AEI’s Nicholas Eberstadt and Evan Abramsky have eye-opening answers to a jarring question straight out of Richard Scarry: What do jobless men do all day? Background:
Thanks to the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, we have detailed, self-reported information each year on how roughly 10,000 adult respondents spend their days—from the moment they wake until they sleep.1 These surveyed Americans include prime-age men who are not in labor force (or “NILF” to social scientists), ordinarily in their peak employment years, who are neither working nor looking for work. By examining the self-reported patterns of daily life of these grown men who do not have and are not seeking jobs, we may gain insights into the work-free existence that some UBI advocates hold to be a positive end in its own right.
Immediate answers:
NILF men report much less paid work than their peers—an average of just 12 minutes per day, nearly six hours a day less than employed men, and almost five hours a day less than employed women, but also close to an hour a day less than unemployed men. Perhaps more surprisingly, their time freed from work is not repurposed into helping out around the home, such as doing housework, cooking, and other tasks of home maintenance. In fact, they devote significantly less time to such home chores than unemployed men—less, too, than women with jobs. NILF men also spend much less time helping to care for other household members than working women—less time, as well, than unemployed men.
Apart from work, by far the biggest difference between the daily schedules of NILF men and everyone else comes in what the ATUS calls “socializing, relaxing, and leisure,” a category that encompasses a range of activities, from listening to music to visiting a museum to attending a party. On average, prime-age NILF men spend almost seven and a half hours a day in such diversions—over four hours a day more than working women, nearly four hours a day more than working men, and over an hour more than jobless men looking for work.
Furthermore:
NILF turns out to be a catch-all category that merges two very different populations. One of them is adult students, out of the labor force for training to improve their job prospects upon return. The other is a group British parlance calls “NEET”—an acronym for “neither employed nor in education or training.” The NEETs are in effect complete labor force dropouts. And in contemporary America, the overwhelming majority of prime-age male NILFs are NEETs: in the years 2015-19, according to Census Bureau data, fewer than one in six NILFs was an adult student. In the lead-up to the COVID pandemic, this meant one in 10 prime-age men was neither working, nor looking for work, nor seeking the skills that might help them return to the workforce.
If we disaggregate prime-age NILFs into NEETs and adult students, two strikingly different ways of life are revealed.
Namely:
On the one hand, adult students reportedly spend an average of nearly six hours a day on their education or training—and since those averages include weekends and holidays, these men are committing over 2,100 hours a year to their schooling. The converse of such motivation is an unusually low involvement in “socializing, relaxing, and leisure”—distinctly less than for working men, though not as little as for prime-age working women, a notoriously “leisure-poor” population.
On the other hand, self-identified prime-age NEET men spend about seven and a half hours a day in “leisure activities.” That works out to about 2,700 hours a year—almost 1,600 hours a year more than working women, nearly 1,400 hours a year more than working men, and remarkably enough, over 450 hours a year more than unemployed men.
The deeper patterns:
The overwhelming majority of this “leisure” is screen time: television, internet, DVDs, and all the rest. NEET men reported an average of over five hours a day in front of screens—nearly 1,900 hours a year, almost equivalent to the time commitment of a full-time job. ATUS does not ask specifically about video games; if it did, even more NEET screen time commitment would almost certainly be recorded.
To go by the time-use surveys, prime-age men without work who are not looking for jobs and not engaged in training spend almost three times as many hours in front of screens as working women and well over twice as many as working men. Strikingly, they also report over 300 hours more screen time per year than their unemployed counterparts—men likewise jobless but who want to get back to work. And the reality is even more disturbing than these time-use numbers can convey on their own. According to a 2017 study by Alan Krueger, almost half of NILF men reported taking some form of pain medication every day. The fraction for NEET men would likely be higher still. The rhythms of life for a great many of the prime-age men in America currently disengaged with the world of work is defined not simply by days and nights sitting in front of screens—but sitting in front of screens while numbed or stoned.
I’ve long opposed the Universal Basic Income for a great many reasons. First and foremost: Helping everyone regardless of need is an absurd way to allocate finite charitable resources. Eberstadt and Abramsky add another potent objection to the list: the UBI encourages the recipients to fritter away their own lives.
There would seem to be no shortage of anomie, alienation, or even despair in the daily lives of men entirely free from work in America today. Why, then, would we not expect a UBI—which would surely result in a detachment of more men from paid employment—to result in even more of the same?
Paternalistic? Indeed. But as I’ve argued before, the very fact that an adult fails to support himself suggests that he is a poor judge of his own interests – and donors are right and prudent to impose conditions on their assistance. I call this “Ward Paternalism”:
Let’s call this “Ward Paternalism” – paternalism limited to people who are dependents of the government. For example, rather than give welfare recipients cash to spend, a Ward Paternalist might give them food stamps instead. Why? To nudge them into buying groceries instead of alcohol.
Key point: Under Ward Paternalism, anyone who doesn’t want to be nudged can simply decline to become dependent on the government. You can spend your own money your own way, no questions asked. If, however, you ask taxpayers for help, the help comes with strings attached to encourage you to get your life in order. He who pays the piper, calls the tune – and why shouldn’t the tune be, “Get your life in order”?
Or in slogan form: If an independent adult can fairly protest, “It’s my money and I’ll do what I want with it,” why can’t taxpayers just as fairly protest, “It’s our money and you’ll use it as we think best”?
READER COMMENTS
Tiago
Feb 18 2021 at 9:39am
I don’t think I’m convinced by the study. There are some pretty important selection effects here, don’t you think? One of the simplest would be to note that people who have chronic pain might be less employable.
Jones and Marinescu study the Alaska Permanent Fund, which I think resembles what a UBI would be like more than looking at current NEETs and find pretty different results.
UBI Human Housecat
Feb 18 2021 at 11:46am
The Alaska Permanent Fund is a terrible example. The incentive is far smaller than a UBI and its periodicity is annual. ($1,100 a year is not the same as $1,000 a month.)
Tiago
Feb 18 2021 at 5:11pm
I agree it is not the same and have said so above (or below, I guess, because of the comment configuration), but it is not trivial either. The value is per person, a family of 5 would get 5,500 per year, which is a quarter of what a person receiving the minimum wage in Alaska would make.
On the other hand, US$1000 per month hardly makes one a millionaire either. Why would one amount have devastating NEET effects and the other no effect whatsoever?
Dave
Feb 19 2021 at 11:59am
Using your figures, another way of putting it would be to say that the APF pays 1/20th of what a minimum wage job would. One could be forgiven for thinking that it would not have a huge impact on lifestyle. (On my reading, the NILFs in the article generally do not have dependents.)
Simon Rakower
Feb 20 2021 at 7:33am
I’ve lived in Alaska for the entire time the PFD has been distributed. Naturally, everyone I know receives it. I’ve never seen it have any effect on anyone’s employment decisions. It’s used to fill some financial hole, buy for a toy, or is banked for the kids’ future. I think its impact is best understood as similar to that of the income tax refund.
JFA
Feb 18 2021 at 12:30pm
I guess it depends on your definition of UBI. The Alaska Permanent Fund has paid out on average $1600 annually per resident, just a little over the average monthly rent of renting a one-bedroom apartment in Anchorage.
There are certainly selection effects with just looking at NEETs, but when I look at how most people spend their free time, I don’t know how much different the outcomes would be with a full-on UBI. I think for those with low earning potential, many would just drop out of the labor force and do what those NEETs are doing. I think you’d get a large bifurcation of economic outcomes with an introduction of a UBI at the level that is usually proposed.
Tiago
Feb 18 2021 at 1:43pm
I take your point and think there’s still a lot we don’t know on this. I wish we had run experiments on a random sample of the population. The famous Finnish experiment examined people who were already unemployed.
My intuititions seem to differ from you and Bryan. I feel that the vast majority of people work well-beyond mere subsistence and would keep doing it.
nobody.really
Feb 19 2021 at 11:32am
I concur with Caplan that leisure is a superior good (at least, up to a point), and so we should expect people who have more income to shift to pursuing more leisure, all else being equal. People will differ in the amounts required to abandon the labor market.
People systematically make choices that predictably reduce their likelihood of happiness. In short, humans are bad at affective forecasting. To me, this dynamic justifies libertarian paternalism a/k/a nudges.
I also share Caplan’s support for “ward paternalism,” although I characterize it somewhat differently. Libertarians (and others) speak as if social programs are designed to promote the utility of the recipients. I say social programs are designed to promote the utility of the people establishing/supporting the programs. He who pays the piper calls the tune–even when he intends the tune to be heard by others.
Thus, I share Caplan’s concern that a UBI might predictably lead more people to do things that are not in their own self-interest. In particular, it may enable people to withdraw from social interactions. Evidence suggests that this is a really unhealth practice from the perspective of the individual and of society.
ALL THAT SAID, I also share Tiago’s view that the data cited by Caplan does little to support Caplan’s (and my) arguments. I suspect that social safety nets have little affect on the primary variables that lead working-age people to abandon the labor market. (Ok, perhaps a larger child credit might lead more parents to become full-time caregivers, so there’s that. Taking care of your own kids may not count in labor market statistics, but nobody who has done it doubts that it’s work.)
John Hall
Feb 18 2021 at 9:51am
Is it not a question of the level of a UBI? The behavioral response of a household to a 1,000 UBI would be quite different from a 10,000 or 20,000 one.
Also, a big part of the point of a justification of a UBI is the simplification of the welfare system in general. Ideally, any reform would ensure that the share of income after taxes and transfers of different income groups is unchanged after the change. A UBI could be piggybacked with a wage subsidy and reform of child tax credits.
KevinDC
Feb 18 2021 at 10:16am
I recall Brad Delong once commenting how in his youth, he was so absorbed in the computer game “Civilization” that he eventually had to decide if he actually wanted to become an economist, or commit to “Civilization” full time. I wonder what the odds are that if the younger Delong had been receiving constant income stream in the form of Universal Basic Income, he might have ended up making a different choice?
Jon Murphy
Feb 18 2021 at 10:44am
If you’ll forgive the glibness, supply curves slope upward 🙂
It is a good question, though. I, too, grew up playing Civilization (although given I am 30 years younger then DeLong, probably a different version). I still play it. And I also went into economics.
But there are diminishing marginal returns. As much as I love my video games (Civilization, Mass Effect, Animal Crossing), I do get tired playing them. I’m not sure how much I’d have to get in a UBI to fritter away my time just playing them, but I suspect it’d have to be pretty high.
John Hall
Feb 18 2021 at 11:42am
There are also more opportunities out there to make money playing video games than back then. Competitive play, streaming, etc.
KevinDC
Feb 18 2021 at 11:57am
True of me as well – although I was never too much of a fan of Civilization per se. But I’ve logged an absurd amount of time into other games. And I, too, went into economics. And while a UBI of $1,000 a month wouldn’t move me towards a critical mass of unproductivity now, it very well could have when I was much younger. It plausibly could have kept me just that much more distracted, just that much less worried about the consequences of washing out, for just that much longer, to cross a tipping point that I wasn’t going to bounce back from. The same could have been true of Delong as well (or not, depending on how tongue-in-cheek he was being in describing the depths of his Civilization addiction).
Michael Stack
Feb 19 2021 at 11:10am
Oh wow, I actually remember that blog post. That had to have been made by Brad like 12 years ago, maybe longer.
KevinDC
Feb 19 2021 at 4:59pm
It’s interesting the things that get put into long-term memory like that! Brad Delong makes a whimsical comment about a consuming addiction to Civilization, and my brain retains that information. Meanwhile, remembering the names of people even after meeting them dozens of times…less successful there.
John Quattrochi
Feb 18 2021 at 12:58pm
Where’s the data showing that NEETs suffer from anomia?
Todd K
Feb 18 2021 at 1:33pm
Civilization came out in 1991 when DeLong was around 31 years old, and he had finished his Ph.D. four years earlier.
Jon Murphy
Feb 18 2021 at 1:44pm
And?
Todd K
Feb 18 2021 at 2:06pm
Kevin DC wrote: “I recall Brad Delong once commenting how in his youth, he was so absorbed in the computer game “Civilization” that he eventually had to decide if he actually wanted to become an economist, or commit to “Civilization” full time.”
DeLong had already been an economist for several years. I realize the point that DeLong was making, but as a young professor going for tenure at Berkeley he must have been putting in a ton of hours on economics even id also spending time as Lord of Civilization.
Jon Murphy
Feb 18 2021 at 2:35pm
Right, but that’s the point. He could be the Lord of Civilization, but if he wanted to be an economist, he’d have to focus more on economics.
KevinDC
Feb 18 2021 at 3:10pm
If it helps put your mind at ease, I found the specific place that Delong made this claim:
Whether or not Delong specifically was in danger wasn’t really the point I was making. I was using this point from Delong to illustrate a more general point – many of us find ourselves at a tipping point where we have to decide to pack away fun frivolities in favor of long term benefit. And it’s entirely plausible that if a guaranteed income was established, many people for whom the scales would have been tipped in favor of long term productivity would instead get tipped towards short term amusements. Maybe even with a guaranteed income, Delong still would have shelved Civilization to focus on becoming an economics professor. But maybe not. And maybe not in the case of many other people too.
Brett
Feb 18 2021 at 1:49pm
An alternative take is that these men would probably be unemployable even without social support, but instead of being video game addicts harming no one but themselves, they’d be small-time criminals scraping out a marginal existence and harming other people. There have been plenty of those.
William Woody
Feb 18 2021 at 2:41pm
I guess it depends on whose take on “UBI” you support.
For example, I personally support UBI–but as a replacement for both welfare and most forms of tax deductions. Meaning I support UBI but not as a way to pay everyone a basic income which provides a better lifestyle than what one would receive on welfare. Rather, I support it as a way to (a) reduce frictions in seeking welfare (which becomes a real problem for people who suddenly find themselves jobless due to things beyond their control, such as drastic changes in health), and (b) as a way to reduce the paternalism of the existing welfare and tax systems.
On the other hand, I recognize it will be a cold day in hell before either of these things are drastically and seriously reformed (beyond tinkering with those systems by otherwise well-intentioned Utopians trying to implement their “better societies”), so in practice I don’t support most forms of UBI now under discussion.
MarkW
Feb 19 2021 at 6:48am
Meaning I support UBI but not as a way to pay everyone a basic income which provides a better lifestyle than what one would receive on welfare.
Would your preferred UBI provide a single, able-bodied person enough to live on (including Medicaid health coverage)? Keep in mind that staying on welfare indefinitely is currently not a option for those people (unless they are actually disabled and qualify for social security disability).
If it’s enough (especially in a low cost of living area), why wouldn’t a lot of people choose UBI plus a bit of off-the-books work plus some home production plus all their time to do as they like with no drug-tests, no schedules, and no boss to please?
Tristan
Feb 18 2021 at 4:01pm
It’s not hard to understand these observations about the time use of NEETs in a way that has no implications for UBI: Excessive screen time among this group is almost surely at least partially caused by a need to numb the well-documented psychological costs that attend trying and failing to find work. If a UBI eliminates some of the desperation to find work immediately upon job loss (which would happen for the obvious reasons but also possibly through a longer-term reduction in the stigma of joblessness) then the psychological costs of trying and failing to find work would be reduced commensurately, and so too the need to numb oneself in response to those costs.
Josh P.
Feb 18 2021 at 5:45pm
A strong argument for a 100% tax on all inheritances over $1 million.
Ryan
Feb 18 2021 at 7:07pm
I appreciated the analysis and I realize that this is outside the scope of the article, but I also felt left hanging. NEETdom feels more like a symptom rather than the disease. Why are they acting this way? Pure laziness? A rational decision based on their realistic economic/status prospects even with training? Something about the nature of modern work? The siren call of video games is just that good? Changing gender dynamics that have altered male incentive structures to work? Overly generous welfare programs? Something frictional about just getting started? An American version of hikikomori?
Is there any way to tease this out?
AlexR
Feb 18 2021 at 9:45pm
This wouldn’t be politically feasible, but as a thought experiment if all other welfare programs were replaced by UBI, administration costs could go down, so that tax payers could be made better off, and recipients freed from red tape could be made better off too.
Win-win?
Apparently not, because (certain) taxpayers would be willing to pay the higher taxes of the current welfare system for the pleasure of dictating to the have-nots what to consume and how to spend their free time.
This must be some newfangled kind of libertarianism.
MarkW
Feb 19 2021 at 7:23am
Not really win-win because current safety-net programs are conditional. They either have either time or eligibility limits. The UBI would be unconditional — everybody would qualify even when their was nothing preventing them from working except lack of motivation. I do not see that the hypothetical efficiency gains of eliminating current programs would make up for this major defect of a UBI. Nor do I believe that existing programs would actually be eliminated if a UBI were adopted — it would be yet another safety net program. There’s a similar logic with a consumption tax, which could make sense as a replacement for less efficient taxes. But a VAT would never be a replacement, it would end up being an add-on.
AlexR
Feb 19 2021 at 10:43pm
I think quite the opposite, that the unconditional nature of the UBI makes it efficient form of transfer, because earnings don’t face any effective marginal tax rate from the potential loss of UBI benefits. I think it’s rather the current welter of welfare programs, with their implicit high marginal tax rates, that disincentivize work and induce anomie.
I’m focusing on substitution effects, whereas you seem to focus on income effects. But the structure of my thought experiment tries to eliminate income effects by having individuals retain the same transfers but in the form of a UBI that eliminates the marginal tax rates generated by welfare programs. My sense is that most poor people who are trapped into nonwork by absurdly high marginal tax rates would react to the elimination of those marginal tax rates by working and feeling better about themselves.
MarkW
Feb 20 2021 at 7:50am
But the structure of my thought experiment tries to eliminate income effects by having individuals retain the same transfers but in the form of a UBI that eliminates the marginal tax rates generated by welfare programs.
I understand, but the problem is that a UBI wouldn’t just deliver benefits more efficiently to the same group of people receiving them now. If that were all, I’d be in favor. Instead, I believe it would greatly expand the pool or recipients immediately and that pool would grow as the disincentive effects did their work.
My sense is that most poor people who are trapped into nonwork by absurdly high marginal tax rates would react to the elimination of those marginal tax rates by working and feeling better about themselves.
And my sense is that a lot of working poor people have boring, dirty, physically demanding jobs that require working evenings and weekends but with variable, unpredictable schedules. They face drug tests, and often have unpleasant bosses and coworkers. My sense is also that if a UBI and medical coverage is provided, that rest of necessities of modern life (food, shelter in a low cost-of-living area) can be acquired very inexpensively. With a UBI there would be a lot more of these people. And these too.
An unconditional UBI fundamentally removes the obligation to support oneself and one’s family. Making benefits conditional is inefficient, yes, but that conditionality reinforces the social expectation that people must support themselves when they can, and that it’s not OK to go on the dole forever if you’re frugal enough to make it work.
Here is a map of the disability belt in the U.S. With a UBI, I believe those areas would grow and the percentages living on benefits would undoubtedly increase. Do you disagree?
AlexR
Feb 21 2021 at 10:36pm
My inclination is to disagree, because I think anomie among the poor comes from their feeling trapped into dependency on the welfare system. Without high implicit marginal tax rates, it seems that escaping anomie would be easier. But that’s just my hunch. Is there any empirical work that could shed light on the question?
Lizard Man
Feb 19 2021 at 1:31am
Is the “NILF” acronym tongue in check, with “N” standing for no one?
Mark Z
Feb 19 2021 at 6:35pm
Doesn’t it stand for ‘not in labor force?’
Lizard Man
Feb 20 2021 at 9:02pm
I guess most economists would not have seen the movie “American Pie”.
Marc-André Charpentier
Feb 19 2021 at 6:42am
There’s always a thing or two that I don’t understand when someone fears voluntary unemployment would become endemic after establishment of a UBI.
First, why would people stop working if the voluntary exchange with the employer is mutually beneficial to begin with ? Is it because, at some point, the said exchange is not effectively voluntary ? Is it because, in some way, these workers are “coerced” by the threat of starvation/indigence, threat which would be minimally removed with a UBI ?
Second, why would the labor market not adapt to these new conditions ? Why would employers projecting profits with some economic activity not raise wages to a point where the said unemployed workers feel it is now mutually beneficial to exchange labor for pay on the labor market ? Isn’t it the way markets are supposed to work ?
Every time I come about a perspective like the one laid out in this article, I cannot help but feel that some fundamental traits of market theory goes out the window : the mutuality of benefits in a voluntary exchange and the ability of markets to find equlibrium inch by inch through the price system.
Can someone shine a light on this ?
MarkW
Feb 21 2021 at 7:37pm
First, why would people stop working if the voluntary exchange with the employer is mutually beneficial to begin with ?
To answer your question, ask yourself — why do people still capable of working nevertheless retire voluntarily given that the exchange with their employer has been mutually beneficial? This would be no different. If you offered Social Security and Medicare at 55 a lot of people would take it then, and also at 45, 35, and 25. UBI+Medicaid would be effective equivalents of SS+Medicare.
Is it because, in some way, these workers are “coerced” by the threat of starvation/indigence?
Well, of course! The universe has always ‘coerced’ its living inhabitants (human and non-human alike) into developing skills, exerting effort, taking risks, and performing work in order to survive. A UBI would only eliminate this ‘coercion’ by enabling its recipients to coast and live by the efforts of others. It’s one thing for society to support those who cannot work, it’s quite another to support those who just can’t be bothered.
Why would employers projecting profits with some economic activity not raise wages to a point where the said unemployed workers feel it is now mutually beneficial to exchange labor for pay on the labor market?
In UBI world, a lot of people would not bother to develop human capital and would live in inexpensive places where there are few jobs (but which is not a problem if you don’t want one). People would not flow readily between ‘work world’ and ‘UBI world’. Once in UBI world, many would never leave (just as people now rarely leave the disability rolls once they qualify).
Marc-André Charpentier
Feb 22 2021 at 7:55am
Thanks for the response ! Some further points :
Maybe it’s because the price paid for the labor isn’t high enough for some people to continue working if they aren’t “coerced” by the fear of starvation? Why couldn’t it (the price) be adjusted to make it worthwhile to still work?
And, why assume that a large swath of people would not work at all ? Would all these people live on the poverty line without trying to have a job (be it part time) for some “over-the-poverty-line” consumption ? Many studies (with all limitations considered) show that people would probably still work with a UBI, albeit less. But is it really a bad thing, to work less? Can’t we create value outside of the labor market?
Also, why would people stop investing in themselves? Don’t we, the people, do this, yes, for money but also for self-development? Because we feel useful and like learning? And, even if it was still only for money, the money in itself is still useful to the worker, UBI or not. Why wouldn’t the worker, even with UBI, want a new car? A home? What does it say about our actual system if, as you seem to imply, anybody securing goods equal to the poverty line would stop working altogether? Why are they working as much as they are right now? Surely a lot of people bring home a salary way higher than the poverty line… Why don’t they stop working, then? Is it because they effectively cannot work less since most of the labor market is structured around 35ish hours of labor a week? Or is it that they like the things they buy with their salary?
What does it say about the efficiency of the labor market if workers only offer their ressources to employers if they fear starvation? Can we really pretend that this market can be efficient and, consequently, the gains of the exchange are shared equally between the worker and the employer? I can’t wrap my mind around this. Something seems amiss.
And (finally), I really don’t think we can compare UBI with government aid which has a high implicit marginal tax rate that UBI has not. That’s a strong work incentive to be considered.
Todd Ramsey
Feb 19 2021 at 8:42am
Re UBI:
Some people are endowed with natural abilities that are more valued by society than other people are. This can’t be remedied by education or quotas or by any government programs one often reads about.
A Freidmanesque Equality of Opportunity is unfair, because people are born with different natural endowments.
It seems just to attempt to level that playing field. To maximize economic efficiency we would want to do so in the least distorting way possible, and certainly in a way that rewards effort. A large UBI would be a relatively non-distorting way to lift up the least fortunately endowed members of society. Although the income effect of the UBI would discourage work, the UBI would minimize the substitution effect we currently have with government transfer programs.
P.S. Inheritance taxes also seem like a way to level the genetic endowment playing field, because people who receive large inheritances are usually also winners in genetic endowment.
Chuck37
Feb 19 2021 at 11:21am
I’m not following why it’s the government’s job to correct for genetic (or parental/environmental) differences, especially given all the perverse incentives that always come along for the ride. If it bothers you that some people lose the genetic lottery, you are free to donate to charity. I’ll add that people are biologically driven to do what they can to make their children happy and successful. Frustrating their efforts through government action just seems spiteful.
Retired
Feb 19 2021 at 8:51am
How many NEETs are retired? I spent the last 20 years working like a lunatic so I could retire at 50. Now I spend my time reading articles like this online. (Just realized how unhealthy this is and am putting my CV together.)
But seriously, Riccardo Semler writes many of use join the rat race in order to buy houses, cars, etc. and that “we need a better understanding of work” (most importantly, goals and a purpose). Ask ten of your friends why they work. Ask yourself why (three times per Semler :P).
Scaled UBI based on the number of volunteer hours performed?
Enoch A Lambert
Feb 19 2021 at 10:22am
Caplan: The right to be left alone by strangers trumps all.
Also Caplan: If you don’t conform to the “normal” life path laid out for you by society (a force strange to you if ever there was one), you are an immoral, irrational, lazy good-for-nothing.
Phil H
Feb 19 2021 at 10:40am
“the UBI encourages the recipients to fritter away their own lives.”
…right, but who cares what you think is “frittering” or not frittering?
This is a serious point. BC’s judgment of what constitutes frittering should not be relevant for anyone except BC – even if it’s a judgment that many people share. And the idea that governments should determine who to give money to based on BC’s – or anyone else’s – aesthetic displeasure at seeing grown men play silly computer games is wrong, and possibly dangerous.
The point that it’s someone else’s money is a stronger one, but still, government programs should be evidence-based: handing out cash where it helps, not handing out cash to whoever is willing to conform to their idea of what a “good” non-working person looks like.
And what’s missing here is the balanced calculation of utility. Even if we accept BC’s argument that men watching screens all day long is “bad”, the question would be, does UBI do more good than bad across *all* people.
To be fair, I think BC has tried to answer that question in other posts. But not in this one. I think this post is a weak argument.
FC
Feb 19 2021 at 2:18pm
Speaking of frittering one’s life away in front of screens, I recall a Professor Caplan who some years ago commented that his university’s library was filled with papers and books that someone had written but no one read.
Alexander Turok
Feb 19 2021 at 5:33pm
” government programs should be evidence-based: handing out cash where it helps, not handing out cash to whoever is willing to conform to their idea of what a “good” non-working person looks like”
Helps… with that? The answer is: help accomplish some goal that humans have defined as desirable to accomplish. There’s no objective scientific answer here, it’s just that you and Bryan disagree on what that goal should be.
Not that I necessarily endorse, whole-heartedly, Bryan’s position. Often, the tradcon condemnation of single men for not working just leads to lots of incentives for single women to have a lot of kids they can’t or won’t support.
Mark Z
Feb 19 2021 at 6:35pm
To the extent that one person is economically worse off than another because one chooses to purchase more leisure time at the expense of less income, redistribution (e.g. a UBI funded by progressive taxation) from one to the other isn’t utility increasing. If my neighbor chooses to spend 50 hours a week working because he likes having his own car, house, and eating in nice restaurants, and I choose to work 0 hours because I’m fine with mom’s microwaved hotpockets and videogames, I’m not really worse off than my neighbor. We each get the same number of hours a day. He spends 10 each day to get more money, I consume my 10 on leisure. Redistributing from him to me isn’t utility increasing, because if I got more marginal utility out of additional income, I’d work more.
Basically, relative poverty may be due to one person having better circumstances than another, in which case redistribution may be justified as utility increasing, or due to one making poorer choices than another, in which case paternalistic redistribution may be utility increasing by helping correct the poor choices, but if we refuse to judge the choices leading to relative poverty as bad and just treat them as differing subjective preferences, then we can’t treat differing economic outcomes as evidence the better off one gets less marginal utility from his next dollar of income than the poorer one would
Michael Stack
Feb 19 2021 at 11:14am
I’m involved in a video game community, part time. I have a reasonably popular YT channel and network with other content creators, and have a following in-game. As a result, I have a lot of players reach out to me for conversation, gameplay, etc.
I’ve been absolutely shocked by how many players fit this profile:
Between 20 and 30 years old
male
living at home
they don’t work
parents are divorced
living with Mom
Many of these players do nothing but play video games, from the time they wake up until they go to sleep. I wonder what type of future awaits these guys.
Ted Durant
Feb 19 2021 at 12:19pm
Well, obviously those people have SOME means of support, and Michael Stack gives the explanation for what I would guess is a large proportion of them.
So, given that we already have a pretty large population of people in this category, the theoretical notion that UBI would encourage people to “fritter away their own lives” has to be put into the context of how things are today, and how UBI might change them. In the case of Michael Stack’s gaming network, one can reasonably predict that they might move out of their mothers’ homes and significantly increase their mothers’ disposable income.
As others have pointed out, too, these people generally would make terrible employees. What do you think we are missing, as a society, by not having them in the work force?
I’ve spent a lifetime arguing that the incentive-destroying effects of progressive taxation and income subsidies should be given greater consideration in public policy. The federal government mailing checks to people last year was pretty much the last straw for me. Fine, we’re committed to redistributing wealth, let’s do it efficiently and tell the paternalism crowd to worry about themselves, not others. Create a “UBI” in the form of a negative income tax with zero credits/deductions/loopholes and for 10 years give people the option of participating in the current system, with all its complexity and targeted subsidies and penalties (including Social Security, Medicare/aid, … the whole ball of wax), or participating in the new, simple system. Tacking UBI onto the existing bloated nightmare we call “government” will just put us on a faster track to ruin.
Alexander Turok
Feb 19 2021 at 5:38pm
If you assume the money from the UBI would sprout out of nowhere, sure.
There’s plenty of unskilled jobs out there.
Ted Durant
Feb 19 2021 at 6:29pm
I assume ceteris paribus in the household. At the household level the UBI sprouts from the Treasury.
“Unskilled Jobs” still require basic life skills of showing up on time motivated to do the work required, and basic economics require that their productivity be greater than their wages.
Another note … it’s pretty clear from looking at the ATUS data that the study authors didn’t account for the percentage of prime working age adults that are retired. The ATUS job status indicator in the activity summary file gives no indication of why the respondent is not in the work force. You can dig deeper into the detail files to get indicators of physical inability to work, which I haven’t done, yet.
Looking at the 2019 data, it estimates that 5.9% of the population is prime working age, not in the labor force, and not in school; 4.6% Female, 1.3% Male. The estimated portion of the population that is male, prime working age, not in the labor force, not in school, not living with a spouse or partner, and no children at home is 0.6%.
Gene
Feb 20 2021 at 11:42am
To all those promoting a UBI: You’d better be right about its net effects, because once that’s in place, it will NEVER be eliminated.
George Carns
Feb 21 2021 at 11:21pm
I tend to favor the detailed plans for income maintenance described by Charles Murray in his 2006 book on the machinery of a basic income guarantee (BIG), titled In Our Hands. Murray suggested eliminating all welfare transfer programs at the federal, state, and local levels and substituting an annual $10,000 cash grant, in monthly installments, to everyone age twenty-one or older. In his proposal an individual would be given the $10,000 yearly BIG free-and-clear while still being able to earn an additional private market income up to a certain amount, I recall he suggested a yearly private income of around $20,000 per person. Then as one’s yearly private income increased incrementally over $20,000, the BIG would decrease incrementally as well. The BIG would phase out completely as private yearly income increased to a certain amount, I believe it was at $50,000 or so per person. The BIG applied to each individual 21 or older, so a married couple, or two unmarried people living together, without any private market income would receive a yearly $20,000, as an example.
There were two requirements. Before people could receive their BIG each person had to have a bank, credit union or other account where the monthly BIG could be deposited by government transfer. Secondly, since the costliest government assistance program for the poor is health care, each BIG participant had to have at least a catastrophic health care insurance plan of their choice paid for by a portion of their BIG. All remaining monthly BIG transfers could be withdrawn by the recipients and used freely as cash.
Murray also spends a considerable portion of his book summarizing the incentives and disincentives of such a plan. Well worth reading.
Comments are closed.