My issue, and I only have one, with these pilot projects for basic income is that its not realistic. The people in the project know that it will end at a fixed time, so their actions are different compared to what would happen in a BI/UBI system.
Norway has saved up $195,000 per citizen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Pension_Fund_of_Nor...
(Alaska's dividend is also a pittance that likely doesn't even start to offset the higher cost of living there. "Basic income", it's not.)
Btw, the Norwegian model is partial about avoiding 'Dutch disease'. That's why they invest the money abroad. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease
The "why" is complicated, but the "they generally don't" is not.
> Isn't a democracy supposed to reflect what the people want?
People wanted slavery, segregation, Jim Crow, etc. There aren't many pure democracies out there as pure mob rule isn't super awesome in the long run.
Alaska's dividend is particularly odd given they were proposing 40% budget cuts to the state university system recently in order to keep the fund payouts up.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-alaska-politics/deep-budg...
> Dunleavy, who took office in December and is an outspoken supporter of U.S. President Donald Trump, has called for major cuts in higher education, health care and other social programs as he pushes to sharply raise the annual oil revenue dividend that Alaska pays to nearly every state resident.
I have no clue whether those programs he wants to slash are any good or bad.
Higher education is mostly a signalling game. So very useful for individuals to spend on; but a zero sum game at the level of society.
> People wanted slavery, segregation, Jim Crow, etc. There aren't many pure democracies out there as pure mob rule isn't super awesome in the long run.
I'm not a fan of democracy either. But lots of people are. And it beats some of the alternatives.
Now that the annual oil revenue has declined, there's debate every year about what to do with that principal. AK has been cutting services the last few years, even though we have almost $70b in the bank.
About $133/month in 2019, which might offset the fundamental additional expenses associated with living in Alaska.
edit: but I suppose you get the $133 even if employed, nvm
One question about expiration dates; are study participants more likely to take caution them than general populace.
Such an attitude would certainly apply to their reasons for working.
After all, there's a practical limit on the value of a person's labor - let's postulate that it's around $7,000 a day - there's no such limit on what investments can return in a day.
* $7,000 is Elon Musks's $2.2M salary from 2019 divided into 340 working days.
First: musicians and athletes in their prime can make more, and that's definitely labour income. Second: if a bus were to hit Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos or Warren Buffett, their companies would lose lots of value. So even though their day-to-day income looks like it's coming from investments, a big part of it is actually labour income.
(I'm taking 'hit by a bus' here as an exogenous event that would make the CEOs unable to work, but wouldn't touch the companies at all and crucially wouldn't imply to investors any other information about the companies.)
Similar for running a hedge fund: as far as the tax man is concerned, a lot of the income they generate for the people running the fund is some kind of capital returns. But in an economic sense, it's mostly labour income: if you want to estimate the capital side, just see how well the hedge fund's customers are doing out of their investment; any returns insiders make above that are labour income.
There are plenty of people who were born rich who nonetheless go to work everyday. They are engineers, doctors, lawyers, consultants, bankers, inventors, teachers, professors, and business owners.
Having money doesn't discourage people from working. We won't run into a shortage of astronauts, teachers, or even police officers. But we may find it difficult to find people willing to work as a janitor for $8.00 an hour.
And in some cases, that might still end up being much more lucrative than a "normal job". But I'm sure that in many cases, it doesn't - we just don't hear about it, because they're still rich, and nobody really knows what they're really doing anyway.
On the other hand, who knows how long UBI would stay in place in a democratic country? It might get voted out in the next election, too.
It does avoid dealing with the root problems in some sense, but it's certainly elegant.
Yes it’s an avoidance of the real problems. Basically a nice looking pipe dream.
Some would remain for private supplemental plans or whatever, but 90+% of that work would just go away. Plus all those uncompensated hours individuals spend fucking with insurance and medical provider billing departments.
Of course, it would still take tons of legwork to make the actual transition. But the end result would be a net win for simplicity.
Now, it might be a good example of how a nation should distribute revenues from natural resources, i.e. right into the hands of the people. But it's not a UBI substitute.
Some people use it well, putting some in the bank for their kids, paying off loans, etc. But many people just splurge every fall. There's an increase in alcohol and substance abuse-related incidents.
It has impacted politics significantly. We are no longer getting large influxes of cash every year, so there's an open question about how to fund our state's services. We could implement an income tax, but that's a hard sell. We could start tapping into the permanent fund principal, but anyone who proposes that gets trounced by politicians willing to "protect" people's pfd by slashing services. We could offer so much as a state, but people won't have it because they want their $1500 each fall.
I have a friend who moved to Alaska last year for work last year and will probably be there for a few more years. We had discussions about the fund recently because this is the first year he qualifies for it. He will very much be in that camp of using the check in the fall to splurge and will do so until he is able to move in a few years.
As an outsider, it seems frustrating to me that the funds aren't used to improve the state (schools, utilities, infrastructure). I've expressed this to my friend and kind of derided him a bit for being what I see as part of the problem. In reality I guess I can't really blame him for taking the money and (eventually) running, but it just feels wrong to me.
Also, there is a delayed reckoning in the public school system in Texas - they keep on cutting state funding to systems to avoid having to increase state taxes so local school systems have to try to make this up, and the state for a long time fraudulently worked to deny children with special education needs the correct diagnosis - since special education (for whatever reason/cause) children cost a lot more to educate. https://www.chron.com/politics/texas/article/Delayed-or-deni...