'Universal Basic Income' Isn't a Silver Bullet, Says Lead Researcher on Sam Altman's Study (yahoo.com)
- Reference: 0175777925
- News link: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/24/12/28/0535244/universal-basic-income-isnt-a-silver-bullet-says-lead-researcher-on-sam-altmans-study
- Source link: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/guaranteed-basic-income-isnt-silver-080002481.html
> The lead researcher for Sam Altman's basic-income study says guaranteed no-strings payments are not a silver bullet for issues facing lower-income Americans. Elizabeth Rhodes, the research director for the Basic Income Project at Open Research, told Business Insider that while basic-income payments are "beneficial in many ways," the programs also have "clear limitations...."
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> Rhodes headed up one of the largest studies in the space, which focused specifically on those on low incomes rather than making universal payments to adults across all economic demographics. The three-year experiment, backed by OpenAI boss Altman, provided 1,000 low-income participants with $1,000 a month without any stipulations for how they could spend it.... The initial findings, released in July, found that recipients put the bulk of their extra spending toward basic needs such as rent, transportation, and food. They also worked less on average but remained engaged in the workforce and were more deliberate in their job searches compared with a control group. But Rhodes says the research reinforced how difficult it is to solve complex issues such as poverty or economic insecurity, and that there is "a lot more work to do."
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> The Altman-backed study is still reporting results. [2]New findings released in December showed recipients valued work more after receiving the recurring monthly payments — a result that may challenge one of the main arguments against basic income payments. Participants also reported significant reductions in stress, mental distress, and food insecurity during the first year, though those effects faded by the second and third years of the program. "Poverty and economic insecurity are incredibly difficult problems to solve," Rhodes said. "The findings that we've had thus far are quite nuanced."
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> She added: "There's not a clear through line in terms of, this helps everyone, or this does that. It reinforced to me the idea that these are really difficult problems that, maybe, there isn't a singular solution."
In [3]an earlier article coauthor David Broockman told Business Insider that the study's results might offer insights into how future programs could be successful — but said that the study's results didn't necessarily confirm the fears or hopes expressed by skeptics or supporters of a basic income.
Thanks to Slashdot reader [4]jjslash for sharing the news.
[1] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/guaranteed-basic-income-isnt-silver-080002481.html
[2] https://www.yahoo.com/tech/findings-sam-altmans-basic-income-164218164.html
[3] https://www.yahoo.com/tech/findings-sam-altmans-basic-income-164218164.html
[4] https://www.slashdot.org/~jjslash
There's no AGI yet (Score:2)
AI has almost no impact on the kind of shit jobs most people do and due to demographic collapse there's an avalanche of shit jobs coming to the working population. UBI makes people reluctant to do shit jobs.
Re: (Score:2)
There have always been such jobs, but if you don't force enough people into those jobs then basic things don't get cleaned, fixed, maintained, food doesn't get harvested, basic life necessities fall apart for everyone.
Ideally no one has to be forced to work just to have food and shelter, at that point such jobs are only filled by increasing the pay for those jobs vs the plush sit-on-your ass jobs.
Re: UBI and socialism is what got us importing H-1 (Score:2)
Two questions:
1: what does UBI have to do with education?
2: how many of the immigrants got their training via subsidized post secondary education in their home country?
Yes, but... (Score:2)
What's the alternative? Trickle-down economics was never more than a platitude; it's only resulted in the rich becoming much, much, much richer while the rest of us see living standards squeezed and the prospect of merely owning the roof above our heads becoming increasingly less likely.
When the likes of Amazon see revenue increase by 10% do wages also increase by the same amount? Do they shite. At some point in the near(ish) future there will be a tectonic shift in politics and "AI" is bringing that point
Five interwoven economic alternatives (Score:2)
By me from 2011: "Five Interwoven Economies: Subsistence, Gift, Exchange, Planned, and Theft"
[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
"This video presents a simplified education model about socioeconomics and technological change. It discusses five interwoven economies (subsistence, gift, exchange, planned, and theft) and how the balance will shift with cultural changes and technological changes. It suggests that things like a basic income, better planning, improved subsistence, and an expanded gift economy can com
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vK-M_e0JoY
Re: (Score:1)
Don't worry about Amazon - they will go bankrupt once Trump imposes tariffs on imports and people stop buying stuff.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't think AI is going to do it. I think the incoming administration will be the ones doing it. From the incoming slate of officials, you can see they're massively tilting the scales at the rich to get richer on the backs of everyone else.
The assassination of that CEO, and the subsequent cheering of such has already put ripples in the ruling class who is trying to stifle it. But that should be the warning shot across the bow.
Of course, signs of the government being unstable are already showing - Elmo wit
Re: (Score:2)
> I don't think AI is going to do it. I think the incoming administration will be the ones doing it. From the incoming slate of officials, you can see they're massively tilting the scales at the rich to get richer on the backs of everyone else.
> The assassination of that CEO, and the subsequent cheering of such has already put ripples in the ruling class who is trying to stifle it. But that should be the warning shot across the bow.
I say AI because it's going to cause the same sorts of problems that automation has caused in the past: human labour is replaced or augmented by technology but the consequent increases in productivity all go to the people at the top. I prefer not to talk about the US specifically because I'm not from there; the Mangione situation would obviously never arise in the UK.
> Of course, signs of the government being unstable are already showing - Elmo with his "We need more cheap tech immigrants" has already started clashing with the MAGA crowd's "no more immigrants". The feud has been started with the MAGA crowd losing their "blue checks" on X/Twitter, making for some amusing talk about de-platforming.
> But the whole removal of regulations "to make business competitive" is likely to raise a bunch of people who really will have nothing to lose, too many guns on hand, and other things.
Elon vs. Trump would make me get the popcorn out if I didn't hate the stuff, but it will be... interesting to watch, especially since the peop
Re: (Score:2)
A minimum and maximum wage, both adjusting automatically based on the greater of inflation or company revenue increases, the latter includes stock price. Maybe go so far as make dividend payouts mandatory when a company turns a profit. Or possibly go the route of many sports teams: employees get no less than 50% of all company revenues.
Re: (Score:2)
To take your points in turn:
1. An absolute maximum wouldn't work. A ratio of lowest to highest paid is more equitable, e.g. the CEO can't be paid more than 50x what the janitor gets.
2. Again, no. This only works when all employees have a stake in the company. I strongly suggest you look at how companies like the [1]Co-op group [wikipedia.org] and [2]John Lewis [wikipedia.org] are structured. You get higher employee satisfaction and workers who actually have a stake in how well the company performs. If they don't you get problems like those the
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Co-operatives_UK
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lewis_%26_Partners
Re: (Score:2)
Apologies for replying to myself but the water company issues are in England, not the UK as a whole. In Scotland water is managed by the state and in Wales it's privately operated but with very strict rules on shareholder payouts and capital investment on maintenance and improvements. I forget what the situation is in NI but, let's be honest, most of us on the mainland couldn't give a shit about NI and would be quite happy for unification to go ahead so we don't have to deal with the intransigent God-bother
Re: (Score:1)
It's pretty obvious isn't it: don't have a "class" who have all the "money numbers".
(I say "money numbers" because that's all they are, numbers on computers, there to be changed. They're not some magical unearthly absolute. Humanity can change them as Humanity Sees Fit, overnight, if Humanity gets the idea and the power.)
So: reward useful work, not ownership. And all you have to do to get started, in the current world, the current system, is to put slowly increasing limits on how rich people can be versus t
Marshall Brain's passing (Score:2)
"I gather the author passed away recently."
So sad to hear this: [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
"Marshall David Brain II (May 17, 1961 â" November 20, 2024) was an American author, public speaker, futurist, businessman, and academic, who specialized in making complex topics easier to understand for the general public."
Did Slashdot have a memorial article for him?
I met Marshall in passing when I was around NC State in the late 1980s when he saw a demo I gave there of a simulation of self-replicating ro
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Brain
I'm not for UBI either, but... (Score:2)
...of course the people who want to automate your job away also want to make sure that you're fucking starving afterwards.
How to fund it (Score:2)
One objection to UBI is how to fund it.
Suppose you had $1 million in an index fund, and suppose that fund returns 7.5% over long periods.
Accounting 2% for inflation, 0.5% for management fees, that gives you a return of 5% in perpetuity. [1]The S&P 500 long term return [investopedia.com] is 10.13%, and adjusted for inflation (the 2% mentioned) the return is 6%, so an index fund that returns 5% annually is not unreasonable.
So with $1 million in investment you could withdraw $50K annually forever. That would be enough to fund f
[1] https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/042415/what-average-annual-return-sp-500.asp
Industrial Society (Score:2)
Let's make society ever more complex so very few people can contribute effectively and fewer can handle the regulatory burden and then replace all those people's jobs with ClosedAI and Tesla Robots (made by guest workers apparently).
And then expect there will be no consequences.
Might as well just station the Goths and Visigoths on the Canadian border now. The other option is to go all THX1138.
Or we could calm the heck down and simplify. But "One Nation Under Gdp" says no.
Re: (Score:2)
You may be on to something here.
My prediction for the future is an increase in "Precarious living".
1. Why is there the concept of medical debt in the United States?
2. Why do we have non-dischargeable student debt which can last for a lifetime without some form of expiration date?
3. Why are businesses allowed to lobby the US and state governments?
Who wants to live on UBI - (Score:2)
Without the feeling you're contributing to society in some form.
Giving money to live to people to improve their livelihood will help, but there are limits.
Who wants to be totally dependent on others for their existence? Isn't this like being in prison on some ways?
Who wants to live a life without some mild form of adversity to add some dynamics to living and keep it from being a static existence?
Can all people really find something to do with the large swaths of free time they'll have? Maybe the artists a
The medical industry bankrupts people (Score:3)
No mention of medical care.
The US doesn't have universal health care. Most other civilized countries have universal health care.
The largest cause of bankruptcy in the US is medical debt.
UBI is useless for covering medical care.
UBI plus universal health coverage would be a lot more successful.
Re: (Score:2)
I was thinking along similar lines. A low UBI - not nearly enough to live on, but enough to fund hobbies other than robbing people - combined with direct provisioning of things which are human rights and necessary for life. (Housing and healthcare).
UBI (Score:1, Insightful)
And WHO funds UBI? The government? Who funds the government? People who work.. SO UBI is welfare or communism depending on how you look at it.
Recipients valued work more (Score:2)
> recipients valued work more after receiving the recurring monthly payments
How did they determine this, exactly? Did they just *ask* them if they valued their work more, or was there some kind of measurable evidence?
Re: (Score:2)
The only way to answer this is to ask. Generally on a point scale, and you track the change in answers vs a change in answers of a control group. There's no measurable way to tell how someone "values" something other than asking, as it's a question about feelings not objective reality.
Re: (Score:2)
You're probably right about how they got this result, and it's therefore meaningless, because each person's definition of "valuing work more" depends on their own interpretation.
There are, however, ways to measure such things. People behave in predictable ways when they value something. For example, people who value their job, will tend to work harder, and perhaps longer hours, and will be more reluctant to quit, than those who don't value their job. But wait, the study showed that people "worked less" than
Re: (Score:2)
> You're probably right about how they got this result, and it's therefore meaningless, because each person's definition of "valuing work more" depends on their own interpretation.
That does not follow. If you can use the result to make meaningful and reproducible predictions about the future then "asking people" can be a completely valid tactic. You just need to understand what it is you are actually doing and have calibrated against actual experimental results that tell you the true meaning of their answers. Lots of things are subjective, like pain. That does not mean that there is no scientific evidence that morphine works. It does mean that you need to watch the experimenters in t
Re: Recipients valued work more (Score:2)
I reject the assertion that valuing work implies you work harder or longer hours, and that working âoeharderâ is any easier to measure than directly measuring value for anything beyond physical endurance work.
The different definitions of value are exactly why you have a control group. Youâ(TM)d need that even with measuring hours, since how many hours is long hours can also be subjective.