
Universal basic income doesn’t work. Let’s boost the public realm instead - pseudolus
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/may/06/universal-basic-income-public-realm-poverty-inequality
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AbrahamParangi
Am I correct in understanding that this is a public sector union sponsored
report saying that instead of giving money to everyone, we should just give
that money to... public sector workers?

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marak830
I'm fairly ambivilent about ubi, sf I don't know enough to make an informed
decision so I'm not making a comment either way.

But that article is shit. The author (from my opinion) has an agenda against
ubi and is mixing their history to give some rather strange responses about
why ubi wont work.

I use to assume anything published in the guardian was, well not shit, but
now? Well that seems to be me, to be a bit piece, no a neutral and unbiased
look at things.

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ColanR
It seemed fairly well sourced. Anything in particular you didn't like?

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jakelazaroff
This is not made clear in the article, but the author of the article also co-
authored the report on which it's based.

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robotresearcher
The third line on the page is

• Anna Coote is co-author of Universal Basic Income: A Union Perspective

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kerbalspacepro
The first words are "A study published this week sheds"....

Except for its the author's study. "My study" is more appropriate.

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sct202
I'd be a little suspicious about this 'paper', as the only record I could find
on it is this PDF [http://www.world-
psi.org/sites/default/files/documents/resea...](http://www.world-
psi.org/sites/default/files/documents/research/en_ubi_political_overview_2019.pdf)

It has very few sources or figures, and mostly consists of a bunch of
statements without support. They're also using a broken tinyurl to link to the
full paper, which doesn't seem available.

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ColanR
The last few pages (49-53) were just a ton of references. It seemed like a
meta review that could have done with more inline citations, but it had a very
sizable bibliography.

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java-man
on one hand, she writes that

'universal basic income (UBI), the scheme that would give everyone regular,
unconditional cash payments that are enough to live on.'

and then follows with

'what’s been tested in practice is almost infinitely varied, with cash paid at
different levels and intervals, usually well below the poverty line and mainly
to individuals selected...'

so, no studies were conducted where UBI was given to _all_ at above poverty
line? accounting for reduction of government bureaucracy that's currently
decides who gets and who does not?

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LoSboccacc
well there are no real world test of ubi, and only a few with randomized
participants, while i'm not a fan of the idea it sound premature just to write
it off as non working

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newhotelowner
It may not work in the current form then we will have to find alternative.

After working with minimum wage workers for 2 years and with technology
advancement, I don't think the 10-15% of the population will be able to live a
good life without Ubi.

As tech gets better more bottom employees will be displaced from work. We need
to start increasing minimum wages and figure out how to provide better life to
bottom 10% of the population

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kwhitefoot
> It could find no evidence to suggest that such a scheme could be sustained

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. But even if the evidence is
absent that can simply be explained by the lack of large scale well designed
trials.

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anuraj
UBI can work as long as it can spawn an internal market and micro
entrepreneurs in that market. For accomplishing that UBI needs to be delivered
as crypto that works within an internal market.

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gremlinsinc
I totally agree that it needs to induce entrepreneurs into the market, but you
lost me at Crypto, crypto could be a way of making it work (but you'd need to
solve identity issues and have a tax scheme built in AND it'd need to be
usable by landlords, grocery stores, etc...

