What happens in Denver is just a social project, the only thing mildly special about it is that recipients didn't have to do anything in return. But there have been many of such projects in countries all over the world.
If you want to understand more about their study, their methods are available. It answers a lot of the comments below. They do make a distinction and call this "Guaranteed Basic Income" since it targets a subset population: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/64f507a995b636019ef88...
No, it isn't. You can't study UBI by giving income to people who don't currently have income. To study universal basic income, you have to give it to everybody--the same amount--including people who already have income, even people who don't need any additional income. And then you can look at all of the effects, negative (people ceasing to work, or not working as much, because they are now guaranteed a certain amount of income independent of how much they work--meaning that overall production of goods and services might go down even as demand goes up) as well as positive (people who previously didn't have income now having it and therefore having more options).
Studying having the spending of the income not be restricted might be worth doing, but that still doesn't make it a study of UBI, because having the spending be unrestricted is not the critical feature of UBI. We already have social programs that give income whose spending is unrestricted, such as SSI and SSDI. What we don't currently have is a program that gives the same income to everybody regardless of need or anything else. That is the key feature of UBI that would need to be studied if you want to claim to be "studying UBI".
Also there are other implications, I’m not even sure what’s the point in calling this UBI (the data might of course be still valuable for other purposes).
Where are you getting this? The article is indicating that only people experiencing homelessness were given this, and its indicating quite a few of the participants of the study got off the streets and even out of shelters.
Not everybody is homeless due to their financial mismanagement, some people just get runs of bad luck.
Yes, which is why this is a has nothing to do with UBI. Cash based welfare payments are not a particularly novel idea and there is plenty of data why do they work/don’t work.
> Not everybody is homeless due to their financial mismanagement, some people just get runs of bad luck.
Of course. However on average they are probably significantly more likely to mismanage that money than other groups.
Shouldn't they worry more about questions that are related to whether UBI gets implemented in the first place? For instance, whether there's a work disincentive associated with it, or whether the program is cheaper than regular welfare. Figuring out answers to the questions you listed is putting the cart before the horse.
People frame it like that, but in practice it would be offset by increased taxes for most.
For example, everyone gets $20,000 per year as "universal" basic income. However, your taxes go up $20,000 per year or more because you weren't in the lowest tax bracket. We have to pay for the UBI somehow.
UBI of a substantial amount would be incredibly expensive. Expensive to the point that the taxes would have to dip all the way down into the middle class to make it work. So for the average person, that UBI would come in and then go right back out as taxes.
The money has to come from somewhere. Taxes would go up to pay for it.
You can't have both UBI and the current tax rates.
Stock buy-backs don't create any value, or, if they do, it is obscure to me. You may get a one-time bump in capital gains tax, but it's nothing to build an economy on.
A million new dishwashers, though - that's taxable profit and increased emploment. Could UBI drive a virtuous cycle in which everyone gets richer? It certainly looks from here like inequality fundamentally shrinks the pie, even if it works out nicely for some eaters.
That’s not how UBI works. It’s not tied to quitting one’s job. Anyone working earns income from salary/wages in addition to their UBI. Unlike many existing entitlements, there is never a financial incentive to work less.
EDIT: I think I misread the whole thing, it really does not say "Universal" anywhere :) Anyway, I think someone, soon will try to use this project as an argument in favor of UBI, which is ridiculous.
Why's that ridiculous? Testing a small scale trial on the people most likely to be effected by a larger scale program seems pretty reasonable to me.
I mean, I know UBI haven't been tried at whole country scale, but the populist government in my country came pretty close, trying to bribe people with things like social security payments for parents (you get paid a pretty penny monthly for each child you have), or giving extra pension raises to retired people - basically giving away free money to everyone. And guess what? Inflation in my country peaked at 19% in February, luckily it fell down to like 8% in September.
Yes! Exactly. They will not work shitty jobs. Isn't that a good thing?
Which means that after short adjustment period, the prices will rise and you will still need the salary from that shitty job to survive.
Also, the average person will not have their income increase significantly with UBI. The money has to come from somewhere, and taxes will offset the gains for most. Wealthy folks may see their income reduced by a few percentage points. Poor people can easily see their income doubled.
Another factor to consider is that apartments, clothes, and food are not flatly limited, they're elastic. Currently people with no money cannot participate in the market, so UBI has the potential to drive prices down through demand as well. We're seeing a negative example of this with the current housing market; prices are rising quickly because only wealthy people can afford a house, and less and less affordable housing is created as it's not as profitable.
Imagine a country where average income is 2000 USD per month. Now, you give everyone UBI of 1000 USD per month, so the prices keep rising until cumulative inflation reaches 50% - now 3000 USD buys you exactly the same standard of living as 2000 USD used to do before.
So, inflation stops, but no one's life is better after UBI than it was before.
And of course if the government decides to raise UBI from 1000 USD to 2000 USD then the next wave of inflation follows, cancelling any gains once again.
This does not follow. Many people may find they have the same quality of life as before. This isn't a failure. The relative significance of $2k is much greater to someone making <$2k (>2x increase) than someone making >$2k (<2x increase). It seems like in terms of influencing behavior, the greater effect would be felt by the poor, and there's more poor.
That only works on individual level, in a world without inflation. it does not work when when you give money to everyone. Yes, I agree, rich people won't even notice that extra $1k of UBI in their pockets. And they also won't notice a price of pizza going from $20 to $30. Poor people, however, will stay poor.
As a general principle: money is not a real thing. It doesn't exist. It's only a symbol, means of accounting. You cannot eat it, you cannot wear it. You cannot fix the poverty by giving everyone money if you do not increase the amount of goods available for purchase in the market at the same time.
Right, so it's always in people's best interest to work harder, but $2k buys a lot more pizza than $0, regardless of price.
> You cannot fix the poverty by giving everyone money if you do not increase the amount of goods available for purchase in the market at the same time.
Supply is elastic. Increasing demand should indeed increase supply.
That's some Keynesian bullshit, supply is constrained by a lot of factors, demand alone can't increase it. And even when it does, the intermediate step is, guess what? Raising prices.
Because drawing conclusions about what happens if you guarantee income to everyone, based on studying a project that only guaranteed income to homeless people, is ridiculous.
> a small scale trial
Is not what this is. You can't have a "small scale trial" of universal basic income. That's the whole point.
Basic Income is part of Universal Basic Income, and I think it's pretty reasonable to expect some conclusions apply to each.
Since most people are not homeless, I have no idea why you think this makes it reasonable to extrapolate anything from this study to the case of actual UBI.
> Basic Income is part of Universal Basic Income
Not if it's only given to the homeless.
Some people are. They were given a basic income. Under UBI they would also be given a basic income. It seems crazy to me to suggest these are entirely uncorrelated.
> Not if it's only given to the homeless.
So I'll ask again, how does Basic Income for the middle class invalidate Basic Income for the destitute?
I can't tell if you are trolling or are actually confused.
The issue is not that the homeless people were given a basic income. The issue is that everybody who wasn't homeless was not given a basic income. So only a small fraction of people were given a basic income in this study. That is what makes it invalid as a study of universal basic income.
> how does Basic Income for the middle class invalidate Basic Income for the destitute?
This question is irrelevant since middle class people were not given a basic income in this study. Do a study where middle class people are given a basic income and then we can talk.
You're arguing with a strawman. It isn't a study of Universal Basic Income. This is a study of Basic Income and it's effects on homelessness, so the results of this study should reasonably apply to other situations where Basic Income is provided to homeless individuals (as it would with UBI). To be clear, "the results" are the effect of basic income on homelessness, and only the effect of basic income on homelessness. This is not a blanket endorsement of UBI.
I've been very deliberate with my wording to avoid absolutes. You seem to be suggesting that we cannot model anything at all. Yeah, I think that's insane.
No, I'm arguing with what you actually said at the start of this subthread. See below.
> It isn't a study of Universal Basic Income.
According to you, it is valid input to decisions about UBI. Here is the original post of yours (responding to Detrytus) that I responded to in this subthread:
XXXX
> I think someone, soon will try to use this project as an argument in favor of UBI, which is ridiculous.
Why's that ridiculous? Testing a small scale trial on the people most likely to be effected by a larger scale program seems pretty reasonable to me.
XXXX
Your contention that the study is a valid "small scale trial" of UBI is what I and others are disagreeing with. Nothing you have said changes that disagreement in the slightest; you just keep repeating the same contention we have already disagreed with, without addressing the issues we have raised at all.
> "the results" are the effect of basic income on homelessness, and only the effect of basic income on homelessness.
Which has nothing whatever to do with UBI. Nor is it a "small scale trial" of UBI. It's a study of the effect of providing basic income to homeless people and only homeless people. You can't use the results of that to conclude anything useful about what would happen if you provided basic income to everybody. This has already been pointed out to you multiple times in this subthread.
Sigh. I've been very deliberate with my wording, and I did not say Universal anywhere in my original comment. If this caused confusion, my follow-up comments should have made things abundantly clear, and I'm still waiting for a rebuttal.
If you insist on putting words in my mouth, know that you are arguing with a strawman.
In a similar vein, this is not the Alan Partridge Project, which is a band, and that fact was not mentioned in this article, furthering my initial confusion.
When you drill into it basic income advocates are just pushing for less punitive welfare.
It’s a noble goal but not especially novel.
What we need is a job guarantee:
(Now, obviously, taxes are kind of a grab-bag: it is hard to see, directly, how much of your tax dollars go to any one particular appropriation. But the point stands, and I think an easy approximation would be taxes paid * (UBI paid out / total appropriations) or so.)
UBI is essentially equivalent to having a negative tax bracket, and that bracket would only apply to some people. Necessarily to compensate for that bracket, some or all of the upper brackets must go up, in order to fund the lower bracket.
I.e., if the government writes everybody a $10k check, but due to doing that I now owe $15k more in tax obligations each year … I've not in any material way received UBI, even if there's a $10k check in my account.
Like, if you just wrote everyone a $10k check per year the resulting national debt alone would be absurd…? How would that work?