We should give free money to the homeless

[Greg Bernhardt]

Maybe we can see it in action

Switzerland May Give Every Citizen $2,600 a Month
http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/what-would-you-do-with-2800-a-month-no-questions-asked/?f97yi44r%3Futm_source=mbfb

 

[russ_watters]

Switzerland May Give Every Citizen $2,600 a Month

Or not:

The proposed plan would guarantee a monthly income of CHF 2,500, or about $2,600

So it wouldn't give everyone $2,600 a month unless everyone in the country immediatly quit their jobs after it is implemented!

The site cited is in German and I'm having issues with the translation though, so I'm unsure if the error was from the article or the original source.

Will be interesting to see if they do it though. And how it would actually be structured/funded.

 

[mheslep]

The problem with the Swiss plan would be same as its always been with such plans: the monetary value of your first $2600/month worth of labor is zero, and thus the incentive for anyone who can't earn any more than that amount is not to have a paying job.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

incentive for anyone who can't earn any more than that amount is not to have a paying job

So money is the only incentive to have a job? I've also had many volunteer jobs that didn't pay me dime, but I was very productive.

 

[russ_watters]

So money is the only incentive to have a job? I've also had many volunteer jobs that didn't pay me dime, but I was very productive.

C'mon Greg, that's naive. Money is the primary incentive to have a job and you can't volunteer as a hobby unless you already have a paying job that pays you enough (or are independently wealthy) while providing enough free time to volunteer as a hobby. If people volunteered to work at McDonalds for free, McDonalds would be all over that. This law, if implemented, would eliminate most of their workforce -- garbage collectors and janitors too. Zoos and aquariums would boom though.

I know people who have made this choice and the wage doesn't even need to be greater than what you are making now, it only needs to be high enough that your pay rate is too low to be bothered with.

One friend who was on unemployment actually calculated the delta-pay rate between unemployment compensation and a job she was offered and declined it because she didn't want to work for $2 an hour (or whatever the delta was).

Another friend, instead of using his new unemployed status as free time to work at a soup kitchen
(or get training or apply for new jobs) took the free time and used his unemployment checks to fund a cross-country road trip.

A third did indeed take his free time and nonexistent need for money and go volunteer at an aquarium -- where he eventually got a paying job.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

Money is the primary incentive to have a job

I think it would be interesting to discuss what happens to people when money is not a major motivator and people are more able to actually do what they want to do.

This is an interesting video

can't volunteer as a hobby unless you already have a paying job that pays you enough

They can if they are already given a "living" wage.

If people volunteered to work at McDonalds for free, McDonalds would be all over that. This law, if implemented, would eliminate most of their workforce -- garbage collectors and janitors too.

That's what the robotic revolution is for. ;)

 

[russ_watters]

I think it would be interesting to discuss what happens to people when money is not a major motivator and people are more able to actually do what they want to do.

This is an interesting video

They can if they are already given a "living" wage.

That's what the robotic revolution is for. ;)

I'm a big fan of Star Trek, but we are a long way from that level of technology and even as utopian visions go, the no-money Star Trek system is very undeveloped. It is interesting, but I see it as highly speculative science fiction, not a basis for economic policy in the real world today.

Note that in the video, they didn't even test what you suggest: offering the reward without requiring the work be done. It would indeed be interesting to measure the performance if the reward is giving without any performance requirement at all.

Nor or they really testing the reality of how pay is determined. They are testing a popular theory on how pay should be determined and people oftenly mistakenly believe it is. So it is a bit of a strawman/non sequitur for them to argue that merrit-based pay doesn't necessarily produce the best results. Strictly speaking, merrit isn't the driver, supply and demand is. And while supply and demand produces some similar structures to merrit in some cases, it isn't exactly the same and in some cases produces vast differences.

Take their example of tech-based jobs. Google and Apple jobs pay well. Why do they, when clearly, exceptional people are willing to do the same work for free so performance isn't well coupled to pay? It's supply and demand. A highly sought-after employee is going to go to work for Apple or Google. All things about the vision of the company/intellectual value of the job being equal, they will pick the one that pays better.

So why do CEO jobs pay well? Because the pool of qualified CEOs is small. Why does the aquarium job pay poorly? Because even at a low or nonexistent salary, lots of quality people are still willing to do it and the job doesn't require the people who do it to be elite, so there is no need for the businesses to compete for quality workers.

 

[NTW]

Some mentally ill can get cheap housing and social security checks. They just need someone to help them figure it out and apply.

Permanent care is necessary. If you are mentally ill, but there's someone close to you who sees that you take your pills and visit the doctor at the scheduled times, then you can probably stay at home. Without that caring person, the mentally ill usually end up homeless...

 

[mheslep]

So money is the only incentive to have a job? I've also had many volunteer jobs that didn't pay me dime, but I was very productive.

There's some long established economic work showing that, at *higher incomes*, money becomes a smaller share of overall incentive, hence the like of Google providing free gourmet meals and similar perks, or young no-pay interns with complete family financial support. But at the income levels proposed by Switzerland money is everything, separating an entire class of society from incentives to improve its situation.

We can't easily see what matters to others. Left to ourselves our often flawed imagination about what works for others is benign, but enter the government that allows A to take from B to give to C and the damage can be severe.

As mentioned earlier, proposals that deal with the possibility of negative incentives came out decades ago.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax

 

[mheslep]

So why do CEO jobs pay well? Because the pool of qualified CEOs is small.

Another reason is that the high CEO income is often long in arriving, short, and unstable. That is, the typical CEO gets the big chair at ~52, burns out or is pushed out at ~57. Yes a successful retiring CEO might get some cozy board of directors seats, but for those that were pushed out, well, there are no former-CEO job fairs, so they better have gotten their ticket-to-ride while on top.

 

[nsaspook]

As mentioned earlier, proposals that deal with the possibility of negative incentives came out decades ago.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax

This is the effect that worries me more than just people not working. The loss of low income family stability.

They also found an unexpected result: instead of promoting family stability (the presumed result of extending benefits to two-parent working families on an equal basis), the NITs seemed to increase family breakup.[17]

 

[mheslep]

This is the effect that worries me more than just people not working. The loss of low income family stability.

The NIT may have flaws, but it is large improvement on just writing government checks.

 

[OmCheeto]

I did pick crops on my aunt's farm as a child.

How well did she pay?

 

[Evo]

How well did she pay?

I got to eat some of what I picked, only the workers on the picking machines got paid. But it was so much fun going out into the fields and working that I wouldn't have dreamed of asking to be paid. I always wanted to own a farm, not a huge farm like hers, but just a small family farm. (End of OT sidetrack)

 

[OmCheeto]

I got to eat some of what I picked

I ate all of my profits that year.

, only the workers on the picking machines got paid.

So, how did you make money then?

,
But it was so much fun going out into the fields and working that I wouldn't have dreamed of asking to be paid.

You sound like Greg now.

,
I always wanted to own a farm, not a huge farm like hers, but just a small family farm. (End of OT sidetrack)

There is no OT/ST in this thread. (IMHO)

All I've seen so far, is opinion. Hence, my generally slow lack of response.

hmmm...

I'm still trying to figure out where we all came from.

Does anyone know if Greg's dad read "Childhood's End" by A.C. Clark?

 

[Evo]

I didn't make money, I worked on the farm for the fun of it. During the summer when I was there, I stayed at her house and ate her food, I certainly didn't expect to be paid for having fun, I had to beg to be allowed to work.

 

[Pythagorean]

I would agree with Greg; money is not the primary incentive for me. Doing something meaningful is. Money is, however, a necessary condition (if insufficient) as far as it is needed to survive.

 

[OmCheeto]

I didn't make money, I worked on the farm for the fun of it. During the summer when I was there, I stayed at her house and ate her food, I certainly didn't expect to be paid for having fun, I had to beg to be allowed to work.

You didn't make money? Then how did you manage to acquire candy before and after Halloween? Did you steal it?

 

[mfb]

The swiss website is a bit contradicting.

Es wird also grundsätzlich an alle gezahlt, ohne Ansehen sonstiger Einkünfte und Tätigkeiten.

"The money gets paid to all, no matter how much they earn elsewhere or what they do."

On the other hand, you can find statements like this one, claiming the total amount someone earns does not change (if above 2500 SFR).

Apparently they hope the job at McDonalds would give more than 2500 SFR then. I'm not sure if that concept works. Especially as Switzerland is not isolated from Europe - can you completely change the value of work and products if everyone can simply cross the border to get something cheaper?

Anyway, would be a very interesting experiment.I can help with translations if something is unclear.

 

[RonL]

I had to beg to be allowed to work.

Hmmmm!:)

 

[russ_watters]

I didn't make money, I worked on the farm for the fun of it. During the summer when I was there, I stayed at her house and ate her food, I certainly didn't expect to be paid for having fun, I had to beg to be allowed to work.

I got paid for working on my grandparents farm when I was a kid. My parents would dump me and my sister while they went on vacation. After subtracting room and board, my very first paycheck I ever got was $7.

 

[russ_watters]

I would agree with Greg; money is not the primary incentive for me. Doing something meaningful is. Money is, however, a necessary condition (if insufficient) as far as it is needed to survive.

I suppose it would depend on where you draw your line/frame the question. If it is a question of +- a few thousand dollars, one can pick other motivations. But versus having no job, the money is by far the biggest issue.

 

[OmCheeto]

Hmmmm!:)

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

Here's another interesting article by the Economist
http://www.economist.com/news/inter...people-works-surprisingly-well-it-cannot-deal

 

[DivergentSpectrum]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_United_States
In america the bottom 40% of people own .2 percent of the wealth
the top 1% own 34.6 percent of the wealth

Its really scary. Its kinda hard to even fathom or put into context. i know we say were a democracy, but technically america is an oligarchy (where a small group of people runs the country).

However, there is good news:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality
while america seems to be an aberation in the trend of developed countries, overall developed countries are far more equal in wealth, which means that as humanity continues to evolve as a whole, we will eventually reach a good equilibrium between opportunity and incentive

 

[aaa16797]

I actually think that giving homeless people jobs would be better. You are basically making them work for their money, so they can spend their time doing something productive to society

 

[Silicon Waffle]

Usually people doing charity will offer them an initial (pretty) large amount of money first and then introduce them open jobs they can do.
If I were one of them, I'd prefer to get the money anyway.

 

[Czcibor]

I'm not sure how relevant it is here, but:

But the biggest problem may be the way casino profits are sometimes disbursed. Per capita payments have grown as gaming revenues have risen. “These payments can be destructive because the more generous they become, the more people fall into the trap of not working,” says Ron Whitener, a law professor, tribal judge and a member of the Squaxin Island Tribe in Washington state. Of the 17 tribes in the study that handed casino profits directly to members, ten saw their poverty rates rise. Of the seven tribes that did not, only two saw such an increase (see chart).Per capita payments range from as little as a few hundred dollars a year to more than $100,000. In some tribes, members receive 18 years of per capita payments in a lump sum when they turn 18. “There are a lot of very successful car dealerships around reservations that make their money off 18-year- old,” adds Mr Whitener. -

One very small tribe in the study, Jamestown S’Klallam in northern Washington, has eliminated poverty entirely. That tribe does not issue any per capita payments and has used its casino profits to diversify into other businesses, such as harvesting huge molluscs for export to China. Squaxin Island, which reduced its poverty rate from 31.4% in 2000 to 12.4% in 2010, used casino profits to get into cigarette manufacturing about ten years ago. Leaders of the Siletz tribe, by contrast, allot 40% of the casino’s net revenues to per capita payments and only 17% towards economic development. Of the tribes surveyed, the Siletz has one of the highest poverty rates.

http://www.economist.com/news/unite...makes-native-americans-poorer-slots-and-slothYes, I know small sample and correlation instead of causative relationship. Nevertheless...

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

Here is a recent opinion piece, but still interesting
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/18/what-happens-when-the-poor-receive-a-stipend/?_r=1

 

[houlahound]

I didn't realize there was already this thread on the UBI.

 

[OmCheeto]

I didn't realize there was already this thread on the UBI.

Being newly retired, and getting a UBI, and knowing what I've become(LAZY!), I'm starting to see the right wing side of the thought process.
As far as I can tell, right wingers got their money either by being not poor in the first place, or gaming the system.
In any event, they understood long before I did, what it meant to be "self lazy".

One of them really needs to start a thread, on how they overcame that affliction.

 

[houlahound]

I am certain that most people would not become lazy if their basic needs were provided. I think the opposite would happen.

Most people I know on retirement pension work harder than ever in volunteer clubs/committees/lobby groups...

Of course there is a percentage of people that really are just lazy.

I only imagine all the useless physics experiments I would be doing if I did not have to spend so much time on basic survival.

 

[Vanadium 50]

As far as I can tell, right wingers got their money either by being not poor in the first place, or gaming the system.

Or perhaps they hear this kind of comment, dripping with loathing, and decide to oppose your politics? Clay County, KY, which often tops the list of poorest US counties, went 9:1 for the Republican candidate this year.

 

[houlahound]

Or perhaps they hear this kind of comment, dripping with loathing, and decide to oppose your politics? Clay County, KY, which often tops the list of poorest US counties, went 9:1 for the Republican candidate this year.

I am not in the US or understand their politics but have seen places in the South that are like third world hell holes and the people support policies that help them the least ie opposition to healthcare when their health is poor, opposition to welfare when they depend in food stamps, opposition to peace when they are cannon fodder, opposition to overseas manufacturing but addicted to cheap consumer products, opposition to science...

What's up with that, the South is a hard logic to follow.

 

[OmCheeto]

I am certain that most people would not become lazy if their basic needs were provided.
...

See: Children

aka, You are correct.