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How can you meaningfully experiment with UBI if the “BI” is not even universal? My understanding is that many of the criticisms of UBI are based on externalities that would only become manifest in a meaningfully large population. For example, price increases and inflation might arise from everyone having extra money.

If you’re only testing UBI on a small population, then 1) it’s not even universal, and 2) there will not be enough “beta testers” to (in)validate these criticisms.

So while this may be a “success” (how do you even measure that?) it’s not a meaningful experiment at all.

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I agree that it's tough to measure "success," but at least it would be presumably easy to measure failure. If we see exactly what opponents claim will happen, it would suggest a more strict implementation might be worse.

My concern is that with this we're likely looking at an even worse version of the problems seen with sending shoes to Africa [1]. Over the duration of this experiment, it's quite possible you'll create a society that abandons skills / equipment / expertise necessary to sustain an economy. That won't be a problem until the experiment ends, and then you've left people in a place far less than where you found them.

[1] http://www.djiboutijones.com/2014/02/dont-send-your-used-sho...

"Over the duration of this experiment, it's quite possible you'll create a society that abandons skills / equipment / expertise necessary to sustain an economy. That won't be a problem until the experiment ends, and then you've left people in a place far less than where you found them."

That would be a valid result of the experiment though, in light of the fact it is completely impossible to implement UBI everywhere at once. UBI isn't useful if there isn't a path from here to there. We have no lack of wonderful utopias whose only problem is that there is no path from here to there. If UBI can't prove itself out on a smaller scale it can on no account be tried on a larger scale. If the worst some bad social engineering idea does is leave a single county worse off, then it will be doing very well as bad social engineering ideas go.

It appears from reading this post that tracking the skills of the community is already part of the plan. There are certainly predictions about this from both sides.

(I'm a skeptic, yes, but I promise to treat the results from this experiment fairly. However, bear in mind that even total success at this level still wouldn't prove to me that we should immediately adopt it at a national level; I'll need to see a larger one. But I will admit that I was at least wrong about this experiment, because I don't expect this to prove out very well either. I also expect a lot of spinning of the results to make them look as good as possible, so I reserve the right to unspin the results.

As a token of such good faith, I offer that while I remain a cryptocurrency skeptic, and a BitCoin skeptic in particular, I expected BitCoin to be totally dead by now, and it is not. I say this to demonstrate that I can indeed eat crow.)

> I'm a skeptic, yes, but I promise to treat the results from this experiment fairly

There have been lots of previous experiments with stuff sort of similar with UBI. While there are many problems with those studies preventing their use as any sort of conclusive proof, they have been predominantly neutral or positive. Yet I don't see that accounted for in the predictions of doom and gloom any of the UBI skeptics. If this experiment goes well, you need to do more than just admit you were wrong about the experiment, you and other skeptics need to lower your confidence in your overall skepticism of UBI.

> while I remain a cryptocurrency skeptic, and a BitCoin skeptic in particular, I expected BitCoin to be totally dead by now, and it is not. I say this to demonstrate that I can indeed eat crow.)

It sounds to me like you have not eaten any crow. If you had you would say: based on my understanding of the forces at play, I thought BitCoin would be dead. BitCoin has thrived instead so my understanding of the forces at play is less than I had estimated. Based on that, I am now less skeptical (or less confident of my skepticism) of the future crypto currencies. (I share your skepticism of the future of BitCoin, but I am far less certain of that skepticism than I used to be for these exact reasons)

"There have been lots of previous experiments with stuff sort of similar with UBI."

I don't think any of them have even raised to the level of "interesting" compared to the scale of what is being proposed ("rework the entire global economy"). I am aware of them. UBI experiments need to be about UBI, not about things that vaguely resemble it. In particular they need to be large enough that the hypothesized bad effects could even be witnessed, as most of them revolve what will happen once people are habituated to it. For them to be useful, you need to not be referring to them in the past tense because they should still be ongoing, and indeed, really just at the beginning of their run. Most of them are the equivalent of claiming free college works because they went into a single small community and promised anyone who wanted to that they could attend the first three weeks of college for free if they liked; the results hardly matter.

"If you had you would say: based on my understanding of the forces at play, I thought BitCoin would be dead. BitCoin has thrived instead so my understanding of the forces at play is less than I had estimated."

I did say that. I just used fewer words.

If you're sending money then people will spend it (such as on shoes) and increased spending and investment will tend to help local businesses much more than sending goods that compete with them.

So I'm not seeing why you think skills will atrophy? It seems like there's more danger of that when people are poorer? (For one thing, education becomes less affordable.)

The shoes don't have to come from Bomet County. Nor does the food, or the electricity, or much of anything else.

The poverty rate is just under 50%, per Wikipedia at least. If all the money is coming from the county (presumably it is), then it's going to be coming from the other 50%, and at a rate higher than neighboring (non-UBI) counties.

It will be in the rational self-interest of that non-impoverished 50% to leave. Labor will be more expensive as fewer people want to do less-desirable work due to no strong need. I don't know how freely workers can move between counties, but obviously I imagine some people in neighboring counties will want to move in for the free paycheck.

Over time, you've chased out the productive people and bolstered the less productive ones, and you're drawing from a smaller and smaller pool to pay for a larger and larger group of people.

I've always felt like UBI is unsustainable, but at least worth debating. I haven't yet seen even proposed what should be done if UBI fails this way, though.

Interesting theory, but they already started a pilot study in one village, and the results were nothing like that, so far. There seems to to be lots of local small business investment.

I also don't see anything about people moving in or out.

https://givedirectly.org/blog-post?id=1423924916713458127

That link says they started "last October" and is dated February 2017. It covers 95 people. That's a very short period of time, quite sparse on details, and a small group of people in an isolated environment. They're also not taking money from people in the community to redistribute.

Put plainly: It's not surprising at all that one can take a lot of voluntarily-given money and distribute it to an impoverished village in Africa, resulting in them being happy and saying they're seeking work (in the short term). Normally, though, that's called "charity" rather than a UBI experiment, and even UBI opponents will acknowledge the likelihood of that happening.

Thanks for the link.

> rational self-interest

Isn't assuming this the basic failing of economics as a science? Not trying to be provocative, sincerely asking.

Well, the honest answer is "sometimes." People obviously don't simply pack up and move when the taxes are 0.1% lower on the other side of the country even if it is rational. But that doesn't justify ignoring common sense when crafting economic policy.

When the federal government started subsidizing higher ed loans, it is not some unimaginable outcome that higher ed prices will increase. Banks, colleges, students, and parents are all operating in their own self-interest, but by artificially making more money available to consumers, they are naturally willing to spend more.

It's just a sign of really bad policy when nobody is cheating the system and everyone is following the rules, but it results in really bad outcomes. And it's even worse when that happens and blame is passed to those rational actors (banks, colleges, etc.) because that further justifies bad policy.

> If all the money is coming from the county (presumably it is)

I believe most of the money comes from outside the country, I started donating $25 a month to GiveDirectly this summer.

In the years to come technology is going to replace the need for a lot of human labor and UBI will be required to maintain a civil society.

This is the exact opposite of that. When you send free goods into an economy, you inhibit demand which in turn inhibits economic growth. When you send money into an economy, in increase demand and it will have the opposite effect.

Not necessarily. Increased demand solely from cash injections in an economy will increase prices without an increase in investments, since those investing can't know if the cash injections will continue or not.

So it will lead to short-term inflation, and without the long-term investments in production, that inflation will continue for as long as the injections continue.

As the cash injections aren't universal, those who receive it will benefit, while the ones who don't will see their purchasing power drop significantly, and their lives worsen.

I was specifically disputing the analogy with providing goods like shoes and good to impoverished communities.

Well cash injection by definition create inflation. However it could be a neutral effect if, for instance, you get rid of unemployment benefits at the same time.

No. Price increases, by definition, create inflation.

Cash injections CAN lead to inflation as an effect, but this is not a tautology (i.e. by definition).

Indeed, but the issue is that without predictability in the cash injections, nobody will be willing to invest in production.

UBI doesn't send money in, it redistributes it.

And if solving economic problems were as simple as "just take more money from the rich people and give it to the poor people," this problem would have been solved centuries ago.

Clearly. And is this statement based on the well known fact that rich people have always been happy to have their money taken away and given to poor people without trying to undermine any genuine efforts at wealth redistribution for economic growth?

That's why we don't have any rich people any more and wealth inequality is at it's lowest point in decades, right?

The post I was responding to wasn't citicizing UBI, but rather criticizing this specific type of program which DOES inject money into the local economy from outside doners.

> And if solving economic problems were as simple as "just take more money from the rich people and give it to the poor people," this problem would have been solved centuries ago.

When in history have we tried anything like UBI? How can we know if it works if we have never tried it?

We've provided subsidies and guarantees to try to help poor people and manipulated markets with predictable results countless times. In the US, higher education loans and urban housing are modern day examples of this.

UBI isn't inherently different. It's trying to pretend you can manipulate a market with no detrimental side effects, but it's been tried many, many times.

The whole point of UBI is that markets are being manipulated as INDIRECTLY as possible. You aren't subsidizing people to not work (unemployment benefits), subsidizing people to work (minimum wage), subsidizing particular goods (housing, education loans) or inflating demand for a specific set of goods (food stamps).

You seem to be of the opinion that nothing can be done to eliminate poverty, so why even try?

I disagree. It may not be targeted to an industry, but it is a colossal subsidy that will greatly affect markets in a lot of ways.

Plenty can be done to eliminate poverty. I'm confused why you would think large-scale involuntary wealth redistribution is the only way.

> it is a colossal subsidy that will greatly affect markets in a lot of ways

It is, by definition, not a subsidy since it does not target a subset of economic sectors.

> Plenty can be done to eliminate poverty.

Name one means of eliminating poverty without wealth re-distribution or subsidies. The only ones I know of involve sterilizing, deporting, killing or otherwise demographically elminating poor people.

It will absolutely subsidize the industries most likely to gain from poorer people having more money. The yacht and high-end watch industries will not benefit while housing, auto, and entertainment industries absolutely will. This is basic common sense.

Nobody's eliminated poverty yet, so it may be impossible. We do have ways of fighting it, though, which can (and does) include charitable giving (note: voluntary) and economic development of areas.

Just to point out this program is not involuntary. All the funds so far as I understand it, have been generated voluntarily.

Right--sorry. For clarity's sake, I was referring to actual UBI. For these studies (as far as I'm aware), it's voluntarily collected money from outside the area.

UBI isn't intended to solve economic problems that existed or even could be centuries ago - it tackles the problem of poverty of people becoming unemployable due to technological progress, despite very high productivity allowing to satisfy the basic needs of everyone with a small fraction of gross national product, or a small fraction of population working on those basic needs. It's a serious problem for the future, but we're just barely (and only in select locations) beginning to have it. UBI doesn't make sense until the abovementioned conditions arrive, but they're coming, and I'm not aware of any other sensible solutions for these solutions.

When this situation comes, the good option is that the society simply gives the new class of unemployable people their basic needs one way (like UBI) or another; the evil option is that the society doesn't give them the basic needs and they starve (since their labor has no value and they have nothing to trade for these basic needs); and the third option is that they take the basic needs in a revolution that likely destroys half of the society. Really, noone wants the second or third options, including most of the 0.1%, so we will see some mass redistribution system being implemented.

In 1917, taking all the resources from rich people and giving it to poor people wasn't enough to keep the poor people out of starvation for long and destroyed the productivity totally. In 2017, taking more money from the rich to feed the poor doesn't require even close to taking all their resources, as feeding the poor is so much cheaper compared to 1917; it would be deeply unpopular but is doable without killing the rich, and the society could sustain such level of taxation indefinitely if they wished even if nothing changed - but it's going to change, and in 2037 taking enough resources from the rich (i.e. the owners of highly automated means of production) to feed everyone UBI-style would be expected to be just a minor tax, and a boost for the economy, giving spending power to people who'd otherwise have no spending power at all.

Regarding your first paragraph: Agreed.

Regarding your second paragraph: You're looking at this as a measurable global issue that will happen at a single time resolvable by a single government entity, but that's not how it will unfold.

It won't happen overnight, so there will be no point for those options to be evaluated. Let me pitch you (what I see as) a more realistic option:

Some countries will try to implement UBI. They will encounter the same problems opponents have been warning about. The productive will (over time) move to countries that don't take so much of their wealth. The people receiving more than they're contributing will have more children, will have more votes, and will vote to take more and more from the decreasing minority. Even if you can make food truly post-scarcity, housing, healthcare, and other goods/services are not.

If everything is truly post-scarcity: It'll be no problem. Those countries won't really need the wealthy. But I'm not sure true post-scarcity actually exists, and I think (especially in the US) UBI would be a moving target that only ever goes in one direction.

You're right, though, that I don't really have a solution if (e.g.) 80% of people no longer have a meaningful way to contribute to society. That may be fundamentally impossible to solve. But that may never happen and we may never have true post-scarcity, so we shouldn't be redesigning society based on the premise that wealthy people are an endless money tree, and if it's wrong, society collapses.

To be clear the demand is the same — the price is the issue. UBI and inflation may well be tied tightly together.

It doesn't answer all questions. For another example, we won't know how much the results will transfer to other countries.

But it's meaningful to see what people will spend the money on, its effect on the local economy (village level), and how this compares to other ways of reducing poverty.

There are still a lot of people who think that people will stop working or spend the money on some wasteful way, and this will tell us whether that's true.

Some people will stop working, and that's perfectly okay, and that's not an argument against UBI - UBI is a solution for an environment with unemployment and unemployable people, so some people stopping working because UBI is sufficient for them is great, it will free up jobs for people who want more than UBI and do want to work.

Some people will spend the money on some way that seems wasteful to you, and that's perfectly okay as well - assuming they're sane adults, it's their business to choose which of their needs matter more and spend the money as they wish; we don't want all the UBI to become a transfer to specific companies running dirt cheap apartments with a food supply program, the recipients having a choice is a good thing that facilitates competition.

Yes, UBI is not a solution to people with major addictions and mental problems; it's not intended to. It does, however, ensure that a person with a mental or drug problem that can't hold a job isn't necessarily required to get their food by begging or crime.

> It doesn't answer all questions. For another example, we won't know how much the results will transfer to other countries.

We won't even be confident the results will transfer to the same country at some later time. Lots of things can change over time alone, let alone across populations.

   people will stop working or spend the money on some wasteful way

That's not really the argument. What does matter is where does the money come from. Cf

  These handout incomes are to be given as "an absolute 
  constitutional right," and not to be withheld "under any  
  circumstances." This means that the  
  recipients are to continue to get this income not only if  
  they absolutely refuse to seek or take a job, but if they 
   throw the handout money away at the races, or spend it on 
   prostitutes, on whiskey, cigarettes, marijuana, heroin, or  
  what not. They are to be given "sufficient to live in  
  dignity," and it is apparently to be no business of the 
   taxpayers if a recipient chooses none the less to live  
  without dignity, and to devote his guaranteed leisure to 
   gambling, dissipation, drunkenness, debauchery, dope 
   addiction, or a life of crime

https://fee.org/articles/income-without-work/

Your claim is contradicted by your quotes which specifically calls out people not working and spending their money wastefully.

Then you did not understand the quote. It's not about an objective morality (what is shameful, wasteful etc. to spend on). Spend the money you successfully exchanged with someone else the way you want it.

The morale case with the argument is that citizen should have their say in how their taxes are spend, and that each of one us have different goals so "living in dignity" cannot be accomplished by UBI.

> Then you did not understand the quote.

Perhaps you picked a bad quote then. That quote pretty explicitly contradicts your claim.

  They are to be given "sufficient to live in  
  dignity," and it is apparently to be no business of the 
   taxpayers if a recipient chooses none the less to live  
  without dignity

Dignity is subjective ofc. If you think otherwise I can understand how you can interpret the quote in another way :)

Since dignity is subjective, how can someone (the taxpayer) have any business having an opinion on whether someone else is living with dignity?

I fail to see how the subjectivity of dignity has any relation to your claim that "What does matter is where does the money come from."

They don't have business in it. But they might find how their taxes are spent immoral from their point of view.

UBI will never solve the economic problem of "we all should be living in dignity", ours values are subjective.

I'm getting really tired of seeing this argument at the top of every single thread about a UBI experiment, as if:

1. There are no other concerns that we can gather info about besides "UBI might cause so much inflation that it cancels itself out" and

2. Nothing can be learned from these experiments unless they prove that the concern in #1 is unfounded.

This is just obstructionism. Using less than 100% accurate simulations to attempt to predict the outcome of implementing actions and to inform our choices has been common practice since the dawn of civilization, there's no reason that the tool is suddenly completely useless in this particular situation. This isn't a "hard science". We have massive problems with poverty and economic inequality in our society and statements like these only serve to stop the conversation that potentially leads to solving them. Why do people seem so stubbornly against seeing if a UBI works?

Also, another point that this "experiment" doesn't really generalize beyond charity, is that the population of people who get the money, are not the ones supporting the program. The funding for doing this comes from outside donors. Thus, the people who receive money, have no downside of using that money to increase their earning potential.

However, if it were implemented at the government level, people who used their money to increase their earning potential would have to pay increased taxes to support the UBI. The cost/benefit to extra earning changes if you keeping all your extra money, or a significant portion is going towards funding UBI. Once you do that, you may see a lot more people decide that the extra effort is not worth it.

So, this is a great experiment in directly providing money as charity. It does not really address UBI as would be implemented by governments.

One interpretation of "universal" is that it is income independent of other income, so if you get a job you still get UBI too.

This could be a huge help people who can't find stable employment, but still want e.g. a loan to buy a home.

1) How do you mean it isn't "universal"? My understand is that this initiative is universal within these communities? Are you saying that there is no meaningful way to test UBI without jumping immediately into a global program?

2) 6000 is a pretty good sample size. Given that this will be universal within these communities, we can certainly look for any evidence of local price changes.

That would be true if every economic good were produced within the community. I don’t know how isolated these experimental communities are, but I doubt they source 100% of supplies from the same group that’s getting the basic income.

It's true if ANY economic good is produced locally. You can look for individual prices changes.

Additionally, production costs are highly variable component of local prices and can be dwarfed by transport and retail costs (e.g. produce in the US.)

Why? Even if a whole country would have UBI they still need to import stuff...

The “U” in “UBI” usually stands for “Unconditional” (not behavior- or means-tested), not “Universal”.

> If you’re only testing UBI on a small population, then 1) it’s not even universal, and 2) there will not be enough “beta testers” to (in)validate these criticisms.

Your point holds until history has proven who is right. Of course, any experiment on UBI that is constrained by a financial reality of whoever conducts the study needs to limit eligibility and therefore lose the proof of universality.

But: Do you have a better design for UBI experiments, given actual constraints?

> everyone having extra money

No. UBI redistributes income (slightly differently than welfare). It does not create new money.

Then many (the upper half of?) citizens will have tax burdens greater than their basic income payments.

Is it “not means tested” because you and the IRS both mail each other checks instead of using net settlement?

What makes UBI different from standard progressive taxation and welfare?

Most (all current?) welfare schemes have a disincentive for work because earning income disqualifies you from welfare, and getting a poor job can make you worse off even if the welfare amount is below the minimum wage, since going to that job often also does add extra expense (transportation, caretaker for kids and other dependents, etc).

With unconditional basic income, however, all the job income is extra, which is a big difference in motivation especially for people who can't hold a full-time job because of health issues or having to take care of others.

Furthermore, standard welfare systems don't handle structural unemployment well - they don't provide a long-term (decades, not months or years) means of support to able-bodied people that can't get a job. Historically, that wasn't much of a problem - able-bodied people could get a job if they really wanted most of the time; if there was an economic slump, then it went away in a couple years (and welfare could help ride it over), and if they couldn't get a job, then retraining was a solution. In the future, the situation is different, we should expect millions of people, eventually a majority of population, whose labor is economically unnecessary (it can be done by machines better if these people aren't allowed to participate) despite any reasonable retraining. This issue is(will be) new, and current methods clearly won't work.

People respond to "carrots and sticks", and UBI brings a much more sensible set of "carrots and sticks" than progressive taxation + classic welfare.

>all the job income is extra

If a realistic working person's income tax liability is going to be a substantial portion of or greater than the UBI allocation, UBI is really just unemployment insurance and the disincentive to work remains.

We already have a "basic income" for working people: (personal exemption + standard deduction) * (marginal tax rate). Working people are still net taxpayers. Making them not net taxpayers is just sharply increasing the progressiveness of the progressive taxation scheme, i.e. standard liberal/Democratic politics since forever.

I'd support reframing the standard deduction, personal exemption, child tax credit, etc. as refundable credits, but this is only "income" at the bottom of the distribution.

This really does sound like FUD to my ears.

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