[nkoren]

Of course it has poverty traps. I live in the UK, where I get to see how the "workfare" programme creates poverty traps all the time.

If you want to get out of poverty, a good way to do that is by getting more education and practicing skills that are valuable to employers. A Basic Job often conflicts with that.

If you want to get out of poverty, a good way to do that is by taking part-time and piecemeal work to build up your experience. A Basic Job often conflicts with that.

A government study of workfare programmes in the UK, Canada, and US[1] concluded that: "There is little evidence that workfare increases the likelihood of finding work. It can even reduce employment chances by limiting the time available for job search and by failing to provide the skills and experience valued by employers."

Oftentimes the poor are those who most need to spend time taking care of children or the elderly -- types of work which are tremendously valuable to society despite not being part of the wage labour system. A basic job conflicts with that.

Furthermore, Basic Job programmes have vast bureaucratic overhead and are far more expensive to implement than Basic Incomes. What you consistently miss in your argument against Basic Income is that it is something which everybody receives. Most people contribute to it, but all people receive a benefit from it. The "cost" is not the total cost of the programme, but the difference between what you pay and what you receive.

1: http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20130128102031/htt...

[yummyfajitas]

I don't understand - how does a Basic Job prevent you from either going to school or taking part time work? No one is obligated to work a Basic Job. It's just what you do if you are unable to find anything better.

Basic Job programmes have vast bureaucratic overhead and are far more expensive to implement than Basic Incomes.

Back of the envelope calculation, please.

Incidentally, your study merely shows there is very little evidence of anything due to workfare being poorly implemented and rapidly abandoned. For example, NYC had only 2800 people on workfare in 2003. Additionally, it claims that about half of people on workfare don't actually work and merely loaf about the work site (but presumably continue receiving benefits).

Obviously a BJ won't work if you turn it into a de-facto BI or welfare system.

[nkoren]

> I don't understand - how does a Basic Job prevent you from either going to school or taking part time work? No one is obligated to work a Basic Job. It's just what you do if you are unable to find anything better.

With this comment, it becomes difficult to see how you're arguing in good faith. If your Basic Job tells you to work at a particular time of day -- and classes and/or a part-time job are in the middle of this work schedule -- then they conflict. Sure, you can go to school and/or take the part-time job instead, but then you starve.

How is it that you're incapable of understanding that this creates a conflict?

> Back of the envelope calculation, please.

Okay, using your straw-man scenario, there are 50M people requiring $20k worth of income. That costs $1T upfront (same as if we provided the $20k Basic Income to all 300M people). Now with our Basic Job, we're basically asking people to do work that they don't want to do -- since as you point out, if they're not closely supervised then they won't do the work.

So let's assume we need a poorly-paid supervisor for every 12 basic-jobbers, a somewhat better-paid line manager for every 20 supervisors, a somewhat well-paid district manager for every 50 line managers, and an actually well-paid regional manager for every 100 district supervisors. Furthermore, lets assume that all these jobs come from the ranks of the currently-unemployed, so that they're not pure overhead but are providing support in and of themselves.

  Job description   $/year   No. of people   Total cost
  Basic Jobber      20k      45,973,453      919.5B
  Supervisor        30k      3,831,121       114.9B
  Line Manager      40k      191,556         7.7B
  District Manager  60k      3,831           0.2B
  Regional Manager  100k     383             -

...This would be an overhead of about 4.2%, compared to the effectively zero overhead which a Basic Income requires (all you need for BI is one-time-only verification of citizenship, and careful monitoring of when people die so that the payments stop. You don't need to employ millions of people to do that). So this would cost roughly $420M more than an equivalent Basic Income program, while simultaneously preventing 50M people from doing something more useful with their lives.

[yummyfajitas]

Going with your numbers, if a basic jobber costs $7.25/hour and they produce $0.30 worth of value, the Basic Job pays for it's own overhead. And of course, $1T < $6T.

I must commend you on actually thinking things through carefully and checking if, numerically, a policy is remotely plausible. It's so rare to see on threads like this.

[nkoren]

> of course, $1T < $6T

Your $6T number is false. Even in your strawman, the cost of the Basic Income would be $1T: $6T less $5T as a "cash-back rebate", due to the fact that every single person paying for the BI is also receiving the BI. This has been explained to you many times on this thread, but you keep ignoring it.

> if a basic jobber costs $7.25/hour and they produce $0.30 worth of value, the Basic Job pays for it's own overhead.

But a Basic Income would have $0/hr worth of overhead -- and it can be assumed that a person who is able to seek work and education will produce more than $0.30/hr of value anyway.

> I must commend you on actually thinking things through carefully and checking if, numerically, a policy is remotely plausible.

Thank you. I have an MBA from Oxford and run two businesses. I am very comfortable with numbers.

[stcredzero]

But a Basic Income would have $0/hr worth of overhead

This doesn't sound plausible to me. People are devilishly clever when it comes to bilking large bureaucracies out of free money. It's going to take a bit of work to prevent that from happening. Organized Crime is going to get in on something like this.

[nitrogen]

You don't actually need all $6T, because most people will be paying taxes that equal or exceed what they receive from BI.

You mentioned earlier that BI disincentivizes work. How so? It seems to me that it would not, because the basic income doesn't disappear the instant you start working even a little bit.

[thaumasiotes]

This one is pretty straightforward. BI disincentivizes work because it stays with you if you stop working. On the common assumption that people are working for the money, not for the joy of showing up, this reduces the penalty for not working, which will cause a rise in... not working.

[dllthomas]

It's certainly true that BI will reduce incentives to work, 1) on paid projects, 2) first order, 3) amongst those who are not currently receiving assistance.

Regarding each of these caveats in turn:

1) There are plenty of projects that we individually may deem socially worthwhile that we don't pay for. Parents raising their children being probably the strongest example, but there are other places where value is simply hard to capture. Incentive to work on these is not decreased by BI.

2) Incentive to work depends on what people are willing to pay you for your labor. If BI ultimately means people are willing/able to pay for more things then the total incentive to work may rise. So far as I'm aware, this is not a settled question (it seems a probable second-order consequence but possibly drowned by inflation, &c...)

3) Anyone currently receiving disability or welfare payments is not merely being paid despite not working, they're effectively being paid not to work. Transitioning to unconditional support will clearly increase their incentive to work.

What all this does in aggregate is not at all clear to me.

[nitrogen]

The arguments for BI that I've read here on HN assert that this isn't a problem, because people who don't want to be working are a net drain on the systems in which they work, and/or they will be replaced by people who want to work a little bit but can't because they will lose disability.

The incentive to continue working even if you receive BI is that BI won't be enough to have a luxurious lifestyle, just enough to meet basic needs and educate oneself.

[ThomPete]

With BI it always is beneficial to work. Even if you only work for a couple of months a year (for instance picking strawberries) you will make more money than not doing anything.

So if anything BI incentives people to work even if only for once in a while.

[eanzenberg]

You will cause entrepreneurs and job-creaters to leave the country. The U.S. isn't in a bubble. Why would someone making 6 or more figures want to be taxed 60%+ for their work?

[timdierks]

Where's the calculation for how much it costs to give the $20K/person to the employed? Unless unemployment is above 96%, it will be more than the 4.2% overhead you hypothesize here.

[ThomPete]

You cant live from a job that the government doesnt already consider worhthy of paying a salary for.

It doesnt work and never have. Denmark tried this too it does nothing cause it doesnt solve the basic problem.

There is not enough jobs for all of us and will increasingly be so.

BI is the best solution we know of and we should try it.