A whole 1.3 hours a week or $490 per year at federal minimum wage. Essentially a rounding error. Also worth mentioning it doesn’t say what they were working before so this may simply be a reduction on overtime to take better care of other things such as family, health etc. there’s plenty of things other than finding a “better job” or “being an entrepreneur” that would fall into social or leisure but still reduce things like future healthcare, prison system expenses etc.
From the reason link:
The five researchers who published the paper tracked 1,000 people in Illinois and Texas over three years who were given $1,000 monthly gifts from a nonprofit that funded the study. The average household income for the study’s participants was about $29,000 in 2019, so the monthly payments amounted to about a 40 percent increase in their income.
Relative to a control group of 2,000 people who received just $50 per month, the participants in the UBI group were less productive and no more likely to pursue better jobs or start businesses, the researchers found. They also reported “no significant effects on investments in human capital” due to the monthly payments.
Participants receiving the $1,000 monthly payments saw their income fall by about $1,500 per year (excluding the UBI payments), due to a two percentage point decrease in labor market participation and the fact that participants worked about 1.3 hours less per week than the members of the control group.
Participants in the study generally did not use the extra time to seek new or better jobs—even though younger participants were slightly more likely to pursue additional education. There was no clear indication that the participants in the study were more likely to take the risk of starting a new business, although Vivalt points out that there was a significant uptick in “precursors” to entrepreneurialism. Instead, the largest increases were in categories that the researchers termed social and solo leisure activities.
It’s also like, if they made $29,000/year before plus $12,000 during the study, they’re still making less than someone with a full time job making $20/hour.
$20/hour felt AMAZING as a promotion to a broke-ass food service 20-something, and is a hell of a lot better than $29,000/year-- but having been in that pay-range before, 100% of that increase is going towards stability and comfort stuff.
Imagine-- you can afford more than just scraping by on rent! Wow, what if I can buy a video game?! You mean I can actually say yes when my friend invites me out for a drink this month??? I CAN BUY THE NICE CHICKEN NUGGETS???
Like, damn, of course they aren’t like, “starting an entrepreneurial endeavor”, they’re still broke as hell. The might work a little less, but maybe that’s because they’re like, taking time off when they’re sick, where before they would power through to afford rent? Or maybe they will feel more like they can call off work to help for family or friend emergencies? Like it’s pretty obvious that this UBI amount still falls into the category of bringing people out of poverty stress into “normal human decision making” mode, not like into “has the space to be able to dream about visionary possibilities” mode
The idea that people should not be able to enjoy their lives and always have to keep clawing their way to the top to win at some imaginary race we’re all running is so repellent to me.
Plus, there are several studies that have found the opposite, with both better sample sizes and methodology. If I were near my desktop, I could paste them for the terminally lazy, b/c I bookmark most BI articles and studies. I’ll do so if someone challenges me in early August - I’m traveling until then.
It’s a study. Not a very good one, but even bad ones can be informative. The interpretation leaves a lot to be desired.
P.S. The Center Square is also questionable. They characterize the study as a “massive study.” It was three-year, 3000-participant study at $1k/m. A total of $108k, over three years. “Massive” is vast exaggeration.
A whole 1.3 hours a week or $490 per year at federal minimum wage. Essentially a rounding error. Also worth mentioning it doesn’t say what they were working before so this may simply be a reduction on overtime to take better care of other things such as family, health etc. there’s plenty of things other than finding a “better job” or “being an entrepreneur” that would fall into social or leisure but still reduce things like future healthcare, prison system expenses etc.
From the reason link:
It’s also like, if they made $29,000/year before plus $12,000 during the study, they’re still making less than someone with a full time job making $20/hour.
$20/hour felt AMAZING as a promotion to a broke-ass food service 20-something, and is a hell of a lot better than $29,000/year-- but having been in that pay-range before, 100% of that increase is going towards stability and comfort stuff.
Imagine-- you can afford more than just scraping by on rent! Wow, what if I can buy a video game?! You mean I can actually say yes when my friend invites me out for a drink this month??? I CAN BUY THE NICE CHICKEN NUGGETS???
Like, damn, of course they aren’t like, “starting an entrepreneurial endeavor”, they’re still broke as hell. The might work a little less, but maybe that’s because they’re like, taking time off when they’re sick, where before they would power through to afford rent? Or maybe they will feel more like they can call off work to help for family or friend emergencies? Like it’s pretty obvious that this UBI amount still falls into the category of bringing people out of poverty stress into “normal human decision making” mode, not like into “has the space to be able to dream about visionary possibilities” mode
The idea that people should not be able to enjoy their lives and always have to keep clawing their way to the top to win at some imaginary race we’re all running is so repellent to me.
Plus, there are several studies that have found the opposite, with both better sample sizes and methodology. If I were near my desktop, I could paste them for the terminally lazy, b/c I bookmark most BI articles and studies. I’ll do so if someone challenges me in early August - I’m traveling until then.
It’s a study. Not a very good one, but even bad ones can be informative. The interpretation leaves a lot to be desired.
P.S. The Center Square is also questionable. They characterize the study as a “massive study.” It was three-year, 3000-participant study at $1k/m. A total of $108k, over three years. “Massive” is vast exaggeration.
Can you explain the $108k number and how you got it?
Decimal point displacement. Something I do all the time, unfortunately, when I’m doing mental math… I drop zeros. I consider it a character flaw.
$108M. A couple of orders of magnitude bigger, but still; over three years, far from “massive.”
Humans are just machines to libertarians. Except themselves of course. They’re different. They won’t be a cog. They’re a free-thinker. You’re an NPC.
Also, more leisure time as a bad thing. Christ.
I’m nearly certain my entire life has been a Truman show and that the movie with the same name by Jim Carrey was a psyop for plausible deniability.
As proof: Belgium. Belgium doesn’t exist and it’s irrational they’d make a good waffle when they have approximately zero maple trees.