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from the Having-UBI-would-afford-more-time-to-spend-supporting-SoylentNews dept.
The fine folks at the CBC bring us the following report:
Participants in Ontario's prematurely cancelled basic income pilot project were happier, healthier and continued working even though they were receiving money with no-strings attached.
That's according to a new report titled Southern Ontario's Basic Income Experience, which was compiled by researchers at McMaster and Ryerson University, in partnership with the Hamilton Roundtable for Poverty Reduction.
The report shows nearly three-quarters of respondents who were working when the pilot project began kept at it despite receiving basic income.
That finding appears to contradict the criticism some levelled at the project, saying it would sap people's motivation to stay in the workforce or seek employment.
That's an interesting way of looking at it. An alternative viewpoint could be that over a quarter of the people who were working before the UBI trial stopped working. Unclear are the benefits that resulted from their new spare time — such as providing support to an ailing family member.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Myfyr on Wednesday March 11 2020, @04:52PM
The cheaper suppliers aren't dropping their prices in this scenario, they just aren't increasing them, so the only reason they'd be supplying below cost would be if the costs increase. Since market competition applies to the inputs as well, I see no inherent reason why costs would necessarily increase (again, assuming a semi-functional free market which, as others have pointed out, may be an invalid assumption).
The possible exception here, which you may be alluding to, is potential labor cost increases due to decreased labor supply. Which is the point under discussion in TFA, and one of the main unanswered questions for the workability of a UBI; what, exactly, would be the impact of a UBI on labor supply? And nobody really knows. The Ontario pilot provides some, but not much, data on that point. Something concrete for the economists to argue about, at least.
It is my understanding that there is substantial evidence that a happier and/or less stressed workforce is more productive, which makes sense to me. Prolonged stress has definitely been shown to impair cognitive performance. I don't have any evidence to hand though, so while that assumption is not unquestioned, it is unsupported, at least here.