[felipe]

> I believe that if you remove the incentive to work to survive, vast swaths of people will simply choose not to do anything

Three-quarters of adult recipients of the Brazilian basic income system do work [1].

Like the parent commenter said, "without solid evidence, statements like that are little more than expressions of ideological preference, both on the left and on the right."

[1] http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/how-giving-cash-directly-to...

[notdrunkatall]

Three quarters work, and one quarter do not. What's the unemployment rate in the USA now? If you include those who've 'given up' looking for work or whatever, I think it's around 12%. Yeah, let's fork out a couple of trillion dollars a year and double that.

If you want to do this, you need the data which proves that it can work in the USA.

[quadrangle]

This entire "lazy" argument misses the biggest point: your definition of "work" is worthless. Someone reading interesting books and having meaningful discussions with friends and being there for their families and loved ones… people healthy and happy enough add good to the world without doing bullshit labor. A huge portion of "work" today has no need to be done at all.

Your argument amounts to: But, with a guaranteed income, people might refuse to do wage labor and would just live in the world going about their day following their interests instead of mindlessly processing meaningless bureaucratic forms in some office!

Indeed they might! There's a lot of work happening that need not happen. There's a TON of value coming from things you do not call "work." And your suggestion that having health and food and shelter should be dependent upon doing some miserable useless "work" is fundamentally corrupt perspective.

[notdrunkatall]

My definition of work is most certainly NOT worthless! "Work" is what produces the interesting books, the couches they sit on, the lights and heat which keep them warm, the houses, and everything else they depend on, ad infinitum.

If less people work, there are less things being produced, period. If less things are being produced, there are less things to go around. If there are less things to go around, we are ALL less wealthy.

Is this decrease in wealth trumped by the increase in mental, emotional, and physical health which would supposedly occur under a basic income economy?

I don't know, and neither do you. It would, however, be relatively trivial to do some experiments, gather the data, and analyze that data.

It would certainly be preferable to do this than to dive headlong into a basic income scheme, only to find out that your posterior-derived claims are entirely false.

[kijin]

This seems like a case of "Is the cup half full or half empty?"

In any case, methinks your obsession with unemployment rate is one of the things that we must seriously reconsider if we really want to be objective about the merits (or lack thereof) of basic income (BI).

Let's get a bit philosophical here. One of the fundamental premises of BI is that it's OK for a substantial portion of a future society not to do anything that is traditionally considered "work". And one of the reasons we need to experiment with BI is to see whether or not this seemingly outrageous premise turns out to be correct after all.

Including the unemployment rate in your definition of "it can work in the U.S." is inherently biased against BI because it already assumes the opposite of one of the premises of BI. It's like trying to decide between theism and atheism using the Bible as your measuring stick. Regardless of what conclusion you draw at the end of the day, that competition ain't fair.

In order to make a fair decision, we'll need to go a little meta and ask, for example, about the total productivity of the society, the physical and mental well-being of its citizens, or something like that.

[notdrunkatall]

In any given economic system at any given time, there is a finite level of wealth to be shared by everyone participating in that system. (note: by 'wealth,' I mean things, not currency.) When people work, they produce things (and services), and this increases the total level of wealth within that system. When they do not work, they do not produce things, but they are still consuming things. Thus, people who do not work yet still consume in a given system reduces the overall level of wealth within that system, which reduces the level of wealth that everyone within that system can enjoy.

Thus, from a wealth standpoint, a system with less unemployment is preferable to one with more.

Proponents of basic income usually claim that when people are freed from the drudgery of working a normal job, they will be free to be creative, to take risks, to start businesses, and that this new productivity will compensate for the loss of productivity in the traditional system.

But that's all that is: a claim. It's completely worthless without some kind of data backing it up. It's akin to a preacher saying that God exists because he said that God exists. It simply has no merit.

So would the loss of productivity be compensated for by the increase in physical and mental well-being? I have no clue, nor do you, nor does anyone, because we lack data.

So let's get the data.

[sstrudeau]

There is plenty of "work" that happens outside of the labor market. Some days I pay a babysitter to take care of my daughter; other days my wife has off instead and does the same job.

Once, my battery died and a paid a tow truck for a jumpstart. Another time, I was able to call a friend to get a jump instead. Both times the same service was provided.

The last time I moved, I paid movers to haul boxes. The time before that, my brother and I did the work.

Money in exchange for labor isn't the only way useful work gets done and counted. Some things will still get done even when people aren't paid to do them.

[tg3]

Do you consider advertising to be work? As in, people who work for Pepsi or Coke, convincing consumers to purchase their brand of sugary water over their competitors'. Is that producing wealth? Is society as a whole enjoying a higher level of wealth as a result of their work?

Or would our collective wealth (more broadly defined) be higher if those same people were creating works of art with their skills?

[adaml_623]

If you did a quick Google on the real unemployment rate you would see estimates on the unemployment rate of 11% to 30%.

But that figure from Brazil is not the same as the unemployment rate so stop comparing apples and oranges. The figure from Brazil is going to include people on disability and old age pensions, etc.

[velis_vel]

> Three quarters work, and one quarter do not. What's the unemployment rate in the USA now? If you include those who've 'given up' looking for work or whatever, I think it's around 12%. Yeah, let's fork out a couple of trillion dollars a year and double that.

Not everybody is on the Brazilian system, only people below a certain income level. According to http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpswp2011.pdf the employment level among those in poverty is something like 10%. Obviously you can't directly compare that to the Brazilian system without knowing more about how the US vs. Brazil define poverty, but it's obviously wrong to assume that all income levels are employed at the same rate.

[dllthomas]

What about those who are in school? or retired? or home-makers?

Edited to add:

Per the CIA World Factbook, our workforce is 155 million, including the unemployed. Our population is 316 million, of which about 20% are under 14, and less than 35% are under 25. If we assume everyone under 25 is too young to work (which is crazy, but will give conservative numbers here) then we have 100% * (1 - 155/(316 * .65)) = 24.5% adults who aren't working or seeking work, which is right about the 25% in Brazil. If we assume everyone above 14 should be working (obviously overly aggressive, but for reference) we get 100% * (1 - 155/(316 * .8)) = 38.6%.

[Grokit]

I think your math might be a little off. The idea isn't to give basic income to everyone. The idea would be basically give it to anyone who can't afford basic living expenses. Not to everyone. It's not 25% of the entire population that isn't working, but only 25% of the poorest people being provided income and who probably weren't working anyways

[dionidium]

I think it's you who has misunderstood basic income. Under most schemes everyone gets it. That's the whole point.