[jlawson]

Studies on basic income have shown that it's harmful to the people who receive it.

They report no improvements on any measured outcome. Not lower stress, not more education, not better health. They work a bit less but that doesn't help them or their kids.

Over the long term it harms them because their productive skills, values, and emotional capacities atrophy away from lack of use.

[ragazzina]

> Studies on basic income have shown that it's harmful to the people who receive it.

That's extremely interesting, can you link such studies?

[jlawson]

This podcast covers a bunch of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5nj3DLvT64

It's one of those things that can be tricky to research because almost all the researchers and journalists on the topic very much don't want to see this conclusion. So there's a tremendous amount of misrepresentation and wishful reasoning about how to interpret the data. The truth comes out from actually reading the data, not researcher or journalist summaries.

[ororoo]

"Final verdict on Finland's basic income trial: More happiness but little employment effect"

https://yle.fi/a/3-11337944 https://www.helsinki.fi/en/news/fair-society/universal-basic...

so basic income caused more happiness, less stress. but those are not profitable things, so, no basic income in finland.

[Analemma_]

What’s the alternative, if AI does turn out to be able to replace large swathes of the workforce? Just kill everyone?

You could ban it and then turn all existing employment into a makework jobs program, but this doesn’t seem sustainable: work you know is pointless is just as psychically corrosive, and in any event companies will just leave for less-regulated shores where AI is allowed.

[RobertoG]

what studies are those?

[NickC25]

>Over the long term it harms them

Yes, but not for the reasons you state. It harms them because we have an zero desire as a society to effectively combat inflation, which negates any benefits we can give people who receive the basic income.

The powers-that-be don't take action to make sure the people who get basic income can actually use it to improve their lives. Food prices rapidly inflate, education costs skyrocket, medical costs increase exponentially almost overnight.

Much like how the government backstopping student loans basically got university costs to jump, promising to give people a basic income while not addressing the root causes of inequality and wealth disparity just makes things worse.

If you want basic income to truly work, you have to engage in some activities in the short term that are inherently un-capitalistic, although if done correctly, actually improve capitalism as a whole for society. Price controls and freezes, slashing executive pay, increasing taxes on the wealthiest, etc.