The First Basic Income Experiment in Germany Will Start in 2019 (basicincome.org)

Basic income is going to be tested in Germany next year. From a report: The setup of the experiment will be similar to the one now ending in Finland, which means there will be an unconditional cash transfer to 250 randomly selected people among those already receiving benefits (250 others will act as the control group), and evaluate the impact in terms of labor market behavior, health and social relations. Behind this initiative, to be initiated in May 2019, is the Sanktionsfrei organization, a non-profit managed by volunteer professionals from administration, IT-tech, communications and law. Sanktionsfrei (meaning "free from sanctions"), with headquarters in Berlin, specializes in helping sanctioned citizens by the Hartz IV social security system in Germany. It will conduct this experiment in Berlin, for a 3-year period, accepting volunteers who may apply for it through their website.

Comments

Re:Broken by design.

[Jane Q. Public]

There have been at least 3 recent experiments at UBI. One in Norway, one in Canada, and one in the U.S. (State, not Federal).

All three failed miserably.

Sweden tried something similar quite a while ago. It wasn't exactly UBI but the effect was about the same. According to a Swedish fellow who worked at my company, "Back home, if you don't want to work you just don't. You still collect a nice 'paycheck' from the government every month."

When Sweden initiated these entitlement programs in the 1970s, they had the 4th highest per-capita GDP in the world.

20 years later they were down to 14th.

Alarmed about their economy, they scaled back the entitlement programs around the mid 90s, and 20 years later they were back up to 4th again.

If you think that's coincidence, you're crazy.

Re:I wonder if we can agree on success criteria ti

[guruevi]

Humanity has tried nationwide UBI - USSR, Cuba, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, various native American reservations, Alaska - you CAN get guaranteed basic income until the money runs out. In case of Cuba it was using USSR money and Saudi Arabia and Alaska is using oil reserves to fund its population, native American reservations kind-of-work (although being blamed for alcoholism and other issues) until the casino goes bust.

In every case, everything works until you run out of - literally - someone else's money.