
The promising results of Stockton’s basic income experiment - mitchbob
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-promising-results-of-a-citywide-basic-income-experiment
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phepranto
I realize there's no data on this, but do these localized experiments
translate into actual UBI at all? I only skimmed the article but it seems to
me that giving 125 people 500$/Month, which come from a donation to research
UBI, has basically no relation to actual UBI.

They found that giving those 125 people an unconditional monthly allowance
helps them survive and has a positive effect on their life.

They did not seem to research at all how to actually fund it, what kind of
effect a higher tax to fund it would have, or what would happen to the
government employees currently working in social welfare if they'd lose their
job.

~~~
roenxi
> They did not seem to research at all how to actually fund it

And this is really the most profound part. There isn't an argument to be made
against "if people have more money to buy stuff they will be better off".
Nobody can argue against that, it is true.

The _entire_ case against that sort of social spending is "but we need normal
people to create more than they consume or the resources won't be available"
and "this isn't fair on the people who have to support them" argued at varying
levels of complexity and indirection.

If you ignore the negative outcomes then any plan is a good plan and only has
positive outcomes. Duh.

~~~
DonaldFisk
The aim of UBI is not to make people better off, but to ensure that everyone
has enough money to live on. It's intended to replace means-tested social
security.

With UBI, nobody falls through the safety net and ends up with nothing to live
on; you don't need an army of people assessing claimants' financial
circumstances; and when someone finds a low-paid or part-time job they still
keep their UBI, so there's no disincentive to work.

If you argue it's unfair that people pay for UBI, how is that different from
arguing that it's unfair that people pay for means-tested social security (or
poor people's medical bills)?

~~~
notahacker
> If you argue it's unfair that people pay for UBI, how is that different from
> arguing that it's unfair that people pay for means-tested social security
> (or poor people's medical bills)?

There's a big difference between a welfare state designed as a form of social
insurance to protect people from adverse circumstances and old age, and one
designed on the assumption that those who want to work owe those who don't a
living, and that the only circumstance that should affect how much people
receive is whether they have the right citizenship.

Aside from the fundamental ethical rationale changing from contribution based
social insurance to citizenship based entitlement, UBI would also represent a
much larger bill, and a lower payout to the neediest.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Lots of loaded words in there, and not really fairly.

Nobody 'owes' anybody a living. The situation is, we can give most folks a
living, without everyone working. And those that continue to work, of course
are better off because they earn money for that. No unfairness at all.

I think its the old Protestant work ethic, this attitude of "folks not working
are immoral". We have to get past this, to make UBI a thing.

~~~
notahacker
> Nobody 'owes' anybody a living

The literal purpose of UBI is to ensure that taxpayers do owe each citizen a
fixed amount set at an average living. Making that a social obligation based
on birthright rather than a potential future entitlement based on need is how
it's different from social insurance schemes. The assumption if you're able to
work and not interested in looking for it you probably don't need the money as
much as other people certainly isn't what's wrong with current welfare states.

You don't have to believe that "folks not working are immoral" to believe that
helping those fortunate enough to be able to choose not to work at the expense
of those that aren't [whether by reduced benefits or higher taxes] isn't what
welfare states were for.

~~~
DougWebb
_The literal purpose of UBI is to ensure that taxpayers do owe each citizen a
fixed amount set at an average living._

Not _average_. It's _Basic_. It's just enough to get by. That's the incentive
to work: most people want to do more than just get by. Anyone who doesn't want
that would be a drag on _any_ system, so that's a separate problem to deal
with. But there are a lot of people who can't get ahead with the current
system who would do better in a UBI system, and we'd all be better off if we
could get those people productive and happy.

~~~
notahacker
my bad, that was supposed to be average living _wage_ , with living wage being
the concept of a just-above-subsistence income. The 'average' part of that
phrase is important because a basic living in one region can be quite a
comfortable living in another, or for someone not needing to factor rent into
their cost of living, but it helps if I don't miss the other key word out :)

~~~
DougWebb
I would imagine that if a national UBI program were implemented, the amount
would have to depend on the local cost of living, probably with caps. How
they'd work that out, I don't know.

If that's not done, then UBI would encourage migration from higher cost-of-
living areas to lower cost-of-living areas. That might not be a terrible
outcome; it would probably lead to balancing the cost-of-living across regions
as the populations change.

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debacle
This isn't a basic income experiment. It's a grant-based income subsidy.

What a real basic income experiment would look like:

\- Take a nominally populated county.

\- Calculate a baseline income requirement necessary to live in the county.

\- Completely gut all of the economic service programs (carefully without
breaking federal law).

\- Pool all that extra money together and divide it by the population.

\- Add some sort of VAT to county sales to cover the difference between what
UBI should be and how much money is in the kitty.

\- Do a test run of at least 18-24 months.

Things to pay attention to:

\- County sales tax receipts.

\- School attendance.

\- Employment, especially seasonal employment.

\- Crime.

\- Costs of groceries, restaurants, contractor services, etc.

\- Mean age of retirement.

\- Employment of those 18-25.

\- Rent prices

Things to consider:

\- Are state pensions on the chopping block?

\- Are you going to implement basic income as UBI + earned income or the
greater of the two?

\- Is there any opportunity to debit federally mandated economic support from
the UBI totals?

Hurdles:

\- Without buy in at the state level, how are you going to prevent people from
buying their groceries across county lines, or doing most of their retail
online?

\- Unless you pick the county properly (a proper mix of employment + age
demographics), you'll have large problems on your hand.

\- Serious local, national, and possibly international pressure to derail the
program.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
That's certainly one way to do it. Maybe the best way. But there's all sorts
of things to study, and it may be valuable to try and study them in isolation.

~~~
debacle
The psychological and resultant behavioral impact on tax base whales and the
liquidity of labor are the most important things to study. I can't reasonably
think of a means to study those outside of an academic scenario.

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throw51319
Are a lot of people going to use the UBI to better themselves? A large number
will probably end up hanging out. Or work a few years to save for a
downpayment, then end up hanging out.

It will prob speed up automation. Like some 40 year old with no skills is
gonna suddenly re-skill and being a computer programmer? Lol.

Just gonna be a bunch of people chilling on the taxpayers dime. Reproducing,
taking up space, etc.

Everything is going to be a sharp bimodal distribution. Those that are
productive, get paid a ton. Those who aren't productive and just chill all day
on UBI.

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christiansakai
I am concerned that UBI as a whole will make the divorce between economy and
productivity, just like artificial pumping by the government divorces stock
market from the economy.

An individual will have this illusion of they are fine in life, as long as UBI
coming in, even though they are not productive at all.

Stability of a government is never guaranteed. What if one day, for whatever
reason, whether the government go rogue, or the government has no more money
or assets, decide to stop UBI. A lot of people will suddenly be unprepared to
come to terms with the actual reality, that they don't have the needed
marketable skills to survive in the world because they have been living off
UBI all these times without cultivating themselves.

~~~
ksdale
I agree with you completely that it's a problem when society as a whole
doesn't have a good idea of what it means to be "productive" but I think that
in your second sentence, you could just as easily replace "UBI" with "wages"
and the truthfulness of it doesn't change at all. I think working for wages
doesn't allow most people to do what I would consider "cultivating
themselves," and possessing "marketable" skills is not the same thing as
possessing useful skills.

Obviously we all have our own definitions of "productive" (I actually like to
think of it more as useful rather than profitable) but my own personal opinion
is that what is useful and what people get paid for have as little overlap as
they've ever had, so the risk of replacing certain jobs with UBI isn't
actually as much of a threat to productivity as it might seem like.

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mchusma
I think UBI is an essential concept and believe will be no way around it in
some fashion.

That said, "AB testing" it is really hard. The real idea behind UBI (for most
advocates) is that it is a living wage granted for a very long time (something
like lifetimes). $500/mo for a few months or years means that people need to
still plan around that loss of income, and are unlikely to act too
differently.

I like research, but I don't really see much benefit here. I think you justify
UBI on these grounds: 1) administration costs are much higher for welfare
states than UBI (the US spends more on anti poverty programs than it would
take to distribute funds and make nobody below the US poverty line). This
should appeal to fiscal conservatives. Our anti poverty programs have failed
not due to resources, but rather due to centralized, command and control
techniques a la ISSUE. 2) the number of people that are completely
unemployable (they are not able to outcompete machines/AI at any narrow job
function) will increase.

Number (2) is more speculative for most people, but having automated away many
jobs myself, I can see that the only reason things are not more automated is
the will of leaders to automate. Most people lack the will, but that won't
stop it in the long run, only slow it.

~~~
notahacker
The big problem with (1) is that it's unambiguously falsified by widely
available data.

Approximately 75 million working age US citizens are 'economically inactive'
in normal times - i.e. they're not working or paying income/payroll taxes, and
in most cases are ineligible for any other type of benefit. The US poverty
line is 12k.

You're not finding all that extra money from admin costs

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LatteLazy
Non paywalled:

[https://outline.com/2dA7jj](https://outline.com/2dA7jj)

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amINeolib
Not real UBI. I want to see an end to food stamps and housing subsidies and
Medicare taxes before you call it UBI.

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jakeogh
Hey, don't worry; we are just taxing the negative externalities of your
existence.

This is an authoritarian dream, and it's why cash has a big target on it.

Got a fine? Deduct it. Putting people on the take gives government
significantly more leverage over them.

Next up is to incrementally pair it with a social credit score. The concept is
fundamentally against free expression; it's the same old model used keep large
fractions of social classes from becoming independent.

Real solutions involve decentralization and less tax on _time_, the power
players want cheap labor, so they were allowed to import it. That scam is well
known now, so onto plan B.

This is really a proposal for extreme centralization via hidden tax on value
producers. It's a deliberate problem; hence the Hegel soluton.

~~~
perfunctory
> Next up is to incrementally pair it with a social credit score

Which part of “unconditional” do you not understand?

~~~
HPsquared
Policies have a habit of changing over time.

~~~
perfunctory
By this logic we should never ever make any new policies lest they evolve into
something undesirable.

~~~
mamon
I think all libertanians would agree with that logic :)

In theory you should be able to come up with some minimal necessary set of
laws and policies, pass apropriate parlimentary bills once, and after that
parliament becomes unncecessary, or maybe it just gathers in session once a
year, to evaluate the need for new laws.

Also, to encourage long-term thinking it should be written into Constitution
that any new law passed can only take effect 10 years after it was passed, not
sooner.

~~~
phaemon
Just like software development then?

