[HN Gopher] Mincome: Canada's 1970s universal basic income exper...
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Mincome: Canada's 1970s universal basic income experiment
Author : rmason
Score : 35 points
Date : 2020-06-26 20:00 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| FreakyT wrote:
| I feel like there is a specific issue with the methodology of
| this and various other basic income experiments: it was time-
| limited.
|
| If one goes into the experiment knowing that the basic income
| will end after N years, I suspect that may significantly affect
| one's behavior. For example, this study found that people
| typically did not quit their jobs (for 4 years of basic income).
| Would that result replicate with indefinite basic income? I'd
| like to see a follow-up study to test that.
| godelski wrote:
| While I agree with this, is there any long term experiment even
| in proposal? We'd really need at least 30 years to see how
| children develop through their dependent years (<25). I see "it
| was time-limited" often stated in response to UBI criticism (it
| is a legitimate complaint that these are time limited!) but I
| have yet to see a proposal that tries to remedy this. Is there
| one?
| abellerose wrote:
| Instead of the idea of universal basic income. I like to toy with
| the idea of somehow making it so people can work less. Such as a
| person works every other week and where someone else fills the
| role for the weeks the other person isn't working. I think it
| would increase job positions and better mental health. I'm unsure
| how it financially could work out but I assume money can come
| from somewhere because UBI is basically proposing income for no
| work at all.
| godelski wrote:
| At this point of time I seriously think we only have a few
| conclusions: (Special note to 4, please address)
|
| 1) Recognize that we have sufficient "small" scale studies (note
| the quotes) that are short term, and providing similar results,
| which necessitate longer term studies. i.e. studies that are ~30
| years, so that children can grow up completely under this
| environment and live through their dependent years (<25 years
| old) under these conditions.
|
| 2) The experiments provide enough evidence and this warrants
| attempting this on a much larger scale for the presumed future.
| i.e. institute a UBI (obviously we need to determine WHICH kind
| of UBI we would institute).
|
| 3) There are major flaws in the studies that need to be addressed
| and we need to refine them. (Personally with the many variations
| of these I've seen I do not think this is an accurate conclusion,
| but I am open to being wrong as I am not an expert studying this
| topic)
|
| 4) While the benefits are real, the cost is too much. This is one
| I'd particularly like to see addressed. Pretty much every time we
| see UBI experiments come up we see: 1) little to no earning wage
| increase (which is difficult to say if it is because the short
| time periods or not) 2) lower hospitalizations 3) higher sense of
| self worth 4) more children are finishing education 5) more
| children are reaching their dietary needs. The issue I see is
| that these have (unclear) economic values tied to them but are
| not discussed. I ALWAYS see the economic _cost_ discussed, though
| understandably this is a much easier thing to calculate. But aren
| 't economists supposed to be estimating these difficult concepts?
| As a voter I would like to know what the economic benefit is to
| these programs as well as the cost. This will allow me to make
| better judgments (e.g. even if UBI costs more economically maybe
| my personal moral utility value makes up the difference between
| the numbers). It is a shame that this is not discussed.
|
| The issue of UBI and all its variations is complex but I believe
| that the conversation is frequently being framed in ways that is
| difficult to make real judgments on. We see the economic costs,
| but not the economic benefits. But we do see moral benefits, but
| this isn't enough. Legitimate excuses are given (for and
| against), but no one is making new experiments that address these
| concerns. We need a serious conversation with less surjection.
| skybrian wrote:
| Manitoba again. If you're paying attention to universal basic
| income, this is more like the experiment they keep reminding us
| about.
| Kednicma wrote:
| How much bigger do UBI experiments need to be before we can be
| confident that these positive small-scale outcomes will also
| replicate on the scale of a USA-sized country?
| jvm_ wrote:
| There's some longer term unanswered/unanswerable questions as
| well. How do children do if their parents have never worked?
| Synaesthesia wrote:
| Children of rich parents who never work do fine.
|
| Having a child is hard work. It's just not valued by modern
| liberal society, which doesn't value people, only their value
| they can sell.
| greiskul wrote:
| Which parents that never worked? If unemployment doesn't go
| up, but remains constant or goes down, and more children
| complete high school, what kids are you worried about? Right
| now we have a bunch of kids that don't finish high school and
| are born in unemployed families, how about we worry about
| them? We know the effect our current system is causing on
| them, a cycle of poverty that never goes away. Clearly our
| current approach is not working.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| I don't know where this idea is coming from that UBI will
| incent people to drop out of the labor force. Any reasonable
| and currently-feasible UBI would do the opposite. And
| experiments bear this out - those who seemingly leave the
| workforce are actually doing something quite different:
| namely, they're temporarily shifting from formal employment
| to working towards human capital acquisition, or else
| providing care for others.
| godelski wrote:
| This is a great point, but at the same time how do we answer
| this question when all our experiments last 5 years or less?
| To answer this question you have to run an experiment for
| roughly 30 years, ensuring that people born into this system
| are taken through college (i.e. the dependent years, which is
| usually considered <25yrs of age) and that you have enough
| children being born during this period. We know that
| influences before the age of 8 have significant factors in
| establishing things like educational culture for children,
| and this is highly associated with socioeconomic status.
|
| So if we're saying that an experiment has to run for at least
| 30 years: 1) why aren't we getting on that? 2) are short term
| studies enough to warrant bypassing the long term small scale
| study and precede to a large scale study?
| Spooky23 wrote:
| People want to work.
|
| A better question is: why do we actively discourage single
| parents from marrying and working full time? In many places,
| full time employment with low skills is a ticket to disaster.
| [deleted]
| mantas wrote:
| So far experiments are one-sided with outside money being used.
| Nobody is testing how a self-sustained society works in UBI.
| I'd be more interested in seeing a full-fledged test rather
| than bigger and bigger cherry picked tests.
| arnaudsm wrote:
| I bet that after this recession, at least one western country
| will try UBI at large scale within 20 years. We'll learn a lot.
| alexashka wrote:
| This endless discussion of UBI or other programs in isolation is
| like trying to find treatment for an itchy toe, ignoring that the
| rest of your body is also itching.
| nexuist wrote:
| Last I check itching cream worked on most parts of your body.
| Like UBI, being given any amount of itching cream can cure many
| itches at once.
| [deleted]
| artsyca wrote:
| I understand what you're getting at. It's like you're trying to
| put out a fire in your kitchen when your whole house is on
| fire. It would work if you could get it all done at once but
| not when you try to do it piecemeal.
| II2II wrote:
| That treatment for an itchy toe managed to reduce
| hospitalization rates by over 8% and increase high school
| completion rates (to the point where everyone at least started
| their final year). There were also indications that small
| businesses started appearing, presumably because people wanted
| to keep working yet also wanted more autonomy. The article
| states that was possible because financing was easier to come
| by.
|
| There is a possibility that addressing financial insecurity
| will give people the freedom to address other social ills on
| their own accord. Yet we will never find out if people keep
| coming up with excuses to prevent wider scale trials.
| aszantu wrote:
| without knowing anything about it I'd think that our system would
| be working better with UBI if it was randomized and switching
| between citizens, would make sense to exclude everyone who is
| already a millionaire or something. So if you pull it, you get
| 4-8 years to build a business with the money, or do whatever u
| want, and then the money goes to someone else. That way it
| wouldn't just be hyper inflationary. If you give everybody more
| money, nobody has more money. Capitalism is built on inequality.
| skybrian wrote:
| tldr: If you're worried about the high cost or the efficiency
| of UBI, you could fix it with taxes.
|
| If we are just talking about giving cash as charitable
| donations, smaller-scale experiments about giving people cash
| tell us what we need to know about the effects. But at large
| scale, yes, we will have to also consider the effect of
| whatever taxes are used to counter the increase in the money
| supply. This isn't an immediate concern considering very low
| inflation, zero interest rates, and a depressed economy, but
| might eventually become an issue, someday.
|
| The thing is, you could combine UBI with _any_ tax, so that
| means there are a huge number of possible policies. My
| favorites are a carbon tax along with making income tax more
| progressive, but there are others.
|
| If much of the benefit of UBI is earlier in life and the taxes
| are paid somewhat later (at higher income), then this has
| similar effects to a loan. If the benefits happen after peak
| income (in retirement) then it's more like forced savings.
|
| It's also similar to an insurance scheme. On net, some people
| may never benefit due to always having a good income and paying
| more in taxes than they get back, but it still reduces your
| risk if you somehow lose your income.
| fastball wrote:
| Capitalism is built on private ownership, not inequality.
| HighlandSpring wrote:
| Oh there'll still be inequality, don't worry about it :)
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| Things are still unequal with UBI - if you get $2k a month,
| billionaires are still billionaries. It can make being poor
| less dangerous; e.g. homelessness, car repossession, lack of
| basic necessities can stop being a thing.
|
| I sometimes think really that a good alternative would be
| Universal Protected Net Worth. Maybe things would be better if
| there was some floor of money and assets below which no court
| or legal proceeding could take from you, including taxes,
| fines, bail, judgements, seizures, forfeitures, etc. I don't
| know how that would work in practice.
| winstonewert wrote:
| The Mosaic law actually has something kind of like this where
| you can't lose ownership of your allotted farmland. Thus, at
| minimum, everyone owns a valuable asset and thus some net
| worth. (Data is sparse on whether this law was every actually
| followed or the effects.)
| fastball wrote:
| Universal Protected Net Work sounds unbelievably prone to
| abuse.
|
| One of the best things about UBI is that it is unabusable
| (except with faking existence of people, which can be used to
| abuse literally any system).
| dang wrote:
| If curious see also:
|
| 2016 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11497021
|
| 2015 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9004287
|
| 2014 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8792192
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(page generated 2020-06-26 23:01 UTC)