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I'm going to assume it won't be "for life", but will instead be for some fixed period, such as 1 or 2 years. Scotland has been proposing doing a similar experim

I'm going to assume it won't be "for life", but will instead be for some fixed period, such as 1 or 2 years. Scotland has been proposing doing a similar experiment too. But I'm not sure what these very small scale experiments are meant to tell us, especially since several such experiments have already been done. I can't help but be cynical and think this is governments offering platitudes to those in favour of UBI, running experiments designed to produce the outcomes the government wants. Realistically, the behaviour of someone receiving monthly payments for a known fixed term is going to be radically different than that of someone who knows they are going to receive that payment for life, and that it will increase online with inflation or the CPI (Consumer Price Index).

XorNot 5y ago
This has always been my problem. If we're going to test UBI, then we really need to run a test over a reasonable time-frame (20 years) or so and commit into it. So we move some people off the existing schemes we have, onto UBI and let that study run. I suspect the ideal candidate group would be older, poorer people (say, in there 40s) who we would otherwise expect to coast onto a pension later. It timeframes it nicely, and if it works starts making the case for trying it with younger cohorts.
- sonograph 5y ago
  It would also need to be tested in nations that have lots of social programs and nations with low social programs. A wide range of governments here. For example, I could see a UBI test in the US just going to pay for health insurance premiums (or part of them anyway)
- ghaff 5y ago
  >ideal candidate group would be older, poorer people (say, in there 40s) Perhaps. That helps determine if older people who don't make a lot of money anyway will just decide to stop working. However, perhaps the bigger question is if it's offered to younger people, will a lot of them simply never get a job after school and, by the time they realize they need more than UBI, it's too late.
  - the_lonely_road 5y ago
    This website is filled with 30 and 40 year olds who rerolled the life dice into successful tech careers so it’s not too late. Obviously a large part of that is the boom in tech so I don’t know how reasonably those people could have become doctors or air traffic controllers with their famously long start up time and forced retirement ages respectively. The more interesting cohort for me would be 25-35 year olds (with special emphasis on females) wondering if it would be enough to convince large swathes of new parents not in professional track careers to exit the workforce and care for their own children instead of using daycare. This would be a real net positive for society if it occurred in my opinion.
    - ghaff 5y ago
      Fair enough. Although "change careers" is arguably a different situation from "I've never had a job in my life and maybe I should think about getting one. I wonder what it involves?" People obviously can turn their lives around but it's difficult. I don't necessarily disagree with your other point although I doubt $10K a year or whatever would be enough to influence these sorts of decisions for most people. Any UBI is going to be very Basic.
    - kodah 5y ago
      > This website is filled with 30 and 40 year olds who rerolled the life dice into successful tech careers so it’s not too late. I'm not a 30 year old restarting my career but I restarted my programming career at 27 after pausing it for military service. A couple of notes: - I have not met very many people in tech that have lateral moved careers. I mainly sight them online. - This path was not easy and I would 100% not recommend it, especially if you cannot handle years on years of failure and insecurity in your face. - I would call tech a young person's game. Company behaviors, attitudes, and hiring practices reward youth and the energy that goes with it. Those considerations in mind, counting on rolling the dice on tech is not a good idea. For every one of these people you meet, I suspect there's a long line of people who didn't make it or couldn't tolerate the journey, and I don't blame them.
- spicybright 5y ago
  Not only for a long time, but you need a fairly wide area of "coverage" to get good data. Imagine if Boston suddenly announced UBI for all residents. People are going to be toppling over each other to get into that city somehow for the free money.
- alan-crowe 5y ago
  20 years is far too short. The introduction of UBI divides society into the "pleasantry", who live modestly on the UBI, and the "workers" who aspire to a higher standard of living, study to get qualifications, and then work. Take home pay has to be high to get people to work at all, taxes have to be high to fund the UBI, therefore gross pay has to be very high. Let us assume major advances in automation, so that the sums work out. In the next generation there is a class divide. Children of workers get brought up with a set of expectations about studying in school, getting qualifications, and working twenty hours a week at a very highly paid job (perhaps repairing broken down automated systems - endless one-off jobs that are ill suited to modern statistical artificial intelligence). Children of the pleasantry grow up with a different set of expectations around being thrifty and enjoying simple pleasures (simple is perhaps a euphemism for cheap, but there is also an aspect of living a gently paced life that passes copious spare time enjoyably). I anticipate a two-way flow. Some of the children of the workers struggle academically and see no prospect of ever learning to trouble shoot a broken down robot. They give up and grow up to be members of the pleasantry. Other children of the workers just think that the pleasantry have the better deal and drop out of the working class. Meanwhile there is traffic the other way, as children of the pleasantry query why other children have expensive toys. The adult world is explained to them: the children with expensive toys are the children of workers. And so some children of the pleasantry learn to aspire to more, to study, work, and have luxuries. The key issue is the numbers. If 50% of the children of the workers join the pleasantry and 10% of the children of the pleasantry join the workers, then the working class will shrink and the pleasantry grow. For example, maybe the first generation sees an even split, 50% workers, 50% pleasantry. The proportion of workers falls to 30%, then 22% then 19%,..., solving for the equilibrium, we only have 17% workers, even though the 20 year trial had the proportion of workers holding up reasonably well, above 30%.
- lorepieri 5y ago
  Perhaps we could guarantee life-income, so potentially 40-60 years of UBI. This would be expensive and slow, but it would provide the real UBI experience. Restricting this to a small group of people (100-1000) could make it viable financially. My belief is that we will forced much earlier to start real UBI program, thanks to the push of automation. I forecast real nation-wide UBI being implemented in a country before 2045. I would bet on a Nord European country.
_rpd 5y ago
Yes, these ‘tests’ are documenting how people respond to a lottery windfall. They have nothing to do with UBI.
- waheoo 5y ago
  Isn't that what ubi should feel like? Humans have evolved and adapted so well to this planet the amount of resources we extract and roduce far outpace the resources our bodies require. There is literally not enough work to go around so we have to make it up. If we gave up the facade I can imagine it would feel like winning the lottery and it should.
  - _rpd 5y ago
    You don’t plan your life around lottery windfalls. There’s no structural change.
toyg 5y ago
It might help to look at the Welsh political landscape. Labour is in power but is permanently at risk of being replaced by the national-populist Plaid Cymru (like it happened in Scotland, where the Scottish National Party literally wiped the board). PC (like the SNP) supports UBI, so Lab has to coopt the policy. This also helps them attract LibDem voters (another pro-UBI party), whose votes are otherwise wasted (LDs can’t win in Wales). And it solidifies the covid-created Wales-Scotland axis against the UK government, currently dominated by unabashed “England-first” Conservatives (philosophically opposed to UBI, since it threatens to reduce employers’ power). So the Welsh government has an interest in making the policy work for real, to keep them in power in the long term. The issue for them will be affordability.
- dll 5y ago
  There's some interesting post election anaylsis that picks up on this (in Wales at least). There's a view [0][1] that while results are bad for Plaid, they're getting a lot of what they want, and shifting the window on the most important issue (independence). In addition to UBI, it's interesting that Welsh Labour have started the push for "home rule" [2], something that is likely to win them a lot more votes from traditional Plaid Cymru supporters. [0] - https://nation.cymru/opinion/this-was-a-bad-election-for-plaid-cymru-but-they-seem-to-be-winning-without-winning-elections/ https://nation.cymru/opinion/this-was-a-bad-election-for-pla... [1] - https://www.thenational.wales/news/19303406.plaid-cymru-nothing-pressure-group/ https://www.thenational.wales/news/19303406.plaid-cymru-noth... [3] - https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/politics/mark-drakeford-devolution-labour-senedd-19919246 https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/politics/mark-drakeford-d...
  - toyg 5y ago
    Yep, Welsh Labour clearly learnt the lessons of Holyrood and are determined to avoid a Scottish scenario playing out in Wales. They are also helped by the fact that Labour is unlikely to get any sort of realistic shot at a Westminster majority anytime soon, so the periphery is quite free to set their own agenda. English Labour can quietly support a breakup of the Union that will then try to tie around the necks of Tories and SNP, they have little to lose now.
christophilus 5y ago
I used to agree, but it’s hard to argue that the temporary US covid unemployment benefits haven’t changed behavior. It’s obviously not a perfect test, but maybe it’s better than we thought?
jxidjhdhdhdhfhf 5y ago
Realistically, you also need to simultaneously test out the extra taxes to pay for the UBI as well so that you can measure the full economic effect.
- benhurmarcel 5y ago
  Exactly, to test properly the test subjects would need to have their taxes increased accordingly.

XorNot 5y ago

This has always been my problem. If we're going to test UBI, then we really need to run a test over a reasonable time-frame (20 years) or so and commit into it. So we move some people off the existing schemes we have, onto UBI and let that study run. I suspect the ideal candidate group would be older, poorer people (say, in there 40s) who we would otherwise expect to coast onto a pension later. It timeframes it nicely, and if it works starts making the case for trying it with younger cohorts.

sonograph 5y ago
It would also need to be tested in nations that have lots of social programs and nations with low social programs. A wide range of governments here. For example, I could see a UBI test in the US just going to pay for health insurance premiums (or part of them anyway)
ghaff 5y ago
>ideal candidate group would be older, poorer people (say, in there 40s) Perhaps. That helps determine if older people who don't make a lot of money anyway will just decide to stop working. However, perhaps the bigger question is if it's offered to younger people, will a lot of them simply never get a job after school and, by the time they realize they need more than UBI, it's too late.
- the_lonely_road 5y ago
  This website is filled with 30 and 40 year olds who rerolled the life dice into successful tech careers so it’s not too late. Obviously a large part of that is the boom in tech so I don’t know how reasonably those people could have become doctors or air traffic controllers with their famously long start up time and forced retirement ages respectively. The more interesting cohort for me would be 25-35 year olds (with special emphasis on females) wondering if it would be enough to convince large swathes of new parents not in professional track careers to exit the workforce and care for their own children instead of using daycare. This would be a real net positive for society if it occurred in my opinion.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    Fair enough. Although "change careers" is arguably a different situation from "I've never had a job in my life and maybe I should think about getting one. I wonder what it involves?" People obviously can turn their lives around but it's difficult. I don't necessarily disagree with your other point although I doubt $10K a year or whatever would be enough to influence these sorts of decisions for most people. Any UBI is going to be very Basic.
  - kodah 5y ago
    > This website is filled with 30 and 40 year olds who rerolled the life dice into successful tech careers so it’s not too late. I'm not a 30 year old restarting my career but I restarted my programming career at 27 after pausing it for military service. A couple of notes: - I have not met very many people in tech that have lateral moved careers. I mainly sight them online. - This path was not easy and I would 100% not recommend it, especially if you cannot handle years on years of failure and insecurity in your face. - I would call tech a young person's game. Company behaviors, attitudes, and hiring practices reward youth and the energy that goes with it. Those considerations in mind, counting on rolling the dice on tech is not a good idea. For every one of these people you meet, I suspect there's a long line of people who didn't make it or couldn't tolerate the journey, and I don't blame them.
spicybright 5y ago
Not only for a long time, but you need a fairly wide area of "coverage" to get good data. Imagine if Boston suddenly announced UBI for all residents. People are going to be toppling over each other to get into that city somehow for the free money.
alan-crowe 5y ago
20 years is far too short. The introduction of UBI divides society into the "pleasantry", who live modestly on the UBI, and the "workers" who aspire to a higher standard of living, study to get qualifications, and then work. Take home pay has to be high to get people to work at all, taxes have to be high to fund the UBI, therefore gross pay has to be very high. Let us assume major advances in automation, so that the sums work out. In the next generation there is a class divide. Children of workers get brought up with a set of expectations about studying in school, getting qualifications, and working twenty hours a week at a very highly paid job (perhaps repairing broken down automated systems - endless one-off jobs that are ill suited to modern statistical artificial intelligence). Children of the pleasantry grow up with a different set of expectations around being thrifty and enjoying simple pleasures (simple is perhaps a euphemism for cheap, but there is also an aspect of living a gently paced life that passes copious spare time enjoyably). I anticipate a two-way flow. Some of the children of the workers struggle academically and see no prospect of ever learning to trouble shoot a broken down robot. They give up and grow up to be members of the pleasantry. Other children of the workers just think that the pleasantry have the better deal and drop out of the working class. Meanwhile there is traffic the other way, as children of the pleasantry query why other children have expensive toys. The adult world is explained to them: the children with expensive toys are the children of workers. And so some children of the pleasantry learn to aspire to more, to study, work, and have luxuries. The key issue is the numbers. If 50% of the children of the workers join the pleasantry and 10% of the children of the pleasantry join the workers, then the working class will shrink and the pleasantry grow. For example, maybe the first generation sees an even split, 50% workers, 50% pleasantry. The proportion of workers falls to 30%, then 22% then 19%,..., solving for the equilibrium, we only have 17% workers, even though the 20 year trial had the proportion of workers holding up reasonably well, above 30%.
lorepieri 5y ago
Perhaps we could guarantee life-income, so potentially 40-60 years of UBI. This would be expensive and slow, but it would provide the real UBI experience. Restricting this to a small group of people (100-1000) could make it viable financially. My belief is that we will forced much earlier to start real UBI program, thanks to the push of automation. I forecast real nation-wide UBI being implemented in a country before 2045. I would bet on a Nord European country.

_rpd 5y ago

Yes, these ‘tests’ are documenting how people respond to a lottery windfall. They have nothing to do with UBI.

waheoo 5y ago
Isn't that what ubi should feel like? Humans have evolved and adapted so well to this planet the amount of resources we extract and roduce far outpace the resources our bodies require. There is literally not enough work to go around so we have to make it up. If we gave up the facade I can imagine it would feel like winning the lottery and it should.
- _rpd 5y ago
  You don’t plan your life around lottery windfalls. There’s no structural change.

toyg 5y ago

It might help to look at the Welsh political landscape. Labour is in power but is permanently at risk of being replaced by the national-populist Plaid Cymru (like it happened in Scotland, where the Scottish National Party literally wiped the board). PC (like the SNP) supports UBI, so Lab has to coopt the policy. This also helps them attract LibDem voters (another pro-UBI party), whose votes are otherwise wasted (LDs can’t win in Wales). And it solidifies the covid-created Wales-Scotland axis against the UK government, currently dominated by unabashed “England-first” Conservatives (philosophically opposed to UBI, since it threatens to reduce employers’ power). So the Welsh government has an interest in making the policy work for real, to keep them in power in the long term. The issue for them will be affordability.

dll 5y ago
There's some interesting post election anaylsis that picks up on this (in Wales at least). There's a view [0][1] that while results are bad for Plaid, they're getting a lot of what they want, and shifting the window on the most important issue (independence). In addition to UBI, it's interesting that Welsh Labour have started the push for "home rule" [2], something that is likely to win them a lot more votes from traditional Plaid Cymru supporters. [0] - https://nation.cymru/opinion/this-was-a-bad-election-for-plaid-cymru-but-they-seem-to-be-winning-without-winning-elections/ https://nation.cymru/opinion/this-was-a-bad-election-for-pla... [1] - https://www.thenational.wales/news/19303406.plaid-cymru-nothing-pressure-group/ https://www.thenational.wales/news/19303406.plaid-cymru-noth... [3] - https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/politics/mark-drakeford-devolution-labour-senedd-19919246 https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/politics/mark-drakeford-d...
- toyg 5y ago
  Yep, Welsh Labour clearly learnt the lessons of Holyrood and are determined to avoid a Scottish scenario playing out in Wales. They are also helped by the fact that Labour is unlikely to get any sort of realistic shot at a Westminster majority anytime soon, so the periphery is quite free to set their own agenda. English Labour can quietly support a breakup of the Union that will then try to tie around the necks of Tories and SNP, they have little to lose now.

christophilus 5y ago

I used to agree, but it’s hard to argue that the temporary US covid unemployment benefits haven’t changed behavior. It’s obviously not a perfect test, but maybe it’s better than we thought?

jxidjhdhdhdhfhf 5y ago

Realistically, you also need to simultaneously test out the extra taxes to pay for the UBI as well so that you can measure the full economic effect.

benhurmarcel 5y ago
Exactly, to test properly the test subjects would need to have their taxes increased accordingly.