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Comment by nautilius | Hacker News Reader

So, if you would want to test if, say, a pair of shoes improves running performance, it's not enough to compare to peers without change, or the situation before the new shoes, but you will reject the study unless you also have a third group where you break people's legs? How would that be necessary?

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UBI cannot be implemented unless somebody pays for it. It's necessarily redistributive. All existing experiments only look at one half of the equation. I think it's a fair question to ask what the effect will be on people who on net will pay more than before this system was introduced. Breaking peoples legs is not a prerequisite for others to run faster.

Of course not, there are a plethora of factors that would alter the effectiveness of UBI, looking at it so simply and then rejecting it outright is dishonest.

Money would majorly come from those who have the greater means to pay larger amounts into the system, and on the hypothesis that bettering the material conditions of those in the lower and middle class will necessarily lead to increasing productivity and thus (and 'thus' is a large leap) greater general income that can partly be paid back into the system in a cycle.

You can use purchasing power parity differences to check it out. Find like-minded first world people to pool a fraction of their income and you can offer UBI to a third world village or town.

Isn't the typical first principles argument that lowering taxes for the companies etc. pays for itself because of increased economic activity and thus tax income actually increases. Why could the same not apply for UBI?

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