Re:12-year study will look at effects of universal basic income
by munk-a on Monday May 07, 2018 @03:48PM
(#17015886)
I think that conclusion on it's disincentivation to work would be of value. Currently western society at large thinks that social assistance is a good thing, we have targeted programs like housing assistance, medicaid (or free non-pharma care up here in Canada) and food stamps.
The debate on whether social assistance is a good or bad idea in general will happen orthogonally to the debate on what the best manner to provide that assistance is^1.
1) The camp that believes that social assistance is entirely evil is justified in saying that investing effort into maximizing efficiency of a bad thing is a waste of resources - that's a logical position - but I think that it's more reasonable to research our options. Anything more I could type here would just go into my personal opinions.
The issue is that there's a lot of nuance here. For example, the claim is that a UBI provides less disincentive to work than alternative (especially means-tested) social assistance programs. But it's likely that all social assistance programs provide some disincentive to work, because they inherently increase the viability of not working (or working less). If you compare a UBI with no social assistance at all, the result will be much different than comparing it with something like means-tested food and housing vouchers.
Moreover, the details are important. If instituting a UBI causes some people to choose to work 40 hours a week instead of 80 and spend the extra time with their kids, that is obviously much different than someone who quits their job so they can watch television and play video games. Even if the change in net hours worked is exactly the same.