I would take such data as evidence if it was peer-reviewed (and not just a report by the organizers who claim that “we introduced it and it’s great”), and, more importantly, if we had information about its long-term effects. All of these projects are very recent. What will happen after a year? The initial enthusiasm might prompt people to spend the money wisely, but what will happen if they grow used to take it for granted? What will happen after ten years? Or after a whole new generation grows up?
I’m living in Eastern Europe, where, although no “basic income” was introduced, the changes in the last few decades led to a situation similar to basic income. And it had a disastrous effect. I’m not exaggerating with the word “disastrous”, because this region was invaded, looted and burned regularly during its history, by Mongols, Ottomans, Russians and others, and it was always rebuilt. The last few decades brought a greater devastation than any war from which it might never recover, with abandoned villages, destroyed culture, and a general hopeless mood despite a more comfortable living people in this region ever had.
Please let me elaborate.
In the past, people had to work very had just to survive. They had no other choice. Still, as everyone was almost equally poor and had to work equally hard, they were relatively happy. This I can attest from all the cultural artifacts which remain from that period, beautiful clothes, handcrafting, made by simple villagers and decorating every house, cheerful folk songs, and childhood memories of my grandparents who had to work on the fields even as children, walked barefooted most of the time, but still have very happy memories. I know, there might be some bias in those happy memories, but still, the society as a whole survived and even prospered. If an army devastated the village and burnt the houses down, the survivors rebuilt everything without any outside help from the government, and life went on.
Today, although the economic situation is quite bad, especially when we compare it to the rich Western Europe, you can get away with not working. You can get away with being irresponsible, and you can get away with being an alcoholic. You will not starve. Life might be hard for you, but basic food is cheap enough, basic clothing is almost for free, and there are plenty of opportunities for survival even for the very lazy and very uneducated people. They can do some seasonal jobs for a short while, receive some financial aid, then loiter around for months. They might live uncomfortably, but they won’t starve to death. Life is much easier, compared to what was the norm for many centuries. But as the rich West is nearby, people are depressed. They are depressed that they only make 5 times as much as their grandparents did, and not 50 times as much, like they do in the West. Although in the past the villages were mostly self-sufficient, and they worked even the hardest fields on the mountainsides, today there are vast fields with good quality soil on the plains, most of which are abandoned. Corruption is rampant, in many villages people were first used to not being required to work from morning till evening because they got a little financial aid, and now they bribe the doctors to put them on disability pension.
And there are opportunities for working, there are a few motivated people who start again with mostly self-sufficient agriculture, but for most people the low wages are not attractive. They rather loiter, barely surviving, instead of going to work for just a little bit more money as what they can get without having a stable job. Of course, if the wages were higher, that would motivate more people, and of course, the low wages can be partly responsible form many people to choose welfare instead of work, but the biggest problem is that the damage to culture is already done. And such a trend is very hard to be reversed, if the majority of society is used to something.
The point is, that in the past people didn’t have the possibility to choose this lifestyle, as they would have starved to death. These psychological changes happen through decades, not over a few moths. This is why I would be very careful in evaluating the “basic income” projects too soon.
Sadly, all this will remain anectodal evidence, because the region is not interesting enough to be featured in any English-speaking media, besides very one-sided and politically-motivated rants about racism against Gypsies. And speaking of Gypsies, you will not find it in the media, but if you come here, 100 people out of 100 will be able to testify that since they started getting financial aid (which they didn’t get back before the fall of communism) they are poorer (and work less) than before.
Human advancement is (and always was) motivated by need. If you take that need away, you will take the motivation away.
And sadly, in this ever-faster world people don’t see the side-effects of very slow social changes, which will be measurable only after several decades. Maybe they don’t even care, because the next election is in 4 years, not 40.
Speaking about the Gypsies, here is a problem that frequently happens:
There is a group of people, culturally and otherwise related, who have a strong preference for living close to each other. Also, most people in the group are unemployed. What happens?
The costs of living are different in different places. Usually the proximity of good job opportunities drives the prices up. So, if you are unemployed and almost all your friends and relatives are unemployed, it makes economically a lot of sense to move—together—to a location without job opportunities. You can sell your old small appartment and buy a new larger house, and you will still have some money left. The problem is, now you are effectively locked in the unemployment.
Even worse, your children are also locked. Even if they would like to get a job, they can’t. They live in a location without job opportunities. And they won’t move to a better place, because they are part of a culture that has a strong preference for living close to each other, and all their friends and relatives live in a place without job opportunities. Even if a few of them leave, most of the group will stay where they are, and the problem remains for generations.
The lesson for the basic income is the following… if you allow too many people to live without having jobs… so we would not be talking about unemployed individuals, but about whole communities where unemployment is a norm, then their children who might want to have a job could have a problem finding one simply because there is none in the area.
The same mechanism is at work in many American Indian communities.
The problem is exacerbated by ongoing evaporative cooling: people (mostly young) with energy, talent, motivation all leave. What’s left behind in the community is usually not pretty.
The problem is exacerbated by ongoing evaporative cooling: people (mostly young) with energy, talent, motivation all leave. What’s left behind in the community is usually not pretty.
It may not be pretty, but that’s most likely because they either don’t have any money, or can only get it under onerous conditions (‘welfare’). If you just pay everyone the same amount, it doesn’t take much to improve these folks’ living standards until they’re at least tolerable. (Since their local area is so cheap.) And once you have some money flowing in the area, local job opportunities would also spring up. (This is basically the principle GiveDirectly relies on, although they apply it to some of the poorest people in the world, as opposed to Roma or Native Americans.)
Money is a part of the problem, or maybe the origin of the whole problem, but at some moment there is a culture that perpetuates itself, and from that point giving more money does not help.
For example, in a group of poor people it makes sense to reduce the concept of private property. To make a mutual treaty of “if someone from our group is starving, and others have food or money, they are obliged to share”. At some moment this treaty benefits everyone, so it becomes a part of the culture. But in a long term… as soon as the first job opportunity appears, you would have to be an idiot to take it. It means more work and less free time for you, while your wage is shared with everyone. But you can’t go against the whole culture. Except if you leave the group. This is a reason why the motivated people leave; they simply cannot live the new lifestyle within the old group.
Okay, this is too complicated topic to be discussed as a sidenote in a “stupid questions thread”. Just wanted to say that “a poor community surrounded by rich communities” is a different dynamics than “a poor community surrounded by poor communities”. The difference is the easiness of just going away for all motivated people.
To make a mutual treaty of “if someone from our group is starving, and others have food or money, they are obliged to share”. …
Interesting point. Still, it would be interesting to see whether UBI can affect this dynamic. After all, the whole point of UBI is to provide social insurance (i.e. make sure that nobody is starving, at least in a literal sense) more effectively than any arrangement within the poor group.
make sure that nobody is starving, at least in a literal sense
The point is, that it’s already done without an UBI, by a much lesser scarcity than in previous generations, augmented by a very meager but existing aid system, that nobody is starving in the literal sense, and this allows them to choose a less responsible lifestyle. And it is very hard for those who try to break out of this lifestyle, they have to literally flee their peers. I know of Gypsies who did successfully try to break out and become medics or engineers, and they (especially, but not exclusively, girls) were bullied by their own families: “how dare you think you are better than us!”
I’m living in Eastern Europe, where, although no “basic income” was introduced, the changes in the last few decades led to a situation similar to basic income
Well, this is one point of view obviously, but UBI supporters might disagree about how “similar” it is. Some of the things you mention, wrt. family farms being abandoned in favor of urban lifestyles, are happening literally across the world; the unfavorable comparison with the West is also not something that basic income could affect either way. And ISTM that widespread abuse of things like disability is even worse than most ‘welfare’ in making people disinclined to work. But this is something that UBI aims to correct, while still making life easier for the folks who receive it.
I would take such data as evidence if it was peer-reviewed (and not just a report by the organizers who claim that “we introduced it and it’s great”), and, more importantly, if we had information about its long-term effects. All of these projects are very recent. What will happen after a year? The initial enthusiasm might prompt people to spend the money wisely, but what will happen if they grow used to take it for granted? What will happen after ten years? Or after a whole new generation grows up?
I’m living in Eastern Europe, where, although no “basic income” was introduced, the changes in the last few decades led to a situation similar to basic income. And it had a disastrous effect. I’m not exaggerating with the word “disastrous”, because this region was invaded, looted and burned regularly during its history, by Mongols, Ottomans, Russians and others, and it was always rebuilt. The last few decades brought a greater devastation than any war from which it might never recover, with abandoned villages, destroyed culture, and a general hopeless mood despite a more comfortable living people in this region ever had.
Please let me elaborate. In the past, people had to work very had just to survive. They had no other choice. Still, as everyone was almost equally poor and had to work equally hard, they were relatively happy. This I can attest from all the cultural artifacts which remain from that period, beautiful clothes, handcrafting, made by simple villagers and decorating every house, cheerful folk songs, and childhood memories of my grandparents who had to work on the fields even as children, walked barefooted most of the time, but still have very happy memories. I know, there might be some bias in those happy memories, but still, the society as a whole survived and even prospered. If an army devastated the village and burnt the houses down, the survivors rebuilt everything without any outside help from the government, and life went on. Today, although the economic situation is quite bad, especially when we compare it to the rich Western Europe, you can get away with not working. You can get away with being irresponsible, and you can get away with being an alcoholic. You will not starve. Life might be hard for you, but basic food is cheap enough, basic clothing is almost for free, and there are plenty of opportunities for survival even for the very lazy and very uneducated people. They can do some seasonal jobs for a short while, receive some financial aid, then loiter around for months. They might live uncomfortably, but they won’t starve to death. Life is much easier, compared to what was the norm for many centuries. But as the rich West is nearby, people are depressed. They are depressed that they only make 5 times as much as their grandparents did, and not 50 times as much, like they do in the West. Although in the past the villages were mostly self-sufficient, and they worked even the hardest fields on the mountainsides, today there are vast fields with good quality soil on the plains, most of which are abandoned. Corruption is rampant, in many villages people were first used to not being required to work from morning till evening because they got a little financial aid, and now they bribe the doctors to put them on disability pension. And there are opportunities for working, there are a few motivated people who start again with mostly self-sufficient agriculture, but for most people the low wages are not attractive. They rather loiter, barely surviving, instead of going to work for just a little bit more money as what they can get without having a stable job. Of course, if the wages were higher, that would motivate more people, and of course, the low wages can be partly responsible form many people to choose welfare instead of work, but the biggest problem is that the damage to culture is already done. And such a trend is very hard to be reversed, if the majority of society is used to something. The point is, that in the past people didn’t have the possibility to choose this lifestyle, as they would have starved to death. These psychological changes happen through decades, not over a few moths. This is why I would be very careful in evaluating the “basic income” projects too soon.
Sadly, all this will remain anectodal evidence, because the region is not interesting enough to be featured in any English-speaking media, besides very one-sided and politically-motivated rants about racism against Gypsies. And speaking of Gypsies, you will not find it in the media, but if you come here, 100 people out of 100 will be able to testify that since they started getting financial aid (which they didn’t get back before the fall of communism) they are poorer (and work less) than before. Human advancement is (and always was) motivated by need. If you take that need away, you will take the motivation away.
And sadly, in this ever-faster world people don’t see the side-effects of very slow social changes, which will be measurable only after several decades. Maybe they don’t even care, because the next election is in 4 years, not 40.
Speaking about the Gypsies, here is a problem that frequently happens:
There is a group of people, culturally and otherwise related, who have a strong preference for living close to each other. Also, most people in the group are unemployed. What happens?
The costs of living are different in different places. Usually the proximity of good job opportunities drives the prices up. So, if you are unemployed and almost all your friends and relatives are unemployed, it makes economically a lot of sense to move—together—to a location without job opportunities. You can sell your old small appartment and buy a new larger house, and you will still have some money left. The problem is, now you are effectively locked in the unemployment.
Even worse, your children are also locked. Even if they would like to get a job, they can’t. They live in a location without job opportunities. And they won’t move to a better place, because they are part of a culture that has a strong preference for living close to each other, and all their friends and relatives live in a place without job opportunities. Even if a few of them leave, most of the group will stay where they are, and the problem remains for generations.
The lesson for the basic income is the following… if you allow too many people to live without having jobs… so we would not be talking about unemployed individuals, but about whole communities where unemployment is a norm, then their children who might want to have a job could have a problem finding one simply because there is none in the area.
The same mechanism is at work in many American Indian communities.
The problem is exacerbated by ongoing evaporative cooling: people (mostly young) with energy, talent, motivation all leave. What’s left behind in the community is usually not pretty.
It may not be pretty, but that’s most likely because they either don’t have any money, or can only get it under onerous conditions (‘welfare’). If you just pay everyone the same amount, it doesn’t take much to improve these folks’ living standards until they’re at least tolerable. (Since their local area is so cheap.) And once you have some money flowing in the area, local job opportunities would also spring up. (This is basically the principle GiveDirectly relies on, although they apply it to some of the poorest people in the world, as opposed to Roma or Native Americans.)
Money is a part of the problem, or maybe the origin of the whole problem, but at some moment there is a culture that perpetuates itself, and from that point giving more money does not help.
For example, in a group of poor people it makes sense to reduce the concept of private property. To make a mutual treaty of “if someone from our group is starving, and others have food or money, they are obliged to share”. At some moment this treaty benefits everyone, so it becomes a part of the culture. But in a long term… as soon as the first job opportunity appears, you would have to be an idiot to take it. It means more work and less free time for you, while your wage is shared with everyone. But you can’t go against the whole culture. Except if you leave the group. This is a reason why the motivated people leave; they simply cannot live the new lifestyle within the old group.
Okay, this is too complicated topic to be discussed as a sidenote in a “stupid questions thread”. Just wanted to say that “a poor community surrounded by rich communities” is a different dynamics than “a poor community surrounded by poor communities”. The difference is the easiness of just going away for all motivated people.
Interesting point. Still, it would be interesting to see whether UBI can affect this dynamic. After all, the whole point of UBI is to provide social insurance (i.e. make sure that nobody is starving, at least in a literal sense) more effectively than any arrangement within the poor group.
The point is, that it’s already done without an UBI, by a much lesser scarcity than in previous generations, augmented by a very meager but existing aid system, that nobody is starving in the literal sense, and this allows them to choose a less responsible lifestyle. And it is very hard for those who try to break out of this lifestyle, they have to literally flee their peers. I know of Gypsies who did successfully try to break out and become medics or engineers, and they (especially, but not exclusively, girls) were bullied by their own families: “how dare you think you are better than us!”
Well, this is one point of view obviously, but UBI supporters might disagree about how “similar” it is. Some of the things you mention, wrt. family farms being abandoned in favor of urban lifestyles, are happening literally across the world; the unfavorable comparison with the West is also not something that basic income could affect either way. And ISTM that widespread abuse of things like disability is even worse than most ‘welfare’ in making people disinclined to work. But this is something that UBI aims to correct, while still making life easier for the folks who receive it.
I wonder what slatestarcodex would make it this.