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Old news, 2011 article, but thanks for posting anyway. :-)
The author doesn't spell it out but Mincome was a means-tested BIG, not a UBI.
'Only two segments of Dauphin's labour force worked less as a result of Mincome—new mothers and teenagers. Mothers with newborns stopped working because they wanted to stay at home longer with their babies. And teenagers worked less because they weren't under as much pressure to support their families.'
'The end result was that they spent more time at school and more teenagers graduated. Those who continued to work were given more opportunities to choose what type of work they did.'
“People didn't have to take the first job that came along,” says Hikel. “They could wait for something better that suited them.”
'In the period that Mincome was administered, hospital visits dropped 8.5 per cent. Fewer people went to the hospital with work-related injuries and there were fewer emergency room visits from car accidents and domestic abuse. There were also far fewer mental health visits.'
The test town, Dauphin, is 10% native American and 41% Ukrainian. About a quarter of the town population still speak Ukrainian. On the whole it is a poor town, with median income well below average.
So a means-tested BIG has been tried, it worked, and the sky didn't fall. Imagine that!
Since the means-tested BIG has been proven to work, I've never understood why recent BIG advocates insist on a UBI? I think they just like the idea of everyone getting free money, except it is not really free since a tax increase is likely required.
A couple of the better UBI / Social Credit proposals -- Abba Lerner's and C.H. Douglas' -- proposed a carefully calculated credit amount, rather than an arbitrary number.
Douglas proposed a Social Credit was calculated to offset the "demand leakage," in order to keep the economy running at full employment. Douglas didn't use those words but that's what it amounted to.
Likewise Abba Lerner's Social Credit was to be "funded" from the profits of nationalized industries, and sized for full employment as per functional finance.
I could support such a UBI sized to offset demand leakages and maintain full employment. It probably would not be enough to live on though, so you would still need some sort of means-tested safety net in addition to the social credit.
If you could come up with a mathematical formula to calculate the "full employment social credit" each year, then pass a law for such a calculated social credit, that might be one way to use FF to maintain full employment.
Otherwise we are dependent on the legislature to pass a full employment budget, and they don't have a good track record of doing that. If anything, discretionary spending tends to be pro-cyclical rather than counter-cyclical. I view that as an inherent weakness of Keynesian and FF economics -- they're great in theory but the politicians botch it.
4 comments:
Old news, 2011 article, but thanks for posting anyway. :-)
The author doesn't spell it out but Mincome was a means-tested BIG, not a UBI.
'Only two segments of Dauphin's labour force worked less as a result of Mincome—new mothers and teenagers. Mothers with newborns stopped working because they wanted to stay at home longer with their babies. And teenagers worked less because they weren't under as much pressure to support their families.'
'The end result was that they spent more time at school and more teenagers graduated. Those who continued to work were given more opportunities to choose what type of work they did.'
“People didn't have to take the first job that came along,” says Hikel. “They could wait for something better that suited them.”
'In the period that Mincome was administered, hospital visits dropped 8.5 per cent. Fewer people went to the hospital with work-related injuries and there were fewer emergency room visits from car accidents and domestic abuse. There were also far fewer mental health visits.'
The test town, Dauphin, is 10% native American and 41% Ukrainian. About a quarter of the town population still speak Ukrainian. On the whole it is a poor town, with median income well below average.
So a means-tested BIG has been tried, it worked, and the sky didn't fall. Imagine that!
Since the means-tested BIG has been proven to work, I've never understood why recent BIG advocates insist on a UBI? I think they just like the idea of everyone getting free money, except it is not really free since a tax increase is likely required.
A couple of the better UBI / Social Credit proposals -- Abba Lerner's and C.H. Douglas' -- proposed a carefully calculated credit amount, rather than an arbitrary number.
Douglas proposed a Social Credit was calculated to offset the "demand leakage," in order to keep the economy running at full employment. Douglas didn't use those words but that's what it amounted to.
Likewise Abba Lerner's Social Credit was to be "funded" from the profits of nationalized industries, and sized for full employment as per functional finance.
I could support such a UBI sized to offset demand leakages and maintain full employment. It probably would not be enough to live on though, so you would still need some sort of means-tested safety net in addition to the social credit.
Interesting! Great post.
If you could come up with a mathematical formula to calculate the "full employment social credit" each year, then pass a law for such a calculated social credit, that might be one way to use FF to maintain full employment.
Otherwise we are dependent on the legislature to pass a full employment budget, and they don't have a good track record of doing that. If anything, discretionary spending tends to be pro-cyclical rather than counter-cyclical. I view that as an inherent weakness of Keynesian and FF economics -- they're great in theory but the politicians botch it.
I'm curious about how the private sector responded to more finicky employees.
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