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Comment by RubenSandwich | Hacker News Reader

From my understand this is going to the poorest of the poor in Kenya, because the median Kenyaian monthly salary is ~800 USD.[1][2] So this UBI experiment does not seem to be for the average population, more as a form of welfare. Still interesting and meaningful research, but not the long term UBI experiment many are waiting for.

[1] http://www.salaryexplorer.com/salary-survey.php?loc=111&loct...

[2] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=80%2C000+KES+in+usd&t=osx&ia=curre...

Edit: Source [1] seems to be unreliable. See below comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17013632. So while the number is wrong, it does seem that this UBI is still targeting the poor.

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The figure from the above website is wrong. US$800 per month is in the upper middle-income territory but Kenya is still a lower middle-income nation.

https://qz.com/635952/kenyas-goal-of-being-an-upper-middle-i...

Kenya's GDP per capita was around $1143 or less than $100 per month in 2016. "The average monthly wage in Kenya is 6,498 shillings ($76).", according to Reuters in 2013.

https://tradingeconomics.com/kenya/gdp-per-capita

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-kenya-reform-idUSBRE94R0M...

This means that the basic income ($22.5 per month or ~20-30% of national median salary) to be provided to Kenyans should account for a substantial part of their income and the experiment could become a basis for an analysis of basic income effects in certain communities.

Thanks, somehow I missed that, this makes much more sense but then raises some fundamental questions regarding the potential pigeon holing of UBI as a tool whose efficacy is primarily shaped by the state of the economy in which it is deployed (ie this study is highly dependent on the underlying economy being that of a severely under developed nation state).

Maybe I'm being slightly too cynical, but that's pretty much inevitable. A great deal more "scientific knowledge" than you'd probably be entirely comfortable with knowing involves taking a point sample of some space and applying it way, way away from where the sample was actually taken. If this study succeeds, then you can expect the HN commentariat to be citing how BI has been scientifically proved to be a good idea until the end of time, and if this study fails, the opposite.

Even better, there's really two types of BI going on here. One is as a mechanism for poverty alleviation, by getting capital to people who have none. Not just "not much", but none. The other is as a solution to the as-yet mostly future problem of the work force being automated out of existence in every industry that people below a certain IQ threshold can work productively in. Expect those to be conflated freely, even though in my opinion they're two different problems. (If you squint really hard, yes, they blur together, but don't ignore the fact that you're squinting.)

As one of the likely cheerleaders, without the tax credit, it’s not UBI. (In my humble opinion) This is pure charity.

What do you mean by pigeon holing here? I don't understand what are the variables and what is the value space. (No disrespect, just trying to understand.)

$148 USD in HCMC [1], which is a modern city.

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=vietnam+average+salary

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