>But a basic income, if large enough for somebody to live comfortably _will_ result in huge numbers of people dropping out of the work force. They will just play these cosy games rather than go out in the world and do hard things.
Few things here I want to point out that I find problematic with this.
One is, perhaps we should let go of the idea that everyone needs to work. There will, simply put, be a % of people who given the choice, would rather opt out of this and do something else with that time. It may be playing games and doing other things that generally aren't considered productive. Perhaps forcing these types of people into the workforce isn't good for the workforce in the first place. Perhaps there is a reason these people feel demotivated to participate in the labor market. Its worth considering the idea that perhaps these are not people who are generally going to be value add, and perhaps serves everyone better by allowing them to opt out of the workforce in the first place.
Second, its not all that binary. People may well be that they opt to do something that at the time doesn't have a lot of traditional monetary value but instead social value, like murals, public art etc. It may be something else entirely that does manage to move society forward, it just wasn't obvious at the time, who knows. Its not binary, like everyone who opts out of the traditional workforce in this paradigm will only engage in self gratifying behavior. Humans are complicated, and all of us respond to new paradigms differently.
Third: by guaranteeing a "floor" of failure to which someone can fall back on, it becomes infinitely easier for the "little guy" to take more risks without requiring someone to seek outside capital in the beginning (or perhaps at all), or otherwise take on debt (such as a business loan). We know in software that businesses can start small, but often pressures of needing funding force businesses that perhaps should have grown more organically to seek VC funding, dooming them to the VC treadmill that could just as well kill the business due to outside pressures. By having a livable floor you reduce alot of personal risk when you gotta think about your family and health insurance over starting a business, because starting a business is the bigger risk.
Fourth: Human nature isn't this binary at all. Lots of people would still choose to participate in higher rungs of society. We are talking about a minimum here, and if human nature has proven anything, its that people will always be striving to be above the minimum of anything. Smaller scale studies in Canada where they implement UBI in a whole town as an experiment have proven this to be true: The overwhelming majority of participants still kept working, even though they explicitly had the option not to. Many used it to improve themselves through education, investing leftover portions for the future etc. People still want to be rich, if you will.
Five: Ultimately, the labor market will simply have to evolve to be more palatable in attracting people to do the work. What that looks like would vary, but it would have to happen, and I think this is a good thing.
And finally, those with disabilities and other things that prevent them from participating in the labor market as it exists today would be able to live more comfortably, and that shouldn't be overlooked.
>But I don't believe we could ever make a basic income comfortable because I think inflation will instantly gobble up any increases we make
We'd need to try it on some scale to see if that assumption is true. Given the scope of social programs in Western Europe, I don't think its this simple.
Thanks for your reply, I agree with almost everything you said. I think perhaps the only place we might disagree is our estimate of number of people who would continue to be productive, and those that would not bother.
I _did_ say we need both disability and unemployment benefits to support people who can't or choose not participate in the workforce for whatever reason. I agree that we should support somebody who might want to drop out and write the nest great novel. But I don't think its unreasonable for those people to feel like they have to go without some luxuries.
I think it's OK to choose to be poor in exchange for total freedom, and we should insure that even the poorest of us have food, shelter, education, and health care.
UBI experiments that don't don't guarantee the income for life are obviously not going to induce people to quit a job.
UBI says we need to give everybody the same amount of cash to be fair, I just don't agree that we need to give it to everybody, and perhaps that giving out lots of cash will have unintended consequences.
Few things here I want to point out that I find problematic with this.
One is, perhaps we should let go of the idea that everyone needs to work. There will, simply put, be a % of people who given the choice, would rather opt out of this and do something else with that time. It may be playing games and doing other things that generally aren't considered productive. Perhaps forcing these types of people into the workforce isn't good for the workforce in the first place. Perhaps there is a reason these people feel demotivated to participate in the labor market. Its worth considering the idea that perhaps these are not people who are generally going to be value add, and perhaps serves everyone better by allowing them to opt out of the workforce in the first place.
Second, its not all that binary. People may well be that they opt to do something that at the time doesn't have a lot of traditional monetary value but instead social value, like murals, public art etc. It may be something else entirely that does manage to move society forward, it just wasn't obvious at the time, who knows. Its not binary, like everyone who opts out of the traditional workforce in this paradigm will only engage in self gratifying behavior. Humans are complicated, and all of us respond to new paradigms differently.
Third: by guaranteeing a "floor" of failure to which someone can fall back on, it becomes infinitely easier for the "little guy" to take more risks without requiring someone to seek outside capital in the beginning (or perhaps at all), or otherwise take on debt (such as a business loan). We know in software that businesses can start small, but often pressures of needing funding force businesses that perhaps should have grown more organically to seek VC funding, dooming them to the VC treadmill that could just as well kill the business due to outside pressures. By having a livable floor you reduce alot of personal risk when you gotta think about your family and health insurance over starting a business, because starting a business is the bigger risk.
Fourth: Human nature isn't this binary at all. Lots of people would still choose to participate in higher rungs of society. We are talking about a minimum here, and if human nature has proven anything, its that people will always be striving to be above the minimum of anything. Smaller scale studies in Canada where they implement UBI in a whole town as an experiment have proven this to be true: The overwhelming majority of participants still kept working, even though they explicitly had the option not to. Many used it to improve themselves through education, investing leftover portions for the future etc. People still want to be rich, if you will.
Five: Ultimately, the labor market will simply have to evolve to be more palatable in attracting people to do the work. What that looks like would vary, but it would have to happen, and I think this is a good thing.
And finally, those with disabilities and other things that prevent them from participating in the labor market as it exists today would be able to live more comfortably, and that shouldn't be overlooked.
>But I don't believe we could ever make a basic income comfortable because I think inflation will instantly gobble up any increases we make
We'd need to try it on some scale to see if that assumption is true. Given the scope of social programs in Western Europe, I don't think its this simple.