Comment by opo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by opo | Hacker News Reader

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>The report shows nearly three-quarters of respondents who were working when the pilot project began kept at it despite receiving basic income.

1/4 of the people stopped working?? That is a huge effect, particularly since it was a short duration experiment. Unfortunately this is also seen in other experiments with basic income. The economist Noah Smith blogged about a large randomized basic income study done in the US where participants received about $1,000 a month for three years:

>...Just $1000 a month made 2% of people stop working! That’s a very large negative effect. It contradicts the results of earlier studies showing little or no effect of unconditional cash benefits on employment. And worst of all, the basic income recipients didn’t seem to transfer to better jobs or go back to school — two of the most powerful arguments for basic income. Instead, people just sat around at home.

https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/at-least-five-interesting-thin...

Don't forget to compare that to the number of people who exit the job market without UBI.

Given the chance, many people will quit working. That isn't surprising. Acting like this is UBI's fault is kind of weird.

> Acting like this is UBI's fault is kind of weird.

As Noah Smith wrote:

>...Now, increased leisure time isn’t zero benefit — obviously it’s nice to be able to sit around and do nothing and live off of government cash for a little while. But it represents a steep tradeoff — programs like this are already very expensive in fiscal terms, and if they make people work less, that only adds to the total economic cost. If leisure time is all we’re getting for all of that money and lost output, it’s highly questionable whether the intervention is worth it.

Not to butt in, but 2% sounds like a good trade to me. You gotta think about every possible cumulative benefit everyone experiences by having 1k more a month. Imagine the lost stress, the increased nutrition, the increased education, the skills explored and practiced that couldn’t be before, etc. If the trade is that 2% of people sit around and economic output drops as much, why shouldn’t that be a net positive for society?

>...2% sounds like a good trade to me.

What exactly is the trade here? In a trade, both sides are supposed to be better off.

As the link says:

>...But if it’s confirmed that basic income discourages work and provides little long-term career benefits, I think interest in the idea will wane rapidly.

As the person making the trade, you give something so that you can get something of greater value to you. The thing we’d be giving up is 2% of our economic output, and the thing we’d be getting is, I think, a massive improvement to people’s quality of life.

> But if it’s confirmed that basic income discourages work and provides little long-term career benefits, I think interest in the idea will wane rapidly.

It’s deeply unfortunate if it turns out true. I wish we could look past the things we value as proxies for the things that matter so that we could see that the things that matter could be improved here.

>The thing we’d be giving up is 2% of our economic output…

That 2% was for a payout of just $1,000 a month and the participants knew it was temporary. A more generous payout that was permanent might lead to a higher percentage.

>...and the thing we’d be getting is, I think, a massive improvement to people’s quality of life.

The general principle of most welfare systems is to provide for those who are unable to work. There isn't nearly as much support in the general public to provide for those who simply choose not to work. Hence the comment in the blog that "...if it’s confirmed that basic income discourages work and provides little long-term career benefits, I think interest in the idea will wane rapidly."

> A more generous payout that was permanent might lead to a higher percentage.

Sure, but the point of doing studies is to get a general idea of the effects. If we can’t presume it’ll be roughly representative, then let’s advocate for the actual deployment of UBI on a small scale to test its real-world effects, since the time span of the study is so essential to its utility.

> The general principle of most welfare systems is to provide for those who are unable to work. There isn't nearly as much support in the general public to provide for those who simply choose not to work.

Taking the framing for granted, I feel like I’m confused about the purpose of the discussion. If your point is to say that the results of this study render the “selling” of UBI more difficult to the public, then I absolutely agree, but that’s a bit of a given. If you’re saying it should be abandoned as a political project because of these results, which is more the vibe I was getting, then you haven’t substantiated why, since you’re talking about public perception rather than impact. Could you clarify?

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