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Universal basic income: A nonprofit is about to test it in a big way

179 points by MaysonL 11y ago

rdudekul 11y ago
In India I have tested this in my own small way, by giving money to some known poor people. My experience has been that typically women utilize the money far more effectively than men. May be India is a bit peculiar in terms of feelings of entitlement being higher among men. Looking forward to the results of this test.
- pilsetnieks 11y ago
  > by giving money to some known poor people That is just welfare, if done on a governmental level, or charity, if you do it individually. For it to be a true experiment about UBI, you would have to find an area that's somewhat autonomous, provide everyone indiscriminately with the same amount of money that would suffice for maintaining their basic living needs and guarantee the income for at least a certain period of time. Otherwise, well, good for you for helping the needy but it doesn't have anything to do with universal basic income.
  - kgwgk 11y ago
    That wouldn't have much to do with universal basic income either unless the money being provided was somehow extracted from the very same group of people. Giving away someone else's money is of course more likely to "work".
    - wastedhours 11y ago
      It's fairly close, it's just the "local rich" for whom the UBI is an additive rather than their main income source has been abstracted for donations. Based on the assumption that there'd be a semi-stable taxation system in place when people are earning more through trade/working, it'd be a reasonable way to test, no?
- sridca 11y ago
  To what desired effect did the women utilize the money "far more effectively" than the men? Without knowing the purpose of their spendings I can only assume that you morally approve one over the other (which would put a big dent in your flippant "feelings of entitlement being higher among men" theory).
JulianMorrison 11y ago
Now that's an interesting idea. Starting a UBI in a poor country has to be an awful lot cheaper than starting it in a rich one with a high cost of living; a small charity can do a comparatively large amount of good.
- morgante 11y ago
  The ideal would be to give it to the entire population of a small, poor island nation. You could then get a very good idea of its impacts without worrying too much about perverse incentives and other outcomes. It's unclear to me how this study is going to deal with people moving into the UBI villages.
  - chipsa 11y ago
    Looks like the study participants are fixed at the beginning of the experiment. People who move out keep their cash, people who move in don't get anything.
- throwaway049 11y ago
  Remember that this is an experiment so to do good cannot be assumed. The hope is that enough people will use the security of UBI to build up some productive enterprise and elevate the wealth of the whole community, but there is a (very small) risk that everyone will just be idle consumers who will be in trouble when the experiment ends.
  - JulianMorrison 11y ago
    I consider it a major advantage of UBI that it permits freeloading. A lot of activity that would raise quality of life later, is a pure cost right now. Like studying for example, or starting a business that isn't yet profitable, or writing a novel.
GordonS 11y ago
> we’re planning to provide at least 6,000 Kenyans with a basic income for 10 to 15 years It's great that this is going to be ran at scale, and over a long period of time - the hardest part is going to be waiting on the results!
- brador 11y ago
  What will they do about births and deaths? Will the basic income be extended to a child or will children be left poor while their parents get BI? If babies get added to the BI payroll, doesn't this incentivize baby making?
  - morgante 11y ago
    It seems fairest to give BI to all adults. That way you don't incentivize pregnancy but people will receive their own BI when they come of age.
    - joelthelion 11y ago
      But then the BI might not be enough to support families. It's a tricky problem. Edit: the point being that children are the ones who suffer most from poverty, and investing in them has the most long term potential. But of course we don't want people to have kids just for the money, hence the difficulty.
      - mhb 11y ago
        Why does it need to be enough to support families? It will help. It doesn't seem that tricky.
      - morgante 11y ago
        I don't think having children is a natural right which society has the obligation to subsidize. Perhaps an additional subsidy should be provided for those who have children when the study begins, but no new children should receive that benefit.
Vinnl 11y ago
To participate, you can donate here: https://givedirectly.org/give-basic-income https://givedirectly.org/give-basic-income (They're also listing fee-less Alternative Donation Options there, but I can't quite figure out how to use those to donate to this specific experiment.)
- chilicuil 11y ago
  This is awesome, are there any list about other similar experiments?
TheLogothete 11y ago
>As it turns out, that assumption was wrong. That's a bold assertion. Care to back this up? Because you know, I have an entire peninsula full of people to demonstrate that this is false.
- naasking 11y ago
  The sentences following your quote provide plenty of links to back that up.
  - TheLogothete 11y ago
    They were just bolded, not a terribly good choice to indicate a hyperlink, IMO.
  - TheLogothete 11y ago
    First link I click: Q:Do the Poor Waste Transfers on Booze and Cigarettes? A: No Measurement: Survey asking how much money you spend on alchol. Justification: For more sophisticated gaming and to deliver the mostly negative and insignificant results we observe, households would need to remember how much they reported at the last survey (often one year ago), and report a similar but slightly lower number. This seems unlikely. JUST LOL. With shoddy logic like that, I can make everything to sound like a great idea.
loceng 11y ago
One factor that can't be measured is what competitive advantage they will have over others and how much of an impact that will have on their quality of life.
cubano 11y ago
Isn't one of the more interesting benefits of a UBI supposed be that it frees the people getting it to be madly productive in their passionate interests? As Sam Altman said in a recent podcast (and I paraphrase here)..."its ok of 90% of UBI recipients sit around and smoke pot all day as long as 10% create awesome new things for society...its a net benefit." Are these 6000 Kenyans in the technical position to create a new vision and application that benefits the world society? Can they build the next AirBnB or Uber? I'm not saying they can't, of course...just wondering if the cultural and technical infrastructural differences between Africa and the US/Europe would create experimental distortions. [edit] ok..AirBnb and Uber were probably poor examples and with more thought it makes sense the the effects would be much more localized in this case. I guess what I was trying to say is that the 10% have a lot of work to do if they have to carry the weight for the other 90%.
- sunir 11y ago
  They don't need to innovate relative to our lives to be innovative overall. Kenya has its own economic system quite different enough from what we are used to. It is likely they will focus locally on tangible opportunities.
- Vinnl 11y ago
  I mean... AirBnB or Uber? If some of them set up schools or other things that benefit the local community as a whole, wouldn't that be far better than someone developing some app or something and probably moving to the West and earn shitloads of money?
- k-mcgrady 11y ago
  You're making the assumption that creating the next AirBnB or Uber is something society needs. Let's say you give people UBI and they are happy to sit around talking, smoking pot, playing amateur sports etc. Provided that the UBI can continue to be funded doesn't the fact that these people are now happier than before make the program a success?
- pasquinelli 11y ago
  "just wondering if the cultural and technical infrastructural differences between Africa and the US/Europe would create experimental distortions." everything is tied into the conditions under which it arises. whatever the "cultural and technical infrastructural" conditions are, there would still be people freed to be "madly productive in their passionate interests." whatever their economy and culture demand, people with more free time will be better able to fulfill those needs, right? the people best able to assess that are the people within the local economy and culture.
known 11y ago
Basic income can solve many https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility issues
sickbeard 11y ago
sample size too small, and the problem is not that people will blow it on drugs and booze.. the problem is affordability.
- cuchoi 11y ago
  6000 people is not an small sample size at all. I work at one of the research centers that evaluated the impact of Give Directly, and a sample size of 6000 is not small in any case.
GodofGrunts 11y ago
I'd like to point out that Libertarians do not support basic income. In this instance, the argument is simply that basic income is a better system then the current welfare system.
- mason240 11y ago
  That's not true at all. Lots of libertarians support UBI (which this specific case is not). It's a very capitalist solution to a post-labor world.
  - logfromblammo 11y ago
    I am libertarian, and support UBI, though not necessarily via state taxation and administration. Pragmatically, though, that is how it would need to be instituted in the real world, even if it could possibly work differently in my personal libertarian fantasyland. I'd say that a significant fraction of all libertarians don't want to admit that their fantasyland and the real world are so far apart that they will never meet in any living human's natural lifespan, and therefore resist any idea which would tend to empower government to a greater extent in the long run. By my personal estimation, UBI is necessary to avoid the accelerating concentration of more economic power into fewer hands, until the common man again becomes a "useless eater" that must be disposed of for the sake of efficiency. I fear that without it, or something like it, class-based warfare is inevitable, and war is more damaging to liberty than the welfare state. Given the choice between backing a step away from the way I wish the world could work, and running ten steps in any direction in a blind panic, I choose the one controlled step.
    - norea-armozel 11y ago
      I think UBI is a band-aid on a bullet wound which is the notion of capitalism (note that I see markets as independent from the concept of private ownership of capital/land). All it does is delay the inevitable collapse of capitalism under its own weight. The better solution is to try to decouple capital ownership from individuals, corporations, or states. I'm not sure how that can be best achieved but honestly I think automating the economy itself may be the best approach. It can be done in a piecemeal fashion, but it's a question of whether the capital owners will give up the reigns of power to machines to decide how best to fulfill demands of people. I'm not so much arguing for the nonsensical approach of Jacque Fresco because his notion requires engineering wants of people and the abolition of money. For me, money and prices are good aggregators for demand, they just need to be adjusted in their use cases (probably away from capital speculation), but even an automated economy would need something akin to a price and a unit for which the price is measured in. Otherwise, how are goods created? I don't see happy thoughts and wishing being viable means to ration in any economy.
JonFish85 11y ago
This is missing perhaps the most controversial part of the Universal Basic Income: that it's funded by the same population that it's helping. This isn't a fair test because it's being funded by "outside" money, from a much richer source (investors and donors from the richest country on earth). It's a charity moreso than a real investigation of Universal Basic Income. A more realistic test would be to take those 6,000 Kenyans, tax them in some way (e.g. take 2x from 3,000 people), then distribute the money equally. And it would have to be done in one localized area to take care of the homogeneity problem (if the money is too sparsely distributed, prices won't reflect the new money distribution). As much as they talk about how scientifically the study must be done, and the rigorous testing, it seems that there are some holes in the experiment.
- JulianMorrison 11y ago
  I would rather have a world UBI funded by world-level income and capital taxes. The richer countries owe places like Kenya big for centuries of extractive imperial policies.
  - jackcosgrove 11y ago
    British colonization of Kenya started in the mid-19th century and ended in 1962. Before that the Arabs and Portuguese were only able to control the coasts. So "centuries of extractive imperial policies" is a bit of hyperbole. Do the Italians owe the French compensation for Julius Caesar's campaigns? This game can go on forever.
  - logfromblammo 11y ago
    I would dearly love to see the note I signed to assume that debt. Nobody owes anybody anything for the things their great-grandparents did. Or for the things their grandparents did. Or for the things their parents did. Or for the things their siblings do. Life happens right now, not 10, 20, 50, 100, or 1000 years ago. The problem with worldwide UBI is the same as nationwide UBI. The cash is just a token to split up complicated market-clearing trades into a collection of simple half-trades. You still need the goods and services to be produced and distributed. If you take a million US dollars and give it to a Kenyan, that Kenyan would still have to send some of it right back to New York to fill up a cargo ship and send it to Nairobi, because the local markets aren't equipped to handle that ripple in the money supply. Rather than taking the money, and moving it, you have to take the productivity and move it. You would have to industrialize Kenya to the same extent as the US. You would have to pave it with the same roads, wire it with the same cables, police it with the same cops (or maybe better cops), do business with the same contract law. I think the reason Kenya is still Kenya after the colonial period is because it does not wan't to be the 51st state of the US, or another member state of the EU. And it does not yet have enough robots operating there to sustain a meaningful UBI. Worldwide UBI means worldwide industrialization and uniform business laws. You can't just screw with the money and expect it to work.
irln 11y ago
No sarcasm intended here: Is the highest abstracted benefit of Universal basic income (other than the benefit to those that receive the basic income) that you cut out the middle person in social welfare distribution?
- AngrySkillzz 11y ago
  Partly. As an example, well-intentioned midcentury relief workers did a lot of damage to minority communities (like you see in Malcolm X's autobiography). Eliminating means testing and data collection saves money and is significant for the people involved in the program. There are a lot of labor market benefits as well; one of the big problems with means-tested programs is that they screw up the tax structure at the low end of the income scale. If your options are being jobless receiving welfare or getting a job that forces you out of welfare, there's a large disincentive to seek work. You would be paying an effective tax rate of ~100% by losing that payment.
- transfire 11y ago
  It also removes the stigma of welfare b/c everyone is getting the same thing regardless of income and status.
- fasteddie 11y ago
  Further, beyond streamlining operations, it also allows people to spend on what they need/want the most. Today, if you would rather have less housing vouchers and more food stamps? Too bad. UBI would allow people to spend their "basic living" money in the best way they see fit.
- surfaceTensi0n 11y ago
  I would say that cutting out the middle person is part of how you pay for UBI. To me the highest benefit of UBI is that people wouldn't need to work/struggle to live anymore.
amelius 11y ago
Can't we have a new style of lottery, where the prize is not $1,000,000 or more at once, but instead just basic income for a lifetime? The results could be useful for scientific purposes (even though the sample is somewhat biased towards people buying lottery tickets).
- earlyriser 11y ago
  We have a lottery like that in Quebec, $1k/week for a lifetime. I don't now if there are studies about that.
- Jtsummers 11y ago
  Not a lifetime (they may say for life, but most are actually restricted to 20-30 years), but in the US some state lotteries do this. $500-$5k a week or a month for a few decades.
- AdamN 11y ago
  New York has a $1k/week for life lottery.
- judah 11y ago
  What you're suggesting already exists. While lotteries in the US often advertise the lump sum winnings, many are actually paid out in installments over a few decades. What happens is that winners demand the full lump sum. For the lotteries that offer it, the lump sum is less than the total winnings paid out over the years. (Something like 10% less.) This has created a niche for businesses to crop up where the company will give you the lump sum total due, with a nice chunk extracted for themselves.
  - amelius 11y ago
    > This has created a niche for businesses to crop up where the company will give you the lump sum total due, with a nice chunk extracted for themselves. What prevents these businesses from approaching these Kenyian people?
    - 11y ago
kelvin0 11y ago
All other considerations aside, isn't this going to create some form of inflation? At least in the beginning (first couple years), I would think that a greater monetary mass (everyone has more money) would see an increased price tag on goods? I am no economist, just wondering what others take is on this?
- jackcosgrove 11y ago
  It would do exactly that. Scarcity is relative, so giving everyone in the world a basic income will simply raise the prices of basic goods such that many again would be unable to afford them even on a basic income. The best way to end hunger is to grow more food, not to give everyone more money.
  - AngrySkillzz 11y ago
    That really isn't true though. You can find the data on this almost everywhere: we produce enough food to feed the entire world's population more than adequately, but it doesn't get to the people that need it because of poverty. [1] [1] http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/world%20hunger%20facts%202002.htm#Does_the_world_produce_enough_food_to_feed_everyone http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/world%20hunger%20f...
    - jackcosgrove 11y ago
      You're advocating for demand-side stimulus by giving everyone money to spend on goods without increasing the productive capacity of the economy. This led to stagflation in the USA in the 1970s. There are other examples such as Venezuela today where simply giving out money does not improve welfare if the supply of goods and services does not grow as well.
  - clavalle 11y ago
    That is only true if competition between the sellers of those goods is broken or there truly is a global shortage of all types of goods that can fulfill a basic need.
AdamN 11y ago
Finland is experimenting with this as well (Switzerland might too): https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/12/finland-basic-income/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/12/finland-basic-income/
dnautics 11y ago
I think the biggest unsolved question about ubi is will prices increase? There is no meaningful test if this question unless the test is conducted truly universally (I.e. this experiment will not resolve this). The potentially devastating consequence of increasing prices due to ubi is that it might relatively drag down individuals in the lowest income tiers (yes, even though they are also getting money).
transfire 11y ago
The title of the article is COMPLETELY WRONG. UBI is universal. You don't just give it to the poor. Everyone gets it. That's an important part of the point.
transfire 11y ago
They are giving this money to poor villages. I wonder if that is going to provide a good testing ground? Do these people even have access to "higher-level" activities? If not then these people will just do what all the nay-sayers say they will do. Nothing. But not b/c they won't, but b/c they can't.
- pasquinelli 11y ago
  i guess that's the point of the experiment, but i would be shocked if they didn't find plenty of useful shit to do with themselves.
jiiam 11y ago
The point that makes universal basic income (UBI) unconvincing IMO is that it relies on a reality that it actually subverts, i.e. money. I'm not saying that we should eliminate money or provide UBI in a different, subsidiary, form. But maybe it is worth thinking on what the meaning of money, economy, markets, loans, etc will be in a world where there is a UBI.
pakled_engineer 11y ago
There already is a long term UBI scheme in Kenya's poorest region around Lake Turkana if anybody wants to see what the desperate poor do with the money. http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21657384-wild-ancient-and-oil-rich-turkana-shows-how-fast-continent-changing http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/2165738... UK's DFID and Equity bank in Kenya pay out $50/mth to 10,000+ villagers there.

179 points by MaysonL 11y ago

In India I have tested this in my own small way, by giving money to some known poor people. My experience has been that typically women utilize the money far more effectively than men. May be India is a bit peculiar in terms of feelings of entitlement being higher among men. Looking forward to the results of this test.

pilsetnieks 11y ago
> by giving money to some known poor people That is just welfare, if done on a governmental level, or charity, if you do it individually. For it to be a true experiment about UBI, you would have to find an area that's somewhat autonomous, provide everyone indiscriminately with the same amount of money that would suffice for maintaining their basic living needs and guarantee the income for at least a certain period of time. Otherwise, well, good for you for helping the needy but it doesn't have anything to do with universal basic income.
- kgwgk 11y ago
  That wouldn't have much to do with universal basic income either unless the money being provided was somehow extracted from the very same group of people. Giving away someone else's money is of course more likely to "work".
  - wastedhours 11y ago
    It's fairly close, it's just the "local rich" for whom the UBI is an additive rather than their main income source has been abstracted for donations. Based on the assumption that there'd be a semi-stable taxation system in place when people are earning more through trade/working, it'd be a reasonable way to test, no?
sridca 11y ago
To what desired effect did the women utilize the money "far more effectively" than the men? Without knowing the purpose of their spendings I can only assume that you morally approve one over the other (which would put a big dent in your flippant "feelings of entitlement being higher among men" theory).

JulianMorrison 11y ago

Now that's an interesting idea. Starting a UBI in a poor country has to be an awful lot cheaper than starting it in a rich one with a high cost of living; a small charity can do a comparatively large amount of good.

morgante 11y ago
The ideal would be to give it to the entire population of a small, poor island nation. You could then get a very good idea of its impacts without worrying too much about perverse incentives and other outcomes. It's unclear to me how this study is going to deal with people moving into the UBI villages.
- chipsa 11y ago
  Looks like the study participants are fixed at the beginning of the experiment. People who move out keep their cash, people who move in don't get anything.
throwaway049 11y ago
Remember that this is an experiment so to do good cannot be assumed. The hope is that enough people will use the security of UBI to build up some productive enterprise and elevate the wealth of the whole community, but there is a (very small) risk that everyone will just be idle consumers who will be in trouble when the experiment ends.
- JulianMorrison 11y ago
  I consider it a major advantage of UBI that it permits freeloading. A lot of activity that would raise quality of life later, is a pure cost right now. Like studying for example, or starting a business that isn't yet profitable, or writing a novel.

GordonS 11y ago

> we’re planning to provide at least 6,000 Kenyans with a basic income for 10 to 15 years It's great that this is going to be ran at scale, and over a long period of time - the hardest part is going to be waiting on the results!

brador 11y ago
What will they do about births and deaths? Will the basic income be extended to a child or will children be left poor while their parents get BI? If babies get added to the BI payroll, doesn't this incentivize baby making?
- morgante 11y ago
  It seems fairest to give BI to all adults. That way you don't incentivize pregnancy but people will receive their own BI when they come of age.
  - joelthelion 11y ago
    But then the BI might not be enough to support families. It's a tricky problem. Edit: the point being that children are the ones who suffer most from poverty, and investing in them has the most long term potential. But of course we don't want people to have kids just for the money, hence the difficulty.
    - mhb 11y ago
      Why does it need to be enough to support families? It will help. It doesn't seem that tricky.
    - morgante 11y ago
      I don't think having children is a natural right which society has the obligation to subsidize. Perhaps an additional subsidy should be provided for those who have children when the study begins, but no new children should receive that benefit.

Vinnl 11y ago

To participate, you can donate here: https://givedirectly.org/give-basic-income https://givedirectly.org/give-basic-income (They're also listing fee-less Alternative Donation Options there, but I can't quite figure out how to use those to donate to this specific experiment.)

chilicuil 11y ago
This is awesome, are there any list about other similar experiments?

TheLogothete 11y ago

>As it turns out, that assumption was wrong. That's a bold assertion. Care to back this up? Because you know, I have an entire peninsula full of people to demonstrate that this is false.

naasking 11y ago
The sentences following your quote provide plenty of links to back that up.
- TheLogothete 11y ago
  They were just bolded, not a terribly good choice to indicate a hyperlink, IMO.
- TheLogothete 11y ago
  First link I click: Q:Do the Poor Waste Transfers on Booze and Cigarettes? A: No Measurement: Survey asking how much money you spend on alchol. Justification: For more sophisticated gaming and to deliver the mostly negative and insignificant results we observe, households would need to remember how much they reported at the last survey (often one year ago), and report a similar but slightly lower number. This seems unlikely. JUST LOL. With shoddy logic like that, I can make everything to sound like a great idea.

loceng 11y ago

One factor that can't be measured is what competitive advantage they will have over others and how much of an impact that will have on their quality of life.

cubano 11y ago

Isn't one of the more interesting benefits of a UBI supposed be that it frees the people getting it to be madly productive in their passionate interests? As Sam Altman said in a recent podcast (and I paraphrase here)..."its ok of 90% of UBI recipients sit around and smoke pot all day as long as 10% create awesome new things for society...its a net benefit." Are these 6000 Kenyans in the technical position to create a new vision and application that benefits the world society? Can they build the next AirBnB or Uber? I'm not saying they can't, of course...just wondering if the cultural and technical infrastructural differences between Africa and the US/Europe would create experimental distortions. [edit] ok..AirBnb and Uber were probably poor examples and with more thought it makes sense the the effects would be much more localized in this case. I guess what I was trying to say is that the 10% have a lot of work to do if they have to carry the weight for the other 90%.

sunir 11y ago
They don't need to innovate relative to our lives to be innovative overall. Kenya has its own economic system quite different enough from what we are used to. It is likely they will focus locally on tangible opportunities.
Vinnl 11y ago
I mean... AirBnB or Uber? If some of them set up schools or other things that benefit the local community as a whole, wouldn't that be far better than someone developing some app or something and probably moving to the West and earn shitloads of money?
k-mcgrady 11y ago
You're making the assumption that creating the next AirBnB or Uber is something society needs. Let's say you give people UBI and they are happy to sit around talking, smoking pot, playing amateur sports etc. Provided that the UBI can continue to be funded doesn't the fact that these people are now happier than before make the program a success?
pasquinelli 11y ago
"just wondering if the cultural and technical infrastructural differences between Africa and the US/Europe would create experimental distortions." everything is tied into the conditions under which it arises. whatever the "cultural and technical infrastructural" conditions are, there would still be people freed to be "madly productive in their passionate interests." whatever their economy and culture demand, people with more free time will be better able to fulfill those needs, right? the people best able to assess that are the people within the local economy and culture.

known 11y ago

Basic income can solve many https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_mobility issues

sickbeard 11y ago

sample size too small, and the problem is not that people will blow it on drugs and booze.. the problem is affordability.

cuchoi 11y ago
6000 people is not an small sample size at all. I work at one of the research centers that evaluated the impact of Give Directly, and a sample size of 6000 is not small in any case.

GodofGrunts 11y ago

I'd like to point out that Libertarians do not support basic income. In this instance, the argument is simply that basic income is a better system then the current welfare system.

mason240 11y ago
That's not true at all. Lots of libertarians support UBI (which this specific case is not). It's a very capitalist solution to a post-labor world.
- logfromblammo 11y ago
  I am libertarian, and support UBI, though not necessarily via state taxation and administration. Pragmatically, though, that is how it would need to be instituted in the real world, even if it could possibly work differently in my personal libertarian fantasyland. I'd say that a significant fraction of all libertarians don't want to admit that their fantasyland and the real world are so far apart that they will never meet in any living human's natural lifespan, and therefore resist any idea which would tend to empower government to a greater extent in the long run. By my personal estimation, UBI is necessary to avoid the accelerating concentration of more economic power into fewer hands, until the common man again becomes a "useless eater" that must be disposed of for the sake of efficiency. I fear that without it, or something like it, class-based warfare is inevitable, and war is more damaging to liberty than the welfare state. Given the choice between backing a step away from the way I wish the world could work, and running ten steps in any direction in a blind panic, I choose the one controlled step.
  - norea-armozel 11y ago
    I think UBI is a band-aid on a bullet wound which is the notion of capitalism (note that I see markets as independent from the concept of private ownership of capital/land). All it does is delay the inevitable collapse of capitalism under its own weight. The better solution is to try to decouple capital ownership from individuals, corporations, or states. I'm not sure how that can be best achieved but honestly I think automating the economy itself may be the best approach. It can be done in a piecemeal fashion, but it's a question of whether the capital owners will give up the reigns of power to machines to decide how best to fulfill demands of people. I'm not so much arguing for the nonsensical approach of Jacque Fresco because his notion requires engineering wants of people and the abolition of money. For me, money and prices are good aggregators for demand, they just need to be adjusted in their use cases (probably away from capital speculation), but even an automated economy would need something akin to a price and a unit for which the price is measured in. Otherwise, how are goods created? I don't see happy thoughts and wishing being viable means to ration in any economy.

JonFish85 11y ago

This is missing perhaps the most controversial part of the Universal Basic Income: that it's funded by the same population that it's helping. This isn't a fair test because it's being funded by "outside" money, from a much richer source (investors and donors from the richest country on earth). It's a charity moreso than a real investigation of Universal Basic Income. A more realistic test would be to take those 6,000 Kenyans, tax them in some way (e.g. take 2x from 3,000 people), then distribute the money equally. And it would have to be done in one localized area to take care of the homogeneity problem (if the money is too sparsely distributed, prices won't reflect the new money distribution). As much as they talk about how scientifically the study must be done, and the rigorous testing, it seems that there are some holes in the experiment.

JulianMorrison 11y ago
I would rather have a world UBI funded by world-level income and capital taxes. The richer countries owe places like Kenya big for centuries of extractive imperial policies.
- jackcosgrove 11y ago
  British colonization of Kenya started in the mid-19th century and ended in 1962. Before that the Arabs and Portuguese were only able to control the coasts. So "centuries of extractive imperial policies" is a bit of hyperbole. Do the Italians owe the French compensation for Julius Caesar's campaigns? This game can go on forever.
- logfromblammo 11y ago
  I would dearly love to see the note I signed to assume that debt. Nobody owes anybody anything for the things their great-grandparents did. Or for the things their grandparents did. Or for the things their parents did. Or for the things their siblings do. Life happens right now, not 10, 20, 50, 100, or 1000 years ago. The problem with worldwide UBI is the same as nationwide UBI. The cash is just a token to split up complicated market-clearing trades into a collection of simple half-trades. You still need the goods and services to be produced and distributed. If you take a million US dollars and give it to a Kenyan, that Kenyan would still have to send some of it right back to New York to fill up a cargo ship and send it to Nairobi, because the local markets aren't equipped to handle that ripple in the money supply. Rather than taking the money, and moving it, you have to take the productivity and move it. You would have to industrialize Kenya to the same extent as the US. You would have to pave it with the same roads, wire it with the same cables, police it with the same cops (or maybe better cops), do business with the same contract law. I think the reason Kenya is still Kenya after the colonial period is because it does not wan't to be the 51st state of the US, or another member state of the EU. And it does not yet have enough robots operating there to sustain a meaningful UBI. Worldwide UBI means worldwide industrialization and uniform business laws. You can't just screw with the money and expect it to work.

irln 11y ago

No sarcasm intended here: Is the highest abstracted benefit of Universal basic income (other than the benefit to those that receive the basic income) that you cut out the middle person in social welfare distribution?

AngrySkillzz 11y ago
Partly. As an example, well-intentioned midcentury relief workers did a lot of damage to minority communities (like you see in Malcolm X's autobiography). Eliminating means testing and data collection saves money and is significant for the people involved in the program. There are a lot of labor market benefits as well; one of the big problems with means-tested programs is that they screw up the tax structure at the low end of the income scale. If your options are being jobless receiving welfare or getting a job that forces you out of welfare, there's a large disincentive to seek work. You would be paying an effective tax rate of ~100% by losing that payment.
transfire 11y ago
It also removes the stigma of welfare b/c everyone is getting the same thing regardless of income and status.
fasteddie 11y ago
Further, beyond streamlining operations, it also allows people to spend on what they need/want the most. Today, if you would rather have less housing vouchers and more food stamps? Too bad. UBI would allow people to spend their "basic living" money in the best way they see fit.
surfaceTensi0n 11y ago
I would say that cutting out the middle person is part of how you pay for UBI. To me the highest benefit of UBI is that people wouldn't need to work/struggle to live anymore.

amelius 11y ago

Can't we have a new style of lottery, where the prize is not $1,000,000 or more at once, but instead just basic income for a lifetime? The results could be useful for scientific purposes (even though the sample is somewhat biased towards people buying lottery tickets).

earlyriser 11y ago
We have a lottery like that in Quebec, $1k/week for a lifetime. I don't now if there are studies about that.
Jtsummers 11y ago
Not a lifetime (they may say for life, but most are actually restricted to 20-30 years), but in the US some state lotteries do this. $500-$5k a week or a month for a few decades.
AdamN 11y ago
New York has a $1k/week for life lottery.
judah 11y ago
What you're suggesting already exists. While lotteries in the US often advertise the lump sum winnings, many are actually paid out in installments over a few decades. What happens is that winners demand the full lump sum. For the lotteries that offer it, the lump sum is less than the total winnings paid out over the years. (Something like 10% less.) This has created a niche for businesses to crop up where the company will give you the lump sum total due, with a nice chunk extracted for themselves.
- amelius 11y ago
  > This has created a niche for businesses to crop up where the company will give you the lump sum total due, with a nice chunk extracted for themselves. What prevents these businesses from approaching these Kenyian people?
  - 11y ago

kelvin0 11y ago

All other considerations aside, isn't this going to create some form of inflation? At least in the beginning (first couple years), I would think that a greater monetary mass (everyone has more money) would see an increased price tag on goods? I am no economist, just wondering what others take is on this?

jackcosgrove 11y ago
It would do exactly that. Scarcity is relative, so giving everyone in the world a basic income will simply raise the prices of basic goods such that many again would be unable to afford them even on a basic income. The best way to end hunger is to grow more food, not to give everyone more money.
- AngrySkillzz 11y ago
  That really isn't true though. You can find the data on this almost everywhere: we produce enough food to feed the entire world's population more than adequately, but it doesn't get to the people that need it because of poverty. [1] [1] http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/world%20hunger%20facts%202002.htm#Does_the_world_produce_enough_food_to_feed_everyone http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/world%20hunger%20f...
  - jackcosgrove 11y ago
    You're advocating for demand-side stimulus by giving everyone money to spend on goods without increasing the productive capacity of the economy. This led to stagflation in the USA in the 1970s. There are other examples such as Venezuela today where simply giving out money does not improve welfare if the supply of goods and services does not grow as well.
- clavalle 11y ago
  That is only true if competition between the sellers of those goods is broken or there truly is a global shortage of all types of goods that can fulfill a basic need.

AdamN 11y ago

Finland is experimenting with this as well (Switzerland might too): https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/12/finland-basic-income/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/12/finland-basic-income/

dnautics 11y ago

I think the biggest unsolved question about ubi is will prices increase? There is no meaningful test if this question unless the test is conducted truly universally (I.e. this experiment will not resolve this). The potentially devastating consequence of increasing prices due to ubi is that it might relatively drag down individuals in the lowest income tiers (yes, even though they are also getting money).

transfire 11y ago

The title of the article is COMPLETELY WRONG. UBI is universal. You don't just give it to the poor. Everyone gets it. That's an important part of the point.

transfire 11y ago

They are giving this money to poor villages. I wonder if that is going to provide a good testing ground? Do these people even have access to "higher-level" activities? If not then these people will just do what all the nay-sayers say they will do. Nothing. But not b/c they won't, but b/c they can't.

pasquinelli 11y ago
i guess that's the point of the experiment, but i would be shocked if they didn't find plenty of useful shit to do with themselves.

jiiam 11y ago

The point that makes universal basic income (UBI) unconvincing IMO is that it relies on a reality that it actually subverts, i.e. money. I'm not saying that we should eliminate money or provide UBI in a different, subsidiary, form. But maybe it is worth thinking on what the meaning of money, economy, markets, loans, etc will be in a world where there is a UBI.

pakled_engineer 11y ago

There already is a long term UBI scheme in Kenya's poorest region around Lake Turkana if anybody wants to see what the desperate poor do with the money. http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21657384-wild-ancient-and-oil-rich-turkana-shows-how-fast-continent-changing http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/2165738... UK's DFID and Equity bank in Kenya pay out $50/mth to 10,000+ villagers there.