this post was submitted on 02 Nov 2023
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Receiving some extra money benefits people who get it, all other things being equal. Water is wet.
The question is what happens when you implement such a program widely. All things will not be equal then. How would it affect inflation, the labor market, etc.?
One might expect that even if it was implemented in a way that didn't increase the money supply, which would be difficult, it would increase inflation for at least two reasons. First, because working class people are more likely to spend it, increasing consumer demand. Second, because people who were approaching retirement would be incentivized to retire earlier, decreasing labor supply and production output. All these effects are inflationary.
This is a complex subject and I wish people saw beyond the simplest first-order effects.
Dude, they did it for an entire town in Manitoba for four years in the 1970s, and none of the horrors some people seem to love to predict with respect to UBI ever materialized. How big and long-lasting would a pilot program have to be to convince you that yes, this does work?
The experiment did not apply to everybody in the village, but to a small subset of people.
The experiment did show a reduction in the number of hours worked in the house, as expected.
The experiment wasn't in any way self-sufficient. The funds came from the wider province, and thus the cascade of "fewer people working leading to a loss of tax revenue, making it harder to continue funding the UBI" couldn't have materialized.
This isn't idle speculation: this loss of revenue is the reason why the age at which people are eligible to receive a public pension has been increasing in developed countries.
Lastly, the experiment didn't attempt to measure inflation in the prices of goods and services provided in the village, so we can't tell whether it materialized or not.
I don't know. The specific concerns about the ramifications of a UBI and hasn't been addressed properly by any UBI advocates. I would like future pilot projects to be designed specifically to address them.
Tax revenue isn't the only measure of success. If people take UBI, then stay home to raise their kids or support a sick relative, that work has a value to society that isn't accounted for -- savings in spending on old age homes for parents of people on UBI were likely missed or under-represented. Someone who stays home, but volunteers instead provides a service to society at large whose benefit is difficult to quantify when the impact may not be strictly monetary, or whose monetary impact may be delayed for several years.
The other side is that UBI means workers aren't exploited by making housing contingent on working... Employers will likely need to pay more and offer better benefits (that affect life/work balance) in order to find staff... Another intangible/incalculable improvement for society that doesn't show up in a small-scale study.