5 ms·

yep. It's very important UBI be given to everyone regardless of status/income otherwise it's not a valid economic experiment. This is just welfare with more mon

yep. It's very important UBI be given to everyone regardless of status/income otherwise it's not a valid economic experiment. This is just welfare with more money.

La1n 6y ago
>otherwise it's not a valid economic experiment. It can still be a valid economic experiment, it just isn't UBI.
- ncallaway 6y ago
  Yep, this is a great point. There are a lot of great experiments that show that direct cash assistance is a really good Valid experiment, but not a full UBI experiment. That said, I do think these kinds of experiments are still helpful for evaluating UBI as a policy. It's good to know that direct cash assistance is an effective welfare program for a lot of cases. It's probably also worth evaluating where direct cash assistance falls short as a safety net.
kwhitefoot 6y ago
An experiment is always more limited than the thing it is being used to study. If you are experimenting with a limited budget you really cannot afford to give it to absolutely everyone; just as in an experiment in physics or chemistry you try to simplify the environment so as to both make the signal clearer and to get it done with the resources available. It's a balancing act. If you insist that the only valid experiment regarding UBI is to give it to everyone then no experiments can ever be done.
- kybernetikos 6y ago
  > If you are experimenting with a limited budget you really cannot afford to give it to absolutely everyone; A real UBI program would also be experimenting with a limited budget. The universal part is a big part of what makes UBI unusual in comparison to the common means tested approaches, and is therefore the part that needs some of the most careful research.
- notahacker 6y ago
  If you experiment properly, you take people who were in a region on $startdate and give them UBI indefinitely, also levying enough additional tax or welfare cuts on that region to pay for it. That's geographically more limited, and it might be temporally more limited if it turns out to be a massive failure forcing the curtailment of the whole thing, but it's very different from testing to draw the amazing conclusion that penniless people given $7.5k are on average more financially secure a year later, which actually tells you less about a hypothetical UBI than the existing welfare state. (There might be other public policy reasons to test giving cash handouts to homeless people, like "is this more efficient use of funds than spending the equivalent on homeless hostels and counselling?" but likewise, you have to construct the experiment to actually look at that side of things)
leetcrew 6y ago
the other issue (and the bigger one imo) is that the experiment described in the video seems to be a one-off payment, which you would expect to have very different behavioral outcomes. if you gave me $7500, I would probably just put it all in SPY and pretend it didn't happen. if you promised me $7500/yr, I might actually change my lifestyle a bit.
foolinaround 6y ago
the money has to come from somewhere. Why would you and I, members of the society with our needs met, also need to get money... This massively increases the cost of the programs. this is the part that i don't get...
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
  Because it removes the administrative overhead almost completely. Arguably, that saves even more money than trying to only give it to people who "need" it.
  - foolinaround 6y ago
    this is a good point, but is this true though? Assuming it costs $10000 per person/yr If we can agree that 80% of society has their needs met, then if we give to all, we now have an additional 4 times of the overall outlay. I dont think the cost of administration would be so much, and if so, we should aim to cut down those as much as possible, I also pulled out that 80% number. As this goes down to 50%, then the argument is easier made that the administrative cost is now equal to the cost of funds we could have just given away.
    - samatman 6y ago
      This misses what is probably the more important point, which is that any system which tries to measure who has their needs met is going to screw up. People won't fill out the paperwork, they'll check the wrong box, the papers will get lost, the wrong flag will be entered on the database, they won't fulfill the criteria on paper but still really need the help: people in need fall through the cracks all the time. Also, great care needs to be taken with welfare to avoid income traps. It's easy to set up a system where working more means you lose money, and that's hard to get out of. This remains a problem with US welfare and disability payments. With a UBI, it's simple: do they know who you are, and have you been paid yet. And the people who have enough are generally easy to find, and have, let's say, a preexisting relationship with the IRS. It's easy enough to tax the UBI back from them, and it would be comforting, if and when they unexpectedly lose their job, to know that a check will be arriving. One less thing to think about. I have some reservations about UBI, but I'm familiar with the case for it, which I'm conveying here without a full endorsement.

yep. It's very important UBI be given to everyone regardless of status/income otherwise it's not a valid economic experiment. This is just welfare with more money.

La1n 6y ago

>otherwise it's not a valid economic experiment. It can still be a valid economic experiment, it just isn't UBI.

ncallaway 6y ago
Yep, this is a great point. There are a lot of great experiments that show that direct cash assistance is a really good Valid experiment, but not a full UBI experiment. That said, I do think these kinds of experiments are still helpful for evaluating UBI as a policy. It's good to know that direct cash assistance is an effective welfare program for a lot of cases. It's probably also worth evaluating where direct cash assistance falls short as a safety net.

kwhitefoot 6y ago

An experiment is always more limited than the thing it is being used to study. If you are experimenting with a limited budget you really cannot afford to give it to absolutely everyone; just as in an experiment in physics or chemistry you try to simplify the environment so as to both make the signal clearer and to get it done with the resources available. It's a balancing act. If you insist that the only valid experiment regarding UBI is to give it to everyone then no experiments can ever be done.

kybernetikos 6y ago
> If you are experimenting with a limited budget you really cannot afford to give it to absolutely everyone; A real UBI program would also be experimenting with a limited budget. The universal part is a big part of what makes UBI unusual in comparison to the common means tested approaches, and is therefore the part that needs some of the most careful research.
notahacker 6y ago
If you experiment properly, you take people who were in a region on $startdate and give them UBI indefinitely, also levying enough additional tax or welfare cuts on that region to pay for it. That's geographically more limited, and it might be temporally more limited if it turns out to be a massive failure forcing the curtailment of the whole thing, but it's very different from testing to draw the amazing conclusion that penniless people given $7.5k are on average more financially secure a year later, which actually tells you less about a hypothetical UBI than the existing welfare state. (There might be other public policy reasons to test giving cash handouts to homeless people, like "is this more efficient use of funds than spending the equivalent on homeless hostels and counselling?" but likewise, you have to construct the experiment to actually look at that side of things)

leetcrew 6y ago

the other issue (and the bigger one imo) is that the experiment described in the video seems to be a one-off payment, which you would expect to have very different behavioral outcomes. if you gave me $7500, I would probably just put it all in SPY and pretend it didn't happen. if you promised me $7500/yr, I might actually change my lifestyle a bit.

foolinaround 6y ago

the money has to come from somewhere. Why would you and I, members of the society with our needs met, also need to get money... This massively increases the cost of the programs. this is the part that i don't get...

AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
Because it removes the administrative overhead almost completely. Arguably, that saves even more money than trying to only give it to people who "need" it.
- foolinaround 6y ago
  this is a good point, but is this true though? Assuming it costs $10000 per person/yr If we can agree that 80% of society has their needs met, then if we give to all, we now have an additional 4 times of the overall outlay. I dont think the cost of administration would be so much, and if so, we should aim to cut down those as much as possible, I also pulled out that 80% number. As this goes down to 50%, then the argument is easier made that the administrative cost is now equal to the cost of funds we could have just given away.
  - samatman 6y ago
    This misses what is probably the more important point, which is that any system which tries to measure who has their needs met is going to screw up. People won't fill out the paperwork, they'll check the wrong box, the papers will get lost, the wrong flag will be entered on the database, they won't fulfill the criteria on paper but still really need the help: people in need fall through the cracks all the time. Also, great care needs to be taken with welfare to avoid income traps. It's easy to set up a system where working more means you lose money, and that's hard to get out of. This remains a problem with US welfare and disability payments. With a UBI, it's simple: do they know who you are, and have you been paid yet. And the people who have enough are generally easy to find, and have, let's say, a preexisting relationship with the IRS. It's easy enough to tax the UBI back from them, and it would be comforting, if and when they unexpectedly lose their job, to know that a check will be arriving. One less thing to think about. I have some reservations about UBI, but I'm familiar with the case for it, which I'm conveying here without a full endorsement.