Christianity could be a higher order way of organizing lives

[BananaStand]

The most recent studies are still ongoing, but there's a pretty large one underway in Kenya at the moment. My understanding is that on the whole people have not cut back on work, but instead increased spending on improvements to their standard of living, started businesses, etc.

It's nice that Caplan is offering his view based on theory, but the results, so far, aren't in support of the theory.

Hate to do this, because you've been my biggest cheerleader as of late, but this post represents some cracked thinking.

I'm really not familiar with the Kenya situation. I have read some about similar programs going on in Europe. One of the major problems I see, is that the program is billed as "experimental". If you're referring to the Kenya program as "a study", then chances are it's been advertised as such. That insulates people against feeling entitled to the benefit. Rather, it is perceived as a "bonus".

So this "study" is rigged. It's artificially inflating income while not dis-incentivizing work. Once this program has been in place for a few decades, it's certainly reasonable to think that might start to fall apart. Once the benefit becomes perceives as a secure, guaranteed, entitlement, that's when the incentive to work starts to degrade.

And you can't put in a program like this for that long, and then take it back later. So the debate must absolutely occur in theory. Any real-life experiment is bull-shit....unless maybe it can show that the incentive to work lasted through say 50+ years. But there is no such data.

think about it like this....did savings fall off of a cliff after social security was enacted? Nope. People still saved. It took four generations for us to reach our current state where 1/3 of American adults can't pull together $1,000 for an emergency expense.

the program was really meant to support non-working women. They overwhelmingly lived longer than their husbands, and usually never worked a day in their life. How the fuck are they supposed to survive once they're widowed? It was enacted to start paying out after age 65, at a time when life expectancy for men was right about 65. So, now that feminism has happened, and two-income households are more common than not, you could argue that Social security is totally obsolete. But how the fuck do you stop the program now?????

How can you not infer the same result from UBI's? Rigged results early, consequences much much later, and the program becomes so entrenched, that even if it is proven to be an abject failure, you can never take it back.

One other thing to note. I mentioned that 1/3 of American adults couldn't pull together $1G on a day's notice. That's not even that bad. I recall some threads recently with some socialist libtards touting the greatness of Denmark, Shitserland and Scandanavian countries that provide citizens with tons of entitlements.

Wanna guess who is the world leader in household debt??

[wufwugy]

The short of it is that the income in UBI is entirely endogenous to the system. The Kenya thing introduces exogenous income. This experiment will tell us next to nothing about UBI

[wufwugy]

Hate to do this, because you've been my biggest cheerleader as of late, but this post represents some cracked thinking.

I'm really not familiar with the Kenya situation. I have read some about similar programs going on in Europe. One of the major problems I see, is that the program is billed as "experimental". If you're referring to the Kenya program as "a study", then chances are it's been advertised as such. That insulates people against feeling entitled to the benefit. Rather, it is perceived as a "bonus".

So this "study" is rigged. It's artificially inflating income while not dis-incentivizing work. Once this program has been in place for a few decades, it's certainly reasonable to think that might start to fall apart. Once the benefit becomes perceives as a secure, guaranteed, entitlement, that's when the incentive to work starts to degrade.

And you can't put in a program like this for that long, and then take it back later. So the debate must absolutely occur in theory. Any real-life experiment is bull-shit....unless maybe it can show that the incentive to work lasted through say 50+ years. But there is no such data.

think about it like this....did savings fall off of a cliff after social security was enacted? Nope. People still saved. It took four generations for us to reach our current state where 1/3 of American adults can't pull together $1,000 for an emergency expense.

the program was really meant to support non-working women. They overwhelmingly lived longer than their husbands, and usually never worked a day in their life. How the fuck are they supposed to survive once they're widowed? It was enacted to start paying out after age 65, at a time when life expectancy for men was right about 65. So, now that feminism has happened, and two-income households are more common than not, you could argue that Social security is totally obsolete. But how the fuck do you stop the program now?????

How can you not infer the same result from UBI's? Rigged results early, consequences much much later, and the program becomes so entrenched, that even if it is proven to be an abject failure, you can never take it back.

One other thing to note. I mentioned that 1/3 of American adults couldn't pull together $1G on a day's notice. That's not even that bad. I recall some threads recently with some socialist libtards touting the greatness of Denmark, Shitserland and Scandanavian countries that provide citizens with tons of entitlements.

Wanna guess who is the world leader in household debt??

Your point about changes in expectations given time is very good. It's not one I was thinking of, but it is definitely true that UBI could cause an initial positive economic shock which would be followed up by negative economic drip. Though this is probably more useful as a way to illustrate it rather than what would actually happen. In the real world it would unlikely cause that positive shock in the first place since markets would adjust for the negative drip at the same time it would adjust for that which could cause a positive shock.