Why limit the experiment to unemployed people? It would be interesting to see what people already earning a living do when receiving this no-strings-attached income.
It's known there are tens of thousands (hundreds? millions?) of people who just don't want to work and sit around on it for their entire lives. A few friends did it for a decade after highschool, just surfed all day every day.
Despite all the naysayers and doomsayers about this kind of thing, Australia's economy and workforce is perfectly healthy, and has been this way for decades....
And remember: there are 4 weeks and some change in the average month, so more like $1083/mo. Not that that's much more :)
Evidence proves otherwise. I know people who are doing it right now.
Nobody needs a cell phone when they're just surfing every day anyway....
By contrast can I point out that Australia has a high basic cost of living, colossal levels of private debt, an epidemic of obesity, an ongoing productivity crisis that was only temporarily masked by a resources boom, and a demographic inversion just around the corner that is likely to a) overwhelm the healthcare system and b) elect ever more conservative governments that will stifle immigration at exactly the time it is most needed.
http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/0/1CD2B1952AFC5E7ACA...
If this is the first you've heard of the West and many Asian nation's pending Demographic Inversion, I suggest you do some research. China, Japan, most of the EU have serious issues ahead as a result of now going on three generations of birthrates below replacement level.
Figure 4 on page 10 of this pdf shows that the lowest income decile has seen real income growth of over 40% in just 20 years:
http://www.pc.gov.au/research/supporting/income-distribution...
Have you ever actually dealt with Centrelink?
I was also on center link payments for study.
20 Years ago maybe, now there are so many strings no one knows what to expect from centerlink.
My mum has to get a doctors certificate every year to prove that my sister is still down syndrome. I doubt she's going to grow out of that extra chromosome.
It is a classic resource economy, helicopters of money everywhere during the boom years, take on debt during the bust years, cycle repeats.
Sorry but that's just flat out incorrect.
The maximum payment possible is $528 a fortnight through Newstart (not available to everyone, and only available for 6 months). See https://www.humanservices.gov.au/customer/services/centrelin... for more information.
$528 a fortnight equates to $13,728 annually (so you're going to get less than this, because you can only get it for 6 months) in a nation where the _median_ income is over $80,000 AUD. What little you get is going to be spent on rent, food, and going to and from interviews (which are a requirement of you getting NewStart).
> It's known there are tens of thousands (hundreds? millions?) of people who just don't want to work and sit around on it for their entire lives.
Dole bludgers are _few_ and far between. What you're seeing is people doing nothing because they literally cannot afford to do anything, even if they're getting the maximum payment (and it's likely they're not).
Welfare in Australia could be a lot better, and I'd be interested to find out how a UBI could affect the process as Centrelink (the welfare department) is incredibly inefficient.
Have you been on the dole?
I was on it between jobs, and my brother was just on it for a year while he rode a bike around Tasmania, then volunteered at the circus in Perth.
It's very do-able. Obviously you're not owning an iPhone and driving a new Commodore, but if you're willing to have a few roommates and eat 2 minute noodles from time to time, it's an easy life.
I'm not implying it's not do-able, but it's definitely not the same as having a job that pays even 30k AUD a year.
How comfortable you're going to be also depends on where you live naturally, as renting a room in Brisbane is about ~$120 a week minimum. Melbourne is more expensive and Sydney same again.
But true, it would be a better experimental setup to include all kinds of initial circumstances in the study population.
On the other hand, people realize that UBI may go away any day.
What will be when canceling UBI has as much chance as canceling Minimum wage?
It looks like they're doing it in a way that doesn't cost anything - its just a reshuffling of the current benefits.
The way means-tested welfare works is that there is e.g. a 20% tax and then people are given some benefits but the benefits are taken away very quickly, e.g. you lose 70 cents in benefits for every dollar of income. It means that low income people are effectively paying a 70% marginal tax rate while the rich pay 20%, which means there is a much lower incentive for the poor to make some more money. Especially when making more money can also cost more in expenses like transportation and child care, which can eat more than the part the government didn't take.
The way a universal basic income works is that there is a somewhat higher nominal tax rate, e.g. 30%, but everyone gets the benefits unconditionally (and in cash, so less bureaucracy), so everyone has the same marginal tax rate. Which reduces the disincentive to work of means-tested welfare.
You can still have any effective tax rate you like at a given income level, by choosing the amount of the basic income and the nominal tax rate.