Quote:
Originally Posted by amoeba
First, apologies for resurrecting an old thread.
What I don't understand is why governments are doing these small scale universal basic income experiments when the scalability of such a system is fully questionable. UBI working or not working in a 1000 individual experiment is completely meaningless in assessing whether UBI would work in a 10 million+ population. Especially considering that the 1000 subjects of the experiment are interacting economically with the greater non-UBI population, there just seems no value in these experiments.
I have no opinion on the feasibility of UBI but I do have a big problem with the way its feasibility is studied.
A much better way would be to take something of a similar scale and function and see if that can be improved upon. Say Social Security, which is the closest thing we have to UBI. Universal benefits that are largely the same across the board with semi progressive taxation to pay for it. Think of it as delayed UBI.
You can learn a lot more about the feasibility of UBI by looking at what it takes to keep SS solvent than some small UBI community experiment.
The most obvious critique of these case studies is that a large component of why you'd expect it to impact peoples choices is the confidence that it'll be around indefinitely. If you think it'll only last a couple of years it doesn't really have a material impact on your choices.
It's also not nearly as significant of a factor for people who're already invested in a career and/or in a routine that they're comfortable with. To someone whose 40 and spent the last 10 years working towards the job they're in it's not as if they'll just throw in the towel. To someone contemplating an entry level job it's a much bigger factor.
But as usual people will see whatever they want to see.