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>I’m sorry, but “getting free money makes people happy” isn’t exactly a shocking result is it? It's kind of significant, yeah. As a general rule, people on inc
by Sir_Substance 8y ago
>I’m sorry, but “getting free money makes people happy” isn’t exactly a shocking result is it?
It's kind of significant, yeah. As a general rule, people on income support in Australia and the UK tend to be harassed, stressed and moderately unhappy people despite the free money.
There's a lot of evidence from looking at lottery winners and people with significant disabilities that suggests that people have some base level of happiness they trend towards.
Happy fun people who have catastrophic accidents and end up paraplegics are really unhappy for about 6 months and then start rolling with it and end up being happy fun people who make light of their situation and enjoy life despite the wheelchair.
Debbie downers who win the lottery are super-happy for about 6 months and then become rich unhappy people.
A persistent long term increase in net happiness is a notable result. Maybe not earth-shattering, but certainly not necessarily to be expected either.
- notahacker 8y ago> It's kind of significant, yeah. As a general rule, people on income support in Australia and the UK tend to be harassed, stressed and moderately unhappy people despite the free money. The experiment had an appropriately-matched Finnish control group on standard unemployment benefits. The UBI group received four fifths of those benefits plus an extra unconditional EUR560 per month and were according to the preliminary results about 4% less likely to report themselves as stressed Obviously the caveats about the experiment being short term apply, but that's not a significant result, that's a disappointing result.