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But that's an unacceptable position for UBI advocates to take because it makes the experiment unfalsifiable over any reasonable time horizon. UBI advocates cla

But that's an unacceptable position for UBI advocates to take because it makes the experiment unfalsifiable over any reasonable time horizon. UBI advocates claim that an alternative form of welfare system (because that's what it is) would have immense benefits, but they would only become visible if you don't do any experiment to find out what they are. This is completely unscientific and based on enormous assumptions about human nature. I feel the more UBI is debated the less convincing it gets. The claimed benefits evaporate when closely studied. Advocates say there'd be no administration overhead, but there would: you still need to avoid paying UBI to fake identities, dead people, non-citizens, etc. That's a significant proportion of administrative overheads. So advocates then say, well, the savings in administration overheads would be so large that it'd pay for itself. But you can measure and see the overheads of the welfare system today and they aren't that large in percentage terms. Nowhere near enough to pay for a UBI even if you pretend 100% of those costs are for means testing. This claim is supposition, not backed by serious calculations. Advocates get the experiments they lobby for, and then turn around and claim that the null findings should be ignored because it just wasn't tried hard enough. But where have we heard that claim before? That no matter what level of resource redistribution is tried, when it doesn't work it's just not "real UBI"? Right: another social scheme that attempted to guarantee income to everyone, which always has people vigorously campaigning for it and always excusing its failures. In the beginning when UBI was floated, I was interested. It's at least a novel idea. But like many people on this forum, I would be a big loser from UBI. I don't need it and will be paying huge taxes to pay for it. As any realistic implementation would be surely funded by excessive borrowing and inflation, I'd also lose my savings and my children would incur large debts too. For such a catastrophic scenario to gain my support the benefits have to be enormous and utterly convincing. An unfalsifiable claim of the form "UBI doesn't work unless we all UBI harder" will never cut it. Unless the concept evolves significantly, I suspect I will be opposing UBI my whole life.

jlokier 6y ago
> you still need to avoid paying UBI to [...] non-citizens Oh is that what the U in Universal basic income stands for. "All people are universal, but some people are more universal than others" -- George Orwell, paraphrased.
- thu2111 6y ago
  If UBI advocates believe their country should give, e.g. hundreds of dollars a month to the over 1 billion people in Africa in the name of being truly universal, please do explicitly state that every time the proposal is made. It'll save a lot of time for us all because such a delusional idea will kill the idea dead even quicker. Obviously it has to be limited to citizens because those are the people paying for it via taxes.
  - jlokier 6y ago
    > If UBI advocates believe their country should give, e.g. hundreds of dollars a month to the over 1 billion people in Africa Hello straw man argument. UBI advocates do not advocate that. However I apologies for not being clear enough. What I have in mind is that your own country (wherever it is) contains "non-citizens" and "citizens", and for some of them it's a bureaucratic lottery which category they are in. It is not a fair or humane system within the country itself. And therefore UBI for citizens means UBI for some people living (some their entire lives) in the country get support and others do not. It would execerbate the non-level playing field economically by raising prices for those lucky to be in the "citizen" group and increasing hardship for those not lucky to be in it, who have no realistic choice but to continue living as they do. Which is obviously against the stated purpose of UBI, to dissolve bureaucratic drivers of poverty within a country or administrative region and ensure everyone gets a basic level of safety. After all, everyone there is subject to the laws, economy, and at the moment pandemic, and they are in principle supposedly protected by the police and law and civil systems. It's hypocritical that they are governed by almost every facet of the system, but we would then design an "ultimate" survival safety net and say "you are governed and affected by everything in the system, except not the safety net". If you are in the USA, consider "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." It is widely agreed that the USA's Declaration of Independence is there to be a guiding, strong principle to govern the lives of the people of the USA, overriding ordinary law and ordinary politically-motivated systems in the country, and that it was not intended to govern everywhere else on the planet. It does not, however, say "all men [actually we mean some according to a bureaucratic tick-box] are created equal..." If you don't think people who failed the citizen-lottery living in a country should be subject to its most basic economic survival safety net, yet they are required to be subject to all the other systems... Then that safety net is what it is, but it defeats the entire point of universality if it is not held up there along with other universal driving forces of the country such as human rights, declaration of independence, rule of law, etc.

jlokier 6y ago

> you still need to avoid paying UBI to [...] non-citizens Oh is that what the U in Universal basic income stands for. "All people are universal, but some people are more universal than others" -- George Orwell, paraphrased.

thu2111 6y ago
If UBI advocates believe their country should give, e.g. hundreds of dollars a month to the over 1 billion people in Africa in the name of being truly universal, please do explicitly state that every time the proposal is made. It'll save a lot of time for us all because such a delusional idea will kill the idea dead even quicker. Obviously it has to be limited to citizens because those are the people paying for it via taxes.
- jlokier 6y ago
  > If UBI advocates believe their country should give, e.g. hundreds of dollars a month to the over 1 billion people in Africa Hello straw man argument. UBI advocates do not advocate that. However I apologies for not being clear enough. What I have in mind is that your own country (wherever it is) contains "non-citizens" and "citizens", and for some of them it's a bureaucratic lottery which category they are in. It is not a fair or humane system within the country itself. And therefore UBI for citizens means UBI for some people living (some their entire lives) in the country get support and others do not. It would execerbate the non-level playing field economically by raising prices for those lucky to be in the "citizen" group and increasing hardship for those not lucky to be in it, who have no realistic choice but to continue living as they do. Which is obviously against the stated purpose of UBI, to dissolve bureaucratic drivers of poverty within a country or administrative region and ensure everyone gets a basic level of safety. After all, everyone there is subject to the laws, economy, and at the moment pandemic, and they are in principle supposedly protected by the police and law and civil systems. It's hypocritical that they are governed by almost every facet of the system, but we would then design an "ultimate" survival safety net and say "you are governed and affected by everything in the system, except not the safety net". If you are in the USA, consider "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." It is widely agreed that the USA's Declaration of Independence is there to be a guiding, strong principle to govern the lives of the people of the USA, overriding ordinary law and ordinary politically-motivated systems in the country, and that it was not intended to govern everywhere else on the planet. It does not, however, say "all men [actually we mean some according to a bureaucratic tick-box] are created equal..." If you don't think people who failed the citizen-lottery living in a country should be subject to its most basic economic survival safety net, yet they are required to be subject to all the other systems... Then that safety net is what it is, but it defeats the entire point of universality if it is not held up there along with other universal driving forces of the country such as human rights, declaration of independence, rule of law, etc.