This study and the discussion here reminds me of https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/12/beware-the-man-of-one-study/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/12/beware

This study and the discussion here reminds me of https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/12/beware-the-man-of-one-study/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/12/beware-the-man-of-one-... - basically whenever you have a financial or politically motivated topic of study, you'll get numerous serious seeming studies supporting position X, then a thorough debunking of X, then a resounding rebuttal, then more studies taking other positions, those getting debunked & rebutted, meta studies trying to aggregate & tease out who's actually correct, those getting debunked & rebutted, and the fight goes on. My concern with UBI is more that we're unlikely to be able to fix it if it's actually terrible - once in place, handouts tend to become sacrosanct regardless of efficacy (I'm sure that are exceptions that prove the rule ;) - and it is stupendously expensive. How about Universal Basic Assistance instead? We tend to make government assistance be "hard shell, soft center", i.e. hard to qualify for, but once you're in, it's all gravy, unless you do something silly like get back on your feet (see unemployment & disability). What if we instead switched to a "soft shell, firm center" approach and made it really easy to access assistance funds, but they e.g. got gradually reduced over time as you tap into them? And perhaps you have some skin in the game with a required personal emergency fund? And perhaps you owe some of the assistance $$ back, so that the average person "pays for themselves" over the course of their life? Just spit-balling. I'm sure there are tons of problems with such an approach as well. But maybe it would still be quite useful for the recipients, and a lot more palatable for the tax payers = more reasonable to actually implement?