5
submitted 3 months ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world

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.

top 16 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[-] SinningStromgald@lemmy.world 6 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

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.

Of course productivity has increased 87.3% since 1979 so those lost hours mean nothing in the grand scheme of things.

[-] brianary@lemmy.zip 6 points 3 months ago

Economics is a religion, not a science.

How economics became a religion | John Rapley https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/jul/11/how-economics-became-a-religion

[-] DomeGuy@lemmy.world 6 points 3 months ago

They say "people will work less" like it's a bad thing.

[-] Makhno@lemmy.world 5 points 3 months ago

It's bad for our masters

[-] awaysaway@sh.itjust.works 1 points 3 months ago

they do specifically say because that will lead to increasing costs of goods. A valid concern I think when cost of living is on the rise.

[-] DomeGuy@lemmy.world 5 points 3 months ago

"oh, some of us should starve so that the stuff I buy at Kroger is cheaper" is an indefensible position, even if wages and marker prices were strongly correlated. Which they aren't

[-] Shoshin@aussie.zone 4 points 3 months ago

UBI fundamentally doesn't work unless you have controls in place against inflation (read: profiteering). Give everyone an additional paycheck? Welp, I guess prices of everything just rose to compensate this sudden new "cash".

[-] Lhianna@feddit.org 4 points 3 months ago

The voters in Hamburg did not vote against universal basic income. They voted against a pilot project as a study which would have given around 2000 citizens about 1300€ for three years.

Not only have there already been studies like that, they're also not very meaningful given that those people know that this income was for a limited time frame and act accordingly.

[-] etherphon@lemmy.world 3 points 3 months ago

Isn't that the whole idea of UBI? To make up for lost work due to technological advances...

[-] Zulu@lemmy.world 1 points 3 months ago

But the shareholders! Or some such nonsense.

[-] madjo@piefed.social 3 points 3 months ago

How much misinformation was spread by the opposition?

[-] ISOmorph@feddit.org 2 points 3 months ago

Virtually none. However, Hamburg has disproportionately rich citizens, and Germany as a whole has a pretty old population. This results in politics being naturally skewed towards conservative neo liberal dogma.

[-] sem@piefed.blahaj.zone 2 points 3 months ago

This is probably as good a place as any to ask a question I've been mulling around recently. One of my dad's friends told him that when they were on an Indian reservation, the casinos gave a stipend to everyone on the reservation and because they had this stipend, a lot of the people on the reservation decided to work less and instead just get drunk or do drugs or beat their wives or whatever.

My thought on this is that there are so many problems caused by poverty that it's possible that without the stipend from the casino, these folks would be even worse off. And there may not be good jobs in their area. And my dad said, well why don't they drive to somewhere that has jobs? Like that is something anybody would want to do if they didn't need to get the money.

So I guess my question is, are there any people who've done research on stipends like this that already exists in the real world and any data specifically on Indian reservations would be really interesting to me?

[-] BlindFrog@lemmy.world 1 points 3 months ago

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

[-] Asafum@feddit.nl 0 points 3 months ago

This sounds absurd. Wtf is $750 going to get you that you no longer need to work much?

[-] tomi000@lemmy.world 1 points 3 months ago

Exactly. The fear of everyone quitting their jobs because of 1000$ is baseless.

The people it really makes a difference for are those who already struggle surviving, to take away some of the stress and enable them to get their lives on track.

this post was submitted on 22 Dec 2025
5 points (72.7% liked)

News

36805 readers
724 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious biased sources will be removed at the mods’ discretion. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted separately but not to the post body. Sources may be checked for reliability using Wikipedia, MBFC, AdFontes, GroundNews, etc.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source. Clickbait titles may be removed.


Posts which titles don’t match the source may be removed. If the site changed their headline, we may ask you to update the post title. Clickbait titles use hyperbolic language and do not accurately describe the article content. When necessary, post titles may be edited, clearly marked with [brackets], but may never be used to editorialize or comment on the content.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials, videos, blogs, press releases, or celebrity gossip will be allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis. Mods may use discretion to pre-approve videos or press releases from highly credible sources that provide unique, newsworthy content not available or possible in another format.


7. No duplicate posts.


If an article has already been posted, it will be removed. Different articles reporting on the same subject are permitted. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners or news aggregators.


All posts must link to original article sources. You may include archival links in the post description. News aggregators such as Yahoo, Google, Hacker News, etc. should be avoided in favor of the original source link. Newswire services such as AP, Reuters, or AFP, are frequently republished and may be shared from other credible sources.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS