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Comment by luckylion | Hacker News Reader

> This is an old take that has very rarely (if at all) seen tangible evidence.

It's literally what we face in Germany. Our unemployable are getting housing, health care, TVs etc + cash and they do not move on to jobs they enjoy more, they do not volunteer more, they do not start companies etc.

If you don't see evidence of that in the US, it's because you don't have anything that comes close to unlimited perpetual income with no requirements to work. If you have an economic shut down for a month or two and people expect the "free money" to run out eventually, they'll be eager to get back to work. The situation changes very much if they do not expect it to run out and adapt to the new circumstances where work is optional and considered a hobby.

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Germany doesn’t have a UBI. When people start earning they lose many of those benefits quickly. That’s the difference.

Sounds like the welfare system in the US. Same obvious result, obviously. Fixing that would be a concrete step towards UBI.

As far as I understand, most UBI-proposals would essentially be the same. If you work, you pay more taxes on your income to fund the UBI. You'll still get the UBI, but you'll pay significantly more taxes which will leave you pretty much even.

But the cutoff happens much later in the curve. With classic welfare handouts the marginal tax curve is very steep at the beginning

As a counter example: a UBI proposal in my country was linked to taxation on consumption (VAT). That makes more sense at first glance.

No. The whole point of UBI is to remove the cliffs and high marginal tax rates that the working poor face; people in low-income jobs would benefit the most, approximately doubling their income (someone on minimum wage would instead get the equivalent of minimum wage + unemployment). Also it becomes more practical to ease into work, since if you work e.g. 5 hours/week you get full pay for those 5 hours rather than losing more in lost benefits than you gain. Of course this has to be balanced by higher earners paying more tax.

We have some of this already included. If you work in so called Mini-Jobs (up to 450€/month, employers do not need to pay into social security, reduced bureaucracy and public health insurance premiums), 100€ won't change your benefits and 20% of whatever more you make will also not affect your benefits. This is primarily meant to be exactly that: low-threshold ways to work for a few hours and have extra benefits.

Imho the primary issue remains: it's not required to work, you won't get a massive improvement if you're okay with the current situation and you have to expend energy and do stuff you don't love. Open source projects that rely on donations often face similar issues. Donations are not mandatory, so few people will donate, as they can still use the software without contributing. I don't believe that "donating is difficult" is the issue there either, most accept paypal, github sponsors etc.

General question from a foreigner who has lived in Germany, does it seem to you like those income boundaries for benefits are designed to discourage class mobility? Do most benefits seem designed with hard on/off boundaries, or are most designed with a gradual decline as income increases?

In my very limited experience talking with Germans, it always seemed like those social benefits were a boolean choice that kept people from wanting to move up.

That could have just been my interpretation of the culture though, where it seemed many Germans simply seem to accept that retiring as a cashier is an acceptable level of ambition. That level of ambition is definitely not the same world-wide, and can come off as "lazy" to non-Germans who may not understand what it's like to simply accept one's lot in life.

Benefits often have some fuzzy borders (e.g. 450-Euro-Jobs/Mini-Jobs), but will quickly lead towards "make one Euro, lose on Euro of benefits".

As for ambition, it may have to do with a lower income disparity, where a cashier in a grocery store will certainly not make great money, but will be able to support themselves (median income in Germany is ~2500 Euros, full-time cashiers will make ~2000-2200 Euros). It's also often not a full-time job, but 20-25 hours per week.

What we have in Germany isn't even close to UBI.

For most intents and purposes, it is. Yes, it's not "100% cash, do whatever you want", and it theoretically contains the requirement for anyone getting benefits to be looking for work. Practically, it's not enforced. There are sanctions that can reduce the cash-component of social benefits, but you'll generally have to try hard to get to that point. If you glide along, you wont face them and you can stay on benefits indefinitely.

I think with UBI it would mean that you CAN work something and get more than before. UBI won't go away as soon as you start to earn extra. But this is the case with German "Sozialhilfe". So it is not really comparable because it gives the wrong incentives.

You're right regarding the incentives, but the functional part i.e. "your basics are taken care of" is very close. I'd expect the effects that are promised with UBI ("people will learn more new things, people will volunteer more because they don't have to worry about making rent") to happen with the current system, as you don't have to worry about food, medicine or rent (to a degree, if you're living alone in a 100sqm flat, they will ask you to move to a more appropriate place after a few months. I suppose the same would happen with UBI, only you wouldn't be asked to, you just can't afford it)

UBI is for everybody, without asking for anything in return.

Harz4 on the other hand is not universal, seen as a stigma (people who have to rely on it are called "Harzer") and forces you to jump through all kind of hoops, be present at dates in the job offices etc.

I happened to study at art school in Germany and never had to apply for it, but many of my friends did and it is quite frankly state organized humiliation. And everybody involved is cynical. If you go there as a young academic and seriously try to find a job, they laugh at you.

Yes, it's not paid to everybody, but everybody can rely on it. UBI is technically for everybody, but the average person that does work will not feel a difference in most scenarios, as increased taxes will eat the UBI that's paid out.

As for the stigma associated with not working: true, but it's not part of, or encouraged by, the law. It will be the same with UBI, it will not be admired to not contribute to society. Some people may feel that they do in fact contribute, but society at large values other things than self-actualization.

The university/higher education system is weird, but for other reasons (my personal theory is that you can't have organized bureaucracy in Germany without some senseless cruelty). It's another point on the board for "free doesn't necessarily give you the expected results" though: unlike in the US, it's free, our "student loans" (Bafög) are generally interest free and 50% of the amount owed will generally be forgiven. Obviously, we see plenty of people entering, but we don't see the results you'd imagine if costs were what's holding people back.

My point was that the way people act in HarzIV is not comparable at all to the way people might act if there was a UBI, mainly for two reasons:

1. a UBI would very likely be unconditional and universal (as long as you are a citizen) so relying on it would carry no social stigma, because everybody gets it.

2. you still get a UBI if you get yourself a job – which means a job gives you extra money. With most current unemployment benefits you could sometimes loose money when you get a job, or you'd just get a tiny bit extra for a lot more work (especially if you are doing demanding physical labour).

This means the incentives are completely and utterly different – and incentives kinda matter when we want to discuss human behaviour.

If it's universal and meaningful (that is: everybody will have that much more money to spend), you can't finance it unless you massively increase taxes (at which point people won't actually be able to spend it, because they'll need it to counteract the increased taxes). You can fund it only by not actually giving it to everybody in terms of real buying power. You might still pay it out but for the median worker their taxes will be raised, so it's only a nominal thing, they can't buy any more stuff.

Essentially then, you have the same idea you have today: those who will rely on UBI are the same people who rely on social benefits today, and those who do not get it are the ones who will have to fund it (with a slightly enlarged soft border between the two). The stigma isn't because people know that you get social benefits (the records aren't public), it's that they don't see you working.

The cut-offs are an issue, but we already have Mini (up to 450€) and Midi Jobs (up to 1300€) where you'll not get any reduction in benefits for 100€ and 20% of whatever you make on top will also not affect your benefits. That's not a perfectly soft threshold, but it's not a hard cut-off either. The thresholds that you lose money at are much higher (e.g. earning just a little bit too much to be eligible for subsidized housing, which is close to the median salary in most states).

It is even worse.

Germany is employing large number of Romanians for agricultural work. At peak of corona crisis, it cramped many people into airplanes and shipped them from Romania to Germany. No social distancing whatsoever. They sleep in container houses 8 people per room.

No way to use "refugees" for fruit picking.

I agree, that was mental. Looks like concern for people's health goes out the window as soon as big industry profits are threatened and the people you sacrifice are not your own.

Refugees aren't allowed to work.

Oddly Germany might be the single most productive country in the world?

If you measure productivity by economic output / hours worked, allowing those who have no desire to work to be excluded sounds like a good way to maximize it.

I don't know whether it is, but with relatively low personal wealth for the average German, low income growth, and plenty of industry, it may be. If it is, I don't believe it has anything to do with keeping millions of people at home and over-taxing the rest to pay for them though.

I'd worry this creates a large underclass where the people have no purpose and no point to their lives.

It's like what happens when we remove the need for physical labor. People's health declines. Some people join gyms to compensate, some engage in purposeless jogging, but not that many.

No one ever says this about m/billionaires or their children. There are always going to be a few people taking advantage of a system, that shouldn’t be a reason to punish everyone else.

That’s because we call them trust fund babies instead and they are widely mocked and ridiculed.

You mean widely envied.

Envied? Sure. Respected? Nope. Such people often do have self-esteem issues because they know they didn't earn it, and so does everyone else.

Yes, they do say that about the children of wealthy people. The conventional wisdom is the first generation earns it, the second spends it, the third is back where the first started.

Wealthy people are well aware of this, and will often try to make their kids earn their things, send them to a military school, etc.

Now for most people they have somebody who tells them what is useful to work on. This “purpose” is externally imposed and often people don’t really fully believe in the work they’re doing already. Better to have people educated and having time to think and set their own direction than the current system. In an automated society people’s purpose will change whether they want it to or not.

The purpose is survival itself. Following someone's instructions is just one means to that end. Just like your purpose in prehistoric times wasn't just to hunt down and kill a specific wild pig.

This will probably be a very unpopular opinion but I definitely feel that men innately need this struggle.

So you're in favor of eliminating inheritance? Obviously it is unfair how we're depriving rich kids of this struggle they innately need.

Why limit your snark to rich kids? Just rob everyone blind whether they earned it or not.

Either way though, it might impact motivation negatively.

I am, at least partially, via progressive inheritance tax.

Improving the chances for success for your offspring is an innate desire, removing the ability will affect people's motivation to contribute beyond a certain point. A tax on inheritances will allow you to improve your children's life while removing the wealth if a family chooses not to work for a few generations, thus motivating contribution beyond "I exist and I inherited money".

I dont think the majority of physicists or bankers are struggling to survive. There is more to life than survival. I think the need for struggle is better described as a need for burden, rather than survival. It opens up many behaviours that prioritize ideas above biological need to survive and reproduce.

Your opinion cant be removed, everything in life can be reduced down to biology if you accept to lose out on certain axioms.

There is also trying to get laid I suppose. Which motivates younger men at least to seek status.

But I rather like your "need for burden" theory as well.

I remember a newspaper article about a gent who had passed away at around 100. He had retired from running his own business, but needed a purpose and got a job as a Walmart greeter. He didn't need the money, but he thrived at this job, and did it for decades until he could no longer get up in the morning, and then passed away.

Having a job where you get up, go out, do something useful, and interact with others is good for the soul. Sitting at home by yourself watching TV is a recipe for decline and death.

He's right, if not for working at McDonalds to pay rent, what purpose would people have to live?

When I take a month off work, towards the end I feel the need to be productive again, more than anything, even if the travels I'm doing are very exciting and satisfying.

Maybe the timeframes would differ for people, but I doubt many people would enjoy not working on _something_, whatever that may be.

I'm not saying people would enjoy doing nothing. It's just sick and a sign of our society's decay where we think the height of the human spirit and purpose is to slave away at a food service job serving food to others who will ultimately suffer for it. Like WalterBright in another reply says, there's probably some small amount of old people who benefit from working these kinds of jobs. The problem is, it's not only old retirees/people working those jobs. But tons of smart, capable people who are forced to do them in order to pay rent to some faceless landlord vacationing in the Bahamas or some shit.

Older people often take jobs so they have a reason to get up in the morning and a purpose. It keeps them active and engaged in life. Retirees without jobs and no purpose tend to die earlier.

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