Disclaimer This article was polished with the assistance of ChatGPT to refine the language and structure. The ideas and content remain my own. For decades, the idea of social mobility has centered on helping underprivileged individuals “move up” through access to higher education. Worker kids becoming scientists or engineers is...
Three months ago, a county in Brandenburg, Germany introduced a special card payment for refugees to replace cash payment so that the refugees no longer need to fetch cash at the foreigner’s office every month. Besides, it’s thought that this special card, which can only be used locally, can prevent...
Disclaimer
This article was polished with the assistance of ChatGPT to refine the language and structure. The ideas and content remain my own.
For decades, the idea of social mobility has centered on helping underprivileged individuals “move up” through access to higher education. Worker kids becoming scientists or engineers is celebrated as the pinnacle of success. But in today’s rapidly changing world, we must question whether this traditional perspective of “upward” mobility alone is enough to meet society’s needs or unlock its full potential.
In truth, meaningful innovation often comes from the combination of theoretical knowledge and hands-on experience. Think of molecular gastronomy, where chefs with scientific backgrounds revolutionized cuisine. Or consider entrepreneurs like Bill... (read 464 more words →)
If definition was so important to me, I could argue with you what unconditional really means and if the unsupervised Uganda program falls under the definition of UBI even when it’s only granted to applicants with a valid proposal. But I give up, you win. And I don’t have to defend Britannica, because it’s so well established.
I don’t deny that many, maybe the majority, view UBI as unconditional. But to say ALL define UBI this way is a really strong statement, do you have any proof?
Here an example I found on Britannica:
Uganda’s UBI trial, the Youth Opportunities Program, enabled participants to invest in skills training as well as tools and materials, resulting in an increase of business assets by 57%, work hours by 17%, and earnings by 38%.
Christopher Blattman et al., “Generating Skilled Self-Employment in Developing Countries: Experimental Evidence from Uganda,” ssrn.com, Nov. 14, 2013
Link: https://www.britannica.com/procon/universal-basic-income-UBI-debate
It doesn’t make sense to argue about definitions. If you define UBI so, then so does UBI mean for you. I’m actively pushing for a redefinition of UBI, or reshaping the policy as I said, because I thinks it’s the right thing to do.
Did I reply in so perfect English that it sounded like corrected by ChatGPT? Cheer to my English, which has improved so much! 🥂
Thank you for the explanation.
I’m unfamiliar with LessWrong, have difficulty to recognize who wrote what. If I mistake someone for someone else, I can only say sorry.
Yes, the comments are discouraging, but that’s OK. If I was really interested so much in UBI that I would spend days or even weeks to study the literature to get the definition right, I would stay in the discussion regardless what others say or how many downvotes I get. But I’m not. When returning after months to check why this article was perceived so negatively, I realize I can’t even read through the whole article without checking other things I’m currently doing, so I deleted it.
I’m personally responsible for every point in my post, not ChatGPT. While I can conceive some don’t like ChatGPT, I don’t understand what’s the purpose of human written comments if you use exactly the same phrases as Kennaway: “something ChatGPT might right”, etc.
I have genuine belief in what I published. This post is a call to the business to actively co-shape UBI instead of passively rejecting it. Whoever pays, has accordingly more say, like if Microsoft co-finances UBI, it can ask UBI recipients to learn its online courses and make certificates, so when the economy recovers and Microsoft again wants to hire more people, it can more easily find qualified staff. I don’t know what other companies may want, but in general if you don’t participate in the financing, you also have no say.
Yes, I used ChatGPT to polish the English, it did a great job 👍 while I am of course myself responsible for every point in this post.
To your comments:
This post points out that it’s better for the business to actively co-shape UBI instead of passively rejecting it. For humanitarian reasons, it’s good to ensure the existential minimum for everyone, even those too old or too sick to learn or work. If this minimum is already covered by other governmental programs or philanthropic organizations, there’s no need to include it in UBI. If business co-shape UBI, they can ask it to be conditioned on completing training programs, like the certificates offered by Microsoft.... (read more)
I haven’t logged in for three months, so I just read your comment. Sure economics can’t explain everything and cost-benefit analysis is not the only factor affecting popularity (though often the most relevant). Can you be more specific about what do you think makes the card so popular, even if it didn’t satisfy the cost-benefit criterion?
Yes, the special card I suggested is like food stamps (I guess with food stamps you can also choose between different foods and are not bound to a particular food) or Medicare (where you can also choose I guess), only the card idea is slightly more oriented to the supply side (a flat supply curve is the premise), while ultimately the consumers also benefit.
I guess in many aspects I‘m also a poor person, but I haven’t yet found the time to really think about it, because I really doubt if things would be any different if I would be a bit richer. I certainly don’t starve, in fact I‘m thinking about putting... (read 357 more words →)
I fully agree with Radford, while all others also made some good points. My question is: why does UBI have to be paid out as dollar, and not e.g. in form of coupons for say, e-books? The cost for producing one more copy of ebook is almost zero, so you can even finance it by printing money and the price won’t go up, as the quantity varies with demand.
You could even do it on a larger scale: you give everyone a special card with certain amount which can only be used at vendors who agree to keep price constant. For instance, if strawberry sellers have plenty strawberries to sell in May, where... (read more)
Great post! Really. I used to be a picky reader and even if you show me the tweet of a Nobel laureate, I can immediately pick out a few points to criticize, which, of course, doesn’t mean that they aren’t way better than me in economics. A few tweets doesn’t say much about someone’s achievement, if you read my tweets, you can certainly find more to pick on. That you’ve achieved a lot in life, doesn’t even need to be mentioned by me, all know it.
Although I don’t agree with every point in this post, I quite like its philosophical touch, which possibly explains why you, unlike many other non-economists, can directly... (read more)
Three months ago, a county in Brandenburg, Germany introduced a special card payment for refugees to replace cash payment so that the refugees no longer need to fetch cash at the foreigner’s office every month. Besides, it’s thought that this special card, which can only be used locally, can prevent the refugees from paying Euros to human traffickers and give them more incentive to find a job to earn money.
This practice actually violates the teachings from Economics101 which says that it’s most efficient to directly pay the beneficiaries in money so that they can optimize their spending on their own.
However, like any other model in economics, this model is based on a... (read 385 more words →)
