If I had a choice between e.g. $3000 monthly for working and $500 for staying at home, it would feel very different from choice between $3000 for working and $0 for staying at home. I could probably translate the “very different feeling” to better position at negotiating either higher salary or better working conditions.
Right, and that’s the point of unemployment benefits.
Well, yes and no. To get the unemployment benefits, there are some conditions (depending on the country). If I decided I want to stop working now, I probably wouldn’t get the unemployment benefits, unless I had a good excuse. They might just offer me another job, and I would have to take it, or lose the unemployment benefits. Also, I would have to do a huge amount of paperwork. All these inconveniences are big enough for me to not take this option voluntarily. If I tried this for one month, it is likely I would spend a large part of the month just visiting the bureaucrats and doing the paperwork.
With basic income without any conditions and paperwork attached, it would be like taking a vacation.
By “unemployment benefits” I mean benefits which are given to any able person of working age who doesn’t work, for whatever reason.
Some countries have unemployment benefits which have limited duration and/or are conditioned to the requirement to accept any job. That’s not what I’m talking about.
The bureaucratic hassles could be reduced to virtually zero if the government keeps track of who is employed and who isn’t. Yes, there is a risk of fraud: people could work without declaring it (with the complicity of their employers if any) and earn both their wage and the benefits. The judicial system can deal with that.
Is there a specific country having the unemployment benefits in the way you described here?
(The way I described exists in Slovakia, and I would expect it to be in many other countries too, although I have no data about that.)
By the way, if there is a rule of “if you are not employed, you automatically get $X, no questions asked”, I hope there is also a gradual reduction of X instead of jumping from full value to zero when the person makes some money. To avoid situations like: “Sorry, this month your webpage made you $0.01 from adsense, therefore you are not eligible for the $500 from the government.”
Is there a specific country having the unemployment benefits in the way you described here?
I don’t know, possibly not. But that also applies to basic income.
By the way, if there is a rule of “if you are not employed, you automatically get $X, no questions asked”, I hope there is also a gradual reduction of X instead of jumping from full value to zero when the person makes some money. To avoid situations like: “Sorry, this month your webpage made you $0.01 from adsense, therefore you are not eligible for the $500 from the government.”
There are various forms of income which are tax-exempt, I suppose that these should not count as employment.
The important part of my comment about gradual reduction was that people should never be put in a situation where if they make $N, they get additional $500 from the government, but if they make $N+0.01, they get nothing.
Regardless of how big is the $N, and how specifically they received the $0.01. Even if they received the $N using tax-exempt forms and the $0.01 using taxable forms. Or if $N is the limit for the tax-exempt form, and the $0.01 is the first cent above the limit.
Otherwise we get various kinds of crazy situations where people are punished for doing something that would otherwise be rewarded. Especially with poor people these kinds of situations are known to often lead to bad outcomes, both individually and socially.
...and the relevant part for this debate is that if this gradual reduction is implemented, the outcome is more similar psychologically to basic income than to unemployment benefits, because there is not a sharp dividing line between “not working” and “having a low-paying job”.
(A hypothetical example of a gradual reduction of government support which still does not lead to giving money to everyone would be giving people max(0, $500 − 0.2 X) money if they made $X otherwise. Which means that an unemployed person would get $500; a person who made 0.01 from adsense would get $499.99 regardless of whether adsense income belongs to some bureaucratic category or not; a person getting $200 from their job would get $460, which would make their total income $660; a person getting $2500 or more from their job would get nothing; etc.)
Right, and that’s the point of unemployment benefits.
Well, yes and no. To get the unemployment benefits, there are some conditions (depending on the country). If I decided I want to stop working now, I probably wouldn’t get the unemployment benefits, unless I had a good excuse. They might just offer me another job, and I would have to take it, or lose the unemployment benefits. Also, I would have to do a huge amount of paperwork. All these inconveniences are big enough for me to not take this option voluntarily. If I tried this for one month, it is likely I would spend a large part of the month just visiting the bureaucrats and doing the paperwork.
With basic income without any conditions and paperwork attached, it would be like taking a vacation.
By “unemployment benefits” I mean benefits which are given to any able person of working age who doesn’t work, for whatever reason.
Some countries have unemployment benefits which have limited duration and/or are conditioned to the requirement to accept any job. That’s not what I’m talking about.
The bureaucratic hassles could be reduced to virtually zero if the government keeps track of who is employed and who isn’t.
Yes, there is a risk of fraud: people could work without declaring it (with the complicity of their employers if any) and earn both their wage and the benefits. The judicial system can deal with that.
Is there a specific country having the unemployment benefits in the way you described here?
(The way I described exists in Slovakia, and I would expect it to be in many other countries too, although I have no data about that.)
By the way, if there is a rule of “if you are not employed, you automatically get $X, no questions asked”, I hope there is also a gradual reduction of X instead of jumping from full value to zero when the person makes some money. To avoid situations like: “Sorry, this month your webpage made you $0.01 from adsense, therefore you are not eligible for the $500 from the government.”
I don’t know, possibly not. But that also applies to basic income.
There are various forms of income which are tax-exempt, I suppose that these should not count as employment.
The important part of my comment about gradual reduction was that people should never be put in a situation where if they make $N, they get additional $500 from the government, but if they make $N+0.01, they get nothing.
Regardless of how big is the $N, and how specifically they received the $0.01. Even if they received the $N using tax-exempt forms and the $0.01 using taxable forms. Or if $N is the limit for the tax-exempt form, and the $0.01 is the first cent above the limit.
Otherwise we get various kinds of crazy situations where people are punished for doing something that would otherwise be rewarded. Especially with poor people these kinds of situations are known to often lead to bad outcomes, both individually and socially.
...and the relevant part for this debate is that if this gradual reduction is implemented, the outcome is more similar psychologically to basic income than to unemployment benefits, because there is not a sharp dividing line between “not working” and “having a low-paying job”.
(A hypothetical example of a gradual reduction of government support which still does not lead to giving money to everyone would be giving people max(0, $500 − 0.2 X) money if they made $X otherwise. Which means that an unemployed person would get $500; a person who made 0.01 from adsense would get $499.99 regardless of whether adsense income belongs to some bureaucratic category or not; a person getting $200 from their job would get $460, which would make their total income $660; a person getting $2500 or more from their job would get nothing; etc.)