
12-year study will look at effects of universal basic income - denzil_correa
http://mitsloan.mit.edu/newsroom/articles/12-year-study-looks-at-effects-of-universal-basic-income/
======
jfasi
I'm glad this study is happening and I'm excited to see the outcome, but I
feel like I ought to caution people who are expecting this to add this to
their arsenal of pro- or anti- UBI arguments in western countries against
comparing apples and oranges. My personal prediction is this study will show
substantial gains in economic outcomes, health, social standing, etc for all
groups that receive money. I'm guessing UBI proponents will leap on the
opportunity to advocate for similar programs in western countries. If my
prediction is wrong, I'm guessing opposite will happen.

I caution that either conclusion would be unjustified because this is not a
UBI experiment, this is a _charity and aid distribution_ experiment. The
question at hand here isn't "is UBI a wonderful thing" but rather "how do UBI-
like distribution methods compare to others?" If you want proof consider that
Tavneet Suri's isn't a UBI economist focusing on western countries, "her
expertise is as a development economist, specialized in Sub-Saharan Africa"
[1]

I object to labeling this as a UBI experiment. "Universal Basic Income" is
used to describe various proposals to address inequality and unemployment in
developed countries where economic gains and jobs are being automated away
from the masses of low-skilled workers and up to the elite of high-skilled
workers. This is far from the sub-Saharan African context where the economy is
still developing and leaders are mulling how best to sustainably extract
countries from extreme poverty.

[1] [http://mitsloan.mit.edu/faculty-and-research/faculty-
directo...](http://mitsloan.mit.edu/faculty-and-research/faculty-
directory/detail/?id=41285)

~~~
ataturk
As someone who is friends who two different social workers and related to
someone in family court diversions (think: parents getting their kids taken
away and want them back) I can tell you that UBI isn't going to solve much of
anything. These people have money to buy alcohol and cigarettes, and yet their
kids go hungry and rely on school lunch programs, etc.

Also, I had a brother in law who was a raging alcoholic and stole money from
his grade-school kids' piggy banks. He always had money for beer. Asshole. He
did the world a favor and hung himself.

For all of them, their personal issues overwhelm their ability to be
functional adults. They don't clean their houses, they don't mind their kids,
they are addicted to various substances and lie about treatment, recovery, and
lie about anything anytime it suits their needs in the moment. It's all lie,
lie, lie.

There is nothing a UBI or anything else is going to accomplish for these
people and it is a myth to believe that payments without oversight or
qualifications will lead to positive outcomes. One would think the US's 50
year experiment with welfare would already provide more than enough data to
prove that if you subsidize a behavior you get more of it.

Let people face death, then see how they act. Take their kids away, first,
though. It's not the kids' fault their parents are deadbeats.

~~~
lbotos
> These people have money to buy alcohol and cigarettes, and yet their kids go
> hungry and rely on school lunch programs, etc.

Ah yes, let's blame people for their dependence on mind alterning chemicals
that if abused build negative feedback loops. While at the same time, those
chemicals are touted and lauded in mainstream culture. From rap's "popping
bottles" to country's "whiskey makes my girl a little bit frisky".

> For all of them, their personal issues overwhelm their ability to be
> functional adults.

Doesn't this happen to EVERYONE at some point, temporarily? Where something
overwhelms our ability to function. Can you imagine a structure where repeated
incidents lead to patterns, and the societal structures we build are not
helping to correct those patterns for individuals. Yes, some people will just
always make bad choices, but also, some people have never had an opportunity
to actually flourish and understand how their choices are not helping. Or
even, maybe they are addicted to mind altering chemicals that have literally
changed the way they think.

> Let people face death, then see how they act.

If we are sharing anecdotes, my partner works as a therapist with teens with
substance abuse problems in the Bronx. I'll never forget the day she called me
crying, because one of her 17 year old patients was scared he was going to be
attacked leaving the office because he didn't want to join a gang.

He was held up at gun point, had is phone stolen, and his life threatened. You
better believe he wants to escape.

Sure, his personal issues are overwhelming his ability to function, but we
have to acknowledge that society is not trying to really help him in a serious
way because therapy helps, but also economic opportunity as well.

I am an extremely selfish person, and have had great success due to
opportunities granted to me through privilege and access. It took a long hard
look at myself, to look at someone else, even in the face of addiction,
abusive behaviors and acknowledge their personhood and their struggle and say,
you are a not able to function, but you are human, and we should try and help.

~~~
Domenic_S
Helping requires some uncomfortable truths to be socially accepted. "It's all
lie, lie, lie." the GP said, and he's right -- addicts in the throes of
addiction lie. We have to be OK saying, this person is an addict and not
really in their right mind. If we treat addiction as a mental illness, then we
treat the illness and the lies start to melt away.

Some people think addiction is a moral failing; others think it is an illness.
I land on the illness side. Treatment works. We can help people, but it
requires throwing away the blind judgement.

~~~
lovehashbrowns
> Some people think addiction is a moral failing

That is, at least in my experience, what leads to comments like these: "He did
the world a favor and hung himself."

What an incredibly harsh thing to say, especially for a situation that is
rarely as clear-cut as "person A is bad therefore they should die."

The uncomfortable truths you mention are like bubbles rising to the top. As a
society, we're starting to think about things like alcoholism, drug addiction,
childhood abuse, etc. and that will hopefully lead to having fewer of these
clear-cut moral judgements. I think UBI will also help, because a lot of these
mental traps (bad situation -> abuse -> drugs -> bad situation -> abuse etc.)
are magnified by poverty.

What's funny is that some of the pushback against UBI (and welfare) is that
same moral judgement. "We shouldn't have UBI because some people will spend it
on drugs and alcohol."

------
tribune
Any UBI study that doesn't include everyone in a society is not studying
"universal" basic income at all. It's just giving some people money. It would
be very surprising if this didn't yield positive outcomes for that group.

The big question marks surrounding UBI involve its implementation at a
society-wide level. (What are the macroeconomic effects? What if people blow
their UBI on dumb things and still end up starving?) Anything short of
UNIVERSAL experimentation will not address these.

~~~
stale2002
I see this argument brought up, a lot, but the problem with it is that it is
unfalseifiable.

If UBI is so great, then similar "almost UBI" proposals should ALSO show good
results.

I sincerely doubt that there is a magic line between "similar but not UBI"
programs and "UBI" programs where the good stuff immediately appears.

If UBI is impossible to test, then we shouldn't do it.

It would be insanely risky to spend trillions of dollars on something that its
proponents claim can't be tested. So we should just not implement it in the
first place.

~~~
CPLX
> I sincerely doubt that there is a magic line between "similar but not UBI"
> programs and "UBI" programs where the good stuff immediately appears.

Maybe, maybe not. But it's pretty clear that an economy or society fits the
definition of a complex adaptive system, and it's pretty common knowledge in
that field that it's possible for there to be phase change transitions, where
effects come suddenly and all at once at a specific level of participation of
the independent actors.

Analogies include things like herd immunity, or sensitive dependence on
initial conditions in weather forecasting.

~~~
stale2002
I don't know much about weather but something like herd immunity is definitely
testable.

Firstly, even a smallish percentage of immunity would still see population
wide benefits.

Secondly, as diseases are transmitted to people physically nearby, this could
be tested by immunizing a large percentage of a single population, such as a
small town full of people who don't travel much.

If you are truly concerned about the population wide effects of UBI, then you
could do something similar, like fund a small poor town, and give EVERYONE in
that small town UBI.

Unfortunately, I expect that of such a test were attempted, you'd see the same
exact criticism of it, though. It'd probably be something like "you can't see
the benefits unless the entire WORLD is on UBI!!!" or some other further
doubling down on the unprovability of it all.

My point being, that this scepticism of actually testing the damn thing seems
more like a defense mechanism against the possibility of being wrong. It is
just the same lazy approach that everyone has for their pet theories, as a way
of deflecting any and all criticism by declaring it unfalsefiable

------
not_that_noob
If anyone has doubts about UBI, consider the great A/B (or rather B/W?)
experiment the government ran as part of the New Deal. One group was provided
subsidies for housing (analogous to UBI) and another was not - decades later,
the initial modest help compounded to leave one group much more prosperous
than the other. I'm willing to bet on the outcome of this study.

[https://www.npr.org/2017/05/03/526655831/a-forgotten-
history...](https://www.npr.org/2017/05/03/526655831/a-forgotten-history-of-
how-the-u-s-government-segregated-america)

"African-American families that were prohibited from buying homes in the
suburbs in the 1940s and '50s and even into the '60s, by the Federal Housing
Administration, gained none of the equity appreciation that whites gained. So
... the Daly City development south of San Francisco or Levittown or any of
the others in between across the country, those homes in the late 1940s and
1950s sold for about twice national median income. They were affordable to
working-class families with an FHA or VA mortgage. African-Americans were
equally able to afford those homes as whites but were prohibited from buying
them. Today those homes sell for $300,000 [or] $400,000 at the minimum, six,
eight times national median income. ..."

~~~
smsm42
What you describe in not UBI, it's discrimination. I think it's pretty clear
that if you exclude certain group from preferable markets, and sideline them
to be able to buy only second-rate and third-rate goods, then you'll find
plenty of examples where they end up at a huge disadvantage. It's not a test
of UBI, it's a test of whether restricting access to a market can hurt a group
against which it is used. I think we can all agree that the answer to this
question is a definite "yes" \- but it has no connection with UBI.

------
crsv
I'm not sure if I'm understanding this correctly - maybe I'm missing something
significant here, but it says they're giving people 75 cents per day per
person? How is ~273 buck a year going to provide any kind of valid
measurement? Even at poverty levels of income, you're not talking about an
amount of money that reasonably effects anyone's social mobility. I'm having a
hard time understanding how this providing even an academically interesting
insight into the effects of UBI. Am I missing something big here?

~~~
RubenSandwich
From my understand this is going to the poorest of the poor in Kenya, because
the median Kenyaian monthly salary is ~800 USD.[1][2] So this UBI experiment
does not seem to be for the average population, more as a form of welfare.
Still interesting and meaningful research, but not the long term UBI
experiment many are waiting for.

[1] [http://www.salaryexplorer.com/salary-
survey.php?loc=111&loct...](http://www.salaryexplorer.com/salary-
survey.php?loc=111&loctype=1)

[2]
[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=80%2C000+KES+in+usd&t=osx&ia=curre...](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=80%2C000+KES+in+usd&t=osx&ia=currency)

Edit: Source [1] seems to be unreliable. See below comment:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17013632](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17013632).
So while the number is wrong, it does seem that this UBI is still targeting
the poor.

~~~
crsv
Thanks, somehow I missed that, this makes much more sense but then raises some
fundamental questions regarding the potential pigeon holing of UBI as a tool
whose efficacy is primarily shaped by the state of the economy in which it is
deployed (ie this study is highly dependent on the underlying economy being
that of a severely under developed nation state).

~~~
jerf
Maybe I'm being slightly too cynical, but that's pretty much inevitable. A
great deal more "scientific knowledge" than you'd probably be entirely
comfortable with knowing involves taking a point sample of some space and
applying it way, way away from where the sample was actually taken. If this
study succeeds, then you can expect the HN commentariat to be citing how BI
has been scientifically proved to be a good idea until the end of time, and if
this study fails, the opposite.

Even better, there's really two types of BI going on here. One is as a
mechanism for poverty alleviation, by getting capital to people who have none.
Not just "not much", but _none_. The other is as a solution to the as-yet
mostly future problem of the work force being automated out of existence in
every industry that people below a certain IQ threshold can work productively
in. Expect those to be conflated freely, even though in my opinion they're two
different problems. (If you squint really hard, yes, they blur together, but
don't ignore the fact that you're squinting.)

~~~
jfoutz
As one of the likely cheerleaders, without the tax credit, it’s not UBI. (In
my humble opinion) This is pure charity.

------
jeffdavis
As with most economic questions, science is very difficult and limited in what
it can tell us.

That's because economics is a social science, and you never know exactly how
people are going to react. A study of one culture might not apply to another,
and a study in one timeframe might not apply to another.

So we will probably see a lot of "hmmm... that's interesting" kinds of things
that might not be repeatable. And lots of good and bad effects may be
unmeasured or unmeasurable.

~~~
darkmighty
Your claim is also largely true for drug trials. There is also huge
variability due to genetics, cultural placebo response, variations in diet
among cultures, cultural or individual symptom expression, and so on. Every
science faces an enormous amount of confounding variables.

Doesn't mean we should stop doing drug trials, or economic trials in this
case. Well designed experiments can be informative, even though care must be
taken to generalize them.

~~~
ksk
>Your claim is also largely true for drug trials. There is also huge
variability due to genetics, cultural placebo response, variations in diet
among cultures, cultural or individual symptom expression, and so on.

I work in pharma (biologicals) - though not as a scientist - and you're
overstating the differences. The genetic variance of humans is within a very
narrow band. The superficial differences are not relevant to the vast majority
of pharmaceutical products. In any case, how our human biology reacts to
pharmaceutical substances is VASTLY different from humans' economic and social
interactions. You know to a very high degree of certainty how an antigen will
produce an immune response much much more than how pricing your headphones at
50 dollars will get you more customers, or raising wages by 10% will give you
a 20% increase in productivity.

>Every science faces an enormous amount of confounding variables.

I don't think (macro)economics/human psychology are sciences. Aside from my
own opinion, it is certainly debatable - Unlike biology and physics which are
firmly in the science camp.

------
austincheney
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income)

The concepts of social welfare really make me want to visit the Scandinavian
nations to see how they get it right and how it is compatible with their their
social culture.

As an American I really don't see social welfare working the US without
dramatic shifts in the social culture.

I also see taxation as a huge factor. The US needs to eliminate income tax in
favor of other tax programs. The state of Texas has high property taxes but no
state income tax and the results to the state economy are fantastic. Wealthy
people can deduct all manners of things from income taxes, but there are
exceedingly few deductions from property taxes. It naturally punishes the
wealthy more, such as the goals of a graduated income tax, since it is a
percentage set by the local city against the value of the property. People who
do not own property do not pay property taxes, so less wealthy people are
naturally excused from such taxation.

Property prices in Texas are generally low compared to much of the rest of the
country, which means more people are capable of owning property and thus
contributing to property taxes. For example the value of my house in Texas is
the equivalent of the minimum down payment for a similarly sized house in
California, which I could never afford.

With a universal basic income more people would be capable of owning property,
thus having a higher standard of living, and also thus further contributing to
property taxes.

~~~
ThrowawayR2
> _People who do not own property do not pay property taxes, so less wealthy
> people are naturally excused from such taxation._

The less wealthy have those property taxes rolled into their monthly rent, so
I fail to see how you can make that claim.

~~~
airstrike
It should be evident that if the alternative is paying rent AND income taxes,
then the less wealthy are relatively better off in the case of no income
taxes.

------
v_lisivka
IMHO, they should compare their results with Kiva. Kiva provides zero-interest
loans, so donations are not wasted, but used to create sustainable economic
society.

Give fishing rod, not a fish.

[https://www.kiva.org/](https://www.kiva.org/)

~~~
v_lisivka
Can anybody explain that downvote? 8-[ ]

~~~
wolco
Not a downvoter but the post feels off topic

------
IanDrake
Whatever you think of UBI, you won’t be able to point at the results of this
study and make any compelling argument that UBI works or doesn’t work.

For UBI to be tested effectively it would, at a minimum, need be implemented
at a national level and include everyone in that nation.

For one, that is the only way to see the macro economic effects. Second, in
this study the money falls from the sky. No one is being taxed to pay for the
UBI nor is the currency being debased.

In any case, if it works, people like me will point to these flaws. If it
doesn’t work, the pro-UBI camp will have their set of flaws to argue.

Finally, this study seems to suggest that ‘success’ is determined by what
percent of people on UBI work. Instead they should be measuring people’s
standard of living improvement, if they work or not.

------
rumcajz
For those who are not aware, GiveDirectly is a charity, not some kind of
government agency. If you are pro-UBI, put your money where your mouth is and
help with the experiment by donating.

~~~
dragonwriter
It's quite possible to be pro-UBI but not think that exogenous charity
provides a decent model for studying UBI, which is an endogenous transfer
program, or that Kenya is a relevant model for the kind of places one is most
concerned about implementing UBI.

------
dragonwriter
> People who advocate for a universal basic income say it will be a way to
> pull people out of poverty. Skeptics think a universal basic income will act
> as a disincentive for people to work.

IME, advocates tend to say it is a better way of alleviating the symptoms of
poverty than means-tested benefit programs and that, _compared to means tested
programs_ , it provides greater ability to take advantage of (and less
disincentives to) other existing means of lifting oneself out of poverty in
the developed world.

And skeptics _and advocates_ both agree that it will reduce economic
compulsion to work, but advocates argue that the reduction to structural
disincentives and barriers to development and outside income involved in both
means-tested aid programs and the trap that is necesssry-but-dead-end work
would outweigh that in the conditions prevailing in the developed world.

While it may be certainly interesting to study the different models of
exogenous aid provided in the study here, I don't think it's particularly
relevant, other than tangentially, to the core arguments regarding UBI because
the design is wrong and the environment is wrong, and should not be viewed as
a study of UBI so much as a study of charity models which might have some
incidental relevance in discussions of UBI.

------
SlowRobotAhead
Didn’t Finland just roll their UBI experiment back?

If I remember correctly they tried it on the small sample it didn’t have a
meaningful impact and they calculated it would be too expensive to try the
whole country, but I could be meant remembering wrong.

~~~
joemaller1
Yes, you did read that:

[http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-43866700](http://www.bbc.com/news/world-
europe-43866700)

Though there was an attempt to walkback or reframe that article:

[http://www.kela.fi/web/en/-/contrary-to-reports-the-basic-
in...](http://www.kela.fi/web/en/-/contrary-to-reports-the-basic-income-
experiment-in-finland-will-continue-until-the-end-of-2018)

~~~
theptip
> Finland's two-year pilot scheme started in January 2017.. But it will not be
> extended after this year

Sounds slightly different than the parent's phrasing -- the trial was not
"walked back", they just decided not to invest more money in it.

Given that the research hasn't been completed, it seems perfectly reasonable
for the government to decline to extend the trial; I'd think it sensible to
wait until they have analyzed the results before making any decisions (unless
they have already seen some early data).

> "The employment effects across the whole experiment will be available by the
> end of 2019 or at the beginning of 2020."

------
jlebrech
I'd like welfare to be a system that gives people food, shelter, clothing and
hygiene rather than "free money".

also that shelter would allow people to run a business without fear of that
free stuff being removed from under them.

it would help battered wives/husbands and young adults get on their feet.

would also help governments build those desperately needed (communal) homes
that they promise.

------
triviatise
motivation to work is non linear. With low UBI amounts people dont starve, but
still have incentive to work. One of the biggest problems with welfare in the
US is that you lose benefits that are equal or greater to the amount you make
from work, when you start to work, so there is a huge disincentive to work.

If UBI was implemented in the US, 100K would make most people lazy and have
them drop out from the workforce, but would 5K?

A more likely outcome is inflation which results in whatever dollar amount the
UBI starts as, effectively moving close to $0 as prices rise.

~~~
fulafel
Someone always brings up this inflation argument in these threads, where does
it come from? It does not increase the amount of money in circulation. It's
just like other forms of income transfers.

~~~
_rpd
Monetary inflation is not the only source of inflation. There is also cost
inflation. If renters suddenly have additional disposable income, landlords
will raise the rent to absorb the additional disposable income. And the same
with housing buyers and sellers. Unless there is a mass migration from urban
to rural areas, there will be a cost inflation that exactly equals the
additional disposable income.

Cost of living adjustments will just make things worse. Annual increases in
the basic income adjusted to inflation will cause an inflationary spiral and
eventually hyperinflation. This is not a minor concern.

~~~
fulafel
Of course some prices will rise and some will fall, because the new taxes will
reduce income from different consumers than the biggest beneficisries are. If
we want to prevent any price rises of poor people's products, this same
argument could be used again any improvement in poverty / income equality,
whether market based or income transfer based.

If this is the wrong direction, should we make opposite changes - concentrate
wealth in fewer hands?

Anyway, in general it is not the case that prices would rise to consume all
citizens' disposable income, foreastallyng all improvement in living
standards. Your comment seems to conflate localized price changes with total
real change stopping inflation, without justification.

~~~
_rpd
> this same argument could be used again any improvement in poverty

UBI is particularly susceptible because it is a one-time universal increase in
income. The increaes is very predictable by landlords and housing sellers.

> If this is the wrong direction, should we make opposite changes -
> concentrate wealth in fewer hands?

Means-tested welfare, minincome, negative tax, minimum wage increases - all
these are better than UBI. UBI needs to die as a meme.

> in general it is not the case that prices would rise to consume all
> citizens' disposable income

I believe that this is the case under UBI. Based just on housing alone! Even
minimum wage increases are subverted by price rises. UBI would be costly and
have minimal positive impact with the possibility of massive negative impact.
It is the worst of all worlds.

People need to understand that there are two UBIs - \- Right wing UBI where
welfare is liquidated and the proceeds distributed (to the tune of $8k/yr) ->
increased income inequality, medieval levels of poverty \- Democratic UBI
where $24k is given to all and sundry funded by taxes on high income
individuals and corporations + printing money -> hyperinflation, economic
collapse

Neither of these are futures that we want. Please consider alternatives.

------
hartator
Thinking not having money is the issue of Kenya is belatedly false.
Corruption, wars, extorsions, won’t be solve by more “free” money.

------
shireboy
I think this article misrepresents "skeptics". "Disincentive to work" is
really only one reason to be skeptical, and I'd argue not a good one. I'm more
concerned about potential unintended consequences that wouldn't manifest in
small scale studies such as this one. For example, suppose UBI leads to
inflation after 5 years but only once it is truly national-scale. Small-scale
studies may not even look at this metric, or be able find correlation if they
did. By the time it was apparent, choice would be to roll it back and cause
social upheaval, or continue inflation, both of which could hurt the people
UBI is designed to help most.

Obviously I don't have any data to know if UBI leads to inflation or not, but
that's sort of the point. Ideally we'd have data on this and other effects
beyond just "does it help individuals?", but those effects may be difficult to
test.

~~~
ksk
But your objection would apply to all economic policies. Why is this any
different?

~~~
shireboy
Well, I do tend to hold that objection for lots of economic policies ;)
Governments can be really bad at foreseeing things like this and slow at
changing direction once they are detected. Obviously one can take that too far
and do _nothing_ out of fear of unintended consequences. But to the degree we
can think through those potential outcomes and devise ways to test for them,
we should.

~~~
ksk
>But to the degree we can think through those potential outcomes and devise
ways to test for them, we should.

What are some of those ways to test it that you suggest? This study isn't
focused on your particular concern of inflation.

~~~
shireboy
Right, it'd be really hard in this case. Only being armchair-level interested
in UBI I'd have to be content hoping that real economists and UBI researchers
would come up with ways to test or at least address the risk. Maybe there are
ways to do computer models around that, or ways to structure a roll-out so
that it is very clearly a "trial" until various macro impacts can be measured.
Another way to test, at least in the US and similarly organized governments,
is to rely on states to implement. 50 different parallel experiments measuring
UBI vs no-UBI impact. The trick would be to measure fairly and transparently,
and react without political spin and bias, which I don't really see happening
soon.

My other motivation for posting is hoping that reporters and other HN readers
would see there is skepticism besides just "it'd make people lazy".

------
stale2002
One thing that I am surprised that nobody talks about, when discussing UBI is
the fact that the USA already has UBI for a largish segment of the population.

The US UBI program is called social security. It is just a check that is given
to old people with which they can use for whatever they want.

Why can't we study what this group of people does with their money?

~~~
taysic
Having free money after a lifetime of working that you feel you contributed to
seems different from having it available before you've worked before.

------
programminggeek
The problem with UBI is not the idea itself. It's the unintended consequences
and edge cases.

For example, it might be that UBI causes people to work MORE and die sooner at
riskier jobs (like working oil fields). What is the net effect of that?

Also, what if it doesn't do much more than inflate prices to the point that
people still have to work just as much? Could it just reset the sort of "zero
point" higher?

What if people have an in-built need to work to have value in life? Would
paying them not to work cause their life to lose its value and increase
suicides or other negative behavior?

Also, will people start having more kids to somehow get more UBI benefits?

Large system changes mean serious consequences that go beyond the obvious.
Anyone who has ever worked on a large software system surely have experienced
this.

I don't expect failure, but I do expect some seriously weird and unintended
outcomes that are non-obvious.

------
ppeetteerr
This is a great study and I hope it nets some value. UBI has already been
tested in Canada and other areas of the world where it was abandoned.

The outcome, I would guess, is very circumstantial. Perhaps in Kenya, where
there is lack of infrastructure and high corruption, giving people money will
result in greater improved quality of life over providing subsidized services.

In Canada, I would argue that subsidized services (free healthcare, education,
maternity leave, etc.) are more important as they guarantee that a person
cannot possibility fall into the debt trap. Perhaps the ideal is something in
between: cash (UBI) and services.

------
dharma1
I wonder what size a community needs to be for UBI to function in a self-
sustaining way. I'd like to see some game theoretical research into it too if
anyone has pointers?

~~~
MrZongle2
That's a good question. By the same token: is there a _maximum_ community size
that can support UBI?

~~~
dharma1
Quite possibly, things like distance and number of participants would most
likely change the dynamics.

That's why I was wondering about the game theory part, so it could perhaps be
modelled and tested in software. Running large scale UBI experiments is pretty
slow and expensive, so tuning the parameters in the real world to make it work
is going to take a very long time and cost a lot of money.

~~~
airstrike
How exactly do you plan on modeling how people are going to behave after
receiving the aid? That's what these real-life experiments are trying to do in
order to inform their models.

It's not like economists don't know how to build models...

~~~
dharma1
I don't know what I would model or how - that's why I was asking for pointers
:)

And I in addition to economists, I would be interested in seeing contributions
from physicists, computer scientists and machine learning researchers. This
paper was super interesting -
[https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.03058](https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.03058), as was
this - [https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.06376](https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.06376)

But would like to see UBI specific papers.

------
camdenreslink
When studying UBI isn't it hard to control for the fact that only a small
group is receiving funds, rather than every unemployed/underemployed person in
the country (which would be the case if UBI became federal legislation)? As
jobs are automated, we will need to do something...

~~~
snarf21
I think the answer is yes. Also, if everyone just gets $X, will prices also
rise by some Y close to X as people will feel less attachment to this $X as it
was free? I've yet to see a truly thoughtful model of what all will happen.
For example, UBI is said to replace all the bureaucracy of today's welfare
programs. That is a lot of people that will lose their jobs, including the
cycle of the people who used to supply goods and services to those people.
Some of those companies will close and layoff more people, etc., etc. It
doesn't go infinite but it definitely cascades. We can see proof of this in
old steel towns or some place like Detroit. As good jobs dry up, it starts an
economic slide.

------
jasonmaydie
To me it seems like the only way to make a true study is to do it on a self-
sustaining population, in other words very little to no outside money. The
cost saving by the community should fund the income rather than the general
population funding a tiny population. That will always work.

It is generally agreed (and obvious) that a universal income is beneficial the
crux remains though how we pay for it.

------
mey
Title should include the word "will" as it is just getting under way. No
conclusion yet.

~~~
jasonmaydie
it's grammatically correct, albeit misleading

~~~
mey
I didn't have an issue w/ the grammar, but the misleading description. :) It's
a significant difference between a study starting and having a conclusion (or
even partial data). In my mind, it's the difference between clickbait and non-
clickbait headline, even though the article is very interesting.

This is at the University PR section of
[http://phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1174](http://phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1174)

~~~
jasonmaydie
misleading as in people think that the study starts when the trail ends, when
in practice the study starts when the trail starts (because people aren't
aware of this)

------
ddingus
I would much rather we have a jobs program.

Anyone who needs work can get it at $15 per hour and up, depending on what the
job is.

There is a whole lot we need doing. If we do that, we are worth more, and we
get something meaningful in return for a direct economic stimulus.

Our infrastructure needs refurbished. Our homeland needs a cleanup, and could
really benefit from some care and feeding. Our parks can be improved, making
them attractive in the same way we did before.

I don't feel UBI makes sense. It's just a payoff, and it's real value will be
diluted. Too easy to just adjust it up or down to throttle work needs, buying
power.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
In some countries, rising automation means there are no jobs to be had, or
that skilled persons fall down the ladder until they're working unskilled
jobs. We pretend its 98% employment, but folks with degrees are working food
service.

A 'jobs program' in this environment is doing no good. There are already 30M
people in service jobs (The lowest paid), and they're being automated away
right now. We can't retrain them all to be engineers; we don't even need 30M
more engineers. What are we to do? The solution won't be 'do what we did
before' because, we've never been in this situation before.

Oh, wait, in England they were in this situation when weavers were replaced by
textile mills. Their solution: let the weavers starve and die. Maybe not the
answer we want today.

~~~
josefresco
"In some countries, rising automation means there are no jobs to be had"

Source on this claim? Interested in the topic and would like to read more.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
In the US, automation is growing explosively. When factories 'come back to the
USA' from India or China or wherever, its not because they're paying enough to
attract Americans; its because they automated and don't need (hardly) anybody.

Further, bank teller and fast-food worker are the next to be automated away.
Its happening everywhere, with touch-panel counter service.

