
Stockton, CA Tested Universal Basic Income. Here’s How Recipients Spent It - MontagFTB
https://fortune.com/2019/10/03/universal-basic-income-stockton/
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lolinder
>Plus, he said previous studies have shown people don’t spend the money on
frivolous things.

Serious question that I've had for a while: how can anyone actually say this
about money, in any domain? It seems like because money is fungible, it would
be useless to try to say where a particular $500 went unless it was the only
money the participants spent that month. How does research like this account
for that?

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Arnt
You withdrew some money from an ATM last night, right? Thinking it was from
your salary? Actually that was drug money.

The bank isn't useless, because it keeps track of how much money it receives
and hands out, and from whom. So even if you got a note that has been in some
drug smuggler's hands, the bank isn't useless.

The researchers do much the same, except with less precision. The bank has
full insight into who deposits, transfers and withdraws, the researchers only
partial insight into the income and spending of the research subjects. But
they can estimate how good their insight is and take steps to improve it.
Their results are as precise as their insight is complete. Their results won't
be as precise as your bank statement, but they can be precise enough to be
useful. After all, the researches can set the terms their experiment so as to
get enough data.

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codeddesign
From the data, 12%+ either didn’t want to work or were working part time. I’m
all for helping people in need, but not when I have to spend my hard earned
money on someone that doesn’t want to earn their way.

Serious Question: is there a reason why this percentage isn’t given a public
service job in return for this “basic income”? My first though is to let them
help their community and in return they are assisted financially rather than
just giving out free money.

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anon9001
Serious question, why should anyone _have_ to work?

It's easy to imagine an alternate reality where UBI is a thing and working is
optional.

I think there's a legitimate case to be made that freeing people from labor
should be societal goal.

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maerF0x0
IIRC people dont do well without work (much of our identity is tied up in
working) . Of course you can argue that could change if society changes. But
individuals who find themselves without work (due to rapid wealth changes, or
losing work) often find themselves depressed

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anon9001
I always hear about identity being tied to work, but I wonder if that's been
tested in recent years. Pre-internet, sure, that makes sense. But now that you
can do literally anything you want as long as you have the free time to learn
it, and you can be instantly connected to like-minded groups. I'm not so sure
that work is the source of identity that people think it is.

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maerF0x0
> But 40% of the money has been withdrawn as cash, making it harder for
> researchers to know how it was used.

So 40% of it could have been spent on vices and they're just "Trusting" them
and then reporting it as evidence?

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RandomBacon
Discussion posted around the same time as this thread with 70 comments:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21153063](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21153063)

