5 ms·

The thing I don't really see accounted for in these experiments is that UBI is not really "universal". It's a group, or a town who or are not isolated from the

The thing I don't really see accounted for in these experiments is that UBI is not really "universal". It's a group, or a town who or are not isolated from the outside economy, and the participants are usually aware/suspect that this bonus income probably won't last forever, so they know they need to keep working to maintain their careers etc. I'm not sure there's any way to account for it unfortunately, it is such a compelling idea though I think we kind of all want it to be real.

Lammy 6y ago
Your first paragraph is exactly how I would word a defense of a UBI trial that had a bad outcome. Let’s talk about the good things that happened and were measured instead of speculating about the hypothetical bad things that are out of scope for this trial. A successful small trial will lead to larger future trials that might answer your question in a more satisfying way.
- luckylion 6y ago
  It's not a UBI study if it only studies whether people like getting money they don't have to do anything for. I'm repeating it every time: these kinds of studies are the same as measuring the output of "free energy machines" that supposedly work by breaking physics... while ignoring that they are plugged into a wall-socket. To prove that they work, you'd have to unplug them, otherwise you don't need the sophisticated machine and the fancy theory, an extension cord will do the same much cheaper and more efficiently.
  - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
    So let's unplug them then? If the theory says that it works and the small scale trial says that it works, it's time for the large scale trial.
    - luckylion 6y ago
      Let's unplug them and test it before rolling it out on a large scale. We don't want to order a billion free energy machines before we know that they actually work without being plugged in. Will tax payers in the UBI community accept their increased taxes? Will those paying taxes move out of the community, leaving only those on UBI behind (who will then not be able to fund the UBI)? Will we see an influx of unproductive citizens into the community to gain the UBI benefits? Once that's answered, we'll have a better idea of the feasibility and requirements. If people want to avoid the increased taxes so much that they'll move, we'll know that we need to close the borders to force them to stay, for example.
      - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
        > Will tax payers in the UBI community accept their increased taxes? Will those paying taxes move out of the community, leaving only those on UBI behind (who will then not be able to fund the UBI)? Will we see an influx of unproductive citizens into the community to gain the UBI benefits? But then you have exactly the same problem -- a small scale experiment doesn't tell you that. If you did a UBI experiment that applied to a single street in a single neighborhood then of course people would do that, because moving across the street would net you $10,000/year while still effectively living in the same community. But are they going to move to another state, leave their job, community, business contacts, family, friends and everything they've ever known? Much less likely. You also need a certain amount of scale to encompass a realistic level of diversity. If I want to disprove your point I could do a UBI experiment in East LA where there are no rich people to move out, or in Newport Beach where the cost of living is too high for someone to be able to afford to move in just to receive the UBI. The real question is whether it would work at the state level, which you can only tell by actually implementing it at the state level. And your concerns wouldn't even apply to doing it at the national level because we do have national borders and citizenship.
        luckylion 6y ago
        > If you did a UBI experiment that applied to a single street in a single neighborhood then of course people would do that, because moving across the street would net you $10,000/year while still effectively living in the same community. So it has to be world-wide immediately? Of course, if you only do it in e.g. Denmark, the Danish might escape to Northern Germany or Southern Norway or Sweden, while still living broadly in the same region. Anything that's "we can't really show how great it will be until all of humanity has been convinced to go all-in, but trust us, it'll be great" has a super high risk: it might not be great at all, but since we've all committed to it, the damage isn't even contained. > But are they going to move to another state, leave their job, community, business contacts, family, friends and everything they've ever known? Much less likely. For a 30-50% increase in taxes? I'm not so sure. Given that their peers are usually similar to them and will also look to emigrate, you might see whole communities leave... at which point you'll need the tried & tested barrier of building literal walls with armed guards on top to keep people from escaping the utopia you've created. It's not like we haven't tried that before, and it's not like it ended with people being shot for trying to leave. And, once the regimes fell, we've generally considered their actions crimes against humanity. Do we really need to repeat that once every other generation?
  - pwinnski 6y ago
    Any test that doesn't involve full nationwide UBI is subject to the same criticism, and I predict that even a large-scale three-year-long test that involved every western state will still be dismissed as unworkable for the same reasons: no barrier between eastern and western states, and everyone knew the test would end in three years.
    - luckylion 6y ago
      > Any test that doesn't involve full nationwide UBI is subject to the same criticism No, not really, unless the money for the experiment comes from outside the region. The problem is that the argument for UBI is either that "it'll pay for itself" or "it doesn't cost more than today's system". So we'll need a test that actually tests that. Maybe it doesn't work and we'll see "okay, it'll be 10% more expensive than today's systems". That can be achieved by raising taxes, and the result of doing that can be seen in the experiment as well: do people leave the region because they don't want to pay an extra 10%, or do they find UBI's benefits to society at large to be so large that they don't mind? Maybe we'll see that UBI does what the proponents promise: free human innovation and productivity and easily more than pay for itself. Once that result is proven, you'll have no issue to convince anyone. Not trying to test that at all and then saying "well, even if we would, nobody would accept that" isn't the right approach in my opinion. And it feels like there's something left unsaid: that the proponents also don't believe that it would work and therefore don't want to actually test it, because they're convinced the test will prove that it doesn't work. And as long as it's not tested, they can claim that it totally would work (in theory) without having to prove it.
      - pwinnski 6y ago
        So how do you propose a better test? It seems like you slid easily past that point. To determine whether or not it requires 10% higher taxes, as you suggest, we would have to conduct a test large enough to have an appreciable impact on tax allocation, which seems like it would need to be a really wide test, like state-wide, that lasts for a at least a few years, no? I guess that's what I'm not seeing: any tests done so far are too small and not long enough and are known ahead of time to be a test. Okay, fine, let's conduct a test that's larger and long-term, with an eye toward permanence. How large, though?How do we avoid the criticism seen on this very page that limiting the number of people involved distorts things? How do we avoid the converse, which is that unless you're Alaska, letting it be known that everyone in a certain area gets free money means an artificial boom in that area?
- Peritract 6y ago
  Focusing solely on positive outcomes of a study and ignoring criticisms of/flaws in its premise is not really in keeping with scientific rigour.
  - Lammy 6y ago
    Read my comment again but read the entire thing this time ;)
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
learnstats2 6y ago
>the participants are usually aware/suspect that this bonus income probably won't last forever If a country fully implemented permanent UBI today, all of this would still be true. Controversial political decisions are likely to face constant challenge, and this especially applies to those decision which do not benefit the most powerful. Being critical of this as an imperfect experiment is an odd take to me. This is what reality looks like. Having a real-world test like this is an important stage of the process of implementing UBI.
- ahdeanz 6y ago
  Not to mention the US government recently sent $1,200 to a huge swath of the country and Alaska has had a similarly sized UBI-like fund for years. If we want we can chop it up and give it to ourselves each month and call it a $100 UBI (somewhat means tested). Alongside smaller, more direct comparisons like this study, I think we already have a fairly good sense of what a small to moderate UBI would look like. Nothing would go crazy. People would have more money. They’d work the same amount except select groups (students, disabled, elderly) and be slightly/moderately happier at least in the short term. We’d either have higher deficits or taxes, probably both.
NiceWayToDoIT 6y ago
It is quite complex subject, but defiantly needs faster progressing and bigger trials. With AI advances on the way destructing jobs, it is our role to reinvent and find our own place in the future society, question who has rights to have resources, should we invent meaningless jobs, should we accept economical model and maximizing our output, or maybe Scandinavian model where we place people in the center and try to maximize creative potential, well being and happiness?
- AdrianB1 6y ago
  The Scandinavian model is often cited by people in US as an argument for anything they want to support, but it is never understood; it become a buzzword. For example people almost never mention the ethnic homogeneity (and the big problems when that does not happen, see Malmo), that free selection of jobs makes gender split even more unequal than expected or the chronic alcoholism in most of Norway. Cherry picking some parts and ignoring the big picture is a fail.
  - sedeki 6y ago
    Exactly. I can't imagine that the Scandinavian model ever working somewhere like in the US. I say this as a native Scandinavian. I think a more appropriate comparison is with Canada, whose system is also flawed in my opinion (I don't like the Scandinavian model either because it doesn't work anymore nor does it scale.)
  - jasondelta 6y ago
    The reason people almost never mention the ethnic homogeneity is because it comes across incredibly bigoted. Put another way, it's basically saying that a strong social welfare state isn't possible in the US because it happens to have minorities - if only they could just get rid of them, there'd be no more obstacles!
  - salawat 6y ago
    how is the ethnic homogeneity a prereq of the model out of curiosity?
benhurmarcel 6y ago
Also they don't have to finance it themselves.
imtringued 6y ago
Isn't this going to happen to a real UBI anyway? The grand idea behind a UBI is in its simplicity. Everyone gets it no exclusion but nobody thinks about the fact that a non distorted UBI is impossible to implement. There are going to be "concessions". It reminds me of the EU CO2 cap and trade system. In theory it would be a highly effective tool. In practice lots of sectors are excluded, a lot of free CO2 certificates are given away and many to the biggest polluters because they may become uneconomical, which is the entire point of the system in the first place. Basically, the system gets distorted so that the status quo remains. This doesn't mean that the system is not doing something but my point is that you'll have to tone down your expectations. If we ever see a widespread UBI it will probably be means tested and with a limited duration which is exactly what this experiment is doing. It will probably be more effective and less costly but it won't bring wonders. It'll just be an incremental update to the conventional welfare system many countries have.
- donw 6y ago
  I maintain that I would like to see UBE -- Universal Basic Employment. If you can work, we have a job for you. Part-time, full-time, your choice. We'll even train you up. Especially in the US -- there is tons of work to be done on infrastructure, plenty of research to be sponsored with results placed in the public domain, etc. We derive a large chunk of our personal value, out of what we contribute to our tribes -- our community, our friends, our company, etc. If somebody is willing to contribute to society, we should encourage and enable that.
  - 0-_-0 6y ago
    This was already done under socialism in the eastern side of Europe after the Second World War. Jobs had to be created that were unnecessary, or a single job was split between 2-3 people. Keyword is "full employment" if you want to google it, for example: https://nintil.com/the-soviet-union-achieving-full-employment/ https://nintil.com/the-soviet-union-achieving-full-employmen... Resulted in overmanning (a sort-of "hidden unemployment") and lead to work shortages for new projects.
    - 6y ago

Lammy 6y ago

Your first paragraph is exactly how I would word a defense of a UBI trial that had a bad outcome. Let’s talk about the good things that happened and were measured instead of speculating about the hypothetical bad things that are out of scope for this trial. A successful small trial will lead to larger future trials that might answer your question in a more satisfying way.

luckylion 6y ago
It's not a UBI study if it only studies whether people like getting money they don't have to do anything for. I'm repeating it every time: these kinds of studies are the same as measuring the output of "free energy machines" that supposedly work by breaking physics... while ignoring that they are plugged into a wall-socket. To prove that they work, you'd have to unplug them, otherwise you don't need the sophisticated machine and the fancy theory, an extension cord will do the same much cheaper and more efficiently.
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  So let's unplug them then? If the theory says that it works and the small scale trial says that it works, it's time for the large scale trial.
  - luckylion 6y ago
    Let's unplug them and test it before rolling it out on a large scale. We don't want to order a billion free energy machines before we know that they actually work without being plugged in. Will tax payers in the UBI community accept their increased taxes? Will those paying taxes move out of the community, leaving only those on UBI behind (who will then not be able to fund the UBI)? Will we see an influx of unproductive citizens into the community to gain the UBI benefits? Once that's answered, we'll have a better idea of the feasibility and requirements. If people want to avoid the increased taxes so much that they'll move, we'll know that we need to close the borders to force them to stay, for example.
    - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
      > Will tax payers in the UBI community accept their increased taxes? Will those paying taxes move out of the community, leaving only those on UBI behind (who will then not be able to fund the UBI)? Will we see an influx of unproductive citizens into the community to gain the UBI benefits? But then you have exactly the same problem -- a small scale experiment doesn't tell you that. If you did a UBI experiment that applied to a single street in a single neighborhood then of course people would do that, because moving across the street would net you $10,000/year while still effectively living in the same community. But are they going to move to another state, leave their job, community, business contacts, family, friends and everything they've ever known? Much less likely. You also need a certain amount of scale to encompass a realistic level of diversity. If I want to disprove your point I could do a UBI experiment in East LA where there are no rich people to move out, or in Newport Beach where the cost of living is too high for someone to be able to afford to move in just to receive the UBI. The real question is whether it would work at the state level, which you can only tell by actually implementing it at the state level. And your concerns wouldn't even apply to doing it at the national level because we do have national borders and citizenship.
      - luckylion 6y ago
        > If you did a UBI experiment that applied to a single street in a single neighborhood then of course people would do that, because moving across the street would net you $10,000/year while still effectively living in the same community. So it has to be world-wide immediately? Of course, if you only do it in e.g. Denmark, the Danish might escape to Northern Germany or Southern Norway or Sweden, while still living broadly in the same region. Anything that's "we can't really show how great it will be until all of humanity has been convinced to go all-in, but trust us, it'll be great" has a super high risk: it might not be great at all, but since we've all committed to it, the damage isn't even contained. > But are they going to move to another state, leave their job, community, business contacts, family, friends and everything they've ever known? Much less likely. For a 30-50% increase in taxes? I'm not so sure. Given that their peers are usually similar to them and will also look to emigrate, you might see whole communities leave... at which point you'll need the tried & tested barrier of building literal walls with armed guards on top to keep people from escaping the utopia you've created. It's not like we haven't tried that before, and it's not like it ended with people being shot for trying to leave. And, once the regimes fell, we've generally considered their actions crimes against humanity. Do we really need to repeat that once every other generation?
- pwinnski 6y ago
  Any test that doesn't involve full nationwide UBI is subject to the same criticism, and I predict that even a large-scale three-year-long test that involved every western state will still be dismissed as unworkable for the same reasons: no barrier between eastern and western states, and everyone knew the test would end in three years.
  - luckylion 6y ago
    > Any test that doesn't involve full nationwide UBI is subject to the same criticism No, not really, unless the money for the experiment comes from outside the region. The problem is that the argument for UBI is either that "it'll pay for itself" or "it doesn't cost more than today's system". So we'll need a test that actually tests that. Maybe it doesn't work and we'll see "okay, it'll be 10% more expensive than today's systems". That can be achieved by raising taxes, and the result of doing that can be seen in the experiment as well: do people leave the region because they don't want to pay an extra 10%, or do they find UBI's benefits to society at large to be so large that they don't mind? Maybe we'll see that UBI does what the proponents promise: free human innovation and productivity and easily more than pay for itself. Once that result is proven, you'll have no issue to convince anyone. Not trying to test that at all and then saying "well, even if we would, nobody would accept that" isn't the right approach in my opinion. And it feels like there's something left unsaid: that the proponents also don't believe that it would work and therefore don't want to actually test it, because they're convinced the test will prove that it doesn't work. And as long as it's not tested, they can claim that it totally would work (in theory) without having to prove it.
    - pwinnski 6y ago
      So how do you propose a better test? It seems like you slid easily past that point. To determine whether or not it requires 10% higher taxes, as you suggest, we would have to conduct a test large enough to have an appreciable impact on tax allocation, which seems like it would need to be a really wide test, like state-wide, that lasts for a at least a few years, no? I guess that's what I'm not seeing: any tests done so far are too small and not long enough and are known ahead of time to be a test. Okay, fine, let's conduct a test that's larger and long-term, with an eye toward permanence. How large, though?How do we avoid the criticism seen on this very page that limiting the number of people involved distorts things? How do we avoid the converse, which is that unless you're Alaska, letting it be known that everyone in a certain area gets free money means an artificial boom in that area?
Peritract 6y ago
Focusing solely on positive outcomes of a study and ignoring criticisms of/flaws in its premise is not really in keeping with scientific rigour.
- Lammy 6y ago
  Read my comment again but read the entire thing this time ;)
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

learnstats2 6y ago

>the participants are usually aware/suspect that this bonus income probably won't last forever If a country fully implemented permanent UBI today, all of this would still be true. Controversial political decisions are likely to face constant challenge, and this especially applies to those decision which do not benefit the most powerful. Being critical of this as an imperfect experiment is an odd take to me. This is what reality looks like. Having a real-world test like this is an important stage of the process of implementing UBI.

ahdeanz 6y ago
Not to mention the US government recently sent $1,200 to a huge swath of the country and Alaska has had a similarly sized UBI-like fund for years. If we want we can chop it up and give it to ourselves each month and call it a $100 UBI (somewhat means tested). Alongside smaller, more direct comparisons like this study, I think we already have a fairly good sense of what a small to moderate UBI would look like. Nothing would go crazy. People would have more money. They’d work the same amount except select groups (students, disabled, elderly) and be slightly/moderately happier at least in the short term. We’d either have higher deficits or taxes, probably both.

NiceWayToDoIT 6y ago

It is quite complex subject, but defiantly needs faster progressing and bigger trials. With AI advances on the way destructing jobs, it is our role to reinvent and find our own place in the future society, question who has rights to have resources, should we invent meaningless jobs, should we accept economical model and maximizing our output, or maybe Scandinavian model where we place people in the center and try to maximize creative potential, well being and happiness?

AdrianB1 6y ago
The Scandinavian model is often cited by people in US as an argument for anything they want to support, but it is never understood; it become a buzzword. For example people almost never mention the ethnic homogeneity (and the big problems when that does not happen, see Malmo), that free selection of jobs makes gender split even more unequal than expected or the chronic alcoholism in most of Norway. Cherry picking some parts and ignoring the big picture is a fail.
- sedeki 6y ago
  Exactly. I can't imagine that the Scandinavian model ever working somewhere like in the US. I say this as a native Scandinavian. I think a more appropriate comparison is with Canada, whose system is also flawed in my opinion (I don't like the Scandinavian model either because it doesn't work anymore nor does it scale.)
- jasondelta 6y ago
  The reason people almost never mention the ethnic homogeneity is because it comes across incredibly bigoted. Put another way, it's basically saying that a strong social welfare state isn't possible in the US because it happens to have minorities - if only they could just get rid of them, there'd be no more obstacles!
- salawat 6y ago
  how is the ethnic homogeneity a prereq of the model out of curiosity?

benhurmarcel 6y ago

Also they don't have to finance it themselves.

imtringued 6y ago

Isn't this going to happen to a real UBI anyway? The grand idea behind a UBI is in its simplicity. Everyone gets it no exclusion but nobody thinks about the fact that a non distorted UBI is impossible to implement. There are going to be "concessions". It reminds me of the EU CO2 cap and trade system. In theory it would be a highly effective tool. In practice lots of sectors are excluded, a lot of free CO2 certificates are given away and many to the biggest polluters because they may become uneconomical, which is the entire point of the system in the first place. Basically, the system gets distorted so that the status quo remains. This doesn't mean that the system is not doing something but my point is that you'll have to tone down your expectations. If we ever see a widespread UBI it will probably be means tested and with a limited duration which is exactly what this experiment is doing. It will probably be more effective and less costly but it won't bring wonders. It'll just be an incremental update to the conventional welfare system many countries have.

donw 6y ago
I maintain that I would like to see UBE -- Universal Basic Employment. If you can work, we have a job for you. Part-time, full-time, your choice. We'll even train you up. Especially in the US -- there is tons of work to be done on infrastructure, plenty of research to be sponsored with results placed in the public domain, etc. We derive a large chunk of our personal value, out of what we contribute to our tribes -- our community, our friends, our company, etc. If somebody is willing to contribute to society, we should encourage and enable that.
- 0-_-0 6y ago
  This was already done under socialism in the eastern side of Europe after the Second World War. Jobs had to be created that were unnecessary, or a single job was split between 2-3 people. Keyword is "full employment" if you want to google it, for example: https://nintil.com/the-soviet-union-achieving-full-employment/ https://nintil.com/the-soviet-union-achieving-full-employmen... Resulted in overmanning (a sort-of "hidden unemployment") and lead to work shortages for new projects.
  - 6y ago