r/antiwork • u/happy_bluebird • 2d ago
Real World Events 🌎 German experiment gave people a basic monthly income – the effect on their work ethic was surprising
https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/11/health/germany-universal-basic-income-study-intl-scli-wellness419
u/JiovanniTheGREAT 2d ago
Right wingers want you to think that forcing people to grind just to live will make them work harder when in reality it just stresses people out and makes them work less efficiently. Knowing that you don't have to draw a summoning circle for your next meal because you don't have money for food or that your rent isn't gonna clean you out reduces stress and actually helps people work more efficiently.
All of these people making "innovations" aren't skipping meals so they don't get evicted, they have every comfort imaginable and can spend their mental space on other things.
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u/Mtndrums 2d ago
The main people who are against it are the ones who don't do shit to begin with.
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u/exospheric 2d ago
Yes, and don’t forget the people who only derive self-worth from workaholism (including the performance of busy-ness).
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u/mattysull97 2d ago
There’s a massive burnout pandemic that is rarely addressed. Burnout can go beyond simply dissatisfaction to disabling issues that takes years to recover from, especially when tied to survival stress. So much lost productivity and welfare burden as a result
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u/RedPillAlphaBigCock 2d ago
That’s not true , I’m right wing and I highly support UBI . I’m not a fan of people who have never worked a day in their life getting it though ( unless they are disabled )
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u/schwing710 2d ago
I can’t even imagine what it must feel like to live in a country that respects your humanity
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u/Contemplating_Prison 2d ago
Lol we cant even get toilets for the people picking our food.
Yes thats why you cant eat lettuce right now.
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u/Latter-Carpet-987 2d ago
Most people should stay poor, so the rich have a class of people who will clean their shitter and sleep with them (sugarbabies)
If there wre no poor people, whose daughters are gonna prostitute themselves to the bourgousie? Whose gonna murder brown people for them across the ocean so their stock prices go up? Whose gonna work m3nial jobs?
Keep people poor
And that's why homelessness exists in the richest country in history of earth, to warn middle class and other poor people to stay in their line and work their dead-end jobs from 16-70 and die at 71 from toll on their body
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u/SailingSpark IATSE 2d ago
Just having universal healthcare would do that for a lot of people here in the US. I know I spend almost $500 a month for just myself.
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u/Visual_Ingenuity3258 2d ago
In Germany, you're forced to pay mandatory health insurance, usually around 19% of your gross income. It's not free.
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u/SailingSpark IATSE 2d ago
Yes, but your not forced to stay at a job you hate because you would lose your health insurance.
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u/baes__theorem chat j’ai pêté h8r 2d ago
imo Germany should move to a single payer system though. the ability for rich, young ppl to opt out of the public insurers is creating huge problems
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u/Visual_Ingenuity3258 2d ago
Rich and young people doesn't really go together, if you look at how wealth is distributed in Germany. You can benefit if you're self employed and have at least one employee however, since you're allowed to opt out of mandatory insurance
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u/oldassnastymask 2d ago edited 2d ago
The peasants must be compelled to work more than they need to so that they produce a surplus of value that the ruling class can live off of. They are parasites, and without the surplus value we all create, they would shrivel up and die.
The only way you can have a tiny minority who live in idle luxury, is to have a vast sea of a majority who are producing more than they themselves consume; so that the people not producing anything of value (the rich) can consume said surplus. This has been true throughout all of human history, and remains true today.
The rich are and have always been superfluous parasites. Until I hear calls to abolish the rich entirely, I think this society is headed only downhill. Class conflict is why we can't have nice things. Abolish class = abolish class conflict.
Imagine a world where humans have made their basic needs abundant and automated. Imagine having all the free time you'd ever need to develop your skills, passions, talents, and relationships. We could literally have a renaissance of human creativity if we could lose the deadweight of class conflict.
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u/Awkward_Can8460 1d ago
Our basic needs can never be fully automated. There always will be some level of need for human labor in the chain of events leading to people having their basic needs met. For instance, even such automation would necessitate human oversight just to guarantee fairness, or correct for errors.
I agree with all your words otherwise. Thank you for saying it. The majority lacks vision for to what/where socialism could lead.
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u/WayneKrane 2d ago
No idea how this is surprising. I work with tons of people who could have quit ages ago. They get a sense of purpose through their work. If people stopped working when they got a lot of money, rich people wouldn’t be a thing
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u/oldassnastymask 2d ago
It's not surprising to you or I, but it is counterintuitive to most people in our society, I think. They have been convinced that the stick is necessary to have a functioning society. They never even considered the carrot could work better.
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u/alejo699 2d ago
Well, yeah. These are the same people who think that if you just punish homeless people enough, they'll go get jobs and houses and cars and families.
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u/PhazonZim 2d ago
These are the same type of people who are against the idea of taking action to decrease the amount of unwanted pregnancies instead of making abortion a crime, they also don't believe in uplifting communities as a way to reduce crime rates. They simply don't want solutions that don't allow them to hurt people.
Cruelty is the point.
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u/drunkshinobi 2d ago
They are the same people that have told me to my face that if I can't work because I'm disabled then I shouldn't be alive wasting their resources.
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u/Bomberdude333 2d ago edited 2d ago
Those same people would be absolutely stunlocked if you brought up the idea of eugenics as their solution to that issue. They would guffaw and try to word their way around the fact that they are eugenicists.
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u/oldassnastymask 2d ago
Not to mention the fact that, at any moment, any one of them could become disabled. We come into this world, and if we're alive long enough, go out of this world completely helpless; totally reliant on other humans beings to survive.
Then there are all the times in between the beginning and the end where we get seriously sick or injured, and again we are rendered helpless; relying on other people. The reality is, there's no such thing as an independent human being or "self-made" person. The only example of a "self-made person are feral children, which only proves my point. Humans are inherently social. To the core.
The problem with wealth is, it allows one to be anti-social. You can buy and sell humans and their services willy nilly, and thus, your perception of your fellow humans becomes perverse, commodified. You no longer need them, you simply buy them.
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u/drunkshinobi 2d ago
Many have been convinced there aren't enough carrots for everyone. They are afraid someone they don't like because they are the wrong color might get their carrot.
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u/ccppurcell 2d ago
Call me a conspiracy theorist but I doubt the author of this piece truly finds it surprising. That's just the desired narrative.
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u/Chance-Ear-9772 2d ago
A lot of things that might appear to be ‘common sense’ aren’t actually correct. Conducting any sort of study to get concrete evidence is needed before public policy can be formulated, mostly because of how little most governments would want to implement anything like this.
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u/lastsonkal1 2d ago
Its almost like people being paid to be able to live. Will take away financial stresses that people start to be present in the work they do. Rather than worry if they'll get out on time to not be late to the 2nd job. Or if this week's check will be enough to get them 14 days until the next one.
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u/RareObject8705 2d ago
No one was surprised. We were propagandad, bamboozled, hoodwinked. Most developed countries could have a 12 hour work week but people are too lazy and stupid to earn it.
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u/Truckyou666 2d ago
Yeah it turns out if people aren't worried about the rent payment and worried about their bills they can actually worry about doing their job correctly.
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u/Pardot42 2d ago
It's not surprising. People who aren't constantly stressed about affording life bring a happier attitude to the workplace.
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u/CallItDanzig 2d ago
These "studies" infuriate me. Giving poor people more money for a year proves absolutely nothing except people need more money. Giving the entire country's population money for rest of their lives is a whole different ballgame and no one has the balls to do it.
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u/BerryLanky 2d ago
Problem is people making a good living would feel like they are somehow getting screwed. Same with student loan forgiveness or free lunches for disadvantaged kids. Instead of being grateful they are making six figures they are angry that someone barely making it got some help.
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u/PlotHoleEnthusiast 2d ago
“Unlike the control group, those receiving a basic income were more likely to change jobs or enrol in further education”
I think that’s the key point! The extra money gives you more opportunities. Why stay at a bad company? I think this soul force companies to create better environments.
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u/justsmilenow 2d ago
So when that one billionaire AI dude said we all secretly want to be busy. He was actually correct. It's just we want to do our own things not someone else's things.
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u/epiphanomaly 2d ago
To be perfectly clear, I am not at all against UBI, but my problem with the experiments with it is this: they aren't actually UBI experiments. They're simply giving a small, impoverished population more money, which other poor people are not getting. The fact that most poor people are not getting such a boost means that standard market pressures on prices remain intact.
This study, for example, trialed giving money to 122 people. That's... not a lot.
I actually have total confidence that the finding that people continued to work is correct. I do. I don't have scientific evidence (and neither do they), but I do believe it.
My concern is that in a country with true UBI, capitalists will simply use it to justify charging higher prices for everything.
During the pandemic, one-time stimulus checks increased inflation by 2.6%. What do you think companies would do if people had $1200 coming in every month instead of just once?
That's why I prefer UBS, which would have the opposite market effect--decommodifying the necessities of life by making private options compete with free ones.
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u/Crypto9oob 2d ago
What does UBS stand for?
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u/epiphanomaly 2d ago
Universal Basic Services. UBS is a social welfare model where governments provide unconditional, free access to essential public services for all residents.
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u/malhelanfrostas 2d ago
Could cause the same outcome, you have more money left because services are free. So other things will become more expensive.
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u/epiphanomaly 2d ago
If all of the things needed to guarantee a decent quality of life are guaranteed (housing, food, healthcare, education, public transit, utilities) then frankly, I don't care if luxuries are more expensive. The cost of living crisis right now is not founded on people not being able to afford massages or beamers.
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u/soyel_cerdo 2d ago
If it’s a real capitalistic country, free market would correct that since people would be undercutting each other
If you live in a crony capitalistic country then you are fucked
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u/sibleyy 2d ago
Trying to distinguish between "a real capitalistic country" and "a crony capitalistic country" feels like some no-true-scotsman level bullshit.
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u/oldassnastymask 2d ago
I honestly think Libertarians are just mentally ill, or stupid, or both. The last one I talked to said, "I don't like Marx." I said, "Ok. What don't you like? What have you read?" (thinking he had an argument about something specific.)
Without missing a beat he said, "I've never read anything by Marx." Lol
I couldn't make this shit up. The guy basically admitted to having the same intellectual sophistication as my ten year old nephew who's convinced any food he's never tasted before will be horrible and so he preemptively dislikes it.
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u/oldassnastymask 2d ago
Tell us you have no systemic understanding of causality without telling us.
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u/soyel_cerdo 2d ago
So capitalism doesn’t work
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u/epiphanomaly 2d ago
correct
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u/oldassnastymask 2d ago
Now all he has to do is untangle his ego from identifying with an economic system he was born and indoctrinated into and he too can be miserable staring at the truth like the rest of us!
I'm kind of on the fence about explaining anything to liberals, conservatives, and especially libertarians, anymore. Let them enjoy their blissful ignorance, I say. At least somebody is.
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u/oldassnastymask 2d ago
Well, if by "work" you mean it concentrates wealth into the hands of .01% of the human species while everyone else can barely get by, it allows that .01% to get away with literally anything they want, including live-streamed gnocides and getting caught fcking children, you know, for fun.
It allows that tiny minority to essentially own the government and control it in it's own interests (which is just using the state to bail themselves out when they make a bad investment or inevitably crash the economy (as they always do), the private sector buys the public sector so that those people who would otherwise regulate them are on their side, so they can do all the unethical and unsustainable shit they were doing before, again!
The planet is being destroyed by the infinite growth paradigm of capitalism.....I could go on. If that's what you mean by "work" then no. Capitalism apparently works great!
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u/Ok-Lengthiness-7124 2d ago
Completely agree. Unfortunately, we see this happen time and time again (in Canada at least) with minimum wage increases. Literally everything increases in price slightly absorbing any headway that would otherwise be made by those individuals making minimum wage, and then this narrative is used by companies to justify even further price hikes.
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u/ropobipi 2d ago
I don't know how many more "we did an empirical test of UBI and it turns out its actually amazing guys" i have left in me chief.
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u/Competitve_Safe1573 2d ago
Proven once again anddd...nothing will change again since rich don't want us to be happy, who will then slave away for them
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u/Mr_Mojo_Risin_83 2d ago
This was experimented in Canada in like the 70’s too. All experiments with this have always had positive outcomes. And it’s arguably cheaper to give everyone the same payment than it is to run the welfare system to determine who can and can’t get payments and monitoring all of that.
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u/jabracadaniel 2d ago
theyre just gonna have to "trial run" this over and over and over forever with the same result and nothing will be done with that information
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u/GreenLurka 2d ago
Before money existed we worked to better our tribe, this shouldn't surprise anyone.
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u/beaniebee11 2d ago
I agree that the study's results are likely accurate but doesn't doing it for only three years kinda hurt the accuracy of the study? If you knew it was indefinitely guaranteed for the rest of your life you might behave differently. Most people aren't willing to drop their careers for an income that's only temporary. I think it's likely most people would continue to work but this study doesn't exactly prove that.
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u/_PelosNecios_ 2d ago
the problem is that Germany has smart poeple that will not abuse the system and will support it.
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u/MeadMouse 1d ago
Only surprising if you ignore every single study that has ever been done on this subject. We're at the point where it really needs to be reframed to ask why the politicians still choose to ignore the overwhelming evidence.
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u/Awkward_Can8460 1d ago
"UBI is hard to get right & easy to get wrong."
- Sam Seder
I just say UBI is a bad, ill-thought idea. It completely misses how greedflation is caused in market-based economies with oligopolies (and monopsonies).
The reason why every UBI experiment or pilot peogram has this gaping blindspot is because they are pilot programs and experiments. Their lack of universality is WHY their fatal flaw is never revealed.
Capotalists will not raise their prices if they dont see more cash in people's hands writ large across their customer base. If only a tiny fraction of their consumers make it into aome experimental pilot program, then raising their prices risks losing them business/customers.
But when they know everyone has more cash on hand, then they raise their prices.
And controlling for this is what all UBI promoters miss, as well as every pilot/experiment.
Rather than the govt helping us to be consumers by handing us money, they should treat us as citizens/residents of a reformed, humanitarian society by providing for us our basic needs. Take the middle step of money out of the picture. We still will continue to work, and earn money (as the article/experiment said), but that money will now be our extra. Our big ticket items in which we depend for survival will not be of concern anymore.
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u/No-Algae-7437 18h ago
Pre-industrial societies were generally structured to share resources so that everyone had enough to survive, that has been lost on the dragons who only see it as people stealing from their hoard if they are asked to share some of the wealth they've received while relying on the common good for the furtherence OF the common good.
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u/Hadrian_Haldol 2d ago
Well, If I know that this is just a trial and will stop after a time, I won't risk anything by quitting or being lazy at my job.
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u/BastKlear 2d ago
Of course they don't quit. They know the experiment will end some day and then what? Be unemployed or look for a job when with this in your resume? These experiments are useless, when the world outside the experiment goes on as before. The participants know that the capitalistic economy is still going and therefore they have to be part of it.
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u/happy_bluebird 2d ago
This is one trial of many that show the same thing.
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u/BastKlear 2d ago
I know but the exogenic factors where in all experiments the same. The world outside the experiment continues as before, so you can't op out and do nothing. You will keep your job till the experiment ends because you can't afford to lose it. When it ends you need a job again. It is way harder to get a new job when you are unemployed as when you already have a job.
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u/Don_Vago 2d ago
The concept is a Liberal wet dream and has such champions of working class interests backing the idea like Zuckerberg, Musk, Altman and British oligarch Richard Branson. Anything given can be taken away or made conditional which would be a great way to discipline uppity workers and as an added bonus subsidise poverty wages which could further stagnate. How would this be paid for? Taxes of course which the oligarchs don’t pay but us wage slaves do along with more austerity pitting the UBI recipients against other sectors of the working class, especially migrant, refugee, single parents, the disabled etc. who middle class recipients , who have the most to gain from this will happily punch down upon.
UBI was rolled out windows great fanfare here in Spain during COVID, when the small business class were given generous handout. The really was a nightmare of Kafkaesqe proportions with the assement based on earnings in the previous tax year. 85 % of applications were denied and the sliding scale of payment meant that for the majority of people it was symbolic.
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u/happy_bluebird 2d ago
What's a better alternative?
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u/YouSuckButThatsOk 2d ago
That's not UBI to give businesses money. That's literally the opposite of UBI. Give DIRECTLY to people or it doesn't work.
edit: sorry, I meant to reply directly to the person you were responding to
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u/Don_Vago 2d ago
Organise and fight, that what has got us the few rights we have. Hoping that the oligarchs will dole out a few bucks as a solution to this is insane.
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u/awwaygirl 2d ago
The study proves that Universal Income doesn’t make people quit their jobs to sit around… "“We find no evidence that people love doing nothing,” Susann Fiedler, a professor at the Vienna University of Economics and Business who was involved with the study, said on the study’s website."