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Results of 'Universal Basic Income' Program? Employment Increased (ktla.com) 288

Posted by EditorDavid from the takes-money-to-make-money dept.
The Associated Press reports: After getting $500 per month for two years without rules on how to spend it, 125 people in California paid off debt, got full-time jobs and reported lower rates of anxiety and depression, according to a study released Wednesday. The program in the Northern California city of Stockton was the highest-profile experiment in the U.S. of a universal basic income, where everyone gets a guaranteed amount per month for free...

Stockton was an ideal place, given its proximity to Silicon Valley and the eagerness of the state's tech titans to fund the experiment as they grapple with how to prepare for job losses that could come with automation and artificial intelligence. The Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration launched in February 2019, selecting a group of 125 people who lived in census tracts at or below the city's median household income of $46,033. The program did not use tax dollars, but was financed by private donations, including a nonprofit led by Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes.

A pair of independent researchers at the University of Tennessee and the University of Pennsylvania reviewed data from the first year of the study, which did not overlap with the pandemic. A second study looking at year two is scheduled to be released next year. When the program started in February 2019, 28% of the people slated to get the free money had full-time jobs. One year later, 40% of those people had full-time jobs. A control group of people who did not get the money saw a 5 percentage point increase in full-time employment over that same time period.

"These numbers were incredible. I hardly believed them myself," said Stacia West, an assistant professor at the University of Tennessee who analyzed the data along with Amy Castro Baker, an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
The Stockton mayor who'd started the program told reporters to "tell your friends, tell your cousins, that guaranteed income did not make people stop working."
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Results of 'Universal Basic Income' Program? Employment Increased More

Results of 'Universal Basic Income' Program? Employment Increased

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    • Re:Sounds like this story on Friday (Score:5, Funny)

      by aardvarkjoe ( 156801 ) on Sunday March 07, 2021 @10:20PM (#61134640)

      Employment increased, but they all just became Slashdot editors and now sit around posting duplicate stories all day.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by vlad30 ( 44644 )
        They had more money to order uber-eats so uber-eats needed more drivers so employment increased

        • Re:Sounds like this story on Friday (Score:4, Interesting)

          by NFN_NLN ( 633283 ) on Monday March 08, 2021 @12:55AM (#61134960)

          Beep boop beep.... does NOT scale.

          > After getting $500 per month for two years without rules on how to spend it, 125 people in California paid off debt, got full-time jobs and reported lower rates of anxiety and depression, according to a study released

          Now give EVERYONE $500 a month and watch local rents increase by $500 a month because "we knows you gots it".

          It only works because a small selection of people were unfairly elevated above OTHERS.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by Ultra64 ( 318705 )

            What evidence do you have to support this wild claim?

            • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

              by Anonymous Coward
              His own greed? It's the way he would gouge his renters.

            • Re:Sounds like this story on Friday (Score:5, Informative)

              by vlad30 ( 44644 ) on Monday March 08, 2021 @01:32AM (#61135026)
              It already happens When a government in Australia increased the childcare subsidy for childcare the fees went up as an example. same government tried a number of "stimulus" items in every case the costs were far higher than they were prior to the "stimulus" and it wasn't the lower paid workers that got the extra it usually disappeared in management fees. It's not just bad landlords, greedy people who can see free government money meant for lower paid find a way to collect it themselves.

              • Re: Sounds like this story on Friday (Score:4, Informative)

                by e3m4n ( 947977 ) on Monday March 08, 2021 @07:37AM (#61135690)
                Sorta like people emotionally voting to make other big companies pay fees/fines? Only to find it appear as line items on the Cable, Telephone, and Water bills.. and those are only the cases where they clearly print those charges. Telecom got so competitive that the price of a PRI was priced so low that after all the fees, taxes, and must-have add-ons, the cost literally doubled. Federal Subscriber Line charge is one of the biggest scams there is on the telco bills here in the US btw.

          • I agree. The other item is that these handouts have to come from somewhere, which means labor budget for employers needs to increase or inflation should increase directly, which puts us back at square one, but with a devalued dollar.

            [opinion]
            The problem is the global creation of wealth has become linear with no new land areas being exploitable for raw resources (and it becoming more difficult to exploit downtrodden underpaid people for labor*) , so now everyone is gouging each other for services.

            Increasing

          • So if we lower everyone's pay by $500 then costs will go down!

    • How They Pick Them? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Kunedog ( 1033226 )
      Hjacking your comment to ask if anyone knows what the selection criteria were. This study immediately made me think of one from last year:
      https://news.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]

      The 115 participants in the randomized controlled trial were between the ages of 19 and 64, and they had been homeless for an average of 6 months. Participants were screened for a low risk of mental health challenges and substance abuse.

      Mentally healthy non-addicts who'd been homeless for less than a year (what percentage of homeless people is that?) were cherry-picked to do a study that concluded that giving thousands in cash to the homeless had great results. The study's probably also been cited to support universal (not cherry-picked) basic income, too.

      Did sim

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 )

        Did similar shennanigans happen here?

        It isn't clear. Most of these studies are funded and conducted by people with an ax to grind. In this case, the funding and data collection appears to have been done by activists, but independent researchers reviewed the data.

        There was a control group, but TFA doesn't explain what they received. Did they receive some alternative assistance? Did they receive nothing? The ambiguity may be intentional.

        According to TFA, 12% of the recipients found a full-time job. 5% of the control group did. So a 7% diff

        • Re:How They Pick Them? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Monday March 08, 2021 @07:13AM (#61135584) Homepage Journal

          For people with very little money, a bit extra really helps find work.

          At the very bottom you need a fixed address to get anywhere, i.e. somewhere to live. Beyond that it helps to have a mobile phone and internet access, ideally with IT resources so you can maybe print a CV or at least prepare and email one.

          If you can afford transport then the area where you can look for work increases significantly. A few bucks to spend on smart clothes and make-up for women often helps land a new role.

          Childcare is another big factor. If you can afford an hour or two of care after school, for example, there are many more jobs available to you.

          As for the cost of each job, it depends how much that new job pays back in tax. It's very difficult to estimate because it can alter the trajectory of a person's whole life, meaning their lifetime earnings are higher and they receive fewer other benefits (like free healthcare).

      • Re:How They Pick Them? (Score:5, Informative)

        by imidan ( 559239 ) on Monday March 08, 2021 @02:07AM (#61135088)

        Mentally healthy non-addicts who'd been homeless for less than a year (what percentage of homeless people is that?) were cherry-picked to do a study

        The reason they chose "Mentally healthy non-addicts who'd been homeless for less than a year" is because that was the group they were interested in attempting to help with their money. Their goal was to see if giving a chunk of money to a newly homeless person who was otherwise stable would keep them from becoming long-term homeless; would it give them enough cushion to get back on their feet. And it worked. That's not "cherry-picking," it's choosing study participants based upon the hypothesis of the study.

        a study that concluded that giving thousands in cash to the homeless had great results. The study's probably also been cited to support universal (not cherry-picked) basic income, too.

        Nowhere in the study results do the people running the study claim that their results apply to people outside the group that they chose. If someone wants to study giving large cash grants to mentally ill addicts who are chronically homeless, I suppose they could try, but the benefits aren't likely to be as significant. But, again, not the point of the study. If someone has used this study to support UBI, then they're not using it appropriately. "Someone might incorrectly use my results as support for a point they do not actually support" is not a reason to not do a study.

        • Re:How They Pick Them? (Score:5, Informative)

          by serviscope_minor ( 664417 ) on Monday March 08, 2021 @03:35AM (#61135240) Journal

          If someone has used this study to support UBI, then they're not using it appropriately.

          Not necessarily. It demonstrates that if people fall for reasons which aren't, say, mental illness, but have UBI, they will most likely use the UBI money to pick themselves back up and re-enter the workforce. A good part of the point of UBI is the safety net it provides. It won't help everyone, and doesn't replace services for mentally ill people, but it can help a lot of people.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by imidan ( 559239 )
            You're right, of course. I didn't include that level of nuance because I didn't expect the GPP to appreciate it much.
        • Wouldnt UBI be applied regardless of homeless status? If anything you made the case that universal basic income should not be universal but limited to precisely those individuals who are recently homeless and substance free. Dont we call that wellfare/unemployment insurance? Except for the substance free component. I would think the tree huggers would get pissed if you conditioned payments to weekly piss tests or whatever other method was used to ensure substance free.

      • Re:How They Pick Them? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Smidge204 ( 605297 ) on Monday March 08, 2021 @03:31AM (#61135224) Journal

        You seem to be upset that wealthy people with stable incomes aren't included in UBI studies. This is likely because you're a moron.

        Nobody is interested in seeing what wealthy people with stable incomes do when they get a few hundred bucks bonus. It's unlikely that the money will change their behavior in any meaningful way, or have any notable impact on their lives.

        When you have limited funds to run a study with, you focus on a narrow cohort of people who are likely to change their behavior or otherwise have their lives meaningfully impacted by having extra money to spend. Remember the point of UBI, and similar economic strategies, is to address endemic problems like homelessness, unemployment, poor public health, etc. so those are the kinds of people you want to study. Giving someone making $100K+/yr an extra $500/mo is not going to yield any useful information.
        =Smidge=

        • Re: How They Pick Them? (Score:2, Insightful)

          by e3m4n ( 947977 )
          How do you define wealthy? I dont consider myself wealthy. Of your income stopped tomorrow, how far will what you have saved last? 1yr? 2yr? If you do get another job after 9mos, what does that do to your retirement nest egg? Are you now a walmart greeter? Most of us could be a few paychecks from living out of a cardboard box so to speak. I dont consider that to be wealthy. I think knowing if UBI will make productive people less productive is a reasonable goal. $500 is not much of a safety net. If the argum

  • 500 a month is not a basic income (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Blightor ( 5895752 ) on Sunday March 07, 2021 @10:04PM (#61134608)
    Of course people would get a job, this isn't enough money to live above the poverty line.

    I mean Australia has a monthly support payment that is more than double this a month (after conversion) and it gets regularly panned as not enough to be above the poverty line.

    I'm not advocating whether basic income support should or should not be done, but a study like this doesn't provide anything in the way of understanding if people are given enough money to live above the poverty line would they increase or decrease their ability to get a job.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fermion ( 181285 )
      This is how it works in many places. The idea is not to provide income some people can shop at Traders Joes and live in luxury apartments, but to provide base income so they can participate in the equitably participate in the capitalist economy. That is not have to take out payday loans just to work.

      So you can get roommates, donated clothing, and be presentable for an interview. You can get Internet, a tablet, and participate in the online work. Maybe three people can get a cheap car and each take a shif

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by dcw3 ( 649211 )

        My mother gets about $1000/month from Social Security. It's her only income, and it's not enough to live on your own (her home is paid for, and I pay all the utilities, taxes, etc.). It's barely enough to feed yourself. There are medical bills, clothing, etc.

        So yeah, maybe several people could band together, and survive. Let's see...Poverty line for 4 is $26,500 according to hhs.gov. Oops, that's only $24,000 they're still living in shit.

        https://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty-g... [hhs.gov]

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by uncqual ( 836337 )

          No question that living on $1,000/month is tough but

          It's barely enough to feed yourself.

          seems like quite an overstatement. $30/day is way more than enough to feed someone. $10 is adequate. Of course at $10/day you're not eating out consistently or having meals delivered to your home and you're doing some light duty cooking if you care about eating healthy, but if you are happy with food that isn't too healthy, on that budget you can easily buy processed foods that are almost ready to eat (canned/frozen).

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by dcw3 ( 649211 )

            Of course at $10/day you're not eating out consistently

            Have you eaten out lately? It would have been fine a couple years ago, but not now unless you're living off the $1 menu at McD's.

          • Re: 500 a month is not a basic income (Score:5, Informative)

            by shadow_slicer ( 607649 ) on Monday March 08, 2021 @05:22AM (#61135414)

            You're right. 1000 a month is enough for food. What it doesn't pay for is medical care, rent and utilities. So if you can manage to keep a permanent address (to collect your payments) and never get sick, you can live off of this (on the street eating all the food raw because you have no kitchen to cook it with).

    • And 125 people is not universal (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      This test, like all that have come before, fail the key aspect of "universal basic income". The "universal" part. Because at that level, it doesn't work. And I can prove it with basic math.

      If there were 100 people total on earth, and you gave 10 of them $1,000 per week, and that was the only income they got, while the remaining 90 only got what they earned by working, the buying power for those 10 is $1,000. Give everyone $1,000 per week, and the buying power for the 10 whose only income is that $1,00

    • Of course people would get a job, this isn't enough money to live above the poverty line.

      It’s not suppose to be enough for an apartment, nice food and a car. It’s suppose to help them rent a room with roommates, buy some thrift clothes, buy a bus pass and buy Ramen. Just enough to get them going to a job and the job can take over with paying them.

      • There's nothing in the world stopping you from taking in some rando and handing them $500 a month. Test the premise yourself. With your own pocket.

      • Exactly. It's enough to get a family of 4 a 2 bedroom apartment in most non-coastal places, keep them fed, and pay utilities. It's not comfortable, but it's definitely survivable. No, they won't be in the good part of town, and yes, the commute or bus ride to anything is going to be long.

        But if you want cable TV or a newer cell phone, you're going to need to get a job. This is enough to keep you from homelessness in most places, but it's not enough for you to kick back and do nothing, unless you really don'

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by vlad30 ( 44644 )
      Australia's Monthly support payments are enough that people actually refuse to work especially if they live at home with family or in a group environment to share the rent. It can also be gamed by those who know where to look with migration lawyers often helping for a cut. If you only applied for the one yes it would be difficult to live but they know about all of them and can be collecting much higher amounts. when they do work its always under the table and paid in cash

      • One of the major arguments for UBI is that it ENCOURAGES people to find work. Most programs that hand out free cash do so only when your life's conditions warrants a handout. You end up with situations where you sit on your ass to get 500$, or you work hard to rid yourself of your addiction and make yourself employable to get paid 510$ and lose all benefits.
        But the problem, again, is that we need to have a full-scale UBI experiment to actually know what would happen. All these cherry-picked studies serve no

  • Of course $500/month didn't make them not work (Score:3, Informative)

    by MobyDisk ( 75490 ) on Sunday March 07, 2021 @10:08PM (#61134616) Homepage

    The Stockton mayor who'd started the program told reporters to "tell your friends, tell your cousins, that guaranteed income did not make people stop working."

    Of course it didn't. $500/month doesn't even cover rent.

    These small-scale economic experiments are good. Clearly with increasing housing prices, medical prices, tuition prices, and rising CPI (despite inflation being low), people need assistance. That is why we have calls for unionization and increased minimum wage. However, DO NOT conclude that we can eliminate every government subsidy and replace it with a small cash handout. Do not replace public housing, section 8, child care vouchers, tuition deferral, SNAP, and Medical assistance with cash. I keep seeing the crowd erroneously claims that experiments like this prove that we can eliminate all government programs, institute UBI, and bam everything is great.

    • Medical needs it's own thing in the USA as it is (Score:5, Informative)

      by Joe_Dragon ( 2206452 ) on Sunday March 07, 2021 @10:30PM (#61134676)

      Medical needs it's own thing in the USA as it is broken at all levels

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Maybe they can find a way to deliver it in the form of tax breaks or getting paid not to farm things, nobody gets accused of buying votes that way.

      • Of course not, only a Libertarian thinks in such myopic terms. Let me guess, African Americans are still on the Democrat plantation?

      • $500/month doesn't even cover rent.

        But is it enough to buy their votes?

        Andrew Yang got less than 1% of the vote. So, no. It is not enough to buy votes.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Uberbah ( 647458 )

        That's the entire purpose of the scheme, after all.

        As opposed to passing job-killing tax cuts for the rich? You do know that increasing food stamps (more money for the poor in a consumer economy) is FAR more effective than giving more money to people who don't need it (and didn't earn it), yes?

    • $500/month doesn't even cover rent.

      It does in Stockton depending on how picky you are.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • According to a study... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by BlackBilly ( 7624958 ) on Sunday March 07, 2021 @10:13PM (#61134630)

    28% of the people slated to get the free money had full-time jobs. One year later, 40% of those people had full-time jobs. A control group of people who did not get the money saw a 5 percentage point increase.

    We'll skip the sloppy reporting and bad math here and assume they mean the UBI group went from 35 FTE (28%) to 50 (40%) and the control group went from 35 (28%) to 44 (33%). So those 6 extra jobs cost $1.5M or $250k each.

    "These numbers were incredible. I hardly believed them myself," said Stacia West, an assistant professor

    If by 'incredible' an incredible waste of money then sure. Plenty of these UBI trials have been done and abandoned. If it worked, then why don't the 'Tech Titans' throw more than $1.5M at the problem? Surely they could cobble up an easy $100B between them to solve poverty if this does actually work?
    So it clearly isn't as simple as the fanboys are making out...

    • If it worked, then why don't the 'Tech Titans' throw more than $1.5M at the problem?

      And exactly what incentive would the 'Tech Titans' have to do that? Generally companies aren't in the business of public welfare.

    • then why don't the 'Tech Titans' throw more than $1.5M at the problem? Surely they could cobble up an easy $100B between them to solve poverty if this does actually work?

      I don't know if you've noticed, but the "Tech Titans" contribute only a tiny percentage of their income to charity. Most of them are billionaires who are trying to pad their own wealth and giving away $100B doesn't accomplish that.

      If you dig into their financial statements, you'll find that they give quite a bit to political candidates and PACs while giving much smaller amounts to high-visibility causes that they think will generate good PR.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by dcw3 ( 649211 )

      Plenty of these UBI trials have been done and abandoned.

      So a quick google shows me one in Finland, which gets mixed results, and one in Canada which had positive results. Which "plenty" do you speak of?

      There needs to be plenty of experiments to determine what works and what doesn't. And, because there are plenty of ways in which to implement UBI.

      FWIW, I'm a lifelong fiscal conservative and my initial reaction when reading about UBI was pretty much what you said..."If by 'incredible' an incredible waste of money then sure." But looking further into it, the ide

      • FWIW, I'm a lifelong fiscal conservative and my initial reaction when reading about UBI was pretty much what you said..."If by 'incredible' an incredible waste of money then sure." But looking further into it, the idea can be workable...IF it replaces other social support programs along with the vast bureaucracy behind them.

        That's part of the point. You can also replace the complex income tax system with UBI+flat tax. For people above some threshold it'll be broadly similar (paying a bit more tax), people b

    • they mean the UBI group went from 35 FTE (28%) to 50 (40%) and the control group went from 35 (28%) to 44 (33%).

      Is that significant?

    • So those 6 extra jobs cost $1.5M or $250k each.

      Were the $1.5million used exclusively to get 6 people into work? I was under the understanding that UBI was supposed to supply general societal benefits to those who received it including a few of them mentioned in TFS. But thanks for clearing up that this money and the entire program was *exclusively* about creating a couple of jobs. A lot of people don't realise it and think UBI is something other than a jobs programs so we can thank you for correcting the record here. /sarcasm.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by zmooc ( 33175 )

      Assuming they get to keep the job, the net benefits of getting somebody a job may very well be more than $250K.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by nagora ( 177841 )

      If it worked, then why don't the 'Tech Titans' throw more than $1.5M at the problem? Surely they could cobble up an easy $100B between them to solve poverty if this does actually work?

      What makes you think they have any interest in solving poverty?

    • Sorry, but I find it ironic that you acuse others of sloppy reporting and bad math and then go on to make an even more flawed interpretation. You disregard any and all outcomes outside of job creation and then reassign the money based on that. No, no person received $250K and no, creating jobs is not the single nor even the main expected outcome.

      Each individual received $6000 and used that to improve their life in multiple ways. Outcomes of this study seem to include getting out of debt and general psychol

  • UBI? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Citizen of Earth ( 569446 ) on Sunday March 07, 2021 @10:30PM (#61134672)
    I thought they renamed "Universal Basic Income" to "COVID Stimulus".

  • Important question (Score:5, Insightful)

    by alanshot ( 541117 ) <<moc.iru9dk> <ta> <yor>> on Sunday March 07, 2021 @10:49PM (#61134720)

    But where do the UBI dollars come from? They dont come out of thin air.

    They either come from increased taxes on everyone (else?), or somebody is printing money, creating deficit spending. (unable to maintain long term)

    That UBI money has to come from somewhere. It's not manna from Heaven.

    And it ultimately comes from you and I, the worker bees. Contrary to popular opinion, its not the rich business owners and business entities that pay for it. Taxes are just another cost of doing business. Just like when the cost of materials increases, so does the cost of the product. They may take a bit of a hit, but most of it comes out of the finished product costs, as well as employee benefits and salaries. (sorry, cost of doing business increased, so I cant afford to give you as big of a raise as I would like)

        I've owned a small business as an entrepreneur. When the cost of ANYTHING increased, whether it was raw materials, taxes, or anything else, my cost increase was passed on to my customers. period.

    • Or maybe not spending money on foreign military incursions or poorly implemented projects [forbes.com] instead?

      It's not like the money goes to people and then just vanishes. Unless it's spent overseas, it stays in circulation in the US economy, except for the funds that go to richer people who probably sock it away in the financial markets.

      • Or maybe not spending money on foreign military incursions or poorly implemented projects instead?

        So, follow Trump's lead instead of Biden's.

        it stays in circulation in the US economy

        Then why take it from people in the first place? Why even let the bureaucrats put their fingers on it?

      • Or maybe not spending money on foreign military incursions or poorly implemented projects [forbes.com] instead?

        So your best argument for UBI is that we spent money on other things that were even stupider?

        Shouldn't each policy be judged on its own merits?

    • Re:Important question (Score:5, Insightful)

      by apoc.famine ( 621563 ) <apoc...famine@@@gmail...com> on Monday March 08, 2021 @12:25AM (#61134898) Journal

      Taxes.

      How is this even a question?

      I fully expect that if I get a $500 UBI check at the start of the month that I'll get dinged $300 on each of my two paychecks in the month. But for some reason when I do not have those paychecks, I'll have that $500 to lean on.

      Everyone like you who cries about the money conveniently ignores any economic gain from providing the most poor people in the country a bunch of money. It's not fucking rocket science. Every stimulus we give out, poor people go and immediately spend it. That immediately juices the economy, and all of that economic activity is taxed.

      That economic activity makes jobs, and that gives the poor people something to do, and they become less poor, and thus get less UBI.

      This is nowhere near as scary and complicated as you make it out to be. If we can create trillions of dollars in tax cuts for corporations and the 1%, we can create a funding structure for UBI. And that, at least, will help pay for itself due to the increased economic activity.

      • So, your argument for a permanent subsidy is that a single payment provides a short-term boost to the economy? A stimulus is a short-term emergency measure with considerable long-term consequences. Did you think making it a monthly deal would magically prevent skyrocketing debt and inflation? It won't.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dcw3 ( 649211 )

      One of the primary concepts behind UBI is that it could replace the multitude of other social welfare programs we already have in place. And since it's "universal", you get the advantage of replacing all of the bureaucracy along with it. That's a LOT of money. But until more experimentation is done, we won't have enough evidence, and won't know what implementations work and which don't (and many won't).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Ichijo ( 607641 )

      I've owned a small business as an entrepreneur. When the cost of ANYTHING increased, whether it was raw materials, taxes, or anything else, my cost increase was passed on to my customers. period.

      You never searched for cheaper alternatives in order to stay competitive?

    • But where do the UBI dollars come from? They dont come out of thin air.

      In these experiments they come from taxes. In the theory of UBI itself it very much comes out of thin air (government savings). Anyone who asks where UBI is supposed to be financed should (rather than post questions of Slashdot) do some very basic Googling starting with "what is UBI".

    • You obviouly cant do maths. If you help people a bit with things like UBI, society saves huge sums in other areas. Take crime, crime will go down, thats less money spent on police, social programs, etc.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dohzer ( 867770 )

      Tax the rich. Job done.

    • I've owned a small business as an entrepreneur. When the cost of ANYTHING increased, whether it was raw materials, taxes, or anything else, my cost increase was passed on to my customers. period.

      And perhaps you'll have more customers when people have more money in their pockets.

      As for deficit spending... Shouldn't that cause inflation? How much inflation should all of last year's spending cost? And when should we see that inflation?

      U.S. Inflation rates hit 3% once in the last decade. How high should we expect from last year's spending?
      https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com]

      Or maybe something else is going on. In which case deficit spending can be curbed by just raising taxes if the economy starts ov

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by nagora ( 177841 )

      Contrary to popular opinion, its not the rich business owners and business entities that pay for it.

      Well then you need to fix your tax system then.

  • Results of study find that yes, self presentation bias is indeed a thing. People will act better when they know someone's watching aka when their actions and decisions are directly scrutinized and accountable to someone else. You can NEVER have a study that will work. People will sit around all day getting high and not working while cramming 6 of their friends into one apartment to pool basic income with zero ambition to get a job. Trust me. I know people like this already who are in SS because of a "disabi

  • If we are repeating the story, we should also repeat the same arguments...

    UBI is useful, yes, however it comes at a cost. Nothing in life is "free", and all "program", including UBI come at the expense of something else.

    A better approach could be making sure people are actually productive. i.e.: give people "boot up" money. Or take the food stamp/EBT concept further and give people credits for education. It does not need to be a prestigious private college. Most people will do fine with Udemy or other onlin

    • A better approach could be making sure people are actually productive.

      Until we get a handle on pollution, making people more productive only hastens the destruction of the biosphere. Why do you want to destroy our life support system?

  • Pros and cons (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SimonInOz ( 579741 ) on Sunday March 07, 2021 @11:57PM (#61134832)

    The problem we expected to have with a "modern economy" was, basically, not enough work.
    And to some extent that's true. We will, eventually, pretty much replace/automate all the low end simple jobs, and even some of the medium complex ones.
    So the question is, what to do with al the people? Do we
    * give them nothing and let them starve to death? (pure capitalism ... possibly Americanism)
    * give them fake jobs and have them just about cope? (this is what Soviet Russia did )
    * just give them money and basically leave them to play - this hasn't really been tried yet
    * something else ... ok, what?
    In rich economies, there is definitely enough money for everyone there to have a reasonable life. There's no real reason for anyone to stave, be sick, or not have a roof over their head. The problem is distribution.
    In many societies, taxation is adequate to house and basically support its unproductive people. Norway manages this, for example. Other countries make it tougher for their unproductive, from Australia, where it's pretty tough (but some manage to kinda live, and mainly surf), to the USA where it can be very tough indeed, to various countries in Africa where you beg or starve.
    I rather like the gentler approach, where people have a basic income, enough to have a tolerable life, with minimal luxuries. In fact, many things we might consider luxuries, like internet access, are in fact very cheap. Medical services can be covered fairly well also (almost everywhere manages this, except, inevitably, the USA). Housing is more challenging, as housing costs have got out of hand in many cities (certainly mine, Sydney).

    If you oppress the poor and unproductive too much, they will riot and rebel. Even in ancient Rome, they realised this, thus free bread and circuses.
    But imagine the life we could all have where we could, if we wished, take a year off and just hang in there, with enough to get by on. You could try a new project, paint a new painting, write a book, or even just laze in the sun (or snow, to choice). You'd work to get luxuries, or because you wanted to.
    It sounds somewhat idyllic, doesn't it? But we are easily rich enough for this. Easily. If, for example, countries cut back considerably on their military outgoings (especially the USA, which spends an incredible 800 billion each year), and replaced most of their other social support, (and taxed the wealthy people and companies property) this could be afforded pretty easily.
    USA 25 million unemployed. Give them, say 400 per week (21k per year, considerably above the USA poverty line of 12k) , and we get 520 billion per year. Much less than the military budget. And they'd pump all of that straight back into the economy (instead of saving it, like rich people do). This is not to mention the savings from Social Security, food stamps, etc, which the USA is awash with. (I still can't believe that Walmart actually issues its staff with instructions on how to claim food stamps).

    We should do this.

    • Re:Pros and cons (Score:4, Interesting)

      by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Monday March 08, 2021 @12:48AM (#61134940) Journal

      If you oppress the poor and unproductive too much, they will riot and rebel.

      The poor and unproductive don't overthrow governments. They don't know how to do it (see: January 6th 2021). It's the marginally less rich, the upper middle class, who form revolutions.

      Even in ancient Rome, they realised this, thus free bread and circuses.

      Bread and circuses were aimed at unemployed soldiers, another group who have caused revolutions from time to time.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • 125 people is not UBI. Also, I saw another story where they said that alcohol and cigarette purchases didn't increase. You know what that means (assuming it's true)? It means these people were monitored closely enough for them to obtain such data. It means they were influenced in ways that people wouldn't be influenced such as being on their best behavior because they knew they were being watched.

    This experiment is to economics what giving 125 people hydroxychloroquine is to medicine.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by clambake ( 37702 )

      Nobody in this study is on their "best behavior" because you're making the wild assumption that the people receiving the money give a shit about the scientific research. They do not. They care about the economic relief, period. They're normal people using the money for normal things. YOU are the biased one who is denying the tenets of basic science in this equation. If you have a problem with their research, cite your research.

      • They care about the economic relief. And they recognize that it isn't guaranteed. If I gave you $500 to make your life better and then asked what you did with it, would you come back and tell me that you bought more beer and cigarettes? Even if it were true, you would probably lie. If I had a way to monitor how you spent it, you would take what you perceive to be my preferences into account in order to maximize chances that the economic relief keeps coming!

  • Communists (Score:3)

    by AlexHilbertRyan ( 7255798 ) on Monday March 08, 2021 @03:31AM (#61135220)
    Everybody knows the only universal basic income money should be to increase the multibillion dollar bonuses of executives. Thats the american way, keep the minions down, black, white, blue, or green it doesnt matter as long as they are poor and down.

  • Why do people keep misunderstanding UBI? (Score:3, Informative)

    by KingCarrot ( 897403 ) on Monday March 08, 2021 @04:41AM (#61135362)
    Ok, so I keep seeing people talking about money "magically appearing" and how UBI will lead to increased inflation. It is really quite simply. UBI is a very "normal" wealth redistribution mechanism. Lets go through the numbers. Everyone receives $500 a month. In order to pay for this, we create a tax, which will depend on the average income of the people. So lets say an average person makes $5000 a month. This means a tax of 10%. So the average person will make $5000 a month. Will pay 10% in tax, and then receive $500 in UBI, leaving their net income at $5000. At the lower extreme end, we have someone who makes $0 a month. That person will receive $500 in UBI. At the upper extreme end we have the person making $10,000 a month. That person will pay 10% tax, and receive $500 in UBI. Leaving a loss of $500 permonth, which goes to the person making $0 bucks. The idea here is simply a zero-sum game. And of course people talking about UBI nomrally mentions that only Bezos or the Zuck needs to pay the taxes. But the principle is the same.
    • If you increase business costs by raising taxes, that gets passed on to consumers by raising prices (inflation). Also, dumping something like 160 billion dollars into circulation every month is inherently inflationary.

      Just picture the basic supply/demand graph. By raising taxes you shift the supply curve to the left as suppliers are forced to raise prices. By giving consumers an extra $500, you push the demand curve out to the right. What happens to the point where those two curves intersect? Why, i

  • The people speaking how "surprised" they are at these amazing results are either shills, pushing for a nation-wide UBI no matter what, or they just aren't paying attention to the world around them?

    I mean, it's not exactly a news flash that if poor people owing a lot of debt are handed $500 a month for free for a year or two, they're going to, on the whole, have paid down some of that debt and had a little less stress in their lives.

    That doesn't mean this scales well or is wise to implement as a standard policy!

    Stockton, CA is one of the poorest or least desirable to move to cities in America, according to many surveys. So the money should seem like a bigger deal there than it would in many other parts of the country. That means this "study" is a bit rigged already, in that respect. Only experimenting with 125 people doesn't prove a lot either (as many of you already pointed out).

    The noted results of said study that "The UBI payments didn't cause a decrease in people willing to work for work." is a straw man too. The reasons a nation-wide UBI for America would be a poor idea have little to do with that. (Theoretically, it shouldn't even matter to anyone else if a person getting UBI payments is happy getting by on those alone. That just means more job opportunities are open for everyone else around them.)

    The big problem with UBI is the issue of WHERE the funding comes from to make it work. Government doesn't really DO or SELL anything to make money. It only TAKES money from groups of citizens and redistributes it. So you can't implement this without rejecting basic financial principles of Capitalism that the USA was founded on. With traditional welfare programs, the idea is that government will TEMPORARILY assist people so they can hopefully get back on their feet and find gainful employment again. A UBI says, "Screw that... We're just going to take a chunk of earnings from everyone who DOES work and hand it out equally to everybody, no matter what their current situation." It's like an incredibly poorly-run and inefficient welfare system.

  • Small numbers (Score:3)

    by holophrastic ( 221104 ) on Monday March 08, 2021 @12:53PM (#61137060)

    I'm all for UBI, as someone who definitely does not need it. There are a boat-load of social benefits, societal benefits, and huge administrative benefits to UBI.

    But I hate every study and test-case done to-date. The fact that most people will choose to spend the money is a productive manner doesn't surprise me. People who abuse their own lives typically do so due to circumstances that all of these test studies aren't likely to encounter -- and that UBI would almost certainly and instantly eliminate.

    But the problems with UBI that need to be found are the ones that can't be tested. What does it look like when EVERYONE gets it? I'd argue that as long as fewer than 25% get it, all things are good.

    What happens when 75% get it? Is it de-valued? When everyone chooses the job that makes them happy, are there more jobs? Fewer? No one to do a certain class of job? When teenagers start getting it before their first job, will they choose more education? Less?

    That'll be the interesting world.

    In my mind, it'll be like everything else -- a horribly chaotic transition, followed by vast improvements over-all. The last horse is better than the first car.

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