Universal basic income (UBI) has supporters across the political spectrum. The idea is that if every citizen received a payment from the state to cover their living costs, it this will allow them the freedom to live as they choose.
But voters who turned down a UBI pilot in a recent referendum in the German city of Hamburg apparently found something to dislike. A frequent argument against UBI is that recipients will decide to work less. This in turn will make labour (and consequently labour-intensive products) more expensive.
Indeed, a recent study on a UBI experiment has found that recipients of an unconditional monthly transfer of US$1,000 (£760) were significantly less likely to work. And if they did work, they put in fewer hours than a control group who received only US$50 per month.
Economics is a religion, not a science.
How economics became a religion | John Rapley https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/jul/11/how-economics-became-a-religion
UBI fundamentally doesn’t work unless you have controls in place against inflation (read: profiteering). Give everyone an additional paycheck? Welp, I guess prices of everything just rose to compensate this sudden new “cash”.
The voters in Hamburg did not vote against universal basic income. They voted against a pilot project as a study which would have given around 2000 citizens about 1300€ for three years.
Not only have there already been studies like that, they’re also not very meaningful given that those people know that this income was for a limited time frame and act accordingly.
This is probably as good a place as any to ask a question I’ve been mulling around recently. One of my dad’s friends told him that when they were on an Indian reservation, the casinos gave a stipend to everyone on the reservation and because they had this stipend, a lot of the people on the reservation decided to work less and instead just get drunk or do drugs or beat their wives or whatever.
My thought on this is that there are so many problems caused by poverty that it’s possible that without the stipend from the casino, these folks would be even worse off. And there may not be good jobs in their area. And my dad said, well why don’t they drive to somewhere that has jobs? Like that is something anybody would want to do if they didn’t need to get the money.
So I guess my question is, are there any people who’ve done research on stipends like this that already exists in the real world and any data specifically on Indian reservations would be really interesting to me?
Good…?
A frequent argument against UBI is that recipients will decide to work less. This in turn will make labour (and consequently labour-intensive products) more expensive.
Oh boy, the stupid people found a way to defend being abused. It’s good that people are working less. It shouldn’t even make things more expensive. Now instead of 1 worker slaving away for 8 hours, we can have 2 workers slaving away for 4 hours each. It’s nothing but beneficial for everyone who isn’t profiting off of abuse.
Stockholm syndrome is a helluva thing
They say “people will work less” like it’s a bad thing.
It’s bad for our masters
they do specifically say because that will lead to increasing costs of goods. A valid concern I think when cost of living is on the rise.
“oh, some of us should starve so that the stuff I buy at Kroger is cheaper” is an indefensible position, even if wages and marker prices were strongly correlated. Which they aren’t
Isn’t that the whole idea of UBI? To make up for lost work due to technological advances…
But the shareholders! Or some such nonsense.
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The transfer caused total individual income excluding the transfers to fall by about $1,800/year relative to the control group and a 3.9 percentage point decrease in labor market participation. Participants reduced their work hours as a result of the transfers by 1-2 hours/week and participants’ partners reduced their work hours by a comparable amount.
Just in case anyone was wondering here is how much less work people did in the study. So ~4hrs/week less working on average for couples or 1-2hrs/week per person.
How much misinformation was spread by the opposition?
Virtually none. However, Hamburg has disproportionately rich citizens, and Germany as a whole has a pretty old population. This results in politics being naturally skewed towards conservative neo liberal dogma.
All of it
People having to work less is the whole point. UBI is not about increasing economic productivity. It’s about distributing the fruits of the productivity more equitably.
There’s a push for companies to constantly increase their profits. That means sooner or later prices must rise. Sooner or later labor must be paid less. In fact, this has been happening for decades. Prices have been rising faster than wages for decades.
Seems to me like labor should get paid more and there should be something (regulations?) to prevent prices from rising when it happens.
They want slavery by another name
Sooner or later, the profiteers need to be guillotined.
This sounds absurd. Wtf is $750 going to get you that you no longer need to work much?
Might be just enough that one spouse will stay home to take care of the kids. Just enough that you don’t have to work for health insurance. Just enough that you can try starting something new, working on your art, continuing your education.
My mother brings in less money than that before taxes, and my parents believe that this money is essential to their household income.
On an individual level you’re right. $750 does not cover the cost of living. However, when combined with a couple that, not only doubles how much the family is taking in, increases the likelihood that 1 of the 2 either doesn’t work or works less.
That’s why it’s so fucked up that the older generation rails against this given it was the standard practice when they were working age…
Why are they using a pic of £1 coins and UK notes?
All they could afford without ubi smh
My biggest concern with UBI is price increases across every metric to account for it, like what happened when women entered the workforce. It used to be that a family could survive on a single paycheck but after decades the corporations and resources realized they could charge almost double and still get it. I worry it would be the same with UBI.
People say the same of giving people a living wage. If we can’t do good things because bad actors will take advantage of it, the solution is not to stop doing good things but to punish the bad actors.
I just wish that any regulators had the fortitude to actually enforce anything to protect the common citizenry. I won’t hold my breath though, I don’t have enough capital to pay them off.
I agree. We would need some sort of cap in raising prices, especially rent, by whatever the ubi would be.
My heart goes up to you, residents of Hamburg…
