Exactly. With a permanent UBI in place you can throw all these studies out the window.
You could get decent results in less than 60-80 years by granting each participant a fully-funded fixed annuity guaranteeing them a specific income for the remainder of their lives independent of the continuation of the study. Of course, that would raise the cost of the study to something approaching a real (non-universal) BI program.
Maybe the simple solution is that the researchers establish a dedicated million dollar bank account for a participant and automatically withdraw $1000 for the participant every month.
UBI is a political decision which is renewed with every government.
The perspective of the participants makes sense. Whether they believe their access to UBI will continue or not, it makes sense to up-skill.
Besides, we do know how people behave when they are born with a million dollar bank account, and it's relatively very rare that they are criticised for how they choose to live.
If this is true than implementing UBI will be more problematic than I thought. All UBI proposals so far call for all other financial safety nets to be removed in order to finance UBI. Managing that will be a nightmare if you can just cut off UBI, then you have to spin up everything else again. I imagine UBI to be something similar to how the pension system is, once in place it stays there forever-ish (meaning that it can potentially collapse).
"we do know how people behave when they are born with a million dollar bank account, and it's relatively very rare that they are criticised for how they choose to live" - that's an excellent point.
The knock on effect is that it'd likely reduce funding for other safety nets because they have an inherent safety net in UBI. But the existing welfare programs are either highly prohibitive or extremely difficult to qualify for and maintain even if you should be using them. UBI eliminates that barrier of entry if you only need 1k a month (using Yangs plan here).
So, yeah, less people would likely use food stamps because they can get more from 1k a month than from 1.2k in food stamps. Most people do not qualify for that much in food stamps as it is. With fewer people using that program, the government would funnel less money to that program, reducing net costs and allowing more money to go elsewhere. Eventually this would likely lead to the end of that program.
This could allow us to create new social programs that are more focused. With fewer people requiring other social safety nets, the new ones that are created would require less funding and can address root cause issues vs symptoms which are what we address today.
Most people just need money. A minority of people using a social welfare programs need something significantly more than just money. We should not leave those people on the street, but Yang never planned on that happening. He proposed a VAT tax to cover the costs. Whether that would actually work or not is debatable, but that was his plan.
So I guess that suggests that even if a UBI is implemented that it could be cut or repealed in a future government.
The benefit isn't shared by everyone, though. The payouts may be equal but the taxes to support those payouts are not. If a majority of voters are paying more in taxes than they receive in payouts (as is likely) then it shouldn't be hard to sell them on the idea that reducing or dismantling the program would be in their own self-interest.
On the other hand, if it would be difficult to dismantle the program even knowing that it benefits a vocal minority at the expense of the majority, that should make us think twice about instituting it in the first place.
It does very little to test economics. Perhaps UBI leads to a lot of people deciding to tend bar at the local tennis club, volunteering for the job. Maybe introducing UBI across a large area has marked effects on gym memberships.
Those seem easier to test if you put a large area on UBI for a short-ish term (though I admit I haven't seen any UBI research that analyses such social effects - perhaps somebody knows of some?)
Is that anything but conjecture? I see a study showing that UBI is a "good thing", and you didn't provide a source for your reasoning.
Edit: to all those saying that the parent comment is straightforward, or common sense, or whatever, it's not straightforward or common sense because I disagree that UBI would be a failure. No one knows what would happen under UBI, but these types of studies give some evidence as to what is going to happen.
Everyone saying the parent is correct is basically similar to saying we should stop studying fusion because it's common sense we'll never achieve it (there are people who say that, too).
It's a good first step to study this, at least, and goes to show we need to test UBI on a greater scale.
However it's not a stretch at all to say people will act different when they're temporarily receiving money than when they'll receive it 'forever'.
No citation is needed for straightforward observations.
All human behaviors are affected by knowing that something is going to end soon or not.
Yet, UBI is often held under strict scrutiny. While the status quo is not challenged in the same way.
I understand it's much more stressful than permanent guaranteed UBI, but it's truer to the real intent of UBI (which I believe is reducing the friction when deciding to try new job or state or whatever in a pursuit of self-actualization).