Is a Lack of Data Holding Back Universal Basic Income Programs? (technologyreview.com)

An anonymous reader quotes MIT's Technology Review: Silicon Valley loves the idea of universal basic income. Many in the tech elites tout it as the answer to job losses caused by automation, if only people would give it a chance.... Getting people on board with basic income requires data, which is what numerous tests have been trying to obtain. But this year, a number of experiments were cut short, delayed, or ended after a short time. That also means the possible data supply got cut off.

Back in June we declared, "Basic income could work -- if you do it Canada style." We talked to the people on the ground getting the checks in Ontario's 4,000-person test and saw how it was changing the community. Then, just two months later, it was announced that the program is ending in the new year rather than running for three years. The last checks will be delivered to participants in March 2019.
The article complains that in addition, Finland's test program ended this year after its initial trial period, while Y Combinator's experiment "has also faced more delays, pushing the experiment into 2019," saying these programs illustrate the three basic issues faced by basic income tests. First, there's political disagreements. ("The Ontario program was shut down by the province's newly installed Conservative government.") Then there's also concerns about funding -- "As you might imagine, giving away free money is expensive" -- and also fears about disrupting existing benefits "To avoid that, they've had to work with municipal and state agencies to get waivers for pilot recipients. But getting those waivers takes a lot of time and bureaucracy....

"The only way the idea can ever be embraced on any sort of large-scale, meaningful level is with more data and bigger tests. Without that, no matter how much support it gets from Silicon Valley, it seems unlikely that the public, at least in the US, will ever come around."

Comments

No, it's psychological

[50000BTU_barbecue]

They've been trying UBI since the 1960s in Canada. We have the technology and resources to enable a leisure society with guaranteed minimum living conditions for everyone.

We *choose* to not do it.

Re: No, it's psychological

[Firethorn]

You could take all the billionaires and millionaires and hand all their money to the rest of the population and still not even come close to funding universal basic income.

Which is why you wouldn't do that. Here, I'll use my libertarian influenced UBI scheme. Keep in mind that I don't have the resources to make more than a gross whack at it.

1. Amount is around $6k per person, per year. Yes, people will complain that this isn't enough for a single person to live on. Tough shit. It's the poverty line for a household of 4, so if you're solely dependent upon the UBI, you don't get to live alone.
2. Almost all other forms of non-medical welfare are eliminated. We'll still need some programs for orphans and such.
3. It worked out better before Trump's tax reforms, but eliminate the first two tax brackets, and increase the third by 1-2%. The system remains heavily progressive because of the UBI. People effectively end up not paying taxes until they're earning more than ~$24k. Equality with the old total tax burden within a few hundred was around $36k(this was where the UBI was completely taxed back and the recipient was paying the same amount they were before to the fed),These types are typically not paying significant federal income tax anyways.
4. Now, this sounds like we're giving a lot of money away, because we aren't making as much from those under $36k, but the funding for this comes from the elimination of all the other welfare programs, just more equitably distributed.

In any case, I'd need to get ahold of some relatively very detailed information, or perhaps some sort of modeling system, to figure out just how badly the tax system would need to be tweaked, who the general winners are(intact working families, I'd think), and who the general losers are(unemployed single people).

UBI is a wealth transfer to the elites

[JohnWilliams]

The reason why Silicon Valley billionaires like UBI is that they know technology is creating a growing underclass who cannot afford to buy food, let alone Netflix subscriptions. What do to? I know: get the taxpayers to pay for Netflix, Spotify, YouTube Red, ... subscriptions, iPhones, FitBits, etc.

Don't get me wrong: I like the idea of UBI. The empirical, non-ideologically driven research and evidence is clear that it's superior in every way to most, if not all, alternative forms of social welfare. All I'm saying is don't take the techno-elite's support for it as altruism: it's just financial common sense for them and their shareholders. After all, they don't pay tax, so they won't have to pay their share of the UBI tax burden Talk about a win-win!

Re:UBI is a wealth transfer to the elites

[Strider-]

The fact is, we already pay enough to bring everyone above the poverty line. That money gets plundered by politicians and bureaucrats before the dregs get handed out to the poor.

The fact that you believe this just goes to show that the real perpetrators have already won. The real perpetrators are the wealthy elite who plunder and pillage companies, amassing enormous wealth while exploiting their workforces. The politicians and bureaucrats you speak of so derisively are or last defence against those who would rob us blind.

Sure it will

[rsilvergun]

their power comes from money. Specifically they say who lives and who dies because we're a society where if you don't work, you don't eat. And they decide who gets to work. Maybe during the cold war when they were afraid of outsourcing their factories least they be seized by the communists, but that boogieman is long gone.

And no, UBI wouldn't be the masses living in poverty. We already have enough housing to end homelessness and enough food to feed everyone and enough medicine to care for everyone. Look it up. We owe most of that money to ourselves. Only about $6 trillion is owed overseas and most of that is basically tribute. It's people buying our bounds and in doing so making the US Dollar the defacto world currency. They're not doing that out of the goodness of their hearts or because we're just so competitive, they're doing that because we have 19 air carriers and China, our closest rival, has 2, both old Soviet retrofits.

And besides, did you even bother reading my post? We could pay off our national debt in 40 years with the money saved from Medicare for All. We could do the foreign debt in 6-8 years. But again, we don't want to. We _want_ to owe those folks money because it locks them into our currency.

The puritanical myth that people won't work unless they constantly fear death by starvation, the elements or lack of medicine is just that, a myth. One created by the ruling class' propaganda and indoctrination.

You're being manipulated by the ruling class. I really wish I could get people to see these patterns. It's not like the American ruling class is doing anything special. It's the same techniques since the bronze age: divide and conquer the working class along economic, religious and racial subdivisions. We see the pattern over and over again (the US Southern Strategy, India's caste system, Britain's classes, Hell, when the Japanese didn't have any racial or religious divides they just declared everyone in "unclean" professions low-caste and kept books of their names so they could oppress them.

It's called Kicking Down, and as a method of controlling a large population it's been almost completely effective. Every now and then cracks appear and are promptly spackle over. I just don't get why folks don't see it and get angry.

Well we better do something

[rsilvergun]

86% of the manufacturing jobs lost in America since the 70s were due to automation and process improvement, not outsourcing. Self driving cars and frictionless checkout are coming in the next 20 years tops, probably less. Farming robots are rapidly developing. Drones are already being used to replace professional crop dusters.

Face it, we're running out of the kind of work that 90% of the population can do. We can't all be surgeons. It doesn't matter how hard you want to work if you're hands aren't steady enough. Same with being a math wizard. Study all you want, you'll hit a wall somewhere. Most hit it long before Einstein (he famously joked about it and numbnuts misread it to think he was bad at math).

The world is full of billions of people not smart enough to live in the information economy. But they _are_ smart enough to hold a gun. If you abandon them, especially in a country like America where there are more guns than people, expect nasty things...