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Comment by dkl | Hacker News Reader

Economists who want to study the effect of a basic income can travel to Alaska and see the impact for themselves.

Can you say more about this? What is the perceived impact?

The biggest impact that many people see is that over time, a minimum income gives people a disincentive to work. So if Switzerland starts giving every citizen $2800 a month, will tons of people stop working because they realize they can live off of 33k/year? In Alaska, it is probably rather difficult to live off of $1400/year but some people do it by living off the land and hard work at home. If the Alaska fund did not exist, would some of those people go back to work? That is the question economists would look for.

I'm unfamiliar with Alaska's situation, but some cities in Manitoba, Canada tried what they called "mincome" for a while as an experiment by the federal government.

The only people they found that were less represented in the work force were teenagers and new mothers (in my opinion, people that could do without being in the workforce for a while...). Hospital visits decreased (with socialized healthcare, this is a good thing financially). Crime went down. Kids did better at school... Really, the effect was a pretty clear net positive.

(It's important to note, however, that as you earned your own income the money was subtracted from your 'mincome' at half that rate. There was never a point where "working more" or "earning more" would equate to making the same or less money. Something missing in many current social programs.)

The program ended because of a shift from a more socialist party to a more conservative one, not because of any intrinsic issue.

But would it help anyone if those people go back to work? I'm pretty sure that in the future we need to refrain from the notion that everybody can find work. With increasing automation there just won't be enough jobs to fill.

Why speak on the future tense? This is occuring now (and has been occuring for more than 30 years now), with actual unemployment levels consistently above 10% and in some coutries even much more.

> living off the land and hard work at home

> go back to work

It sounds to me like they're working pretty hard already.

> In Alaska, it is probably rather difficult to live off of $1400/year but some people do it by living off the land and hard work at home. If the Alaska fund did not exist, would some of those people go back to work?

They are working, as you note -- just working in a manner that they clearly prefer to wage labor.

There was a (Swiss) commenter on a previous HN article (last week, I believe) about the basic income idea and he/she said that $6000 is a median income there.

Link https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6499954

Sorry but you're talking out of your ass. People who are living off the land in Alaska are doing it because that's what they do, when they get their PFD check they spend it on extra things. Regardlesss, nobody's sole source of income is the PFD except for some of the homeless in Anchorage—but they'd be homeless with or without the PFD check.

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