Universal Basic Income

[oskar]

I'm disappointed that their entire test group is unemployed. It looks like the only thing they were interested in was if it's a more effective model than welfare. I'd be interested to see how it changes the behavior of people who have a regular job. Do they just continue as is with some extra cash, do they pursue education, start businesses, etc.

I think ideally we would want to get to a point where everyone can go after what motivates them rather than trying to keep employment rates up just because it has worked historically.

Currently it looks like the preferred strategy to battle unemployment is to increase minimum wages and forcefully create jobs when automation would be more economically viable. I know wuf thinks that new sectors will emerge that require low skilled labor. I don't see how. We'll know for sure in 10-20 years I guess.

Anyway, I'm currently teaching myself tensorflow because I am pretty sure that in 20 years time, you're either working on neural networks or you're oiling robots.

[wufwugy]

I know wuf thinks that new sectors will emerge that require low skilled labor. I don't see how. We'll know for sure in 10-20 years I guess.

Nobody does. It happening is so far as reliable as the sun rising, so we expect it to continue. However, that doesn't mean it will always happen. In fact it probably won't always happen, though that doesn't mean that it not happening will be predictable.

And even then, UBI/welfare has a few premise flaws: (1) in a scenario in which they are "needed", they are actually not needed, and (2) they would make the problem worse anyways.


Question: do you think minimum wage is a way to tackle unemployment?

[oskar]

Question: do you think minimum wage is a way to tackle unemployment?

It demonstrably is not. I don't think we disagree on that. It's welfare with occupational therapy.

[wufwugy]

It gets to this question: how do you valuate a refrigerator in an absolute sense? We have a VERY robust way to valuate refrigerators in a relative sense (the price system / market transactions). But in absolute terms, where do we even start? There was once a time when only the extreme rich lived a refrigerator quality life, yet today the poorest people in the West take the refrigerator quality life for granted.

That people still look at the contemporary poor -- that are incredibly rich in absolute terms -- as poor, exemplifies the other problem I mentioned, that perceptions don't change linearly as "stuff" changes.

[MadMojoMonkey]

It gets to this question: how do you valuate a refrigerator in an absolute sense?

Thermodynamics.


Seriously, though.
The benefits of having a fridge will vary widely based on geography and food availability.

Your greater point is good, though. People want to have roughly commensurate stuff as the people near them. All of which is ambiguously defined.
Value is by and large determined on an individual basis, but all those individual choices add up to a societal norm.

The value of the norm is probably moot. The existence of norms is all that matters, the specifics of those norms is unimportant.
I.e. if people shunned refrigerators in favor of personal, indoor greenhouses which produce fresh food on a regular basis without the need for cold storage, that could probably work out just fine. People just need to commit to it and develop the societal norms which support it.

[OngBonga]

I need a constant supply of cold milk. My fridge is extremely valuable to me.

That said, I think I paid £20 for it.

[CoccoBill]

I'm disappointed that their entire test group is unemployed. It looks like the only thing they were interested in was if it's a more effective model than welfare. I'd be interested to see how it changes the behavior of people who have a regular job. Do they just continue as is with some extra cash, do they pursue education, start businesses, etc.

That's basically it, they wanted to see if if motivates unemployed people to seek jobs. At the moment if you're out of a job you get basic unemployment benefits, plus extra based on your wages in the previous years. You can of course apply for welfare if you still can't make your ends meet. Any part-time work you do while unemployed starts cutting into your unemployment benefits, which is daft as hell and makes it more beneficial to just not work and cash in the benefits. With the UBI deal you'd get a fixed amount no matter what. Too bad they decided to cut the test short and indeed only do it in a very limited fashion in the first place.

It is funny to see the collective global right wing poop their pants in joy over the "failure" of this test. The test actually ends in december, and there's still not even preliminary data about the failure or success of it, the reason to end it was purely political.

[wufwugy]

It is funny to see the collective global right wing poop their pants in joy over the "failure" of this test. The test actually ends in december, and there's still not even preliminary data about the failure or success of it, the reason to end it was purely political.

Even then, what happens won't tell us much about the effects of this welfare.

Economics is only barely an empirical science. While empiricism is good in economics, empiricism is usually not worth very much in the domain. Economics is instead more about math and logic.

When somebody says something is a test of an economic idea, just figure that it's probably not a test of it.