Universal basic income (UBI) has supporters across the political spectrum. The idea is that if every citizen received a payment from the state to cover their living costs, it this will allow them the freedom to live as they choose.
But voters who turned down a UBI pilot in a recent referendum in the German city of Hamburg apparently found something to dislike. A frequent argument against UBI is that recipients will decide to work less. This in turn will make labour (and consequently labour-intensive products) more expensive.
Indeed, a recent study on a UBI experiment has found that recipients of an unconditional monthly transfer of US$1,000 (£760) were significantly less likely to work. And if they did work, they put in fewer hours than a control group who received only US$50 per month.
They say “people will work less” like it’s a bad thing.
It’s bad for our masters
Isn’t that the whole idea of UBI? To make up for lost work due to technological advances…
But the shareholders! Or some such nonsense.
The transfer caused total individual income excluding the transfers to fall by about $1,800/year relative to the control group and a 3.9 percentage point decrease in labor market participation. Participants reduced their work hours as a result of the transfers by 1-2 hours/week and participants’ partners reduced their work hours by a comparable amount.
Just in case anyone was wondering here is how much less work people did in the study. So ~4hrs/week less working on average for couples or 1-2hrs/week per person.
People having to work less is the whole point. UBI is not about increasing economic productivity. It’s about distributing the fruits of the productivity more equitably.
If I had a decent ubi, I’d go back to school full time, now that I’m getting the hang of it (doing college part time). So, of course I’d work less. This seems such a narrow scope of a ubi’s impact
