
Another point I usually bring up is "how much is necessary to achieve that? and why?" is $1000 each month enough and how should this be adapted over time.
My biggest concern with UBI and I haven't heard a convincing answer to it yet, how to prevent the baseline from being moved permanently and eating up all the additional income. If you make low income jobs less attractive, employers must pay more to keep their employees so they have to raise prices accordingly or go bust. So how to avoid that UBI is not just massive inflation in the long run.
First show me the numbers if all people that are working now keep their job. Show me the extra cost and how you will get that money.
After that, give me a prediction of how many people will stop working. I can't imagine moms (or dads), that now have only 3 months of parental leave, will keep on working when they can have a nice income every month without doing anything, and not paying for daycare. Your unemployment rate will not go down, I hope we all agree on this.
And then finally, show me that this has 0 effect on all prices. Show me for example how rent will not go up, when all of us have 1-5k extra to spend on a bigger appartement or house.