UBI Failed and Everyone Is Pretending It Didn't
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Lots of good discussion in the comments, I know this topic by nature is a little controversial. Thank you for the enthusiasm, everyone!
Just wanted to address a few common themes:
1. Yes, Milton Friedman's idea for a negative income tax works quite differently to this form of monthly income UBI. Should have made that clearer in the video. Let me know if you want a follow-up video on that.
2. Some people are saying that it's fine to be poorer if they're happier. The study did measure this and people were NOT happier in the long run. Happiness increased from year 1, but disappeared by year 3. People simply habituated to the higher income. openresearch-web.files.svdcdn.com/production/assets/documents/Documentation/w32784.pdf?dm=1723679143
3. Some people are saying that working less and spending more on leisure should improve physical and mental health. The study also measured this and found no improvements, not even a small improvement in physical health. Mental health was boosted in year 1 (as you would expect) but disappeared by year 2. Again, people just habituated to the money. openresearch-web.files.svdcdn.com/production/assets/documents/Documentation/w32711.pdf?dm=1721432661
4. And finally, yes, a true UBI study can never be done unless you truly give everyone in the country the money, which yes, will have a greater impact on things like inflation. Valid point.
So in summary, this study showed that UBI (in the form of $1000 per month) makes Americans poorer ($1000 on average), with no long-term improvements in happiness, physical health, mental health or financial stability.
To be worried about basics is also a problem. People can't see the big picture. There are many different incentives to make more people work than forced labor. Another point is that there are places where people work for the sake of working. Producing nothing good or pollution. You can't make those unhealthy to work or work in bad conditions when they don't need to.
Democratic world is a lie.
Environment and system is bad, unhealthy. Demands without providing.
@@PeteJudo1 Thanks for elaborating further on what the study found!
You may see things change with the next generations. That is also something to consider. Parents' problems equal the problems of children. But you need more than just UBI.
To be clear, Milton Friedman didn't like UBI or negative income tax. He's made clear, that if he were compelled to come up with something like UBI at gunpoint it'd be a negative income tax.
I thought it was already. Income transfer via taxes. Why is my effective tax rate 20% and my friends a -15%?
Milton Friedman's beliefs changed over his lifetime. When he was younger and made his contributions to economics, he supported the NIT pretty wholeheartedly.
Capitalism and Freedom Ch. 7:
> Suppose one accepts, **as I do**, this line of reasoning as justifying governmental action to alleviate poverty; to set, as it were, a floor under the standard of life of every erson in the community. There remain the questions, how much and how. I see no way of deciding "how much" except in terms of the amount of taxes we - by which I mean the great bulk of us- are willing to impose on ourselves for the purpose
Later, he got more involved in politics, stopped/slowed research, and his beliefs changed.
Free to Choose
> Most of the present welfare programs should never have been enacted. If they had not been, many of the people now dependent on them would have become self-reliant ndividuals instead of wards of the state. In the short run that might have appeared cruel for some, leaving them no option to low-paying, unattractive work. But in the long run it would have been far more humane. However, given that the welfare programs exist, they cannot simply be abolished overnight. We need some way to ease the transition from where we are to where we would like to be, of providing assistance to people now dependent on welfare while at the same time encouraging an orderly transfer of people from welfare rolls to payrolls.
I was under the impression that at least in his later years, he did advocate for it since he said it would be impossible to get rid of welfare. It's been a while though so I could be wrong
There will always be people who are a net negative on everyone else.
IIRC, Friedman's view was that one UBI would be less worse than a byzantine mess of welfare programs.
Argentina has had a version of UBI for poor people for like 20 years. It's called "planes" (i.e. plans). They were supposed to do exactly what UBI is meant to do. But all they achieved is to create two generations of people who don't work, do not plan to work, do not educate themselves, and basically are completely useless because they have spent 20 years doing nothing, so they have no skills or experience. And it really kills the spirit of those who work hard and see that other people live just fine doing absolutely nothing. It is a total disaster (and let's not mention the gigantic fiscal weight of paying for this).
That's really interesting (and sad to hear) I think so much of this conversation is taken up by the financial aspect of UBI, but very little airtime is given to the philosophical aspects of the problem. Will people still work? Will they find other things to do with their time or start businesses? I personally think UBI is going to have to happen in some capacity to stop complete societal collapse. But time will tell.
I think it's not accurate to call what Argentina did "UBI", except for stuff like 'asignacion universal por hijo' (basically: subsidies per child).
For one, many subsidies where given as long as you were poor, which combined with the lack of control of tax evasion, meant that many people worked 'en negro' or 'en gris' (without telling the goverment, which meant neither them nor the employer payed taxes)
This meant less money for the goverment as well as worsening the labour market. The education part wasn't as much related to wellfare, but to many things like lack of control of teachers, allowing students to pass without good enough grades, and a millon more things.
edit: grammar and format
@@percapitaplease813it's not accurate because just like a true believer in Communism who says Communism/socialism hasn't been tried yet, a True Believer in Universal Income will always claim "Universal Basic Income hasn't been tried *right* yet!" It has. It failed. Giving people free things has always failed. And it always will.
@@cavalieroutdoors6036 The U in UBI mean universal. You are confusing run of the mill, means-tested welfare programs with UBI.
This is not a "no true scotsman" fallacy. It's just that what you describe is not UBI.
Unless you also think that, I don't know, giving methadone to junkies is exactly the same as universal health care.
If you say that UBI has been tried and it failed, can you tell me what study you're referring to? Most UBI studies have actually shown that it works. Including this one, BTW. Pete is completely misrepresenting it and/or being simplistic to the point of idiocy about the only endpoint that he considers (assets at the three-year mark).
I don't know where you live, but in most developed countries (typically not the US), plenty of people get "free" shit, in particular healthcare, education, even transport in some places. In literally all of these places, bar none, the actual total social cost of these things is significantly lower, and the people get a better service.
You don't know what you are talking about.
@@vfwh ` This is not a "no true scotsman" fallacy ` proceeds to describe one
The negative income tax was a great deal more than a UBI. It was also a wage subsidy for those who worked.
Hmm interesting point you make here. in other words promote the activity of working
Negative income tax isn’t UBI at all. If you don’t work you don’t get any income. Making it non-universal.
@@legatemichael Yes, because there are so many non monetary benefits to working- self-worth, comradery, etc.
@@caiparry-jones9775 My understanding was that it would provide a basic guaranteed income even for those who didn't work.
I believe the general layout (for Milton Friedman's version) was as follows, I will use simple numbers to explain (it's been a while so this may be off a little and I do not remember which numbers he proposed specifically):
-Set a median income - well say $100k
-Set the rate - well say 20%
-Then you get taxed or subsidized 20% of the difference between your income and the median income
So if you make $0 (unemployed) you are 100k away from the median income ($100k) so you get subsidized 20% of that which is $20k = $20k total income
If you make $20k in income, you are $80k away from $100k so you get 20% of that difference which is $16k = $36k total
If you make $90k in income, you are $10k away from $100k so you get 20% of that difference which is $2k = $92k total
If you make $150k you are $50k above the $100k which means you pay 20% of that difference ($50k) which means you pay $10k in taxes = $140k take home income
@@caiparry-jones9775 The goal of UBI is to lift those who are stuck. It won't do anything to those who voluntarily chose it (yes, some homeless are self-directed). But I agree it is not universal (shouldn't be). I also agree that negative income tax is better than UBI and has the lump sum effect Pete is talking about (which I agree). If they gonna implement UBI, it has to be case by case basis since some people also don't know what is causing them to 'stuck' and UBI needs to consider and solve it as a part of the program
"They measured so many variables that it was impossible for them to not spin it"
"Here are outcomes that are statistically significant" - after acknoeledging this is a heavily p-hackable dataset with a substantially small dataset.
They recieved 36,000 and only came out 1000 less. That 1000, could easily be explained by the value of their vehicle going down. A vehicle easily drops 1000 in value, probably annually if you drive it regularly. So that in my opinion, doesnt mean they are necessarily poorer. Also as you stated earlier, they are giving the money to people that are already only looking at the near future. They aren't prepared to think about the future, even though they have a bit more money. There are far too many things that could impact people having 1000 dollars less in assets.
The vehicle should be used to increase wealth. If it doesn't, it's a bad investment. It's no good me buying a Ferrari and then 3 years later complaining I'm poorer. Buy the car you can afford to replace. If you can't, get the bus.
@@bradg7701 Bold of you to assume everyone can take the bus. Not all cities have good (or even usable) public transport systems. The purpose of transport shouldn't be to make you wealthier, it should be to transport you from point A to point B.
@@maxixe3143 most people travel from point A to point B to make themselves wealthier
@@maxixe3143
Well, they must get to their job somehow.
The above poster suggested that they may have lost money on a car. However, if the purpose of buying a car was to get a better job (which it should be when you're dirt poor), then you should have more money in the end. If you don't have more money, then you shouldn't have bought a car, or the car you bought was too expensive.
I believe it really should have been lump sum, you should not expect poor people given frequent injections of low amounts to save and invest, the motive to make your net worth grow is obviously higher if you start with a good number and start seeing it drop. You’re trying to give them a different experience to effect different behavior, so why are they simulating going paycheck to paycheck?
The first question that came to my mind was simply: were the participants generational poor or recently laid-off workers that had otherwise a long work history but were hitting hard times? I believe there might be a need for basic financial education for the first group, or even both groups. Getting out of generational poverty is a lot harder, because your whole family and support system is made of other poor people. You might not even have a single family member who has experienced moderate success in their life. So, as an individual, you might not even have a single role model. Maybe pairing this study with a weekly visit from a social worker would have increased the chances of success? (but yeah, there was the pandemic...)
The families where randomly assigned to treatment vs control, so that shouldn't matter.
@@borisn.1346 Thanks Boris, I will do my homework, and go check the original study!
I don't know about that. Lots of dirt poor immigrants arrive I. America and are able to figure a way out of poverty. So it's not so much a poverty frame of mind but an entitled spoiled viewpoint.
The problem is not UBI, it’s capitalism. UBI makes people more dependent on money , capitalism makes it even more scarce so that it can exploit natural and Human Resources.
You want society to become rich, don’t give them
Money, give them power to be independent.
Plusmartini, that's literally what capitalism is, giving power to individuals to be independent. UBI doesn't work because it does the opposite of being independent. Capitalism does not make resources scarce, it makes them abundant, something even Marx admitted.
And funnily enough, looking at Marx's life, it starts to seem apparent that we need a system where people are able to be independent and own things instead of relaying on their fellow political philosopher's money (Marx depended heavily on Engels), I wonder what's a system that advocates for individual power, market freedoms and liberties...
"banks don't wan't that"
2007 subprime mortgage crisis
That was socialism for the rich. The banks were bailed out on taxpayer dime. They didn't lose a cent, the taxpayer lost trillions.
The federal government encouraged banks to lend to people who were at risk of default. Promising to secure the mortgages and even threatening banks who wouldn't lend out riskier mortgages
@@historyknowitall Than the federal government bailed out those same banks with their funny money.
Shabbat Shalom
Commissioned by Sam Altman?
That Sam Altman?
Stamford dropout.
AI entrepreneur?
Named by Forbes as one of the top investor under 30?
I think we all know exactly how seriously to take this chap.
for real
Well - he is a millionaire... We are not.
@@bernardmueller5676 There's a surprising number of future convicted fraudsters on those lists, including both Elizabeth Holmes and Sam Bankman-Fried.
@@bernardmueller5676
Well, he did get born wealthy, and we didn't.
Same person involved in making OpenAI closed source, which is against the original goal of the founding of OpenAI.
Of course, in this corporatocratic dystopia, "we" can't allow the wage-slaves to have more time for "leisure activities" while the 1% only extract 67% of the anually generated surplus value! These "job creators" at least deserve 90% of all the wealth, right?!
Problem is, UBI will socialize the cost of the program to taxpayers. So in addition to the corporations, small businesses will make up part of that, and money creation will make up the rest.
Once the system is widespread, companies will use the fact that people receive the program to allow wages to stagnate.
The longer you run the program, the more powerful the corporate state actually becomes.
Why do you think it's the elite that have proposed UBI?
Over time it will make people complacent with the bribe, it will allow wages to stagnate, and it will place more burdens on small business. As you can tell from the past 15 years, money creation doesn't hurt the elites, only the poor as well.
@@mistermonsieur2924 "we can't tax billionaires properly, so we must get rid of the society and become solitary hunting animals"
@@mistermonsieur2924ohh yes because wages haven’t stagnated in our economy already 🤦♂️. UBI doesn’t stagnate wages, we don’t have UBI and wages have been stagnated for 40 years. Your problem is with neoliberalism and it’s capital structure not ubi. Are the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer?? Yes, so what are you even blabbering?
Yes
@@mortache when you try to tax billionaires, they move to lower tax countries because can afford to move.
It's extremely fishy that this video doesn't link the paper. The paper seemingly appears in 9:03, but is almost impossible to read the title and search. I wonder, why on earth there's no link to the paper in the description?
Agreed: evavivalt.com/wp-content/uploads/Vivalt-et-al.-ORUS-employment.pdf
try to increase your resolution above 144p lol😂
@@Electruver Try to incrrase your social skill over EQ of -30.
Pretty sure EQ'ing won't fix your resolution? 🤔
@@ytsm Learn to read first then?
Deindustrialized, debt-based consumerism is collapsing.
It was never sustainable. Mega corps endless greed was never sustainable.
They said the Consumer Economy would be great!
@@pctrashtalk2069 No spending money, no consumers!
@@pctrashtalk2069consumption works, but as long as people are consuming value adding things. If people are consuming VR and pc games all day, then that kind if consumption will ruin the nation. But if people are consuming BMWs, Mercedes, apartments like Switzerland is doing, than that consumption will lead into insane prosperity. But to consume, you need to work.
In Netherlands the poor gets money enough.... but they lost intrest to work !! Because when the work they are left with less money.
And therein lies the problem. Subsidies of all kinds almost always have this kind of perverse incentive. That doesn't mean we need fewer subsidies, it means we need to get rid of the perverse incentives.
@@o0alessandro0o that can be done but it makes things complicated, which makes people think they are getting ripped off/scammed
Because UBI doesn't resolve the contradictions of Capitalist political-economy, it simply puts a temporary band aid on them.
The problem is the political economic system in its entirety.
UBI is just socialist wealth redistribution. I can hardly think of a better way to destroy wealth than punish people for creating it and reward those who don't.
Yeah exactly
TH-cam has decided that I am not allowed to comment on this post. Yay. I'm just testing to see if this one gets deleted too.
Propose an alternative.
@@thelvadam5269 "Things would be better if I was in charge."
UBI only works as monetary policy not a wealth transfer and not as a subsidy. If you are not operating UBI as the currency distribution method of a monetary policy you are doing it wrong, or more accurately not at all.
Milton Friedman's UBI "negative income tax" system also required all other forms of welfare and social programs be eliminated, and that the UBI proportionally decrease as people had income of their own.
That's not universal income then. That's just means-tested universal welfare.
It would just be an inscentive for more under the table income.
@@pondracek That's the whole point.
@@pondracekFriedman came up with the idea for Ubi, you don't get to define it, he does.
@@99EKjohn Friedman literally said that if someone held a gun to his head and made him deliver UBI, he would deliver a negative tax for low income earners.
Friedman didn't 'invent' UBI either.
The definition is right there in the name. Universal = everyone gets it (not means tested) Basic = ideally enough to cover cost of living, Income = Money (Not food stamps)
I just read the UBI paper, and I thought the Western Blot images looked awfully fishy.
LOOOL
Comment of the year contender fo sho
@@PeteJudo1
19m0s - "it's kind of a solution"
It's GDP counterfeiting.
I had the same feeling when I saw publicity images from the new aquarium opening in my town.
It should be noted that Milton Friedman's UBI concept was *MUCH* different than Andrew Yang's. Despite Yang's BLATENTLY dishonest claims that Friedman would have supported his idea. The two ideas were nearly exact opposites.
You're just hating on Andrew Yang cause you're a racist.
Friedman's idea was to REPLACE every single social welfare program (including healthcare) with a negative income tax that would be decreased as people's income becoming positive at some income level. The idea was to use it as a tool to transition people OUT of welfare.
UBI in any form rewards lazyness at the expense of productive individuals, it is not good in any way at all, austrian school economists are always right on these fundamental questions
Milton Friedman was a terrible economist so I'm not sure why he's used as an example.
@@kimilsungthefirst6840 Milton Friedman was definitely not a terrible economist at all.
He was as close as an Austrian economist as you can get, he basically fully supported free markets.
I think everyone is not being truthful about why we work in the first place. This study only proves that. We work not just to work but because we have too. That is why get 'rich quick schemes' are so attractive. We all have different interests and if we had the money to then we would invest in them. Another truth is that sometimes people just want a simple life. Lets be real, UBI was made so that we all have a baseline. While some want more than others and this would only help them, others are simple and truly do not need a lot to be happy/peaceful.
I'm more concerned that anybody seriously thought people worked because they want to work, rather than to fulfill their needs, in the first place.
I dont know if that's totally true. A lot of wealthy retirement age+ people continue working because they want to work, some work until they absolutely can't anymore. Not everybody stops working the minute they no longer have to.
"want to" in the context that they've been conditioned their entire lives to work.
@@Llortnerof I mean, to some extent people do. But that tends to be the case more with attractive jobs, the jobs at the bottom often have horrid conditions, and scum of the earth for managers. I'd think UBI would teach people to be better, at least it seems to me that there's a pretty strong correlation between social safety nets, and quality of lower end employers(e.g. north european work culture is better than almost anywhere else, for the bottom of the ladder)
@@iverbrnstad791 If you check the jobs, it's basically always those they can freely choose to do or not do and choose their clients for. In a way, it's more of a hobby they happen to get paid for.
Those that do work because they need money pretty much never fall into that.
For comparison, a homeless person costs society over $70,000 a year (UK govt report).
And migrants 450k ~
It's pretty clear after taking a look at the actual study for 5 minutes, you are cherry picking the one finding which didn't represent the greater whole of the study. Net worth is not a determining factor of the overall economic health of a society, in the same way measuring the value of the stock market and GDP is either. To pull a quote from OpenResearch itself:
"Recipients reported higher savings, improved financial health, and a greater ability to weather financial shocks. The transfer increased credit scores but did not affect credit limits, delinquencies, utilization, bankruptcies, or foreclosures. Net worth was unchanged, as higher savings were offset by rising debt."
It's pretty clear that rising debt being measured over only a 3 year time span should not be effected by an amount so low that it wouldn't even be enough to pay one month of the current average rent price(being $1227). $1,000 would only serve as padding, and would only meet 1/3 basic cost of living.
I'm also not buying this. With most recent info exposing how TH-camrs are receiving funding from random shady billionaires and and foreign governments.......yeah.....I'm calling this potentially disingenuous.
Bro. Life isn’t work. What went wrong with your learning path that you still assume people’s happiness is driven by money and that we should be optimizing for money-making?
If i got $1000/month for free, I'd 100% work less and do the things that I enjoy more. Why is that a bad thing?
Yeah I don’t see what’s wrong with this lol only people who always get what they need don’t think this is necessary
Decreasing productivity is bad for the economy. It is arguable whether a worse economy would mean that participants are worse off, but because we live in a world of scarcity, I think that is a reasonable claim.
The study and video (although I cannot find the timestamp at the moment) also considered improvements to mental health and the more emotional perspective, concluding that the difference was negligible after the first year. In other words, maybe you would spend less time working, but you wouldn't be any happier. Isn't happiness more important than what you are actually doing to spend your time?
TLDR: UBI worsened economic outcomes but didn't even improve happiness in participants.
@@matthewmoulton1 Easy solution is to reduce taxes... I think it's wild there are like 4 tax brackets for under 100k... We have a system that says 'Oh, you worked overtime? We take a bigger cut of that now.' Which is why I never understood the work culture of construction workers. I am not only making a sacrifice of time and effort, I am sacrificing my physical and mental wellbeing and the gov wants an even bigger cut.
Because someone else is working to give you the $1000. If enough people settled for the $1000, then how many are left to subsidize your enjoyment ?
If everyone got 1000 extra, they would just inflate prices knowing that consumers have the extra money to spend.
1.3 hours less a week, compared to countries implementing a 4 day work week, lol.
I once saw an interview with an old man - who had been a young man when F.D.R. made the new deal in the 1930. He had been advising the president on how to do this. They had calculated that if you just gave people unemployment benefits compared to giving them jobs (state sponsored jobs - ex. building bridges and roads) You could save 15%, but they chose to give them jobs, because that would also restore the dignity of the workers. Just giving money does not change the social inheritance - if you come from a family where people don't work - work is not at part of your identity !! Breaking social inheritance is very very difficult !!
A friend of mine (my boss at the time), formerly destitute, told me that social services are habit forming like cigs. It was really hard for him to get back to work when there were so many free services tempting him.
@@antilogismuntil the welfare reforms of the 1990s you had generations of families on welfare
I ran a staffing agency in the late 80s. We were desperate for workers so I coordinated with social services to get jobs for people on welfare. Idealistic me thought this was a win-win. The social worker cautioned me that this was a population that did not associate money with work. They simply went to their mailboxes and money magically appeared. After scores of no-shows, I gave up. My clients were furious that I couldn’t provide them with a reliable workforce so I searched elsewhere. It’s heartbreaking because without work, there is no hope of improving your situation.
You also get useful labor out of them, so instead of just costs there's a return as well.
@@shane_rm1025 Much of the make-work jobs created during the depression did not produce economically measurable results. They made our national parks and such much better, but that's not really quantifiable.
2:40 in Brazil, people spent 3 billion reais (Aprox 600 million us dollars) of UBI in online gambling in the month of August ALONE
People who were having shitty lives get to live less shitty lives and work less. When you consider the average hours of work most poor people need to work to survive, I would say it is a pretty happy consequence that they just take a step back and work not as hard.
Great, where does that free money come from? People who are working. People like me. UBI doesn't magically create free money out of thin air. It steals wealth from people who work and "redistributes" it to people who do not. Oh, but the working person gets $1000 per month too? Great, now they pay $2000 more per month in taxes, $1000 for their own UBI check, and $1000 for the unemployed bum who lives off their paycheck. That's not even counting the other money that is wasted on government workers who manage the program who also produce nothing of value.
@@Kitkat-986 You don't have to take that much money from the average worker to make it work. And if you earn enough to deserve $2k extra in taxes, you really don't need the 2 grand.
When people earn millions exist, I don't think it's unfair to want the less fortunate to get a small part of that.
And they're not hording it, they're spending it so it goes right back into the economy
@@meneldal There are people who will be driven homeless by even a small tax increase, let alone 2k a month. You don't understand, or more likely, refuse to understand the scale of UBI. 1k per month UBI would cost more than welfare, medicare and the entire military budget combined. It would be the single most expensive government program by far.
@@Kitkat-986 I don't think you7re doing this in good faith, I'm not saying people who have barely enough should pay more taxes, only the ones who have the money and companies cheating their taxes with loopholes we should remove
@@meneldal There literally isn't enough money in the economy for UBI. I know you don't understand this, but there isn't some hidden untapped supply of rich people whose money you can confiscate to fund your socialist free money for all program. I'll even do the math for you.
The median salary in the US is about $45,000 per year. The modest $1k UBI per month is 12k per year. 12k divided by 45k is 0.26, or 26%. Your UBI would cost 26% of the entire economy. UBI would be the single most expensive government program several times over. You literally cannot fund that without completely destroying the economy either with hyperinflation or mass wealth confiscation at a scale that would completely destroy commerce in the US.
The economic calamity caused by implementing UBI wouldn't just affect stock traders and bankers, every single shop would have to double their prices for every item, rent would increase by 50%, property taxes would skyrocket, the entire economy would be in shambles. 1k per month UBI would plunge us into a second great depression.
farming still uses tons of cheap labor, often with harsh working conditions due to lax safety regulations, automation hasn't eliminated the need for a large labor force.
Farming went from 40% of the workforce in 1900 to less than 2% in 1990.
This is highly misleading. Farming used to employ large number of workers and support entire communities. Now the work is casual, seasonal, and cannot support any stable communities, leading to a collapse of rural populations, depopulation of many areas (and/or replacement by holiday homes/second homes, which do not support the local economy.
2 hours a week of leisure? That’s almost 2 hours a week with…drumroll.. with your Family (partners, kids, parents)! First you discuss the negative impacts of poverty, but then discount the benefits of leisure time. Ignoring the stress relief, Now, you calculated just the child care costs of 2 hrs vs. what they are paid for those work hours… that alone may be ENOUGH of a gain before factoring in the social benefits.
You can still get kicked out of your house. You don’t own it, the state charges rent
Abolish property tax. If I buy land, I should own it.
@@Kitkat-986 agreed. It’s immoral
@@Kitkat-986 Suppose you get $50K a year, and spend $10K on the various maintenance costs of your house. Also suppose your neighbor earns $60K a year and rents an identical house for $20K. Should your neighbor pay more tax than you? And if the answer is "no", on what basis should tax be collected that makes his tax bill equal to or less than yours?
@@BaddeJimmewhy should the tax bills be equivalent?
@@Felale The neighbor has essentially the same house, and after paying housing costs, the same income. On paper he earns more, but in reality he is no better off.
I know the main purpose of this video is the narrative around UBI among mainstream media, but as someone who both studied and also works with stats / economics I'd really appreciate if not talking about the study itself in greater detail then at least linking it in some form in the description? For example I remember a similar experiment (not a scientific study, mind you) done in Denver mainly with homeless / jobless people which found that UBI, both lump sum and monthly, did have a noticeably positive effect financially, even saving the city a large sum of money in public services. At first I was wondering if this video was talking about the same study and I'd just been misled as well, but considering you didn't mention Denver nor any of the stats I remember from that study (nor was that experiment conducted by OpenResearch, and it only lasted 1 year instead of 3) I'm pretty sure it isn't, which is weird since your intro makes it seem as though this study is like the one and only big attempt at trying out UBI in America.
Main reason why I'm commenting is because you mentioned how detailed the questions asked by the researchers were, and how certain they are of their conclusions, yet the stats you actually talk about are so incredibly limited, and you don't give any specific numbers either, nor any context really. I understand this is mainly to keep the video easy to understand for a mainstream audience, but at a certain point it does make the video hard to trust for someone knowledgeable in the field who genuinely wants to understand the data instead of just being told the conclusion. It also kinda tarnishes my view of other videos of the channel, ones that deal with stuff I have no expertise in whatsoever, if I can't be confident that you're telling the truth when I _do_ understand the subject matter?
Good old Gell-Mann Amnesia effect
He said it was in Dallas
The study in Denver was very similar, yeah. From the reporting, it found that participants' lives improved from the start of the study to the end of the study but that the experimental groups did no better than a $50/month control group.
Oh, also he just added study links in the pinned comment if you wanted to take a look at those.
❗ 🤣 hahaha ! I love a guy with a sense of humor ! Those endless paragraphs were a joke right ?
10:00 - so, the people with UBI had more time for themselves, and that is somehow bad?
And you also expect them to spend money on networking? How?
Also, what education can you buy for 1000 USD a month where the study was conducted while also working? Also, how would that paid education be useful? Do you have zero experience with job searching?
I am asking these questions as somebody who both studies on one's own (and has a degree) and has been fortunate enough to get a high-paying job after suffering through the job-searching process.
17:00 - the fact that more people get to access necessary healthcare is not significant? What? Are you this deep into net worth worship that you decide to ignore people being able to access basic needs that should be fulfilled as basic human rights?
Entering PhD studying and seeing how weird media interpretations of even business performance (let alone research) appear
Look at those Covid handouts though. I know a lot of people that used that extra money to really improve their lives. I also wonder if 3 years is long enough for most people to change the way they approach life. It isn't long enough to make long term plans like going to college. Even my wife, who came from extreme poverty, just sat around and watched TV for the first few years of our marriage. I really didn't care, but eventually, she got bored, and is going to college full time now. It took a while, but now she is thinking long term about her future.
The current welfare system actually encourages people not to work, so they don't lose their benefits. It is forced dependence. UBI would actually allow poor people to improve their lives.
Overall, I consider this study to be deeply flawed.
They didn’t see all those stories about million dollar winners who went broke.. ? It's a matter of approach to money
I agree with this. I went from broke and in debt to having way more money than ever before by adjusting my behaviors.
Poverty is a behavioral issue, not an issue of economic system.
A lot of people would be happy to fill their basic needs. There is more to life than work and money. TIME.
This. So much.
The effect that I bet is obscured by study design here is that, if UBI is, in fact, universal in a pretty-much closed system like a city or a state, in a society with a rentier class, prices of the bottom tier of rented assets and purchased consumables will rise to absorb and obviate the UBI. So even if recipients are somehow made to be financially adept, “market forces” still ensure a subsistence tier in society.
It's inflationary. The way I see it is it would essentially always be not enough, because no matter how much you increase it to, it effectively would become the new "zero". I don't really see how it's different to how unemployment benefits work here in NZ, where we have families that haven't worked for 4 generations.
So your assumption is that the economy is a zero sun game, the existence of the poor is required for the rest of us to have some level of comfort? We can never improve things because they will just reset to the next lowest level?
@@Patrick-857 it's only inflationary if money is printed to pay for it.
@@ctrlaltdebug I think you're wrong. It's the same as miminum wage and unemployment benefits. It's inflationary because the price of everything rises to meet the new amount almost immediately, so nobody us better off than they were before. Inflation isn't just caused by money printing.
@teagancombest6049 It will always be a Pareto distribution. Pareto distributions are in nature, so to me it's a law of nature. Attempts at wealth redistribution always result in perverse outcomes and always fail at achieving the intended goal. This is because the buyer and seller decide on value, not the government or any other third party in a transaction. When government attempts to redistribute value through something like a UBI, it creates a short-term anomaly in the economy, before it naturally goes back to an equilibrium that looks pretty similar to what it was before the redistribution occurred. A UBI would simply devalue the currency and probably cause a massive capital flight due to the huge taxes required to pay for it. It simply won't work. Currency is a token of value. Value has to come from somewhere, usually goods, services, commodities ect. If you pay everyone for nothing, then nothing of value is being exchanged for that money, and over time that causes the money itself to be worthless. And arguing that people who receive a UBI will still work because they want to work is an argument that comes from people who are privileged enough to have never experienced the really crappy jobs most of us have to endure. If I could earn a living doing nothing, I'd quit yesterday. My job is destroying my health.
UBI is essentially "I can't believe it's not real communism"
*lump sum UBI* would just increase the costs of any commodity in high demand from recipients. if companies know a customer can/ willing spend more money for a product: they are icentivised to increase prices. Take colleges for example: student loan debt keeps getting worse no matter how much money we throw at the problem.
a permanent, reusable assset, or service would at least leviate or raise the standard of living for the poor.
public bathing houses, basic shelter, free health clinics?
why not both?
The study makes no sense. 1000$ is a nice round number, which suggests it’s just a random amount with no hard reasoning behind it. Why 1000$ vs 50$? Are we really expecting 1000$ to revolutionise the life of family that has been poor for years in 2020? At best, all it does is provide some short-term breathing room for groceries and rent. Who can afford to stop working and focus on education with 1000$? How is it supposed to help people find a job? What was the ideal outcome here? People putting the whole 1000$ in an index fund for 3 years and just keep on struggling in the meantime? If we know UBI worked in very poor communities, what would be the $ equivalent for an American family?
Other than the amount, the other critical thing is when the UBI payments start. 1000$/month early on in your life can help set you up for success as you’re figuring out your career. If you wait until people have been poor for years and have families, then you’re asking UBI to repair damages that have built up over decades, not to set people up for success. 1000$/month over 20 years is 240000$. If you expect a 3 year period to undo or compensate for 20 of poverty, then you should be giving people 6667$/month, not 1000$.
This was a very careless experiment that will be quoted and misquoted forever just to push agendas.
The study should not be used to argue against or for UBI at all. It captured two different societies and didn't elaborate on who these people were.
Exactly, this study is just stupid to begin with. We have a UBI in France in a sort of negative tax and free grant for people working or pursuing studies. It is far from perfect and underfunded...but it works.
Why can't it work in USA but in France it can?
Because the whole system in France is created to elevate people and support the needy. In USA it's me,me and me on all levels .
Yeah, Pete has a complete miss here. Probably not smart enough to actually understand it
Thank-you Donnie for one of the best comments here. cheers
"Me, me, me." That's rich coming from people who want to solve every problem with other people's money. Show me an incentive and I'll guarantee you a behaviour. It doesn't work, morons!
UBI isn't the first step, its the last. Handing people money doesn't solve the fact that their necessitities are priced by cartels and that the american public have few means to access low barrier to entry means of increasing one's earning potential. Want to become any form of STEM worker? 50k$, 4 years of full time study and some internships. Want to become a tradesman? 20k+, internships and you won't earn much more than burger flippers until you save up enough to start your own business.
10:37 Wealth inequality is a symptom of a fundamentaly broken economy. Most of the economic policies proposed and implemented do not address underlying causes and a lot of the time makes it worse.
So why aren’t trust fund kids poorer than their peers who don’t have that kind of inheritance?
Don't say the quiet part out loud...
Trust fund kids DO work fewer hours each week...
I imagine its just a lot more money
The point is not that leisure time for poor people is bad. It is that yhe predicted outcome of the experiment didn’t happen. In science, that means either the model of human behavior we have is bad, or the study is flawed. It doesn't matter that we would all like more cash or that we would like to give more to the poor. The study doesn't say the motives are wrong. The results just question the method for achieving the desired outcome. And making sure you method actually works it the difference between wanting to help and actually helping. I agree that the pandemic makes the results questionable. But it suggests that UBI might have problems during economic crisis. This should be investigated more before it is implemented.
What predicted outcome? The expectation of having more net worth or assets is only in Pete's head, he's the one who believes that it's the only end point. The study didn't have it. It was just one of the things that it measured.
Many of the more generally expected outcomes actually happened: more leisure time, better standard of living, better mental and physical health, etc.
@vfwh I have listened to a bunch of talks on UBI and they all suggested it would be a financial gain for the recipients that would lift them out of poverty. So, I think it's fair to say this was a predicted outcome. But you are right that they also predict a better life. And more time to spend with family or to just rest is a definite benefit to the less wealthy. I was once very poor (not just not as wealthy) and I was working three to four jobs at once. More rest would have been welcome. I was also getting an education so I could lift my family out of this situation. That that last part didn't work in the UBI study worries me. But again think the pandemic is a big confounding factor.
@@raymondlines5404 You're right about the education thing, and I agree that it's a disappointment.
Regarding "lifting people out of poverty", do you really think that having $1k more after three years in assets, while you're getting $950 less in monthly income, is a net financial gain? I find that view completely idiotic.
What I'm reacting to here and in Pete's video is two things:
- this kind of literally reactionary impulse that he definitely lets loose that poor people spending more time and resource on leisure is, frankly the way he says it, almost disgusting. I find that kind of moral outrage repulsive, and I think I'm over indexing.
- second, the idea that UBI failed because basically, people who had $1k per month extra for 3 years (and in a real UBI situation, this would be indefinite for life) somehow fucked up because they cared less about $1k after three years compared to people who were only getting $50. This is Pete's main (and practically only) point.
The only logical conclusion from this point is that given a deal where you get $1k a month for life, but have $1k less in assets after three years, vs. getting $50 every month, working more and having generally worse outcomes all-round, all of it to boast having $1k in the bank more after three years, you'd be better off turning down the $1k a month and take the $50 deal?
How completely fucked up is this worldview? Both financially and morally?
@@vfwh and most of those ended being worse than the previous 5 year average,if only slightly.
@@Robdavis1990 Most of what?
UBI did't work in USA, because its over for working class. This $1000 not make a dent in hole between you and what was considered middle class in 1960s.
You either enjoy life as it is, or try hard to fail anyway.
You're kind of assuming that net worth versus time is still more important here or that if you do something with your time it is only valuable if it makes you richer. Orson Welles made a considerable net loss over his lifetime making films. He made most of his money on the side doing voice acting and spent it all on self financing his film projects. Anyone who is talented at impecunious pursuits could well end up with less net worth on paper under UBI but still better off.
better off by what metrics? personal ones that are completely irrelevant to any monetary pursuits?
do you even know what a "vanity project" is?
Regarding the Liberian village pooling their money into lump sums, people likely wouldn't do exactly the same in the US, because the developed world's solution to that problem is loans.
Developed economies lost their sense of community.
We have created a world for which we are not evolved...
@DeltaDaedalus the Liberians were loaning each other money, they just don't have professional banks
@@Hexanitrobenzene ha. You know the Liberians eat their enemies, right?
@@samsonsoturian6013smart. We defend our enemies for some reason
This was discussed. Loans incur interest which then reduces the amount of the money that you get to use.
This makes no sense. You can't live on $1000 a month. And if course they're working less. That's the point. When jobs are all automated we won't be able to work for an income.
I would like to say thay the likelihood of AI replacing everyone in 5 years is very unlikely and extrapolates from a relatively linear increase in its abilities which is likely going to reach a cap, especially when it requires a lot of people to be able to figure out the problems of AI and I requires everyone to agree to it, which they aren't because noone wants the AI to diagnose and treat you with a pneumonia when you could have cancer
Remember when the tractor put everyone out of work in the agrarian society? Yeah, me neither. It will be like every other technology, a force multiplier. More people work in the car industry now than ever despite robots. We just have VASTLY better cars.
@@jasongrundy1717
Nobody knows what will happen. 10 years ago LLMs of today were considered 50 years away. AI benefits from a steady increase in compute available, but sudden algorithmic and training improvements also happen, like GPT o1.
I do not like historical comparisons in the case of AI. It's the first technology which can, at least in principle, make its own decisions. That's not a "force multiplier" or a "tool". That's another species. Of course, current systems are bad at long term planning, continuous learning and the like, but there are hundreds if not thousands of people working on these problems.
AI is just algorithms and pretty dumb ones. Computers can do some things much faster than us, but some things they can't do at all
@KateeAngel Computers are basically like a five year old. If you want it to dobsomething useful, they need a how to guide for dummies to do it. AI is just moves computers to the preteen years. They know just enough to get in trouble without being supervised. But atleast you dont have to break it down barney style at em as much.
They discovered why Paris Hilton enjoys so much leisure time.
lol
boomer dated itself
I don't understand the people who think the solution to poverty is merely lump sums or education. Why not jobs? Make a jobs guarantee. If people want to work, give them a job. Lots of people want to work but simply never get hired. Maybe we should fix that.
UBI doesn't work in a neo-liberal economy, what a surprise
UBI doesn't work
@@destroya3303 It will perfectly work, if:
1. It's a short term arrangement only, which is made clear to the receivers.
2. The payment is conditional, some sort of training program - institutaional or even personal is made mandatory and the receivers is bound to report progress.
For example, say someone wants to learn to code. But good training programs costs a massive amount and free resources require titanic amount of self decipline. UBI can cover such a person, given he has to report his progress periodically and not making upto certain landmark will cease the UBI scheme.
If my scheme seems like loan, mind it - loans are for profit and the loan sharks has no incentive to develop the person. If the person fails, they get to cease his/her property. This is why loan programs like microfinancing failed even more spectacularly.
UBI just simply doesn't work
@@destroya3303 You were born on third base and you think you hit a triple.
It's not really a good idea to give any type of reward for failure. It's human behavior, not an economic issue.
I appreciate the idea of lump sum version of UBI, which I hadn't heard before. If it had to happen at all, I suppose that method would be the one I would support. However, the primary reason I see UBI not solving any problems beyond the short term cannot be reflected in any of these studies. In all cases the rest of the state/country was NOT getting the UBI. This gave participants a relative advantage WITHOUT leading to inflation. If even at the state level this was implemented it would be eaten up by inflation within a few short years. So do we just keep increase the UBI amount to the point that inflation is so high that the only way anyone can support themselves is if they stay in the good graces of the government and don't get their UBI withheld for 'wrongthink?' This is a recipe for tyranny.
The inflation argument is wrong in principle. Inflation is caused by a mismatch between productive capacity and the money supply so if less people can do more, say with the help of AI then that should not only not be inflationary but your problem then becomes lack of people with money to spend. The debanking angle is worrying.
Printing money to pay people to not work is a recipe for inflation, not to mention, as you said, the possibility for abuse by the government. Self sufficient people are more resistant to government tyrrany, and no one is less self sufficient than someone who is paid by the state to not work.
@@markcarey67 I would argue that inflation is caused less by having fewer workers than money in circulation going toward wages than by simply having more money in circulation, regardless of whether the people get it by working or by handouts. You're simply able to use that 'productive capacity' shorthand now because working is currently the only way enough people get access to the money supply to have an effect on inflation!
It wouldn't lead to inflation because the driver of inflation is not the availability of money to the poorest but the effort by the richest to re-capture that money, which leads to both increased inequality and money-hoarding at the top. When those re-capture efforts are negatively reinforced by a progressive income and wealth tax that just transfers it right back to the poorest inflation simply doesn't occur. But yes, if you just print money without a progressive tax then you get inflation.
Inflation is often caused by rising wages, but if we live in a post-worker economy, where most jobs are offshored or automated by machines or AI, then inflation wont be such a problem.
Guy who works for bank opposes wealth redistribution shock.
I wonder if it is correct for us to assume journalists should represent reality as it truly is?
If you mean journalists working at large corporations, I think you have to look at their business model to understand if that goal is even realistic.
Starbucks is huge because they figured out how to sell coffee to people who don't like coffee, but want to feel sophisticated.
The McNews model of your daily politics, entertainment, tech and sports is huge because, fundamentally, it tells people what they want to hear.
Most people want to hear that the government can cut people a check and make poverty go away.
I think independent creators who are passionate about a subject and funded by patrons can be more reality-based and tell us the good and the bad. But journalism that gets to the truth will probably always be a fairly niche business.
Lol!! Please say you're being facetious. Anyone who assumes "journalists" - whether legitimate or not - have any intention of representing "reality" as it truly is has already thrown away their most fundamental asset of independent and responsible thought and reason. Naiveté is deadly, to both you and others.
Journalism as a whole discovered long ago that actually _gaining_ infinite unchecked power was far more personally profitable than _speaking truth to power_ could ever be.
Wait a minute. These people spent an extra couple of hours per week on leisure activities and you think that they're poorer?
Doesn't that show the exact opposite? Don't rich people have more leisure time? I don't understand what you're saying here
Sure, and the people being taxed to pay for it have to get a second job. UBI isn't free money. This study doesn't show the damage caused by taxing working people to fund this program.
@@Kitkat-986 that's not how that works at all. Cities and towns have budgets that they allocate for taxes.. it's not like "here's my dollar for social security, my dollar for the roads, my dollar for schools" you get taxed at an adjusted rate and then the town, city, state spends it on programs
@@tjpaiva3296 UBI is an extremely, ludicrously expensive program. UBI, practically implemented, would cost about a quarter of the US's GDP (26.667% based on my rough calculations). To try to fund UBI would require the kind of tax hike/ inflation that can kill a nation.
@@tjpaiva3296great, another one who thinks money grows on trees.
@@Kitkat-986what does the military cost?
If you give me $1000 per month for 3 years... and I know it... I'll take advantage of it for more leisure and pleasures I never see in my normal life due to being overworked etc.
If you give me $1000 per month for LIFE... I might actually change something in my life.
Knowing how the $1000 doesnt improve mental health at all, makes me suspect this was probably the main issue with this test.
People knowing that it's just a temporary thing, will FOR SURE, cause them to splurge and take advantage of it "while they can". At least I know I'd do it for sure.
It's almost like the effects of a UBI on human capital would take more than 3 years to start, and that the benefits (like more leisure time) aren't entirely encapsulated in terms of human capital
Great, now what about the harms caused to the people who are forced to pay much higher taxes to fund UBI? What about the people who will never be able to afford a home, or have children, or need to get a second job to earn a livable income because of the increased tax rate?
@@Kitkat-986*what about the rich capitalists who will never be able to buy a fifth home?
there, fixed it for you
@@justtiredthings Why should I care if someone else is wealthy? I care about improving the lives of working class people like myself. That means reducing the tax rate on the money I earn.
@@Kitkat-986 pretending tax brackets don't exist is a p boring position
@@justtiredthings Most tax increases happen on the working class. Rich people have the money to pay consultants to find tax loopholes. Middle class people don't. Thus, governments take the path of least resistance and tax the middle class.
I laughed out loud when this guy was like "oh no, the poor innocent banks! They don't make quite as much money when they strip you for parts like an old car and sell them off as if you were garbage. Please feel bad for the poor, innocent banks!" F the banks. How many times have we, the tax payers had to bail them, their assets, their bad loans, the companies they give bad loans to, etc. Where is our bail out? Oh yeah, we don't get one. We NEVER get one. But oh yeah, the poooooor innoceeeeeent banks. Won't someone think of the children? 😂😂😂
Thing with AI is that ppl believe it will solve all problems.
When in reality, its only good for a few... a very few problems.
People used to think we would be living like the jetsons in 2000... tech has come a long way, but its not likely to come so far as to replace us.
The jobs we do and how we do them, will change. But we'll still be needed to get them done.
There is a section of the population that can only do manual labor. You can't educate them, it is just how they are. When the robots come, these people are unemployable.
The thing with AI - or any other form of automation, really - is that people believe that it will affect someone else, not them. AI isn't replacing less skilled or repetitive labor, that's already been done for decades. AI is replacing engineers and the like, who are far too bloated and dysfunctional already..
@@barbarakauppi9915 ai is just nerual networks that try to figure out how to best solve a problem using learning but ofc its way oversimplification but in short it's still just a computer program of yes/nos but on a spectrum/scale that can weight an answer towards yes or no and make decisions based on that. So no it will not replace people it is as good as the data you put in it but will automate the more cumbersome tasks that are mind numbingly boring or repetitive.
@@barbarakauppi9915 Of cause it affects everyone.
Just like tractors being used affected everyone, via the quality of food produced.
My point is AI could never take all the jobs. Its not some be all and end all thing.
A lot of people that would have become farm hands, ended up doing desk jobs.
The work force is still there, jobs are still needed. But the work changes each time tech grows.
Farm hands went from a very physical job to a more technical one. From working in open space, to a small cubical.
End of the day, the jobs may be different, but people are still needed to do them :/
I suspect the majority of jobs with shift in skill, as AIs need more power and speed, its likely electricians and builders will be needed to update things, such as laying fiber optic cable...
Perhaps programmers will need to learn some 'less skilled or repetitive labour' and help to dig the trenches to lay cables in :P
@@barbarakauppi9915 one of the main jobs that engineers do is replace repetitive labor. if you automate engineers, you automate everything, eventually.
I don't think you read the report correctly and focused too much on net worth, for which the control group had some outliers with more valuable assets. Looking at median values, net worth did not change negatively, and most of that occurred in the 3rd year, so after the pandemic, when most people started spending again. Also, -$1000 on $36000 is not a big decrease.
And skimming through, it seems that the change in net worth was largely from taking on debt, particularly mortgages and auto loans. At three years into a mortgage, you've barely made headway into the principal.
Property taxes will be the demise of most folks at some point in the future
You mean I could quit my job, stop pumping thousands of dollars a year INTO the tax system, and start drawing thousands of dollars a year OUT of the system? Sign me up. EVERYONE should do this. What could possibly go wrong?
I'm in!
UBI shouldn't be funded out of taxes, but as the distribution mechanism for the replacement of current monetary policy currency creation. Currently every year the government creates more new money as debt stacking a constantly refilling time displaced debt using newly borrowed money to pay back old borrowed money plus interest, a treasury bond. The government distributes that new money into the economy by means of government spending. (Private banks also expand the money supply but that a derived multiplicative function of the underlying amount of money created, you can ignore this private bank part it's not critical to my point. )
UBI changes the input location of the money in the economy from the government borrowing then spending to the people spending, investing or saving. Each month you get your share of, in an ideal condition, the exact amount of production that has happened so that the value of the money remains stable and tied to only the value of production. No more borrowing money to pay off old debts, no longer is money set to expire, no longer owning more money and interest back to the lenders than actually exists.
UBI is when actually functional and not just commie nonsense one means of supplying the money needed to balance the value of a currency into an economy. You could use a negative sales taxes to do the same thing as UBI. An item for sale with a list price of $1.10 and a -10% sales tax has a consumer price of $1 with the other 10 cents being supplied by the monetary policy.
It's bit like the difference between a car and road. The car is the UBI and the road is the monetary policy. You can move on the road in a car, truck, bus, bike or walking. The vehicle is often less important than where the road goes and where you want to go but I sure do like to drive my own car than ride on a government operated bus.
Sign me up too!
Ware in the US can you live even slightly comfortably on $12K a year. Not that I support ubi
@@williamallen7836Appalachia. Or in California tent cities.
We need to test negative income tax like Friedman wanted
word.
No, Friedman was wrong here. Unfortunate for someone who otherwise understood economics.
@@destroya3303 how was he wrong? Negative income tax is infinitely more efficient that the byzantine maze of US welfare system, as it uses the IRS bureaucracy that's already in place and is not going anywhere
Friedman wasn't really an advocate of UBI, he just said that reverse income tax was the least harmful way to do it.
Negative tax would actually work. If you subsidized more work and more achievement your society will work more and achieve more. If you subsidize laziness, your society will collapse into unbelievable inflation.
0:42 the images you show here shows that Americans don't know what poverty actually looks like
It’s just images among many within a video. It’s filler. You shouldn’t draw any conclusions from them.
Well if there are no jobs to be gained. Why does it matter if people train for skills or not. If I can't train for something I like. I will just focus on the other things I like even more. I. E. Everything else beyond working (which if I did not need the money to live, I would not do anyway). Give me leisure everyday of the week if I did not have to do shit work for pointless managers (which it seems won't have jobs either and don't have useful skills beyond that which makes them managers.). But then again, with 1000 dollars a month extra on top of what I earn now, I would also start working less, but I would go and train in datascience and statistics. One of those jobs that will dissappear according to you. Or I would study some other statistics based field. But I would still only study something I like. I am wasting away on a pointless prospectless job now anyways. One I still have 30000 in study debt for. So if I get another chance. I would not waste it on something that I do not like.
I just don't want to lose $1000 more per month to taxes. That would easily be enough to push me over the line of losing my apartment, or else getting a second job to survive.
@@Kitkat-986 yeah bereaucrats are one of those hurdles why it would not work in heavily bureaucratized countries. Which are pretty much all the western countries. With such an idea as UBI, it would require a serious overhaul of many rules that exist now to keep the capital in the hands with most capital. Those who would need UBI the most are always those who suffer the most with how taxation rules are set up. I would also get in serious trouble if 1000 moreon my bank account would mean that I would go into a higher tax rate, which would also mean I would no longer have a right at the rental that I have now. And because everyone get 1000 more. Prices will go up everywhere, the already very expensive rent-seeking parasites would become even more expensive, which in the end would mean no one would actually gain much. The same happens when salaries are raised systematically. In the end inflation will become worse which in the end would mean no one actually gains much if anything.
@@emiel89 The core issue is that socialism doesn't work, and socialists are too stupid to understand why. Mouse traps work because mice don't understand why the cheese is free.
We moved production to the 3rd world.
ok let's analyse what you just said:
You draw a conclusion on UBI, on dirt poor people, and extrapolate to the whole society.
I would very much love to see this study done on three groups: very poor, poor and middle class.
I do think that most of us would do what they did with money, i.e. "spend it on leisure" in the sense that if one barely survives for 20-30 years and suddenly he can enjoy life a bit, he should and he will. We can all understand those decisions I assume.
None of your conclusion holds based on that false hypothesis and I will say it again:
People behave different based on their income/networth apriori UBI and is still uncertain what they will behave like after UBI.
We already saw what happened during covid. Enormous amounts of people, regardless of class, got money and used it all on leasure or overinflating assets, which is biting us in the butt right now.
@@Peglegkickboxeryou fell for it. In the US, citizens got 7-9% of all the aid. The inflation is not their fault
This study felt so strange to me because there are people who will utilize the money frugally to increase their happiness, security, education and those who will blow the money on eating out and making poor short term financial decisions. You can argue all day people getting money for free is bad but this study being used to argue between two vastly different groups of people and cultures in favor of saying "see ubi never worked" stinks. Also I'm curious if the exchange rate would be different bc 1k US can be way more in a third world country in means of basic goods and services. All I'm saying is this study should not have been used to argue UBI bad in X place but rather analyze the lifestyles those people lived ex: 60 hour work weeks or partying all day and not working. Both sides are sadly trying to use this study. Any other source could have been a better measurement of UBI ineffectiveness/effectiveness in X region???
@@Peglegkickboxer US money printer go brrrrrrr
@@Peglegkickboxer do you even understand how much money was stolen and misused by businesses and corporations? Especially small businesses? They were firing all their employees, then getting the payroll loan, splitting all the money, then doing any work for the business themselves. The law is only just now catching up with them, if it is at all. But everyone complains about poor people getting money because they took a vacation with it. Same with this study. Oh you know you are getting paid to do a study for 3 years and know you will have to go back to work right after? Of course you are going to take that time off. These people probably already had money saved up and credit cards and whatever else they needed. This literally isn't UBI. It was "if we pay people to take off for 3 years what will they do?" I would be seriously concerned given the sample size that these people probably thought they wouldn't get the money if they started working, or that they would have to return it. But I guarantee you every single one of them were thinking "this might be the only chance I have in my ENTIRE life to take 3 years off and spend it doing whatever I want" just like during the pandemic. When you take people who have been working like slaves their whole life and tell them they can take a break, they're going to do it. Just look at all the billionaires and the rich. If you call what they are doing work, then wouldn't any other person be willing to do that too? They never have to "work" again, never have to make another cent, but they still do, why is that? Because everyone wants more. But if what they are doing is not work, then why should they get to continue making money off of other people who do work while they just pile it into a vault and continue to buy things they don't need? This study basically proved that these people were able to live off of basically nothing, by working less and getting just a little bit more, and spend all their time doing what they wanted. If net worth is all we look at then this is stupid because we could take an average of all Americans net worth right now and it would be more than either of these samples because the mega rich would skew it hilariously badly. Only one person with 400 million dollars would cause the average net worth of America to look like it is a million dollars per person. This is why you can't always look at average as true accurate representation and statistics is hard. All it would take is a few people not working at all to skew the average of one side down, and a few people making a crazy amount of money to skew one side up. Not to mention some jobs pay in stock options which would cause net worth to be skewed considerably. Even so $1000 difference isn't even that much on average, so the moral of this story is this study was a waste of money and the paper it was printed on. The only good thing coming out of it was that those people got some free money from a rich A hole.
This reminds me of a video that explained how medieval English peasants worked. In short: they only did as much as required to live in reasonable comfort and avoided work as much as possible. What did they do instead? Leisure... after they finished their household chores of course.
$1000 is hardly anything, unless your net worth is like $1000. The dentist is important because natural teeth are cheaper than all of the alternatives. Why is it important to judge things economically first?
Because economics is a good way to measure relative wellbeing. It's not a perfect measure, but it's better than nothing.
UBI sucks. It doesn't create wealth, it steals it from the workers and gives it to the unemployed. Punishing the productive and rewarding the lazy is the kind of thing that brings a society to its knees.
The problem is that UBI will work differently on different populations, but we can’t admit that politically.
Haha so true.
problematic study
We live in a context where the costs of healthcare are astronomical, every job that pays a living wage requires exceptional qualifications, union membership is at a record low, managers constantly scapegoat subordinates for their own errors, and hard work is not rewarded with promotions, it only serves to make bosses rich. Layoffs in tech and other industries have reached astronomical levels, expert engineers being swapped for junior college grads. The future of every industry is totally up in the air thanks to the upcoming automation revolution. Comp Sci PhD's are out there driving trucks. The jobs suck, inflation is outrageous, hardly anyone can afford a home, and now you wonder why paying people enough to live is not a panacea for growing wealth or improving mental health?
Seriously, is there a 'study' for whether payouts are driving America down a woke descent of liberal decadence and entitlement every time there is a corporate dividend payout? Personally, I echo Yang's sentiment and believe we are all shareholders of a democracy. Corporate oligarchs stand on top of the miners' backs, who dug the coal mines necessary for the coal industry to prosper enough to get to the point where technology could automate their job away. The same is true of every industry.
Pete makes the point that a 'study' cannot really establish anything about people's revealed preferences for spending time under a UBI system because of reproducibility issues like sample size, country, context, economy, admits that the study took place during a pandemic, and admits that so many dimensions were measured that a researcher is bound to find some correlation between any two of the umpteen thousand surveyed. And then he proceeds to pronounce his own bespoke and highly contrived correlations as convictive?
There are loads of reasons why a UBI can be good, even if a lot of people stay or become lazy anyway. Many people are lazy, that's life. The key is that there is no limit to how productive the top performers can be.
What do you propose, @PeteJudo1, that we have an economy totally run by robots and a few elite billionaires and then hundreds of millions of people that spend their time... *not* on leisure?
There is so much these studies can never capture. Long term people who grow up in a society where UBI is normal can have a vastly different mindset than people who grew up with jobs being necessary. There us a massive difference in some people receiving the money and everyone receiving it. This is also different from negative income tax where only the people in need get it, which at slightly higher administrative cost is much more efficient.
People will also act differently if they know that the extra money they're getting is only temporary as long as the study is going on.
What I think we need is a system that holds people accountable enough to reinforce learning survival skills, but not a system that encourages predatory practices on their "Human Capital." UBI trains people to be beholden to a Nanny State, but our present system is an overwhelming mosh pit of sociopathic greed and intentional complexity.
For what it's worth, while living in Nevada ten years ago, I avoided seeing a dentist because I was spending all of my buffer money on private medical insurance, and then one of my teeth broke, became infected, the infection went up my trigeminal nerve, into my brain, and I developed Multiple Sclerosis. Whether or not "UBI" would have averted that crisis, we can't say -- it just would have been nice to have not felt like I was boxed into a corner by an unfeeling system.
As dehumanizing as it is to be referred to as "Human Capital," I agree that for most people, if you pay them not to work, _then they're not going to work._ This should be obvious to anyone who's not lost in the weeds. My issue is that "we" have decided that the ultimate sign of progress in our nation is GDP rather than Median Income. Caring about Median Income would be the epitome of "a rising tide lifts all ships," while caring about GDP alone leads to oligarchic corporate fiefdoms where we're supposed to be impressed that Uncle Bezos has a half billion dollar yacht, or that uncle Elon has gotten two steps closer to achieving his dream of dying on Mars.
Why improve human capital when AI and automation will replace you? Improving human capital should not be the motivation of UBI. UBI should be done because it keeps the money flowing and bills paid. If that's to do something constructive or not, it shouldn't matter because our economy is built on a myriad of industries many of which are leisure and entertainment.
Good comment. It would have been nice to see this question addressed more clearly in the video
People like myself who actually make shit will be pissed off that we're being robbed and will stop working. With less income to tax, you either need to end UBI, raise taxes even higher, or print tons of money to fund it, creating inflation.
Sure when that happens we can have that discussion but automation is far far away from taking jobs. AI is closer but still needs more time.
Also you should realize that work is done to create some sort of value. Just paying somebody for doing nothing means you're giving resources to somebody who didn't provide anything in return. This is why just paying somebody to make mud pies is the same as paying somebody to do nothing even though there is work being done in the first example.
@@sounghungiyour suggestion that automation hasn't reduced the availability of "productive" jobs is transparently false. It has for decades.
@@Apostate1970 I didn't not make that suggestion. My point about automation was about automation my point about value and jobs was about paying people for doing nothing.
Would be great if you included sources in the description because I'm interested in the subject and it'd make it easier to research
Did you watch the whole video? He tells you the source and shows it multiple times
@@deadheadcynicallydepressed7360 Yes but its easier to have a link over needing to search/google it. Thats what I mean - sources are here but it'd be great if these were clickable.
As you bring up these negative outcomes and the study design, it is clear why your title conflicts with results from comparable studies in the Nordic countries. The idea of UBI is enough to close the gap left by other social services between poor and destitute. So a catastrophe would leave you poor, but not at risk of being homeless and/or unable to feed yourself completing the safety net necessary for people unhappy with their position in the world need to take the risks necessary to advance.
$1000/month will not do that for you in a place like the US. You need a pretty robust social support network in place in order for UBI to have the positive effects predicted.
What was their quality of life, their happiness?
if they are spending more on leisure and less work, were they happier?
$1000 worse off does not necessarily mean worse. because a happier person does help in terms of health. This would thus be more interesting to see in a place like UK or Australia where healthcare is less of a problem.
fair enough
Their leisure time is being funded off the backs of people who are working harder and being taxed more. It's fundamentally immoral to take from someone who works hard to give to someone who doesn't.
And you just demonstrated a fundamental misunderstanding of UBI, as well as how it would be funded.
UBI is universal, it applies to everyone. some of those in the study would have been wealthy and paying more tax than others. in fact, it may be possible some were multimillionaires. UBI does not discriminate based upon your wealth or taxes paid.
Next is your lack of understanding of how a UBI is funded. Governments literally make money. A UBI would be funded by the government just producing more money. It is not funded by taxing people more as this defeats the entire purpose of UBI.
@@Kitkat-986 just like the leisure time and wealth of billionaires is founded on hard barely compensated labour of their employees you mean
@@KateeAngel UBI won't be funded by billionaires. Billionaires are notoriously hard to tax, if it were easy, there wouldn't be any billionaires. Even if the government went to every billionaire and held them at gunpoint for their bank account details, that amount of money simply wouldn't be enough to fund UBI. UBI is a colossal expense. Just a basic 1k per month for every citizen would require over 25% of the entire US economy dedicated just to funding UBI, not counting the administrative and procedural costs, which with government tends to more than double the cost of any program.
Practically speaking, to implement just a basic 1k per month UBI would cost the entire current budget of federal government and the entire budget of every state government combined to fund it. About half of the entire current GDP would go to funding UBI. It is economcially completely unfeasible.
Without reading the report or watching this video, the first thing I would thing the aim of UBI is to make people compliant to the entity providing the UBI such as government. Although, misattributed to Thomas Jefferson, I think the following quote still has value. “A government big enough to give you everything you want, is a government big enough to take away everything that you have."
So you basically have people who are already at a comfortable position in life and instead of making themselves more marketable they improved their mental and leisure life? Why is this a problem?
cuz gdp big number good. Gdp go down? baaaaaad.
@@Xenozillex solution print more money :D
UBI turns humans into entitled pets
Humans are already entitled pets. That's the difference between banging rocks alone and forming a herd.
That's exactly what the government wants
You say this based on what?
@@williamjacobs common sense
@@williamjacobs UBI is like feeding a duck in a park. It gets fed every day, so it no longer forges for food. If it ever had to fend for itself again, it would likely starve because it hasn't practiced the skills necessary to forge in a long time.
omg another garbage video about ubi.
What you say the main point of UBI is, increasing earning potential, is not what I’ve ever heard from leftists. The argument leftists usually make is that it increases people’s ability to use their time the way they want. I think working less, moving to a better neighborhood, and going to the doctor more are all good outcomes.
Remember money is a means not an end. You premise of money to help make more money as the sole important criteria is not looking at indicator which will may help generational improvement. Important question on whether you are able to spend more quality time with your children which is one of the primary indicators child development and achievement are the indicator which can break the cycle of poverty. I agree that the think you state are both interesting and important but not necessarily the only important indicators. I agree they should be included in reporting on findings. I think your fairly disparaging comment on participants accessing health and dental care as being important show a lack of understanding of difficulty of accessing such care for people in disadvantaged communities. Undiagnosed and untreated health and dental care issue snowball, particularly in children which can lead to very negative outcomes (both on people wealth and economic opportunities). It all fits together.
All you have to do is understand how rent works, and this fact follows directly.
When people don't have to work then they won't work.
Fix the economy to were there is no shortage of jobs and you enable people to better their lives.
Honestly, they could make it so the UBI money can only be used for education and healthcare.
I know this is a nitpick, but it was technically the Roman Republic while Julius was in charge. It became the Roman Empire after his nephew Octavius assumed titles after defeating Cleopatra and Marc Anthony.
Again, it's just me nitpicking
Surprise… poor people hate their jobs and often work crazy hours… the second you have them some stability they relaxed more. That’s a good thing if you ask me. Especially since the real reasons for UBI is not what you said but to stop an apocalyptic level of chaos when automation replaces employment.
"The logic makes sense on paper"
No it doesn't.
If it's fiat and you're not increasing tax to compensate you're devaluing your currency by however much you're giving out every year. If you're increasing tax to support it, taxation (irregardless of the immorality of blatant wealth redistribution) is an overall negative to economic growth and mainly impacts the poor.
If it's not fiat, you're bankrupting the state in the first example.
The main issue with the welfare system is that it's bureaucracy that adds up to mostly dead weight, replacing it with a single dead weight doesn't fix the issue.
The only reason why UBI kind of works in 3rd world countries is because the baseline there is $100 a month keeps you from dying of dysentery like it's 1840 and not dying from not having basic sanitation means you can work and provide for your family. That's not a thing that happens anywhere else.
Honestly saying UBI doesn't work based off one study in America is throwing the baby out with the bath water. Kind of tired of TH-cam influencers poking holes in everything but offering 0 solutions themselves.
So sad that they had more leisure time. How DARE they. UBI is Failure
What if you "own" your house and loose your job, but you can't keep up with the $300 - $1000 (depending on location) a month in property tax that the government charges for an average single family home (my parents now pay over $10,000 a year in property tax on a house that was worth less than $100,000 in the 90s)
11:15 You get kicked out of your house if you lose your income even if you own it because of taxes. What kind of economist are you?
we have free public schools,even health care. create work . W P A not handouts. give them no other options but to get up early and sweat
Many flawed economic theories overlook the concept of free will, often substituting it with a notion of collective victimhood. This perspective tends to ignore or misunderstand how incentive structures function, failing to recognize their crucial role in influencing individual behavior.
It isn't even a true UBI experiment. A real experiment would be also taxing everybody more to cover the cost of UBI so you would need to look at the negative impact of that additional tax burden and how many people are pulled down lower economically because of it.
Very strange to think this study was proving a point about UBI. It isn't able to be replicated, so it's not scientific in nature. It's also not a failure given that the latent conditions of a "universal" support system is in lieu of access to many other support systems, including income or jobs they would be working at the same time. This is not a test, this is a contrived situation which can't be replicated or studied elsewhere. To say it failed, is to inhale your own flatulence and wonder about the air outside being polluted.
During the pandemic does not fare. Also, disabled people are penalized for part time working this could greatly improve life quality. Elderly that choose between food and medicine could do both which could lower their medical bills in the long run more than the UBI
What does this study say about the psychology of state run welfare and UBI?
I don't understand why people thought this wouldn't happen. The result of people on UBI becoming poorer than they otherwise would be is obvious to the point of redundancy. Of course giving people FREE money will result in them buying luxuries and goods they would otherwise not be able to.
Most poor Americans are poor because they don’t save or limit their spending habits.Tattoos, cigarettes, fast food, and beer shouldn’t be on their shopping list. People who advocate this aren’t really that smart, the don’t see the obvious flaw in their argument.