14 ms·

A basic income experiment in Kenya

130 points by SQL2219 9y ago

sebleon 9y ago
Very heart warming article, glad to hear about empirical evidence that basic income leads to fruitful, productive lives. Personally, I believe that basic income would be a net good if 99% of basic income recipients wasted money on booze, as long as there’s a 1% doing interesting things with their lives.
- monkeypizza 9y ago
  To evaluate that I'd look at the effect on the kids of the 99%. If it enables their parents to drink a bunch more than they would have otherwise, it might not be a net positive, even including the 1% who use the money wisely. I'm slightly suspicious of the self-reported drinking levels. I'd be afraid that the aid recipients might fear having the money taken away from them (no matter how much they're assured otherwise) if they report their true amounts of drinking or other behavior they assume the study organizers don't approve of. Do surveys of people who drink typically reveal true results, when further investigation is done? The incentives here are so painfully slanted. Is there a B Team investigating this adversarially? Ideally this study would be done by researchers who aren't true believers in basic income. If it really works, it works when those carrying it out don't believe in it. Especially considering that if this does get implemented globally, a big percent of those running the show will be bored bureaucrats, not people passionate about the fate of the impoverished.
  - d0100 9y ago
    > If it enables their parents to drink a bunch more than they would have otherwise So just add to the "basic income" scheme a "basic mental health" package, and where are good to go.
    - barry-cotter 9y ago
      And that’s why there’s no hope for an actual basic income actually working.
    - DougN7 9y ago
      And you've just taken the first step towards where we are now. There will of course need to be a "basic physical health" package, and a "basic financial health" package, and a "basic housing package"... The whole idea of UBI is to get rid of everything else and expect people to take care of themselves. Personally, I don't see how UBI scales beyond small tests to whole countries/economies.
      - T2_t2 9y ago
        It won't, because the only way UBI can work is to completely redo a countries spending as well as its taxing. A negative income tax/UBI where, say, outreach programs for the homeless are paid for won't work. Maybe even things like public housing. Further afield, even if we can conservatively say it would cost the USA a trillion dollars, that's an amount that seems implausibly high to get through. I do wonder though if it would be possible to fund with a combination of a sell off of public land plus technology. Theoretically, with a UBI, there would be little to no need for the government to provide subsidized housing, and a technological solution where money could be sent directly to landlords rather than via recipients would provide the sort of risk reduction that many landlords need. That could lead to a boom in sub $1,000 a month rentals, where landlords are guaranteed they will be paid. Combine with a sell off of some public housing assets, and it might be possible to fund a UBI for several years, not so much to push the can down the line, but to see if the trillion dollars is recouped with economic growth as the entire amount would be spent by all recipients up to and slightly above the median US income, so there should be some positive economic growth. That's the rub though, this is hard to pass. The left in particular won't like the replacement of programs for direct cash and a public assets sell off is kind of the left's idea of heresy. Conversely, the right won't let it through without MASSIVELY reducing the number of programs that are currently funded. There is virtually no country in the world with a sane and rational enough parliament to be able to perform the sort of radical surgery their budgets need to introduce a UBI.
  - scotty79 9y ago
    Why would having more money make people drink more? People drink because it's the cheapest entertainment. When people have more money they try out other forms of entertainment.
    - comicjk 9y ago
      Empirically, wealthy Americans drink more than poor ones. http://news.gallup.com/poll/184358/drinking-highest-among-educated-upper-income-americans.aspx http://news.gallup.com/poll/184358/drinking-highest-among-ed...
      - scotty79 9y ago
        The page you link says that they drink more often, not necessarily more. I imagine rich people use alcohol to spice up other entertainment and poor people more often entertain themselves with alcohol only.
        comicjk 9y ago
        You may be right about the use of alcohol as a sole source of entertainment. But the evidence shows that rich people (this source is the UK) drink more, not just more often: http://www.ias.org.uk/Alcohol-knowledge-centre/Socioeconomic-groups/Factsheets/Consumption-levels-by-income-earned.aspx http://www.ias.org.uk/Alcohol-knowledge-centre/Socioeconomic... These are the top Google results for "alcohol consumption by income level", by the way. There's no need to speculate about it without sources as people in this thread are doing.
- deleted 9y ago
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- jimmywanger 9y ago
  Before I pass judgement, I would want to see what happened to the CPI price after basic income. The article says that one recipient was able to buy more milk and send his kid to school. Fine, how much does milk cost now and which kid is now unable to go to school because his son is sitting in the seat? You can have as much money as the government wants, but goods are a limited resource (in the short term). Just printing money to give people more money is not a solution. Venezuela just hiked minimum wage up to 797,510 BSF a month. That's 79,751 dollars at the official exchange rate (which is 10 to 1). On the black market it's about 6.50. And nothing is available on shelves.
  - digi_owl 9y ago
    That assumes that he BI sum will stay unadjusted across years, a very dumb way to do it if true. As for Venezuela, and similar situations, look towards the exchange rate.
    - jimmywanger 9y ago
      Policies like this always lag economic indicators, whereas exchange rates and prices adjust fairly quickly. From [0], "However, Zimbabwe's peak month of inflation is estimated at 79.6 billion percent in mid-November 2008." Even a private charitable organization cannot deal with that level of inflation by tweaking the minimum wage. Plus, you start running out of money (the physical paper kind) really quickly because you can't afford it anymore. Or you can go further down the rabbit hole and enforce price controls. Which leads to shortages of goods and lack of supply because of zero incentive to work and produce. Seeing your children cold and hungry and fair prices is a huge incentive to be productive. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation_in_Zimbabwe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation_in_Zimbabwe
      - digi_owl 9y ago
        Now you are mixing two very different situations. BI as a concept do not, and will never, fix exchange rate problems. BI is for when on paper the nation has a functioning domestic economy, but one that exclude large parts of the population from taking part in said economy via jobs. Weimar Germany was left with a non-functioning industry after WW1, and saddled with reparations denominated in foreign currency. Even Keynes warned that it would be a mess. Zimbabwe similar ended up with a broken domestic industry, but in this instance it was the leadership that tried to keep up appearance via imports that ran things into the ground. For Venezuela i would say that judge is still out, but the slide started with the bet on oil exports to shore up imports, only or for the oil price to take a dip. but in this instance i can't eliminate the potential for foreign meddling as the leadership had incensed certain world powers...
- maxerickson 9y ago
  Politically, in the US, the first step to basic income is something like getting people to support free lunch in schools. You know, instead of shaming kids.
  - mbrumlow 9y ago
    Most schools have this don't they? The two school districts I am near provide it on request. I am not even sure there is a income requirement.
    - maxerickson 9y ago
      I don't know what the statistics are. It's "news" though. https://www.google.com/search?tbm=nws&q=national+school+lunch+unpaid https://www.google.com/search?tbm=nws&q=national+school+lunc...
      - mbrumlow 9y ago
        Hmm. Looks like it is just a HISD thing. The provide 3 meals a day.
    - stonemetal 9y ago
      Depending on income students can get free or reduced price lunches. No there is no universal free lunch program in the US. Not sure how they do it now but it used to work just like food stamps, kids in the program had membership cards that got punched when they got lunch while everyone else paid money.
      - ams6110 9y ago
        Many schools issue a card or PIN that is used to buy lunches. You can't tell who is getting assistance and who isn't, unlike the old days where the kids on assistance used punch cards and everyone else paid cash.
        PhineasRex 9y ago
- bryanlarsen 9y ago
  Anecdata, but every alcoholic I knew was self-medicating, so I suspect that the money itself from BI won't have much direct impact on alcohol consumption. OTOH, unemployment is a huge trigger for depression, so BI could go either way depending on how it's accepted socially. OTOH, I do expect a good majority of basic income recipients to waste their time on stuff that tickles the meaningfulness receptors in the brain: video games, social media, and other easy tribe forming activities such as sports fandom. But I agree with your basic point: you don't need very many geniuses and artists supported by BI to justify a large number of freeloaders IMO.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- pakitan 9y ago
  > Very heart warming article, glad to hear about empirical evidence that basic income leads to fruitful, productive lives. But of course it does because there is a Big White Friendly Brother supplying the money. If it was coming from Kenya's budget, these people would have to be taxed at a higher rate just so there is enough money to distribute as basic income.
  - kragen 9y ago
    While I think it is important to note the racist tone of your comment, I am not going to respond to it directly, because I do not think I can do so civilly. Factually speaking, the money involved would be about 16% of Kenya's GDP, which would indeed be a very substantial tax hike. If it had to be supplied by the village itself, rather than Kenyawide, it would presumably be a proportionally even larger burden; if it had to be supplied by the EAC or by Kenya and its neighboring countries, it would also be a proportionally even larger burden. (Perhaps a useful point of comparison is that the Kenyan Defense Forces cost 5.3% of GDP.) On the other hand, eliminating poverty entirely in exchange for only 15%–20% of taxation seems like it would be a pretty good deal; it falls far short of the costs of providing a Scandinavian-style welfare state. In the US, Social Security + Medicare + Medicaid adds up to US$1.97B per year, almost 11% of the US GDP. A substantial fraction of the US military budget also needs to be counted as poverty-reducing giveaways — whether to individual people for whom a job as a soldier is a path out of poverty, or to the military-supported industries that employ a substantial fraction of the US population. The US armed forces directly amount to 3.3% of US GDP, US$597B, but there's another half-percent split between DHS and DoE.
    - pakitan 9y ago
      Whoa, eliminating poverty entirely...that's a leap almost equivalent to a hyperspace jump. I've seen actual economists, proponents of UBI, making much more modest assumptions. At the very least rents and house prices in poor neighborhoods will go up, negating the benefit of UBI. > In the US, Social Security + Medicare + Medicaid adds up to US$1.97B per year, almost 11% of the US GDP Yes, and you want to dismantle them and share that sum among everyone in the form of basic income. That would mean you'd be taking money from people who actually need it, to give to people who need it less. To counter that, you'd have to increase everyone's taxes just so the former welfare recipients aren't worse off. Of course, the taxes won't be raised just enough to offset the newly gained income, it will have to be raised more, probably substantially more because there will be people who haven't qualified for welfare before but will receive the UBI. My post has no racist tone, you're seeing something that isn't there.
aaron-lebo 9y ago
Interesting to hear results in the field. My question is how does that transfer to other environments? Do the results at $22 a month in Kenya translate to the results at $1000 a month in the US? There's a lot more interesting things to buy with a $1000 in New York than there is with $22 in a village in Kenya. It's also a different society, different people. Maybe more religious, etc. Just throwing out a stupid idea: Kenya's population is 47 million. To give all of them $22 a month (ignoring age cutoffs), unless I'm doing the math wrong would be just under $13 billion a year. If some really wealthy people really want to test this, it's not impossible. Unlike the article's repeated claim that this is the "greatest myth" (it's really annoying how news articles editorialize with untestable statements like that), the biggest issue is still cost. How do you realistically put together and pay for a program that can become policy in the US? It's the 3 trillion dollar question.
- jimworm 9y ago
  Interesting "stupid" idea there. Is there enough incentive on either side for a small nation to offer its entire population to scientific research for a large one that cannot afford the failure of a similar experiment on itself? It'd be fair to assume that a successful experiment would eventually become self-funding and discontinued if unsuccessful. Your $13B number puts the budget in the same ballpark as ITER; smaller than half of the foreign aid donated by the US in 2013, an order of magnitude smaller than Project Apollo, and less than 10% the size of the Marshall plan. However such a project will not be able to avoid wide publicity which would attract many "confounding factors" trying to ensure its success, or more likely its failure.
- mwambua 9y ago
  Interesting observation. One thing that people who are fans of donor-funded BI don't realize is that there are reasons for the minimal standards of living required to sustain a $22 a month budget. a) Donor funding causes poorer members of society to turn a blind eye to inept leadership who misappropriate taxes and who don't really care about effecting sustainable change. The fact that they can live on $22 a month doesn't change the fact that their village has shitty schools, shitty hospitals, and non-existent public infrastructure... and the Kenyans responsible for fixing that get richer by the day. b) Efforts by East African countries to build sustainable industries are curtailed by the same economies that purport to support them. Kenya had to back out of a plan to prevent the importation of second-hand clothing (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/12/world/africa/east-africa-rwanda-used-clothing.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/12/world/africa/east-africa-...) because the States threatened to review Kenya’s eligibility to export textiles to the US. I think it's nice that 3rd parties are so keen on being helpful... but I think that change will have to come from within.
mantas 9y ago
This is not basic income at all. First, people knew timespan is limited. Thus they had incentive to invest money wisely. What would happen if they knew the money would be coming forever? Second, the money came from outside of the community. In Basic Income, money comes from within the community. In true BI scheme, the caregiver dude would be donor and paying to his neighbours.
- Matumio 9y ago
  They are funding it for 12 years. That's pretty close to forever. Any political system can change its policy over such a timespan. Your second point is valid: this is additional money from outside. But the word "donor" would not apply in a true BI scheme. It would be seen as obligation to the community (via taxes), in the same way you pay for public infrastructure, because it adds a value to the community as a whole. (If it wasn't seen that way, it would probably not be implemented in the first place.)
  - mantas 9y ago
    12 years is not close to forever at all. Humans live for much longer than that and they know they've to plan beyond that. Of course, even if they were promised money forever, some people would call bullshit and still plan ahead. But quite a few people do believe existing system, without declared timeout, are permanent. Especially if they were born in the system and haven't experienced any alternatives. But building system based on assumption that humans won't believe it's permanent would be kinda dumb :) Donor is exactly correct word for net-loss in BI scheme. You give up part of your wealth and get nothing in return. You know what you get back in return for your taxes. Like infrastructure or school for your kids. Welfare, when done correctly, is insurance. You know you can get in trouble, thus you pitch in. You have a chance to get in trouble and cash out. But once "welfare queens" pop up, people are pissed off. Since they feel like donors instead of paying insurance. What adds value to community is, for example, funding a local theatre, newspaper or building a park. You pay and you get something in return. You may pay proportionally more than other members of community. But you still get something in return nevertheless. Meanwhile BI doesn't add value by itself. Nor it gives anything in return to those who pay.
suyoshi 9y ago
Anyone interested in basic income should check out https://prps.io https://prps.io An ERC20 token from Athene, the best paladin in the world. No, this is not a scam.
danjoc 9y ago
If UBI works, I wonder, where is the crypto coin to prove it?
- Matumio 9y ago
  here you go: https://duniter.org/en/introduction/ https://duniter.org/en/introduction/
  - danjoc 9y ago
    That requires work to receive coins? If so, it doesn't really sound like UBI.
epynonymous 9y ago
this is an interesting and difficult problem to solve, i was reading an interview from sam altman along the same lines recently, not sure if he's working on this one, but seems the overall goal is to reduce poverty. this study presents some basic data about this hypothesis, but the sample size seems too small. if they widened the sample size, i'm sure there would be more abuse of the system. one thing that seems difficult is how you measure the success of this program, is it the people that you've moved out of poverty? and what's the funding model for this, i don't see many details about how this can be sustained for long periods of time or how this could be extended to much larger portions of people.
snarf21 9y ago
Drawing any conclusions only 1 year into a 12 year experiment seems too much, too soon. It also doesn't seem like it is enough money to really do the experiment if the $22/month could only pay for one child's pre-school. The one hopeful thing I read was that it seemed to reduce alcohol usage. This matches with most evidence of alcohol usage increasing during a recession, etc. When things are hopeless, people cope how they can. This does help reinforce the concept that most people need a hand up, not a hand out. We get so little benefit from too many of our social programs today. We need to fix things to allow people to help themselves and grow to become self sufficient.
- ComradeTaco 9y ago
  Definitely too early to draw conclusions. Preschool the US is pretty expensive, about $500 a month. It would seem if you could pay for preschool with $22 a month, then the purchasing power is quite substantial. I believe that this is not a replacement for existing income streams but a supplement that puts these recipients above subsistence. This is very much a handout however.
  - billyhoffman 9y ago
    $500! I live in suburban Atlanta and it is $1000 per month per kid for any NAEYc certificated preschool. It 20-30% more expensive inside the perimeter
- noobermin 9y ago
  Alright, I'll bite, can you give evidence of your second to last sentence? People toss around this logic as if it is an accepted truth without any real evidence of it.
  - snarf21 9y ago
    I'll elaborate slightly. Mainly there are stupid things like you can't be eligible for certain programs if you have money > X in the bank. How are people supposed to save to get on their feet again if doing so loses their help? We do an okay job of trying to funnel money to the people and necessities but we focus too little on job training and development. I would love for us to bring community projects back into the fold. Learn construction and landscaping while fixing up a park. Let people refurbish old buildings to create low income housing while learning the "trades". Use all the intelligence and energy of people to create after/before school programs and tutoring.
DoreenMichele 9y ago
Other research has found that people's spending on alcohol and cigarettes actually went down when they received direct cash transfers. Faced with a brighter future, many people stop using temptation goods as a way to cope with a hopeless situation, researchers have discovered. In the village GiveDirectly is working with, interviews with nearly a dozen recipients showed that most people have actually worked more since the study began. Well, this is encouraging. I am not pro basic income because I think it won't fix anything in the US without other changes first, such as universal basic healthcare and more affordable housing, and most discussions about basic income start from an assumption that it will be handled at the national level. I think the current focus on basic income actively takes attention away from things like healthcare and housing. We already don't want to fix those things because they are hard problems to solve. Focusing on basic income strikes me as a variation on how so many people fantasize about winning the lottery. It seems like an easy answer. And people would rather imagine that there is an easy answer than wrestle with hard problems. Like others are saying, I am unconvinced that this experiment really proves anything about basic income. But I think this may be the first time I have heard of a basic income experiment where the money came from elsewhere. Maybe this approach does not further basic income. Maybe it will only provide new models for charity. Or maybe it provides a different model for basic income, one that puts a floor in globally and potentially starts the process of moving towards a world government, which doesn't have to be in place of national governments. It can be another layer on top of them. So emergent global order makes more sense than a top down approach to creating it. One of the issues with basic income is the questions surrounding how it impacts immigration. If you give all Americans $1000/mo, that makes citizenship here an even more valuable commodity. But if basic income starts as a global initiative to begin closing the gap between rich and poor nations, instead of a local initiative to help the poor within rich nations, maybe basic income can start resolving some of the problems currently fueling immigration pressures and bring barriers down to a more manageable level.
- easytiger 9y ago
  > more affordable housing The US is an incredibly cheap place to live. Go to Europe and see what you can get for the same money.
blueyes 9y ago
The title is misleading, because this experiment start in late 2016. Sure, they plan to run for 12 years, but right now it's more like a 14-month experiment. Even when the experiment is over, it will have been done on a very small sample. In the dozens, and some will surely drop out. Slightly misleading headline aside, I'm glad the experiment is being done, since international aid had a lot of problems. The promise of UBI is that you don't need huge bureaucratic infrastructure to help lots of people. Maybe all you need is a payment system. Direct cash can put more resources in the hands of the beneficiaries, and less in the hands of aid organizations that exist primarily to persist.[0] [0] https://www.npr.org/2015/06/03/411524156/in-search-of-the-red-cross-500-million-in-haiti-relief https://www.npr.org/2015/06/03/411524156/in-search-of-the-re...
- dang 9y ago
  Ok, we've taken twelve years out of the title above.
charlescearl 9y ago
Wait. Did anyone run a long term empirical study of how giving tax cuts to the 0.1% of income earners would benefit the bottom 99% before enacting regressive taxation policies? No? Then why the F must we devote so much energy to justifying giving every day humans basic services. I think that we just need to get over and be done with the propaganda of the oligarchs.
- ringaroundthetx 9y ago
  I’m inclined to agree, at first I wrestled with the idea that the market would adjust such that staples like rent and groceries would merely increase in price, or that a large distribution of the population would merely hand their money to the savviest players of the money accumulation game, but now I see the utility of simply having guaranteed recurring chances Finally, I realize that this doesnt have to come from the state. Foundations and other aspects of the private sector are capable of doing this on a larger scale than we realize
  - king07828 9y ago
    >Foundations and other aspects of the private sector are capable of doing this on a larger scale than we realize Exactly. And more specifically, if Silicon Valley were to identify this as a problem to solve with its brains, money, and technology, then the problem might be solved much sooner, more easily, and more efficiently as compared to waiting for a politically correct solution from a government. One experiment for basic income that has not been tried: create a new cryptocurrency that makes UBI distributions to all wallets. The question created by such a cryptocurrency is whether the issues created by making such distributions (such as preventing people from making an infinite number of wallets) have practical technological solutions. If there are technological solutions to the problems inherent in a UBI cryptocurrency, then the idea should be implementable by either a cryptocurrency or a government (if a government ever got around to it). Furthermore, if there are not solutions to the problems inherent in a UBI cryptocurrency, then that could help convince UBI supporters that 1) UBI might not be a good solution and 2) a solution other than UBI needs be identified.
kolbe 9y ago
I thought a fundamental characteristic of basic income was that is was redistributed wealth from within a community. This is money that comes from outside Kenya. It's an influx of wealth into their community. And shows very little about how effective it would be to take $1000 from someone to give to her neighbor.
isaac_is_goat 9y ago
This is not UBI, this is charity. Big difference. I would be willing to give 22$ a month to a Kenyan person in need from my own personal income. Forcing society to do this through point of gun at government enforcement is wrong and I will never support it.
- ricardobeat 9y ago
  1) What's the difference for the receiver? 2) It only works as 'charity' between a vast income gap like you have here. Within local communities it's unlikely that many people have enough money and the disposition to support all the others.
  - mantas 9y ago
    > 1) What's the difference for the receiver? We already know giving money to poor people makes them happy. The question is how the whole community reacts to UBI > 2) It only works as 'charity' between a vast income gap like you have here. Within local communities it's unlikely that many people have enough money and the disposition to support all the others. Looks like Kenya have pretty high GINI coefficient [0] inside of it's regions as well as nation-wide. Thus there's wealth to be moved around inside of the country or even it's regions. Many western countries have much lower GINI coefficient, so following this logic, there'd be even less people to share money with other people. Which is why BI opponents think it won't ever work. [0] http://inequalities.sidint.net/kenya/abridged/gini-coefficient/ http://inequalities.sidint.net/kenya/abridged/gini-coefficie...
    - ricardobeat 9y ago
      Charity doesn’t move wealth around and never will. I think you’re underestimating both the motives, breadth and cost of BI.
      - mantas 9y ago
        I totally agree that charity by itself doesn't move wealth. But $100 for the receiver is $100 wether it's charity or BI for the giver. What I'm saying is, we know BI works for receiver. The question is if donor side is willing to foot the bill. I'm well aware of BI scale and motives and that's why I don't think it'd work. Aside from when it approaches charity-like situation. In day-to-day case, BI would be either working people sharing most of their wealth with the rest on massive scale. Which would cause uproar of the working people. Or charity-like situation where working people would just drop some breadcrumbs for the peasants. Which wouldn't be great either.
exabrial 9y ago
Was this a closed system? As in: the money was taken from richer members of the community and given to poorer members? Or was the money brought in from the outside?
- juicyfroot 9y ago
  This.
- neilwilson 9y ago
  It's not the money that is brought in from the outside. It is the stuff. In any ubi system you will find a set of people who don't get paid but who produce the stuff for the money. That's the slave class you need to make it work.
  - Matumio 9y ago
    The U of UBI stands for universal. If this "slave class" gets the same UBI, then they are not slaves. (At least not to the people who have no income in addition to UBI. They may be doing work for them, but they could easily stop and be no worse off than their "owners".)
    - dragonwriter 9y ago
      > The U of UBI stands for universal. “Unconditional”, usually.
- AdrianB1 9y ago
  Open system.
- SubiculumCode 9y ago
  The largest complaint against basic income or government social programs generally is that most people will not use the income productively, and that it would lead to increases in vice and decreases in productivity. This, not being a closed system, does mean that the local economies are getting outside money injected into circulation, but it is a stretch to think that people would act differently (i.e. become less productive) in a closed system. In terms of rights or wrongs of income redistribution, I'd note that a lot of laws (laws that allow rentiers) and taxes (corporate tax cuts) are designed to redistribute wealth upwards too.
grahamburger 9y ago
Here's the only UBI experiment I'm interested in seeing: 1. Take a bunch of people 2. Make them all give you 20% if their income for X years 3. Give them all back ((total money in) - (overhead costs to run the program)) / (total participants) I suspect it would be difficult to find people who would participate willingly.
- grahamburger 9y ago
  Rather than downvotes I would love to hear other ideas about how to fund UBI. Experimenting with only the good side seems silly - of course poor people's lives will get better if we give them money. But only experimenting with that side of the equation isn't testing UBI, it's just testing a different kind of welfare or charity. Maybe we can learn some things about welfare, but we're not learning anything about UBI.
  - neilwilson 9y ago
    There's never an issue with funding it. The problem is that it always ends up being a form of theft in real terms from somebody. They eventually get fed up with the bad deal and either stop producing or end the system. https://medium.com/modern-money-matters/is-basic-income-basically-theft-a95eeedb5aad https://medium.com/modern-money-matters/is-basic-income-basi...
- AdrianB1 9y ago
  It is done in parts of the world, it's called taxes and you get back "services" (sometimes you get something, sometimes you get nothing) and the 20% is around 50-70% in Europe.
  - grahamburger 9y ago
    So - why not do the experiment? You think people would go for it?
    - AdrianB1 9y ago
neilwilson 9y ago
When is a basic income not a basic income? When it's a basic income experiment. The whole thing suffers from a collosal fallacy of composition. https://medium.com/modern-money-matters/is-basic-income-basically-finnished-babadac2d29b https://medium.com/modern-money-matters/is-basic-income-basi...

130 points by SQL2219 9y ago

Very heart warming article, glad to hear about empirical evidence that basic income leads to fruitful, productive lives. Personally, I believe that basic income would be a net good if 99% of basic income recipients wasted money on booze, as long as there’s a 1% doing interesting things with their lives.

monkeypizza 9y ago
To evaluate that I'd look at the effect on the kids of the 99%. If it enables their parents to drink a bunch more than they would have otherwise, it might not be a net positive, even including the 1% who use the money wisely. I'm slightly suspicious of the self-reported drinking levels. I'd be afraid that the aid recipients might fear having the money taken away from them (no matter how much they're assured otherwise) if they report their true amounts of drinking or other behavior they assume the study organizers don't approve of. Do surveys of people who drink typically reveal true results, when further investigation is done? The incentives here are so painfully slanted. Is there a B Team investigating this adversarially? Ideally this study would be done by researchers who aren't true believers in basic income. If it really works, it works when those carrying it out don't believe in it. Especially considering that if this does get implemented globally, a big percent of those running the show will be bored bureaucrats, not people passionate about the fate of the impoverished.
- d0100 9y ago
  > If it enables their parents to drink a bunch more than they would have otherwise So just add to the "basic income" scheme a "basic mental health" package, and where are good to go.
  - barry-cotter 9y ago
    And that’s why there’s no hope for an actual basic income actually working.
  - DougN7 9y ago
    And you've just taken the first step towards where we are now. There will of course need to be a "basic physical health" package, and a "basic financial health" package, and a "basic housing package"... The whole idea of UBI is to get rid of everything else and expect people to take care of themselves. Personally, I don't see how UBI scales beyond small tests to whole countries/economies.
    - T2_t2 9y ago
      It won't, because the only way UBI can work is to completely redo a countries spending as well as its taxing. A negative income tax/UBI where, say, outreach programs for the homeless are paid for won't work. Maybe even things like public housing. Further afield, even if we can conservatively say it would cost the USA a trillion dollars, that's an amount that seems implausibly high to get through. I do wonder though if it would be possible to fund with a combination of a sell off of public land plus technology. Theoretically, with a UBI, there would be little to no need for the government to provide subsidized housing, and a technological solution where money could be sent directly to landlords rather than via recipients would provide the sort of risk reduction that many landlords need. That could lead to a boom in sub $1,000 a month rentals, where landlords are guaranteed they will be paid. Combine with a sell off of some public housing assets, and it might be possible to fund a UBI for several years, not so much to push the can down the line, but to see if the trillion dollars is recouped with economic growth as the entire amount would be spent by all recipients up to and slightly above the median US income, so there should be some positive economic growth. That's the rub though, this is hard to pass. The left in particular won't like the replacement of programs for direct cash and a public assets sell off is kind of the left's idea of heresy. Conversely, the right won't let it through without MASSIVELY reducing the number of programs that are currently funded. There is virtually no country in the world with a sane and rational enough parliament to be able to perform the sort of radical surgery their budgets need to introduce a UBI.
- scotty79 9y ago
  Why would having more money make people drink more? People drink because it's the cheapest entertainment. When people have more money they try out other forms of entertainment.
  - comicjk 9y ago
    Empirically, wealthy Americans drink more than poor ones. http://news.gallup.com/poll/184358/drinking-highest-among-educated-upper-income-americans.aspx http://news.gallup.com/poll/184358/drinking-highest-among-ed...
    - scotty79 9y ago
      The page you link says that they drink more often, not necessarily more. I imagine rich people use alcohol to spice up other entertainment and poor people more often entertain themselves with alcohol only.
      - comicjk 9y ago
        You may be right about the use of alcohol as a sole source of entertainment. But the evidence shows that rich people (this source is the UK) drink more, not just more often: http://www.ias.org.uk/Alcohol-knowledge-centre/Socioeconomic-groups/Factsheets/Consumption-levels-by-income-earned.aspx http://www.ias.org.uk/Alcohol-knowledge-centre/Socioeconomic... These are the top Google results for "alcohol consumption by income level", by the way. There's no need to speculate about it without sources as people in this thread are doing.
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jimmywanger 9y ago
Before I pass judgement, I would want to see what happened to the CPI price after basic income. The article says that one recipient was able to buy more milk and send his kid to school. Fine, how much does milk cost now and which kid is now unable to go to school because his son is sitting in the seat? You can have as much money as the government wants, but goods are a limited resource (in the short term). Just printing money to give people more money is not a solution. Venezuela just hiked minimum wage up to 797,510 BSF a month. That's 79,751 dollars at the official exchange rate (which is 10 to 1). On the black market it's about 6.50. And nothing is available on shelves.
- digi_owl 9y ago
  That assumes that he BI sum will stay unadjusted across years, a very dumb way to do it if true. As for Venezuela, and similar situations, look towards the exchange rate.
  - jimmywanger 9y ago
    Policies like this always lag economic indicators, whereas exchange rates and prices adjust fairly quickly. From [0], "However, Zimbabwe's peak month of inflation is estimated at 79.6 billion percent in mid-November 2008." Even a private charitable organization cannot deal with that level of inflation by tweaking the minimum wage. Plus, you start running out of money (the physical paper kind) really quickly because you can't afford it anymore. Or you can go further down the rabbit hole and enforce price controls. Which leads to shortages of goods and lack of supply because of zero incentive to work and produce. Seeing your children cold and hungry and fair prices is a huge incentive to be productive. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation_in_Zimbabwe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation_in_Zimbabwe
    - digi_owl 9y ago
      Now you are mixing two very different situations. BI as a concept do not, and will never, fix exchange rate problems. BI is for when on paper the nation has a functioning domestic economy, but one that exclude large parts of the population from taking part in said economy via jobs. Weimar Germany was left with a non-functioning industry after WW1, and saddled with reparations denominated in foreign currency. Even Keynes warned that it would be a mess. Zimbabwe similar ended up with a broken domestic industry, but in this instance it was the leadership that tried to keep up appearance via imports that ran things into the ground. For Venezuela i would say that judge is still out, but the slide started with the bet on oil exports to shore up imports, only or for the oil price to take a dip. but in this instance i can't eliminate the potential for foreign meddling as the leadership had incensed certain world powers...
maxerickson 9y ago
Politically, in the US, the first step to basic income is something like getting people to support free lunch in schools. You know, instead of shaming kids.
- mbrumlow 9y ago
  Most schools have this don't they? The two school districts I am near provide it on request. I am not even sure there is a income requirement.
  - maxerickson 9y ago
    I don't know what the statistics are. It's "news" though. https://www.google.com/search?tbm=nws&q=national+school+lunch+unpaid https://www.google.com/search?tbm=nws&q=national+school+lunc...
    - mbrumlow 9y ago
      Hmm. Looks like it is just a HISD thing. The provide 3 meals a day.
  - stonemetal 9y ago
    Depending on income students can get free or reduced price lunches. No there is no universal free lunch program in the US. Not sure how they do it now but it used to work just like food stamps, kids in the program had membership cards that got punched when they got lunch while everyone else paid money.
    - ams6110 9y ago
      Many schools issue a card or PIN that is used to buy lunches. You can't tell who is getting assistance and who isn't, unlike the old days where the kids on assistance used punch cards and everyone else paid cash.
      - PhineasRex 9y ago
bryanlarsen 9y ago
Anecdata, but every alcoholic I knew was self-medicating, so I suspect that the money itself from BI won't have much direct impact on alcohol consumption. OTOH, unemployment is a huge trigger for depression, so BI could go either way depending on how it's accepted socially. OTOH, I do expect a good majority of basic income recipients to waste their time on stuff that tickles the meaningfulness receptors in the brain: video games, social media, and other easy tribe forming activities such as sports fandom. But I agree with your basic point: you don't need very many geniuses and artists supported by BI to justify a large number of freeloaders IMO.
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pakitan 9y ago
> Very heart warming article, glad to hear about empirical evidence that basic income leads to fruitful, productive lives. But of course it does because there is a Big White Friendly Brother supplying the money. If it was coming from Kenya's budget, these people would have to be taxed at a higher rate just so there is enough money to distribute as basic income.
- kragen 9y ago
  While I think it is important to note the racist tone of your comment, I am not going to respond to it directly, because I do not think I can do so civilly. Factually speaking, the money involved would be about 16% of Kenya's GDP, which would indeed be a very substantial tax hike. If it had to be supplied by the village itself, rather than Kenyawide, it would presumably be a proportionally even larger burden; if it had to be supplied by the EAC or by Kenya and its neighboring countries, it would also be a proportionally even larger burden. (Perhaps a useful point of comparison is that the Kenyan Defense Forces cost 5.3% of GDP.) On the other hand, eliminating poverty entirely in exchange for only 15%–20% of taxation seems like it would be a pretty good deal; it falls far short of the costs of providing a Scandinavian-style welfare state. In the US, Social Security + Medicare + Medicaid adds up to US$1.97B per year, almost 11% of the US GDP. A substantial fraction of the US military budget also needs to be counted as poverty-reducing giveaways — whether to individual people for whom a job as a soldier is a path out of poverty, or to the military-supported industries that employ a substantial fraction of the US population. The US armed forces directly amount to 3.3% of US GDP, US$597B, but there's another half-percent split between DHS and DoE.
  - pakitan 9y ago
    Whoa, eliminating poverty entirely...that's a leap almost equivalent to a hyperspace jump. I've seen actual economists, proponents of UBI, making much more modest assumptions. At the very least rents and house prices in poor neighborhoods will go up, negating the benefit of UBI. > In the US, Social Security + Medicare + Medicaid adds up to US$1.97B per year, almost 11% of the US GDP Yes, and you want to dismantle them and share that sum among everyone in the form of basic income. That would mean you'd be taking money from people who actually need it, to give to people who need it less. To counter that, you'd have to increase everyone's taxes just so the former welfare recipients aren't worse off. Of course, the taxes won't be raised just enough to offset the newly gained income, it will have to be raised more, probably substantially more because there will be people who haven't qualified for welfare before but will receive the UBI. My post has no racist tone, you're seeing something that isn't there.

aaron-lebo 9y ago

Interesting to hear results in the field. My question is how does that transfer to other environments? Do the results at $22 a month in Kenya translate to the results at $1000 a month in the US? There's a lot more interesting things to buy with a $1000 in New York than there is with $22 in a village in Kenya. It's also a different society, different people. Maybe more religious, etc. Just throwing out a stupid idea: Kenya's population is 47 million. To give all of them $22 a month (ignoring age cutoffs), unless I'm doing the math wrong would be just under $13 billion a year. If some really wealthy people really want to test this, it's not impossible. Unlike the article's repeated claim that this is the "greatest myth" (it's really annoying how news articles editorialize with untestable statements like that), the biggest issue is still cost. How do you realistically put together and pay for a program that can become policy in the US? It's the 3 trillion dollar question.

jimworm 9y ago
Interesting "stupid" idea there. Is there enough incentive on either side for a small nation to offer its entire population to scientific research for a large one that cannot afford the failure of a similar experiment on itself? It'd be fair to assume that a successful experiment would eventually become self-funding and discontinued if unsuccessful. Your $13B number puts the budget in the same ballpark as ITER; smaller than half of the foreign aid donated by the US in 2013, an order of magnitude smaller than Project Apollo, and less than 10% the size of the Marshall plan. However such a project will not be able to avoid wide publicity which would attract many "confounding factors" trying to ensure its success, or more likely its failure.
mwambua 9y ago
Interesting observation. One thing that people who are fans of donor-funded BI don't realize is that there are reasons for the minimal standards of living required to sustain a $22 a month budget. a) Donor funding causes poorer members of society to turn a blind eye to inept leadership who misappropriate taxes and who don't really care about effecting sustainable change. The fact that they can live on $22 a month doesn't change the fact that their village has shitty schools, shitty hospitals, and non-existent public infrastructure... and the Kenyans responsible for fixing that get richer by the day. b) Efforts by East African countries to build sustainable industries are curtailed by the same economies that purport to support them. Kenya had to back out of a plan to prevent the importation of second-hand clothing (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/12/world/africa/east-africa-rwanda-used-clothing.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/12/world/africa/east-africa-...) because the States threatened to review Kenya’s eligibility to export textiles to the US. I think it's nice that 3rd parties are so keen on being helpful... but I think that change will have to come from within.

mantas 9y ago

This is not basic income at all. First, people knew timespan is limited. Thus they had incentive to invest money wisely. What would happen if they knew the money would be coming forever? Second, the money came from outside of the community. In Basic Income, money comes from within the community. In true BI scheme, the caregiver dude would be donor and paying to his neighbours.

Matumio 9y ago
They are funding it for 12 years. That's pretty close to forever. Any political system can change its policy over such a timespan. Your second point is valid: this is additional money from outside. But the word "donor" would not apply in a true BI scheme. It would be seen as obligation to the community (via taxes), in the same way you pay for public infrastructure, because it adds a value to the community as a whole. (If it wasn't seen that way, it would probably not be implemented in the first place.)
- mantas 9y ago
  12 years is not close to forever at all. Humans live for much longer than that and they know they've to plan beyond that. Of course, even if they were promised money forever, some people would call bullshit and still plan ahead. But quite a few people do believe existing system, without declared timeout, are permanent. Especially if they were born in the system and haven't experienced any alternatives. But building system based on assumption that humans won't believe it's permanent would be kinda dumb :) Donor is exactly correct word for net-loss in BI scheme. You give up part of your wealth and get nothing in return. You know what you get back in return for your taxes. Like infrastructure or school for your kids. Welfare, when done correctly, is insurance. You know you can get in trouble, thus you pitch in. You have a chance to get in trouble and cash out. But once "welfare queens" pop up, people are pissed off. Since they feel like donors instead of paying insurance. What adds value to community is, for example, funding a local theatre, newspaper or building a park. You pay and you get something in return. You may pay proportionally more than other members of community. But you still get something in return nevertheless. Meanwhile BI doesn't add value by itself. Nor it gives anything in return to those who pay.

suyoshi 9y ago

Anyone interested in basic income should check out https://prps.io https://prps.io An ERC20 token from Athene, the best paladin in the world. No, this is not a scam.

danjoc 9y ago

If UBI works, I wonder, where is the crypto coin to prove it?

Matumio 9y ago
here you go: https://duniter.org/en/introduction/ https://duniter.org/en/introduction/
- danjoc 9y ago
  That requires work to receive coins? If so, it doesn't really sound like UBI.

epynonymous 9y ago

this is an interesting and difficult problem to solve, i was reading an interview from sam altman along the same lines recently, not sure if he's working on this one, but seems the overall goal is to reduce poverty. this study presents some basic data about this hypothesis, but the sample size seems too small. if they widened the sample size, i'm sure there would be more abuse of the system. one thing that seems difficult is how you measure the success of this program, is it the people that you've moved out of poverty? and what's the funding model for this, i don't see many details about how this can be sustained for long periods of time or how this could be extended to much larger portions of people.

snarf21 9y ago

Drawing any conclusions only 1 year into a 12 year experiment seems too much, too soon. It also doesn't seem like it is enough money to really do the experiment if the $22/month could only pay for one child's pre-school. The one hopeful thing I read was that it seemed to reduce alcohol usage. This matches with most evidence of alcohol usage increasing during a recession, etc. When things are hopeless, people cope how they can. This does help reinforce the concept that most people need a hand up, not a hand out. We get so little benefit from too many of our social programs today. We need to fix things to allow people to help themselves and grow to become self sufficient.

ComradeTaco 9y ago
Definitely too early to draw conclusions. Preschool the US is pretty expensive, about $500 a month. It would seem if you could pay for preschool with $22 a month, then the purchasing power is quite substantial. I believe that this is not a replacement for existing income streams but a supplement that puts these recipients above subsistence. This is very much a handout however.
- billyhoffman 9y ago
  $500! I live in suburban Atlanta and it is $1000 per month per kid for any NAEYc certificated preschool. It 20-30% more expensive inside the perimeter
noobermin 9y ago
Alright, I'll bite, can you give evidence of your second to last sentence? People toss around this logic as if it is an accepted truth without any real evidence of it.
- snarf21 9y ago
  I'll elaborate slightly. Mainly there are stupid things like you can't be eligible for certain programs if you have money > X in the bank. How are people supposed to save to get on their feet again if doing so loses their help? We do an okay job of trying to funnel money to the people and necessities but we focus too little on job training and development. I would love for us to bring community projects back into the fold. Learn construction and landscaping while fixing up a park. Let people refurbish old buildings to create low income housing while learning the "trades". Use all the intelligence and energy of people to create after/before school programs and tutoring.

DoreenMichele 9y ago

Other research has found that people's spending on alcohol and cigarettes actually went down when they received direct cash transfers. Faced with a brighter future, many people stop using temptation goods as a way to cope with a hopeless situation, researchers have discovered. In the village GiveDirectly is working with, interviews with nearly a dozen recipients showed that most people have actually worked more since the study began. Well, this is encouraging. I am not pro basic income because I think it won't fix anything in the US without other changes first, such as universal basic healthcare and more affordable housing, and most discussions about basic income start from an assumption that it will be handled at the national level. I think the current focus on basic income actively takes attention away from things like healthcare and housing. We already don't want to fix those things because they are hard problems to solve. Focusing on basic income strikes me as a variation on how so many people fantasize about winning the lottery. It seems like an easy answer. And people would rather imagine that there is an easy answer than wrestle with hard problems. Like others are saying, I am unconvinced that this experiment really proves anything about basic income. But I think this may be the first time I have heard of a basic income experiment where the money came from elsewhere. Maybe this approach does not further basic income. Maybe it will only provide new models for charity. Or maybe it provides a different model for basic income, one that puts a floor in globally and potentially starts the process of moving towards a world government, which doesn't have to be in place of national governments. It can be another layer on top of them. So emergent global order makes more sense than a top down approach to creating it. One of the issues with basic income is the questions surrounding how it impacts immigration. If you give all Americans $1000/mo, that makes citizenship here an even more valuable commodity. But if basic income starts as a global initiative to begin closing the gap between rich and poor nations, instead of a local initiative to help the poor within rich nations, maybe basic income can start resolving some of the problems currently fueling immigration pressures and bring barriers down to a more manageable level.

easytiger 9y ago
> more affordable housing The US is an incredibly cheap place to live. Go to Europe and see what you can get for the same money.

blueyes 9y ago

The title is misleading, because this experiment start in late 2016. Sure, they plan to run for 12 years, but right now it's more like a 14-month experiment. Even when the experiment is over, it will have been done on a very small sample. In the dozens, and some will surely drop out. Slightly misleading headline aside, I'm glad the experiment is being done, since international aid had a lot of problems. The promise of UBI is that you don't need huge bureaucratic infrastructure to help lots of people. Maybe all you need is a payment system. Direct cash can put more resources in the hands of the beneficiaries, and less in the hands of aid organizations that exist primarily to persist.[0] [0] https://www.npr.org/2015/06/03/411524156/in-search-of-the-red-cross-500-million-in-haiti-relief https://www.npr.org/2015/06/03/411524156/in-search-of-the-re...

dang 9y ago
Ok, we've taken twelve years out of the title above.

charlescearl 9y ago

Wait. Did anyone run a long term empirical study of how giving tax cuts to the 0.1% of income earners would benefit the bottom 99% before enacting regressive taxation policies? No? Then why the F must we devote so much energy to justifying giving every day humans basic services. I think that we just need to get over and be done with the propaganda of the oligarchs.

ringaroundthetx 9y ago
I’m inclined to agree, at first I wrestled with the idea that the market would adjust such that staples like rent and groceries would merely increase in price, or that a large distribution of the population would merely hand their money to the savviest players of the money accumulation game, but now I see the utility of simply having guaranteed recurring chances Finally, I realize that this doesnt have to come from the state. Foundations and other aspects of the private sector are capable of doing this on a larger scale than we realize
- king07828 9y ago
  >Foundations and other aspects of the private sector are capable of doing this on a larger scale than we realize Exactly. And more specifically, if Silicon Valley were to identify this as a problem to solve with its brains, money, and technology, then the problem might be solved much sooner, more easily, and more efficiently as compared to waiting for a politically correct solution from a government. One experiment for basic income that has not been tried: create a new cryptocurrency that makes UBI distributions to all wallets. The question created by such a cryptocurrency is whether the issues created by making such distributions (such as preventing people from making an infinite number of wallets) have practical technological solutions. If there are technological solutions to the problems inherent in a UBI cryptocurrency, then the idea should be implementable by either a cryptocurrency or a government (if a government ever got around to it). Furthermore, if there are not solutions to the problems inherent in a UBI cryptocurrency, then that could help convince UBI supporters that 1) UBI might not be a good solution and 2) a solution other than UBI needs be identified.

kolbe 9y ago

I thought a fundamental characteristic of basic income was that is was redistributed wealth from within a community. This is money that comes from outside Kenya. It's an influx of wealth into their community. And shows very little about how effective it would be to take $1000 from someone to give to her neighbor.

isaac_is_goat 9y ago

This is not UBI, this is charity. Big difference. I would be willing to give 22$ a month to a Kenyan person in need from my own personal income. Forcing society to do this through point of gun at government enforcement is wrong and I will never support it.

ricardobeat 9y ago
1) What's the difference for the receiver? 2) It only works as 'charity' between a vast income gap like you have here. Within local communities it's unlikely that many people have enough money and the disposition to support all the others.
- mantas 9y ago
  > 1) What's the difference for the receiver? We already know giving money to poor people makes them happy. The question is how the whole community reacts to UBI > 2) It only works as 'charity' between a vast income gap like you have here. Within local communities it's unlikely that many people have enough money and the disposition to support all the others. Looks like Kenya have pretty high GINI coefficient [0] inside of it's regions as well as nation-wide. Thus there's wealth to be moved around inside of the country or even it's regions. Many western countries have much lower GINI coefficient, so following this logic, there'd be even less people to share money with other people. Which is why BI opponents think it won't ever work. [0] http://inequalities.sidint.net/kenya/abridged/gini-coefficient/ http://inequalities.sidint.net/kenya/abridged/gini-coefficie...
  - ricardobeat 9y ago
    Charity doesn’t move wealth around and never will. I think you’re underestimating both the motives, breadth and cost of BI.
    - mantas 9y ago
      I totally agree that charity by itself doesn't move wealth. But $100 for the receiver is $100 wether it's charity or BI for the giver. What I'm saying is, we know BI works for receiver. The question is if donor side is willing to foot the bill. I'm well aware of BI scale and motives and that's why I don't think it'd work. Aside from when it approaches charity-like situation. In day-to-day case, BI would be either working people sharing most of their wealth with the rest on massive scale. Which would cause uproar of the working people. Or charity-like situation where working people would just drop some breadcrumbs for the peasants. Which wouldn't be great either.

exabrial 9y ago

Was this a closed system? As in: the money was taken from richer members of the community and given to poorer members? Or was the money brought in from the outside?

juicyfroot 9y ago
This.
neilwilson 9y ago
It's not the money that is brought in from the outside. It is the stuff. In any ubi system you will find a set of people who don't get paid but who produce the stuff for the money. That's the slave class you need to make it work.
- Matumio 9y ago
  The U of UBI stands for universal. If this "slave class" gets the same UBI, then they are not slaves. (At least not to the people who have no income in addition to UBI. They may be doing work for them, but they could easily stop and be no worse off than their "owners".)
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    > The U of UBI stands for universal. “Unconditional”, usually.
AdrianB1 9y ago
Open system.
SubiculumCode 9y ago
The largest complaint against basic income or government social programs generally is that most people will not use the income productively, and that it would lead to increases in vice and decreases in productivity. This, not being a closed system, does mean that the local economies are getting outside money injected into circulation, but it is a stretch to think that people would act differently (i.e. become less productive) in a closed system. In terms of rights or wrongs of income redistribution, I'd note that a lot of laws (laws that allow rentiers) and taxes (corporate tax cuts) are designed to redistribute wealth upwards too.

grahamburger 9y ago

Here's the only UBI experiment I'm interested in seeing: 1. Take a bunch of people 2. Make them all give you 20% if their income for X years 3. Give them all back ((total money in) - (overhead costs to run the program)) / (total participants) I suspect it would be difficult to find people who would participate willingly.

grahamburger 9y ago
Rather than downvotes I would love to hear other ideas about how to fund UBI. Experimenting with only the good side seems silly - of course poor people's lives will get better if we give them money. But only experimenting with that side of the equation isn't testing UBI, it's just testing a different kind of welfare or charity. Maybe we can learn some things about welfare, but we're not learning anything about UBI.
- neilwilson 9y ago
  There's never an issue with funding it. The problem is that it always ends up being a form of theft in real terms from somebody. They eventually get fed up with the bad deal and either stop producing or end the system. https://medium.com/modern-money-matters/is-basic-income-basically-theft-a95eeedb5aad https://medium.com/modern-money-matters/is-basic-income-basi...
AdrianB1 9y ago
It is done in parts of the world, it's called taxes and you get back "services" (sometimes you get something, sometimes you get nothing) and the 20% is around 50-70% in Europe.
- grahamburger 9y ago
  So - why not do the experiment? You think people would go for it?
  - AdrianB1 9y ago

neilwilson 9y ago

When is a basic income not a basic income? When it's a basic income experiment. The whole thing suffers from a collosal fallacy of composition. https://medium.com/modern-money-matters/is-basic-income-basically-finnished-babadac2d29b https://medium.com/modern-money-matters/is-basic-income-basi...