3 ms·

Were the US Coronavirus payouts not a small-scale test of UBI in themselves?

• tomjakubowski 6y ago
  No more so than the 2008 stimulus checks. Both programs were non-universal and under both the number of dollars sent to eligible recipients depended on their incomes.
  • jimbob45 6y ago
    Oh maybe I'm mistaken. I was under the impression that the COVID payouts were universal.
    • karatestomp 6y ago
      The cutoffs before payments started to taper off—not even get cut off entirely yet, but drop—were pretty damn high. Much higher than I expected when they started talking about it. Not by SV or NY professional-class wage earner standards, but very high for normal people. It wasn't universal but it wasn't too far off, either.
• wonderwonder 6y ago
  Not really, the central premise of UBI is that its recurring allowing you to plan for and adapt to the income. This was just a bandaid for a financial disaster. What is interesting about the payouts is that we magically made the money for them while also magically making the money for a ton of other stuff. Obviously the scale of one time vs recurring is vastly different but I feel like this does go a ways towards proving its possible.
  • eplanit 6y ago
    True that it was a band-aid, but the Magic was a massive increase in the national debt[1]. Be careful wishing for any more. [1] https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/2020/05/08/national-debt-how-much-could-coronavirus-cost-america/3051559001/ https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/2020/05/08/national-d...