[This article is a draft chapter of my book, A Critical Discussion of UBI Experiments, adapted as a blog post]
Like the experiments the 1960s and ’70s, the current round of experiments appears at a time when concern about poverty and inequality is rising and people are rethinking the existing redistributive strategy. The context is otherwise very different. The welfare state has been under attack and greatly pared back in many countries since the 1970s while it has been gradually expanding in many countries from the 1930s to the 1970s. The concern that automation disrupts the labor force that played a small but significant part the 1960s BIG movement, now plays a far larger role in the debate today. The two U.S. experiments are both largely funded by tech entrepreneurs who are particularly concerned this issue. One might think that the increased concern with automation would decrease the concern that UBI might decease work effort, but this does not seem to be the case for all of the experiment. Many still seem tacitly to assume that decreased work effort is necessarily a bad thing.
The current round of experiments is taking place in a much wider context. Including the Namibian and Indian projects that were completed several years ago, the current round involves experiments in four different continents, in very wealthy and much less wealthy countries, and in countries with very strong or with rather weak welfare systems. The different contexts make different testing opportunities possible, but they also bring in new constraints, because researchers have to comply with local laws which can significantly constrain the project. This is particularly important in Europe where experiments have to comply with national and European Union law.
Researchers in different political contexts are understandably interested in very different questions, but they should be aware of the experience in other countries for at least three reasons. First, they might learn how to defend their experiments from criticism that they had not expected in their political context. Second, researchers might consider attempting to replicate each other’s findings with different methods and/or in different circumstances. Third, researchers might try to look for things that other experiments have neglected to examine.
Researchers today obviously have access to much more sophisticated computer statistics programs, but the logistical and financial difficulties of distributing cash to hundreds or thousands of people remain. Therefore, the experiments today are, for the most part, comparable in size and scope to the 1970s experiments. Only in less wealthy countries have significantly larger experiments become feasible.
The next several sections give a brief overview of several current or proposed experiments on or closely relating to UBI.
GiveDirectly in Kenya
At the home of recipient Rispa Atieno Okoyo in Koga village on 22 October 2014. Rispa used the cash to build this goat pen, she bought 2 cows, and planted maize and beans. Rispa with her children in front of their house.
GiveDirectly is a U.S. non-profit organization that has recently established the world’s largest UBI experiment in Kenya. The project is motivated largely be the desire for an evidence-based approached to international charity and development aid, and the belief that evidence so far indicates that the poorest people in the world find cash is extremely helpful. The experiment will involve tens of thousands of people across dozens of villages for several years. It will combine the techniques of RCTs and saturation studies with a significant number of control and experimental villages. The project is able to be so large both because GiveDirectly has raised a lot of money and because Kenya has such deep poverty. Some villages will receive a UBI of as little as US$0.50 per day. Others will receive $1 or perhaps more.
The low level of the UBI in the GiveDirectly project is necessary because of the great poverty and inequality in Kenya. Many of the villages where GiveDirectly operates have average incomes less than $1 per day. If GiveDirectly were to give everyone in one village $2 per day, they could easily make that village four-times-richer than the control or non-participating village down the road. This could create animosity and resistance to the program. Until they can afford the give the grant to everyone in Kenya, it has to be small.
But the small size of the grant makes a very large study possible. Researchers for GiveDirectly are able to combine RCT and saturation techniques and to run a fairly long-term study that is like to produce a great deal of valuable data about how UBI affects various quality-of-life indicators. Although the effects of a very small UBI on severely impoverished villages in Kenya might not tell us a lot about low a large UBI will work in wealthier nations, this study promises to provide a great deal of useful information about how UBI will work in lesser developed countries.
Finland
Olli Kangas of Kela
As I write, Finland is in the middle of a small-scale, two-year UBI experiment, which is being conducted by Kela, the Finnish Social Insurance Institution. It involves about 2,000 participants between ages 25 and 58, selected by a nationwide random sample of people receiving unemployment benefits. The experiment replaces unemployment insurance benefits of €560 per month with a UBI of the same size. The Finnish parliament rewrote the law to make participation in the experiment mandatory for unemployment benefit recipients who were selected.
The Finnish effort has been criticized because the UBI is so low and because, being drawn from people receiving unemployment benefits, it incorporates the conditions of eligibility attached to those unemployment benefits. Kela responded that it simply does not have the budget to conduct an experiment across a large selection of low-income individuals.[i]
The make-up of the Finish experiment has at least two advantages as a UBI test. First, the low-level of the grant makes it comparable to the existing program, eliminating problems of distinguishing the effects of the size and type of program under investigation (as discussed in Chapter 4 of my book). Second, even though people had to be eligible for unemployment benefits to be selected for the study, once they were assigned to the experimental group, all or most conditions were eliminated. Therefore, although the study is not designed to examine how a large UBI would affect a large cross-section of the public, it is well designed to examine how a small UBI would affect people currently on unemployment benefits. And that kind of study reveal a great deal of useful information about UBI.
The stated goal of the Finnish experiment is, “To obtain information on the effects of a basic income on employment.”[ii] This concern is very similar to what became the focus of the four U.S. experiments in the 1970s, but the design and focus of the study makes it very different. One of the motivations of the experiment is the fear that Finland’s long-term unemployment insurance eligibility criteria created significant disincentives to work.
Because the Finnish project tests UBI only on people currently receiving unemployment benefits (that is, people currently not working), and because UBI eliminates eligibility criteria that might inhibit unemployed people from taking jobs, the study might find that UBI increases employment among study participants. The study does not increase marginal tax rates for participants and so it will provide a much higher overall income for low-income workers in the study,[iii] but it will be expensive to replicate that program design on a national scale.
Canada
Issues such as poverty, inequality, and the complexity of the social insurance system have inspired the Canadian experiment. The Ontario government is conducting an experiment at three sites in Ontario: Hamilton, Thunder Bay, and Lindsay, and might later include an additional study at a First Nations community. The study so far involves an experimental group of up to 4,000 low-income people aged 18 to 64. One of sites has been described as a “quasi-saturation site,” but I have been unable to clarify that that means. Researchers hope to examine the NIT’s effects on quality-of-life indicators as well as work behavior, education, and entrepreneurship.[iv]
Evelyn Forget of the University of Manitoba
Although the people conducting the study call it a “basic income,” it is a negative income tax that is conditional not only on household income, but also on household size. Single people receive a maximum of C$16,989 per year while couples receive a maximum of C$24,027 and both face a take-back rate of 50% of earned income.[v]
The 6th Chapter of my book explained that the inclusion of a marginal tax rate is an element of the NIT model, but it is needed to approximate the impact of marginal tax rates on recipients. The fact that the maximum benefit for a couple is not simply double the maximum benefit for an individual is a form of conditionality that departs from the UBI model in a way that is not strictly necessary for the purpose of conducting experiments. That is, unlike the UBI model in which individuals receive the same amount regardless of whether they live in small or large households, in the Ontario study two people living together receive considerably less than two people living separately. The motivation for this conditionality is probably to save money. Two people living together can live more cheaply than two people living apart. By including this condition the program can provide a poverty-level BIG at a lower cost, but they create an incentive for people to live apart, and might create a situation in which recipients pretend to live apart.
Y Combinator in the United States
Y Combinator Research (YCR) the nonprofit arm of Y Combinator—a private venture capital firm in the United States. It is run by tech entrepreneurs who are very motivated by the automation issue. Basic Income has become a major focus of YCR’s research, and it has taken on the effort to fund a large-scale UBI project with purely private funds.
Originally planned for Oakland, California, the organizers decided to move the experiment to two other states not yet announced. The experimental group will involve at least 1,000 people who will receive $1,000 per month for 3-to-5 years. More subjects will be included if funding allows. The experimental group will involve people aged 21 and 40 with total household incomes (in the year before enrollment) below the median income in their local community. Although researchers will gather data on how participants use their time and money, they will focus on the impact of UBI on social and physiological well-being—using both subjective and objective measures. The initial project proposal makes no mention of phasing out the grant as income rises.[vi] Therefore, YCR is testing a true UBI, but like the Finnish study, the YCR study implicitly assumes that recipients will face no higher marginal tax rates under a UBI system than they do now.
The Netherlands
The Netherlands experiment is a bit unusual for the times. While politicians in Greece, Italy, Spain, and several other places today are promoting proposals that are called “basic income” even though they share little with the basic income model, the Netherlands is experimenting with something that they do not call “basic income” even though it takes a significant step in the direction of basic income. The experiment seems to be motived in part by dissatisfaction with so-called “active labor-market policies” that are in place in the Netherlands and several other countries. These policies allow people to keep some benefits while in work, but subject them to harsh sanctions if they fail to search for work or to remain in work if they find it.[vii] These policies have proven to be cost-ineffective and often allow employers to capture some of the benefit intended for low wage workers.[viii]
Although the Dutch experiment is limited to welfare recipients under the current system, it frees people from job requirements of the current system and allows them to keep some of their benefits as they earn. These are two important features of a UBI. Because the cost-effectiveness record of active labor-market policies is so poor, this experiment could show that these steps in the direction of UBI will prove to be a more cost-effective means of achieving some of the ends of active labor-market policies.[ix]
The Dutch experiment is sometimes conceived of as a “trust” experiment because the existing system makes caseworkers responsible for enforcing rather draconian sanctions on recipients fostering distrust on both sides. Yet, this experiment conceptualizes “trust” in terms of fulfilling the obligations of a recipient of conventional social assistance—primarily to take work if they find it. In that sense they are not directly related to UBI, which is often conceived as a rejection of such obligations.
The Dutch experiment is actually several experiments that will take place in several different municipalities across the country—made possible by a 2015 law allowing experimentation at the municipal level. The experiments, launched in late 2017 and expected to last for two years, will study the effects on labor market and social participation, health and well-being of allowing social assistance claimants to maintain at least some of their benefits as their income rises while exempting them from the legal duties of seeking work and/or participating in training activities. The experiments involve several different experimental groups eligible for slightly different policies. Recipients are randomly assigned to the control group or one of the experimental groups in their municipality.[x]
Stockton, California
The city of Stockton, California has secured funding from private non-profits to launch a small-scale UBI project with about 100 participants receiving $500 a month for approximately 18 months. Like Y Combinator, major funders of the Stockton project are also largely involved in the tech industry and motivated by the automation issue.
Although the project has received a great deal of media attention, it is in the early planning stages and few details have been announced. The project is not called “the Stockton experiment” but “the Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration” (SEED). The organizers do not claim to be planning a “scientific experiment,” but a “a guaranteed income demonstration,” which could be taken as indication that it is aimed not to gather rigorous data but to present useful but possibly anecdotal evidence to further UBI politically.[xi] There is nothing wrong with conducting a smaller-scale and/or a less-rigorous study, and all the difficulties of clearly communicating what it does and does not say about the implementation of a full, nationwide UBI still apply.
Other experiments
Jamie Cooke of RSA, Scotland
The Scottish government has committed funds to conduct a full-scale UBI experiment, and is working with the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) and other institutions to design the project, but it is currently in the planning stages and few if any details about the experiment have been announced yet.[xii]
Barcelona, the principle city in the Catalonia region of Spain is conducting an experiment it calls “B-Mincome” in honor of the 1970s experiment in Canada. The projects literature draws inspiration from the UBI movement. The experiment involves about 1000 people group into ten small experimental groups and a control group of 1000 people. The various experimental groups will receive a NIT, some unconditionally and others attaching various conditional programs designed to encourage labor, entrepreneurship, community service, and so on.[xiii]
The government of British Columbia, Canada recently announced that it will conduct a UBI experiment, but it is only in the planning stages, and few details have been announced yet.[xiv]
There are many small UBI projects that aren’t necessarily intended as experiments. Small-scale charities, such as “ReCivitas” in Brazil and “Eight” in Uganda have been using the UBI model to help people for some time.[xv] A group of filmmakers have raised enough money to give a UBI of $231 per adult and $77 per child to about 20 people across eight states. The filmmakers will follow the recipients for two years, eventually producing a feature film or a television series, entitled “Bootstraps,” to document how the grant affects their lives.[xvi] Because these projects are so small and because they are not primarily focused on data gathering, they seldom make the list of experiments.
Other experiments of varying size and connectedness to UBI are being discussed or at least rumored around the world, in places such as France, Korea, and Iceland. Some of these initiatives might well come to fruition, but I have little definitive information about them at this time.
Will we re-fight the last war?
Earlier chapters of my book showed, in the 1970s, BIG opponents focused on two findings of the UBI experiments: the relative decline in hours worked and possible but controversial finding of a correlation with increased divorce rate. Opponents framed those issues in very extreme ways to make the findings appear definitive against BIG: any decline in work effort, no matter how small and no matter that it might be counteracted by other policies was taken not only as a “bad” thing, but bad enough to be a definitive reason to consider the policy a failure. Any decrease in the divorce rate was considered “good,” even if divorce was inhibited by keeping unhappy women financially dependent on men.
Will something like this happen again when these seven experiments start releasing their findings? It will probably not happen in the exact same way. Much of the discussion of the 1970s experiments was particular to the time and place: supply-side economics was on the rise within academia; the War on Poverty had decline in popularity politically; and politicians who vilified the poor were on the rise. But it is almost certain that less conscientious supporters and opponents will attempt to seize on whatever findings they can, framing them in whatever way necessary to spin the discussion in their favor. More conscientious participants of the discussion—whether directly involved in the experiments or not—with the benefit of past experience need to be ready this time.
I doubt the divorce issue will come back, but because the vilification of any non-wealthy person who balks and long hours for low pay is such a perennial favorite of the opponents of virtually any redistributive measure, people need to be ready for this sort of framing of the work-effort issue even if they do not expect it in their political context. It was not a major issue in India or Namibia because in those areas UBI was associated with increase work time. Similar results are expected in Kenya. The Finnish and Dutch experiments draw their samples in a way that is less likely to show a negative correlation between UBI and labor effort and may even show a positive correlation. This is so because conditional programs have a poverty trap that discourages people who don’t meet the conditions from leaving the labor force but encourages those who do meet the conditions to remain out of the labor force. By relieving the conditions, UBI is likely to be correlated with less work for those who had not been eligible and more work for those who had been eligible for redistribution under the conditional system. Most U.S. NIT experiments of the 1970s focused on people who had not been eligible for the largest redistributive programs, and so they were correlated with decreases in labor effort. The Finnish and Dutch experiments focus on people who are eligible for redistributive programs and so they might be correlated with increased work effort.
The other four experiments might now negative correlations and people involved should be consider ways to preempt or counteract any spin based on that correlation. Later chapters of my book consider how.
Of course, there are many other issues that people might use to spin the results of new UBI experiments. The issues will vary significantly by time and place. Knowing the specific political context and the international experience will help people preempt and/or counteract spin.
Dauphin, Manitoba: “the town without poverty”
Notes: contact me for full references:
[i] {Kangas, 2017 #1424}; {Kangas, 2016 #1425}
[ii] {Kangas, 2017 #1426}
[iii] {Kangas, 2017 #1426}
[iv] {Ministry-of-Community-and-Social-Services, 2018 #1433}; {Forget, 2016 #1427}
[v] {Ministry-of-Community-and-Social-Services, 2018 #1433}; {Forget, 2016 #1427}
[vi] {Y-Combinator-Research, 2017 #1428}
[vii] Loek Groot and Robert van der Veen, remarks made and the workshop on Basic Income experiments held at the Center for International and Regional Studies, Georgetown-University Qatar, March 26, 2018
[viii] {Bouquin, 2005 #303}
[ix] Loek Groot and Robert van der Veen, remarks made and the workshop on Basic Income experiments held at the Center for International and Regional Studies, Georgetown-University Qatar, March 26, 2018
[x]{McFarland, 2017 #1431}; {Groot, 2016 #1429};
[xi] {SEED, 2018 #1432}
[xii] {McFarland, 2017 #1431}
[xiii] {Colini, 2017 #1435}
[xiv] {British-Columbia-Government, 2018 #1438}
[xv] Recivitas.org; Eight.world
[xvi] Bootstrapsfilm.com
We don’t know how to say… But the experiment in Italy it doesn’t exist. It’s just a kind of minimum income much more bad than others minimum income schemes in all other european countries. If we say that in Livorno exist an experiment of basic income, so we have to say that in all european countries exist the basic income…
the risk is to give false notice about basic income experiments…
Thanks. Yes, that backs up my understanding.
The UBI concept is blindingly obvious.
Can’t you simply summarise the various experiments in a single easy-to understand table?
Why the thousands and thousands of words?????
Dear Goldblatt,
You have other places in the Internet where you can get summarized versions of the experiments. Plus you don’t have to read it all in one day.
Cheers,
Small-scale experiments in UNIVERSAL BI are very obviously misplaced,, contradictory. In rich countries, they seem to be accepting of the assumption that people on benefit are, or might be, slackers. Any worthwhile examination of UBI can only be possible as a result of decades of implementation. It took societies a long time to get to where they are now, and the efficacy of UBI will only be “provable” in the long term.
UBI should be promoted as the way to remove the wasteful. xpensive, non-productive efforts to separate sheep from goats that happens now, and as a matter of principle to remove the grotesque inequality and inefficiency of the present.
UBI does not have to be justified on the basis that the future economy will need less labour. It has always been justified, and the level of wealth creation we have now makes only makes it easier to implement.
Although I agree that we should introduce UBI right now and we should have introduced it decades ago, we’re still the outsiders. Experiments are one thing people are trying to get UBI back into the mainstream discussion. They are a risky strategy, partly for reasons you mention, partly for many other reasons. They could distract people’s attention to the wrong issues. But a good experiment can focus on UBI’s effects (how UBI helps people) rather than its side effects (e.g. how UBI affects labor time), and several experiments and/or reports about experiments have brought a lot of positive attention to UBI by focusing on that kind of evidence.
I disagree on “outsiders” narrative.
It was created by people trying to silence ideas opposing their status-quo.
“experiments” can be easily misinterpreted – perhaps wage slavery reduction will be pictured as “disincentive of work”… perhaps some unrelated fiscal crisis will be attributed to “general effect UBI had on morality of people”.
Society is not determinist machine. We cannot “experiment” on live humans, it is against ethical values.
Also allowing criminals to manipulate people to optimize profits is just cherry on the cake of depravity. How far will You go into serving the evil? Just because You feel “outsider” and “rejected” will you try to lick asses of big gangsters?
I would rather stand by the people – they are not minority. Voices against UBI do not come from exploited and powerless. They come from outsiders of humanity. People ready to stomp over dignity and basic human rights for just hope of preserving their shaky status quo – do You Really feel they are “mainstream”?
Ignorance does not mean opposition.
Those ignorant are perhaps caught by loud narrative of propaganda of criminals, but it does not make them “mainstream” either. They are just.. poor. Ignorant, unable to form their OWN opinion due to the very reason UBI wants to fight against – poverty.
Criminals want to keep them ignorant, but this does not make You an “outsider”.
Phrasing like thst just sustains the symbolic violence. Break free.
I believe UBI has always been justified — especially in abusive money-grubbing societies who commit treason by selling out their own country by taking jobs to other countries, all in the name of profits! If they had brought that money back to their countries, (US for example) it would be different, but they abandon their own countries to gain cheap labor, and take their profits off shore instead of bringing it back into their economy.
They might argue they have a right to do what they want – but no, they don’t. Not as the expense of financial devastation to the country they abandon.
I have been so poor that I nearly died in the hospital because of a dental infection. Why? Because my insurance only pays for preventative care .. not for anything else. Medicare does NOTHING to help with teeth either… but they paid for a 55,000 dollar surgery that was required to drain the infection out of my neck! (Would have been a heck of a lot cheaper to offer full dental coverage.. talk about a waste of funds!).Even Medicaid pays squat for teeth care.The entire capitalistic attitude is to throw people to the wolves and if they cant make it, demonize or criminalize them by saying, “it’s their fault- they are lazy!”.
That isn’t working anymore .. because the rich kept taking and taking and taking … now its their turn to PAY.
If they don’t, this kind of ongoing balance is going to ruin them. Not that they don’t deserve it but if they want to keep their nice slave noose around everyone’s neck, they know they better cough up some scheme to keep us all pacified. They better do it soon — because its gotten to the breaking point.
Yes — UBI was ALWAYS important…it has ALWAYS been ethical and shouldn’t require all this BALONEY about long term implementations, People are dying and starving even in America — just ask the UN Special Rapporteur, Alston, on his recent report. Nikki Haley clearly lives in an Ivory Tower… as do most of the wealthy politicians up there who don’t give a hoot about poverty in America or elsewhere. Yeah, I am upset!
Someone needs to drag these politicians out of their cushy air=conditioned offices and ORDER them to see the poor in America — but they might not want to mess up their fresh pressed clothes, right??
I also think that there’s enough evidence to justify implementing UBI right now, but we’re still political outsiders. Experiments are one strategy for political outsiders. They don’t come at the expense of other strategies to promote UBI.
Hi, and thank you Karl for a great article.
I was wondering if you knew about any large scale data simulations for UBI?
I mean society is always evolving, so any experiments done in the 70s would make no sense today.
Society has changed so much, and with AI, Robotics and the population going up, the question is where are we in 10-20 years, and how do we measure a successful implementation of UBI.
Maybe a simulation with Deep Learning would bring some answers.
Sorry, that post was meant to reply to someone else. I’ll get yours in a second.
Hi, and thank you Karl for a great Article.
I was wondering if anyone has done any large scale simulations of UBI ?
As society is constantly changing experiments done in the 70s dont make that much sense anymore,
but a simulation would be interesting to see as we could add features like more AI, Robotics and population increase,
use a Deep Learning machine to see how the effects would look.
I don’t know of any, but there probably are some and probably will be more as the new experimental results come out. You have to follow the really technical economic journals for that. That’s beyond my specialty. But with the new interest in UBI, you can bet that a lot of work will come out both experimental and non-experimental. So, we’ll be relying less and less on that 70s data soon.
This is a terrific compilation. Thank you.
Id like to see this in Australia .Disability pensioners are being persecuted and we have a soaring suicide rate because of the kick you when you are down mentality currently in this country.We have the robo debt scam ,people being cut off disability support who are under permanent care who cant even go to the toilet on their own being asked to look for work .If we had universal income where you would not be risking your DSP or risking Robo debt ect many if not most who could would find work if it were available where they lived.
https://yadnarie48.wordpress.com/2010/04/12/centrelink%E2%80%99s-secret-the-post-breaching-terminal-outcomes-a-serious-compliance-failure/
My own opinion is that a negative income tax to reduce poverty is easier to establish in a free market society. Our founding fathers were careful to set up equal opportunities to all Americans without addressing equal social or economic status.
Growing up in a family owned business, I remember ALL of us (the entire family) working 80 hour weeks non-stop to make the business succeed. Later as a business owner myself ( I built my own without help from my parents) I found that 80 hour weeks were needed to grow the company.
I had the benefit of seeing automation in my generation first hand. A 5 man survey crew was reduced to 1 man. 3-4 pencil draftsmen were replaced by a CAD operator and a plotter.
The negativity of automation is the removal of skilled trades available that resulted in a widening wage gap.
Understanding the effects of wage gaps, I raised my unskilled works pay scale to higher than standard rates to provide all my employees a liveable salary. I understand most companies do not do this, as profits are their priority.
The US currently has low unemployment rates not seen in 50 years. The problem isn’t jobs available, it is effective income producing employment availability.
You have probably understood by now that I am a republican, and defender of our capitalist free market society, however, I am a liberal Republican. We can’t allow our citizens to suffer and call ourselves a developed nation.
Negative income tax allows all Americans to enjoy a basic standard of living while giving them the opportunity to invest in themselves to better themselves and learn skilled trades.
The wealthy Don’t need more spending money, and we don’t want it. It needs to Target the most needs in our communities without effecting tax rates too drastically that might have horrible outcomes in global economic competition, as production costs would be higher and products produced here in the US would have to reflect those costs. Less products produced here in the US equates to less jobs.
Another thing that needs to be addressed are current wages. Unskilled workers right now have more power in their hands than workers have had in 50 years. Companies would have to struggle if workers decided to have labor strikes. Wages could be negotiated.
Medical costs can be lowered as easy as regulating critical services, much like the government already does in banking and other markets. Perhaps a cap on medical services and supplies profits?
If the $150 wheelchair can only be sold to insurance at a 20% profit after handling costs it would cut the cost by 50%.
Our system is showing growing pains, technical advancement has widened gaps within the fabric of our dynamic workforce. It’s not time yet to advance to a socialist based society yet as human greed and other factors would create the same corruption in government we see in nation’s already incorporating it. It’s time we as Americans stand up to fix the system we already have adjusting it for changing times. Time the work force demands decent wages for themselves and affordable health care, and time we all take pride in America again.
It seems to me , that the attitude of U.B.I. is being viewed backward to a truly Advanced Social Society, as was the case in most First Nations !
This is and was Europe’s Corruption of Commonwealth Commonlaw Right’s of Man, Magna Carta,Jubilee Accountability!
Our values, are savagely unhumanitarian.
Humanities, are to function for interest of Equality!
Humanity advances as We care for all.
Even if some do nothing , but exist , it’s their choice.
Humanity won’t be able to make an Individual see their lost potential, but their ospring maybe Einstein’s.
Provide for all , may they be prosperous to Humanity.
Hi, Thank you so much for your information, It helps a lot with my assignment.
By the way, can I get the full references from you? Thank you so much!
I understand this article is old.
This is the way I see it. With technology growing jobs are disappearing. I believe we can support UBI by investing in technology. As jobs are taken by tech, automation, AI tech a certain tax should go to UBI to support the working or lower class. No reason the upper class should be the only to enjoy the benefits of tech.
I think it is inevitable, one day tech is going to take all the jobs. As we speak some compaines have AI learning from the internet and soon they will come help our tech grow at lighting speed. I believe soon tech will be able to do everything we can but won’t get sick, need breaks, holidays off, or money. That will either create a lot of homeless, and poor or allow them to be free. I believe that UBI could free more people to take up higher learning. Or to start small business like bakers, small markets and etc. More would be able to take up traveling, and even studying ancient technology and sites.
I know some claim there is a middle class but IMO it does not exist. There are two classes. Upper class which is truely free and lower class who is can not be free. UBI along with the lower class owning rights to most of the tech would flip around who needs who more.
Upper class depends on the working class to be free. If they owned the tech to replace us there would be no need for us. In away the working class is just another resource to them. If they are going to replace us then there should be a tax which covers people replaced.
Hi. I am a second year University student in Ontario, Canada. I am doing a research paper on whether UBI is an solution to income inequality.
I have studied the various UBI experiments across the world and the two in Canada.
What i am looking for is post experiment “surveys” used for individuals using UBI. Meaning the questions posed to them both pre and post UBI ? Do you have access to the actual surveys used ? Thank you.
I don’t have that, but if you email me (karl@widerquist.com), I can forward you the info I have accumulated on UBI experiments.