Basic Income Pilot Project: Study results

> Of course people don't quit their jobs and careers because they are part of a small group enrolled in a 3-year scientific study.

Except the study did show people quitting their jobs at a higher rate. But they mostly switched to new jobs instead of becoming unemployed. Of course people given the choice between working less or making more money usually choose the money. People who choose otherwise are already part-timing/episodically employed/on unemployment benefits/getting subsidized by their family.

Presumably there's a level of UBI where most people wouldn't see the need to work anymore, but if they quit permanently, this will reduce the supply of goods, increasing prices and limiting how much UBI can buy, to the point where people are incentivized to start working again. So it's a self-regulating system. Of course it would be less disruptive to start with a very low UBI that gradually increases, instead of starting high and letting inflation sort out the rest.

I'll give you a counter example. "Retirement."

Nominally retirement is "forever" in that once you are retired your pension/savings/whatever is funding your existence needs. Having lived most of my life in the SF Bay area I've watched as my cohort came here as college grads, went through the various tech life cycles, and then aged out into "retirement." I put it in quotes because some retired voluntarily, others did not. Involuntary retirement or "funemployement" as the euphemism goes, was typically below the level of flexibility that they had imagined they would have being retired.

Various life events, health issues, marital issues, Etc. spread the spectrum even further. As a result the 'basic income' for this cohort ranges from just below 'covering groceries, utilities, and rent in a low cost of living area' to an annual travel budget, replacement budget for cars/boats/etc, and possibly a second property with some 'feature' (like a ski cabin, a beach bungalow, etc).

What is consistent across the spectrum is a desire to "do something productive with their time." That skews towards volunteer work if their basic life needs are met, piecework if having extra money would meet some currently unmet needs. I don't think I know anyone who could sit in the rocking chair on the patio every day and watch the sun come up and go down, or spend every day at the golf course or some other leisure activity, choose to take that path.

That said, pretty much everyone I know who has retired took an extended amount of time (typically months) to 'unwind.' Once unwound, life seems to assert itself.

Now I don't think this is scientific, its a very specific group of people. Generally professionals who worked in office jobs vs trades. And a number of them 'fail' at retirement which has them going back to work because they didn't have sufficient tools for creating their own direction or something. But laziness isn't a trait I've seen. A completely different direction perhaps, but a direction rather than standing still.

yeah, there are basically three questions people have for UBI.

1. Does it cause inflation

2. What is the impact on employment/productivity

3. Can we afford to tax ourselves to pay ourselves in a way that makes sense?

These studies answer none of these.

This is the UBI experiment I want to see:

The government creates a new currency called $UBI, with the same legal tender status as the official currency for that country ($FIAT). I.e. people can use it to pay taxes, and people are required to accept it when doing commerce. Both currencies exist in parallel.

In the true spirit of ubi, everyone is entitled to an equal amount of it, and no one should be worse off by it. So they need to issue the currency new currency to give away.

They set up a system so everyone gets the same amount of money, at the same time, for maximum fairness. Everyone's income just goes up, equally.

$UBI officially has 1:1 parity to $FIAT, and this parity is used to calculate how much they'll need to "print" out at a given month. Let's say it's living_wage*population_size. That amount can be adjusted once a year by factoring in the government reserves built up exclusively from tax returns. In other words, the monetary base is a known, deterministic quantity.

They allow free exchange between $FIAT and $UBI, but the government does not officially exchanges it. They also allow people to set prices to their products and services freely.

It's funny, people like you will say a study is too small and focused to be worthwhile.

But then we have the case of Alaska, an entire state receiving a yearly stipend(basic income). And the same type of people will say well it's too broad you can't possibly pinpoint any direct effects. https://www.ktoo.org/2015/02/20/alaska-tops-gallups-index-we...

Science is not made for perfection and many studies are _not possible_ it doesn't mean there's nothing useful to gain from it for policy makers. It's also simpler to study smaller groups than effects on entire countries.

That's right. Community wide Universal Basic Income would cause price rises for shelf goods, negating the intended beneficial effect.

As the value of money is always relative to its scarcity. More money held by all individuals always leads to higher prices, because it leads to money being worth less. Life only becomes less expensive when making more money than others. This is a basic dynamic of how money works, at its most fundamental level.

Society would need price controls to stop shelf prices from rising, and to maintain the beneficial effect of UBI (being able to afford more goods). At that point shortages are incoming, and UBI income functionally transforms from money to credits for goods. Even if it is still called money. Credits implies a limit on how much goods people are allotted, even if given credits / money to redeem said allotment. The government needs to decide how much in goods each individual is allotted.

This is where it gets bad. Communist propaganda practice is to promise that the communist society will allot a maximum amount goods per person out of its GDP, implying an evenly distributed yet relatively well off populace. Visualize a pie that is cut in large slices and completely distributed.

The rub is that the government gets to keep any part of the pie that is not distributed, and so its incentive is to distribute the least amount of the pie and the smallest slices. Which is what we see in practice. People given the minimum of their collective production value to sustain their existence. With the government hoarding the rest. Slaves in all but name.

The government now has a taste of control over wealth distribution for part of its GDP, which it enacts via entitlement over some production value of work and private business. Whatever production value is left for the private sector economy is now tempting for the government to also take over and minimally distribute in the same manner, because again the government gets to keep much of the money. Private business and employment begin to become dirty words.

We live in a World that is dominated by the fundamental nature of money, some would call it a fallen world. Making a low amount of money feels like a slave's existence.

However, at least in a free market economy there is a type of escape hatch from that existence should someone figure out how to provide society with relatively more value than others. Whereas in a socialist society, that escape hatch tends to legally close as the years tick by and the personal allotment of goods declines.

Quantity has a quality all of its own.

Particularly when they ignore the largest data set we already have - the state pensions.

They are a basic income within a fixed exchange rate area by age rather than location. There are trillions of data points across decades of provision. With compulsory retirement and changes removing compulsory retirement.

The results are clear. People tend to stop working once they receive it, even if they have the option to continue.

An inconvenient truth.

And the result is that the age the pension becomes available has to be pushed higher to sustain it. Therefore the alternative time uses are insufficiently productive to be of help overall.

If it was a viable proposition there should be a virtuous cascade driving the pension age down, not up.

will it become a capped negative sales tax, in a way? I don't see how amount of currency smaller than individual UBI amount make tangible sense under its presence.

> completely different to if basic income was actually universal and expected to continue in the long-term

If we were in a “long term UBI situation” how would people really trust that the cash would keep flowing?

If current benefit programs (Medicare, social security, ACA, food stamps) are under attack how would it work with UBI ?

It would be fine for older workers to step back, but what about young adults coming into the workforce - would they just skip learning?

Perhaps, but they have actual arguments for their claim, and you have just hypotheses. Scientific studies like those are the best approximation we can have to a full rollout. So perhaps results won't be exactly the same with a full rollout, but at least they have already taken out the "people will just behave nonsensically / be worse off" hypotheses

If they really wanted to answer the question, they'd have to gather several millions of dollars, and then go to some island somewhere and provide UBI to everyone (without publicizing it, if at all possible). Then observe the changes in that group of people. For best results, choose an island in a developed part of the world.

One of my concerns about UBI is that it would just cause inflation to raise prices precisely high enough to cancel the effect of UBI.

You see this on a more limited scale when we do other things that subsidize demand. Give people assistance with home buying? House prices go up. Make college loans cheap and easy to get? Tuition costs go crazy.

> but the psychology is completely different to if basic income was actually universal and expected to continue in the long-term.

Would it though? Do people really trust their governments that much?

Poor people who this would be most applicable to tend to deal with the government a lot more than UBI proponents so their trust levels are probably different.

The money supply argument seems flawed to me. As long as poorer people gain a larger share of the money supply, their increased spending power would outpace inflation. That’s because inflation is a function of the money supply in total, not the money supply of those with lower income.

Even a lifetime study would take an even longer time to cover the effects of children of people who never worked.

We do have some data on that, because of SSI (not to be confused with SSDI), results not great. It may be a selection effect, of course.

> the likely feedback effects on the broader economy that a universal rollout would have

It's interesting to describe as "likely" something for which there is no evidence. This is an actively anti-science belief. It seems to me as if you really don't like the idea of UBI and so are saying that, if it actually happened, the effect would be the opposite of what experimental data shows. This is pretty clearly biased.

> (increase in the money supply)

There is no effect on money supply if this is funded through taxes.

> Some things just can't be tested ahead of time empirically.

You can gradually expand the pool of people receiving UBI to see how these effects scale. Begin in one city, then increase to a larger region, then do it nationally.

Not that it’s the point of what you’re saying, but at 300k, a 15k yearly payout would be 5%. I'm almost certain that no-one would ever give a 5% inflation adjusted annuity to an 18 year old for 300k.

All that to say that the value you propose is probably even higher than what you lay out.

Yes, the problem is you have more money chasing that same quantity of goods and thus you get inflation.

IMO a better way to achieve the UBI goal is to instead focus on universal basic goods. We're already nearly there with staple foods. For example bulk rice is now so cheap it's basically free. We could do the same with housing via prefab high density similar to Japan (mostly not done because it is illegal in the US). Internet and water is also near zero cost.

You would achieve the goals of UBI good-by-good without the inflation.

Governments try stuff like that pretty regularly (you can only buy certain things with food stamps, etc), but it's typically expensive to administer and inherently prone to abuse. Buy groceries with food stamps, sell groceries, buy drugs. On top of that, it's just inherently difficult to structure this in a way that's fair and useful to every person. If I inherited or built myself a nice rural home, I don't want a government-issue apartment - either instead or in addition to what I have. Do I get nothing? That's unfair. Do I get the stuff I don't want?

"Lump sum in cash" is the most flexible and equitable system. But then - and that's a major problem with UBI - you end up with people who spend it irresponsibly and then need help to survive. So you end up with UBI in addition to all the existing social safety nets.

What am I going to do with a second home?

I see where your head's at, but I think a huge portion of the reason for using dollars is that it's simple and easy to manage. You don't need to find suppliers, manage inventory, match individuals with housing, or audit for fairness. Potentially more importantly, you don't need to pay for those activities either!

And where exactly is that free furnished condo located? Do I get to live in Beverly Hills for free if I want to?

Ahh going back to the days of Government Cheese I see!

Everything old is new again.

I’ve had a similar line of thought.. basically what you are proposing is sort of a voucher system. But, here is where my mind went, what if it is implemented as a bunch of tokens issued via a blockchain or even through a central authority. They can be freely traded if needed and prices can go up and down, but regardless of the price, there is a set number of them that get issued.

Similarly, you can get issued tokens/rewards for doing needed work.

I’ve wanted to spend more time thinking through this more thoroughly and flesh out the idea more.. without ever having the chance to

I think expecting the government to figure out your meaning off life is putting a bit of to much responsibility there.

> If I get UBI but feel lost, how do I find a sense of belonging? How do I find meaning in my life?

That's rather a separate problem. The point of UBI is to make individuals and families more economically resilient. This should have a lot of beneficial spillover effects, but it's not a cure-all for every ill.

This is basically the communist vision (in its original, positive sense) -- Universal Basic Provisioning achieved through automation and a moderate amount of community service. People are always quick to point out how governments will inevitably screw this up, likely making things even worse than they are now, but I think the idea has merit at least in principle. Unlike the idea of Universal Basic Income. Free markets and free money just don't go together. Especially if this money is given to the "productive underlayer" of society rather than investment bankers. That will just collapse the house of cards from the inside out. Administrators, middle managers and VPs of sales do not a functioning economy make.

The problem is that substantial number of people are actually shit employees who create no real value to companies or society. They may be able to pull off the bare minimum requirement to get the money they need, but it'll be like pulling teeth to get them to consistently show up and do their jobs to even a half-decent level.

What you need is a job that's largely self-evidently-verifying (can't be faked), doesn't really need to interface much with other humans (especially customers), and can be self-started/managed. For some homeless people, that job is picking up cans and bottles for recycling money, but it's hard to come up with more and better ones.

Hitler for one always bragged about eradicating all unemployment in a stroke by ordering the autobahn projects.

The core of the problem today is this: With modern tools, a modern worker gets 100 times more work done than a worker without modern tools. And you need to hire people who can use those modern tools and are trustable. Now, for most jobs you can train anybody to do it, but you cannot train people to be trustable and not destroy or steal your modern tools.

The massive infrastructure projects and massive industrial projects of the past could swallow all the workers you could throw at them. And it didn't matter much at all if a worker was any combination of a drunk, a brawler, somebody who didn't speak the language, involved with organized crime at his spare time. As long as he did his job. But today, the very specialized and efficient tools are too sensitive and you want to be careful who gets near them and operates them.

Putting the unemployed to do big infrastructure projects or similar is still better than them doing nothing – but mostly for their own development and spirits, rather than the actual work being done.

I wouldn’t agree to either of those things.

There already is something similar to UBI. People don't starve, they have shelter, and they generally get taken care off when they have medical emergencies. That's true in most countries. What you get at that level is typically not great. But it is provided for by societies and governments across the world and lots of people are dependent on that.

That current system is actually more expensive than UBI. At its best it would be about as expensive. For example, some countries spend almost as much on unemployment programs as they do on the actual unemployment benefits. Which, if you think about it is mildly ridiculous. People that show up at a hospital are not going to die abandoned in the gutter (well mostly, Michael Moore documented a few negative examples for this in the US). And of course, having your life saved might bankrupt you in the US. Even if you are insured. And even there they'll likely patch you up at least. And in most other countries, everybody is insured so it's not a problem. The modern sign of poverty is being morbidly obese because of the excess of low quality nutrition people seem to be able to get their hands on via food stamps and what little benefits they can scrape together. Which then causes health issues. Which further burdens the unemployment and benefits system.

All this is stupid, inefficient, costly, and not that great if you are on the receiving end (to put it mildly). But formalizing the status quo in UBI form might make things a bit more efficient and better. It would still not be great or that attractive as a lifestyle. But then the message becomes "just get a job if you want/need more". Don't worry about starving. Worry about getting something nice for yourself and work to secure that. Most people have more ambition than just coasting on benefits. And would you employ the ones that don't?

People think of this in closed world terms (somebody has to pay for it), not realizing that most economic growth is a complex system with money being created and distributed (in complex ways) by central banks, which then causes inflation to happen, and spending to compensate for that. A lot of jobs are more about distributing money to people and getting them to spend it than getting people to do something that adds value. The most important function many people have in our economy is just spending their money. Skipping the part where these people pretend to be useful in some bullshit job isn't that big of a deal.

1. This isn't at all obvious to me. Look at the number of people who continue working well into retirement or the people who volunteer their time. I tried sitting on my ass for three months after college and it drove me so crazy I picked up WebGL despite having zero intention of using it in my career.

2. Most UBI proposals I've seen involve replacing existing programs with UBI. My personal favorite proposal is a flat tax that's fully redistributed. There's no deficit possible here, if tax revenue goes down, so do payments.

> 1. People will stop working if they don't need to and won't need to in future. This is obvious to anyone who has met people.

Tons of people work jobs they don't like, instead of jobs they would prefer, because the former pays a ton better than the latter, even though they could (barely, perhaps) get by on the lower salary.

They do this because they like stuff, want prestige, and maybe want to raise a family in circumstances other than poverty.

It's not obvious to me at all that UBI at levels anyone is even half-seriously proposing would cause more than a very few people to stop working.

> 2. We obviously can't afford UBI. Most governments have severe deficits even without UBI. "Tax the rich! Then we'll be able to afford it!".. yes well that's orthogonal. Let me know when you figure out how to do that.

That's not at all obvious. I'm not rich, but I recall when I made far less money and was taxed at a marginal rate which was 4% higher than the one which applies to me now. In the U.S., we've made a conscious decision to keep cutting taxes and running large deficits. We could decide to raise taxes and pay for UBI. Yes, that's a political problem, but it's not at all the problem that we can't afford UBI.

==1. People will stop working if they don't need to and won't need to in future. This is obvious to anyone who has met people.==

You are arguing against a proposal nobody is making. In this study, €1,200/month isn't really enough that people wouldn't need to work. The average wage in Germany was €4,479/month in 2023.

Yes, the studies are a waste of money when you've already made up your mind about the way the world "obviously" works, and aren't willing to test your assumptions or change your mind.

1. If this was true the wealthy would not work, and yet a large majority still do, socialites and other classes are very small minorities of the wealthy.

Elsewhere in this thread, someone saying this already exists in Alaska.

Pretty much any policy can work (to some extent, for a while) in a society with sufficiently high social trust. But that trust is not static and can be built or depleted over time by those same policies.

A far more interesting study would be to give its to a bunch of graduating high school students, guaranteed for the rest of their lives, and see how many are contributing meaningfully to the economy at the end of a few years.

As long as lower economic strata gain an increased portion of the money supply, they ought to be able to purchase more than they did before, even after inflation. At a high level inflation is a function of the money supply not the money supply of the lower strata.

It can be done on the scale of a city or region within a country. The idea it would have an inflationary effect is somewhat misguided. There are only so many goods available in the economy, and redistributing money can't decrease that. Your real wealth, that is the quantity of goods and services you have access to, will go up if you are below the mean, and down if you are above it, under a scheme of redistribution. The inflationary effect is actually a desired result, as it will increase the economic incentive to produce goods appealing to people on the lower end of the income scale. In the long term, you should expect a real terms decrease in the price of essential goods and an increase in the price of luxury goods as the spending power of the rich falls in comparison to the middle and lower classes. You can see the precise opposite of this at play currently. Rising inequality, the exact opposite of redistribution, has driven massive increases in the production of luxury goods and simultaneous inflation and decreases in the production of essential goods.

TL;DR A free market serves the consumers with money, and redistributing money re-balances the market towards serving a certain group of people. I believe a downwards redistribution would be favourable to the present upwards one.

I'm not sure that I understand, are you saying that UBI might not work because real estate could become more expensive?

The money naturally flows from those who don't own assets, to those who do. So, to keep the economy flowing healthily, the cycle needs to be completed by taxing those who own a lot of assets.

During COVID, my friends and I were temporarily retired. Lamenting every moment since having to come out of retirement. We were all laid off and received about $2k/mo for awhile and what happened was we ended up hanging out every since day working on whatever we were working on, and feelings of inadequacy faded into the background. It was a micro golden age for us and that period of time has cemented UBI for us. It was a small amount of money and we lived with our parents but we were never more productive and happy.

Hopefully before I die I can witness a strong implementation of UBI. It would directly reflect in culture in terms of music and the arts. Little funding for the arts currently combined with massive rent nearly everywhere leaves little room for cultural phenomenon that was possible in places like the lower east side bowery for example. Or arts funding in the USSR and other soviet bloc countries.

Time is more valuable than anything else.

How so? Universal Basic Income means, you get it no matter what. So if they require you to serve to get money, that's no UBI.

> Who in their right mind wants that?

Those living in poverty. Speaking from personal experience.

> UBI just means signing your soul away to the state, who then can mandate your lifestyle completely including health procedures and even military conscription.

The state can already do this without UBI.

Not saying UBI is flawless though.

I agree. Much better to die because a free market health insurer denied your operation because it rather kept the money it would cost.

Why if the state provides a basic safety net should that preclude individual ambition?

Should we not move toward a society that can not go hungry?

"Universal" basic income.

"Universal" health care.

What the word in quotes means is they're unconditional.

I’m surprised by the down votes. Possibly you could have made your point better, there are pros and cons.

“A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.”

>mandatory health procedures and even military conscription

Some people have these without UBI. In fact theres nothing stopping the state from doing these things right now.

lol the state(aka society's strong arm) will always have an immense say in your life even if you are so oblivious to it. Government exists to redistribute money, might as well distribute it to the poor and do it universally.

This study didn't say, we gave 1200 to people and then dictated their lives like a dictator.

> who then can mandate your lifestyle completely including health procedures and even military conscription. No thanks.

Entirely unlike modern America, where utility providers for food and water are regulated for what's healthy and representative legislature decides when to draft you for Vietnam 2.

You're right. Better to sell your soul away to a corporation that can fire you at will.

You have most of these limitations imposed on you as market effects anyways. You’re no freer than you would be with UBI.

The state gets more power over you without UBI (assuming a social safety net of any kind already exists) - without UBI it needs a larger apparatus to decide how to distribute funds, and it can pick arbitrary reasons to cut off your funds. Under UBI administration would be far simpler and cutting off your income for political reasons would be far more noticeable, since it's supposed to be universal.

> Who in their right mind wants that?

Anyone that is repulsed by a system that requires an underclass of desperate people for it to work.

> UBI just means signing your soul away to the state

As opposed to sign your soul away to corporations instead?

Military conscription has always been the role of the state.

In the US, health procedures are currently in the hands of oligarchical profit-maximizing middlemen; the first assassination has already happened.

I really don't know what your objection is to improving people's lives.

I don't understand why you're downvoted. I grew up in a country that did exactly this, until collapsed. Strong social nets, free housing, free medicine for all, free education, no unemployment, sounds like heaven, right?

The only problem is that every person is a government-owned livestock unit. Their thoughts, knowledge, career paths, kids, even their private life, everything is controlled by government, that also obligates you to watch after your neighbours and co-workers. You can't even leave the country without government permission. You can expelled if you don't like the government though. You can't work where you want after getting your degree, government will send you where they think they need you to be. School is never ending propaganda. We literally had "political information" every Monday, since grade 1. Also, since grade 1 you're in one of the tiers of the only allowed political party of the country. There's tier for grade 1 to 3, then for 4 to 8, then from 8 to 10. Every 18yo is drafted for 2 years for armed forces (3 for navy). I can go on and on.

I remember it too well and would never trade messy and chaotic capitalist society to that labour camp with "free" rations.

It's frightening that so many people in 1st world want to live in a cage with 3-times-a-day meal.

I don't get it. Where's the flaw?

I see lots of people claiming massive positive economic impacts of UBI, but whenever the results are released its always, saved money and is happier.

Like yeah fairly obvious conclusions.

Closest I have seen to the economic impact was a study done on a charity that makes a pseudo UBI in african villages, but thats skewed in a place that has no other monetary investment mechanism. Its probably true that UBI can be used instead of targeted industrial investment by government.

No we do not. None of those are UBI and are not universally distributed.

TSA, and to a large extent the US Military as well, is just a jobs program that avoids triggering the median American's aversion to "socialism".

The others that you mentioned aren't this.

And the point of "U" is "Universal", which isn't at all what you said.

We don't even have single payer healthcare my dawg. The "u" in ubi is for universal.

Those are federal services, that's not the same as UBI. The premise of UBI (in my limited understanding of it) is that, especially in more socialist countries, you can get rid of a lot of programs that support the poor / sick / etc in favor of a system where everyone gets the same amount, and the bureaucratic systems in place that check to make sure people are entitled to these benefits can be dissolved.

For example, I live in the Netherlands which according to Americans is a really socialist country; if you lose your job from getting fired, you are entitled to unemployment benefits. However, only if you prove you are actively looking for a different job, if you don't or can't prove that, you get shorted.

There's the dole (bijstand), but a lot of counties put a lot of conditions on there; some even told people to grab some tools and get to work on maintaining the public spaces as part of keeping their benefits. Which is employment, which should mean they get a contract and wage, worker's rights, etc.

Ok, so what do you propose to do instead as AI gradually eats the world? A stated goal of most companies in that space is essentially to make human work redundant, so shall we just kill off all the ones who aren't needed anymore?

> This kind of expenditure at any business or organization would be recognized as one of poor judgement

The purpose of a business is to generate a return on investment.

Are you suggesting that the purpose of a government is to generate a return on investment?

> We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Thanks for this. Young people think UBI is great since they don't have much invested in the system. Instead they just have propaganda from media/social sites telling them how the world is falling apart, how they don't have a chance to succeed, etc. The answer: UBI! It is the "easy" answer since it literally requires no effort on their part to participate in society. They get up, eat free food, live in a free house, and enjoy the day without any worry.

Sounds great until they realize the human condition eventually kicks in. People will decide not to work - they will just take and not give back. In the end, we need a society where people are required to put forth the effort to participate.