[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.

[dllthomas]

All this shows is that BI doesn't entirely eliminate existing incentives to work. That's uncontroversial. It could still very well be that BI provides a disincentive relative to an identical system without BI.

[ThomPete]

No that is actually one of the major claims from opponents of BI and thus controversial. That it removes the incentive for someone to work.

But there is nothing that indicates this at all. In fact the Canadian experiment mincome although not conclusive did not show people in general stopping to work.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincome

[dllthomas]

You think a major claim of BI opponents is that there is zero remaining incentive to work, as opposed to simply a substantially reduced incentive? Show me anyone (who understands that BI isn't lost when someone works) making that claim anywhere.

I agree with you that the evidence shows there is not even substantially reduced incentive. In the case of Mincome in particular, it did show a decrease in hours worked, which is consistent with the claim that you were objecting to - that BI reduces the incentives for work (relative to the same system with no BI). Asserting that the global disincentive is small and that conditional assistance provides far more disincentive would have been entirely appropriate. Asserting that there is zero disincentive - without an explanation for why we saw one in Mincome - is not, and your earlier comment was arguing that by asserting remaining incentive was not zero which just doesn't make sense as an argument.

[ThomPete]

I think you should read what I wrote again and perhaps you will realize that i did not make any claims about zero disincentive.

What I said was that it always will pay off to work and therefore incentives people to work.

Thats a very different argument than the one you are arguing against.

[dllthomas]

So your assertion is that you were making a true statement that was utterly unrelated to the subthread you were replying in?

[ThomPete]

I was replying to this:

"...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..."

More specifically this sentence:

"...On the common assumption that people are working for the money..."