What will they do about births and deaths?

Will the basic income be extended to a child or will children be left poor while their parents get BI?

If babies get added to the BI payroll, doesn't this incentivize baby making?

It seems fairest to give BI to all adults. That way you don't incentivize pregnancy but people will receive their own BI when they come of age.

Scale it according to age. At 18, you get the full amount. At half that age, 9, you get half the amount, and so on.

But then the BI might not be enough to support families. It's a tricky problem.

Edit: the point being that children are the ones who suffer most from poverty, and investing in them has the most long term potential. But of course we don't want people to have kids just for the money, hence the difficulty.

You have to be careful to not stimulate child birth that way. In South Africa there is a stipend paid for each child (called social grants). It's debatable but many claim it does encourage poor mothers to have even more children (the stipend isn't enough to support each child fully [3]- it's about $20 per month), and is sometimes used for other purposes.[1][2]

[1] http://www.sowetanlive.co.za/news/2012/05/25/misuse-of-socia...

[2] http://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/grants-used-to-suppor...

[3] http://www.parent24.com/Baby/Toddler_1-2/care_nutrition/The-...

I don't think having children is a natural right which society has the obligation to subsidize. Perhaps an additional subsidy should be provided for those who have children when the study begins, but no new children should receive that benefit.

>> "I don't think having children is a natural right which society has the obligation to subsidize."

Whether society subsidises it or not people are going to continue procreating, many irresponsibly (don't have financial ability to support their children). However are you arguing then that these children who happen to be born into poverty should then be left in it without government/societal help?

> However are you arguing then that these children who happen to be born into poverty should then be left in it without government/societal help?

First of all, UBI should ideally be enough to eliminate poverty. Parents might have to make some sacrifices to take care of the children (forgoing personal luxuries or taking a low wage job). Once the child is of age, they would receive their own basic income so there wouldn't necessarily be a cycle of poverty.

Moreover, we should incentivize child transfers by subsidizing adoption.

I think the UBI should cover the majority of families but there are still going to be irresponsible people out there. You're definitely right that the children should get out of poverty once they are old enough to receive their own UBI but I think there should still be some sort of program in place to protect the children of irresponsible parents throughout their childhood. I'm not sure of the best way to do that but overall their is probably a net benefit for society as poverty will inevitably lead to crime and physical/mental health issues.

> I think the UBI should cover the majority of families but there are still going to be irresponsible people out there.

If they're so irresponsible, why would giving them more money necessarily help the children to live a better quality of life?

> I don't think having children is a natural right which society has the obligation to subsidize.

Many of the social benefits a working Western society wants depends upon a growing population, like social security.

> Many of the social benefits a working Western society wants depends upon a growing population, like social security.

To be clear, they depend on a growing labor force.

However, the whole reason to investigate UBI is that we're likely nearing a future where labor is not a dominant factor of production. It seems unlikely that we'll have full employment in the future, particularly if there's UBI.

In an economy where labor is not a necessary constraint or driver of production, it seems entirely unclear why having a growing population (without a growing labor force) would be beneficial.

Not to mention that for the forceable future there are plenty of countries desperate to export excess populations. If you need to increase the population, there's no need to subsidize it.

Children are society's future. I think society needs to incentivize people to have children - otherwise our population will gradually decline to zero (developed countries already have birth rates well below replacement, only immigration is keeping them out of decline).

> Children are society's future.

Sure, but only in the sense that they're the ones who will be living it. Fewer children doesn't mean society won't have a future. It just means they'll each have more resources.

The world is not at risk of underpopulation. If that were actually a serious concern, we could take measures to mitigate it but all evidence points to there being plenty of people in the world already. Some wealthy countries might have declining populations, but there are plenty of countries with overpopulation to offset that.

Why does it need to be enough to support families? It will help. It doesn't seem that tricky.

On the other hand, maybe you want to incentivize pregnancy. Most developed countries are losing population (the only exceptions are those with large-scale immigration).

Compare:

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...

A fertility rate of 2 would be necessary just to replace the current population, without any growth (assuming that all children reach adulthood and breed in turn, which is a big assumption for some of these countries).

World population needs to decline gradually, though. Developed countries with low fertility should compensate through immigration.

"World population needs to decline gradually, though."

Why does world population "need to decline"?

We're eating resources faster than we're replacing them.

I suppose the alternative is to eat resources at the replacement rate - this is what sustainability is supposed to be about.

Or perhaps some new technology will fix it.

Edit: this was in response to your earlier message, which you've apparently edited.

No, we aren't (running out of resources).

The price of oil today is moderately higher (in constant dollars) than it was in 1946, but only moderately so.

http://inflationdata.com/articles/charts/inflation-adjusted-...

Pretty much every jump in the intervening years is directly attributable to political turmoil (e.g., war) rather than any real decline in the amount of oil available. Note that today's moderately higher prices are in an environment with active war going on in Syria and Iraq, historically two of the largest producers. If it weren't for that, oil prices might well have dropped below 1946 prices (again, in constant dollars).

Similar graphs hold for other commodities.

According to the pundits in the 1970s, we were supposed to be at the "Soylent Green" stage long before now. We aren't.

Old Man Malthus claimed that we were on the verge of the Soylent Green world (though of course he didn't call it that) way back in 1798.

Oh, I was thinking more like trees, biodiversity, and water honestly. Sharks, plankton, etc. Even if oil became scarce, energy doesn't look like an issue in my lifetime, there's always coal and nuclear.

But like rainforests are going away real quick.

1) There are more trees in the United States today than there were 100 years ago. No reason that can't happen elsewhere.

2) Water doesn't actually get used up.

1) Can't is different from unlikely to.

2) Aquifers do.

1) You have absolutely no basis for that statement 2) Fossil aquifers aren't the only sources of water. The aren't even the primary source of water, other than in specific geographically-limited regions.

In Kenya the fertility rate is 4.46, and that's after a period of decline and not especially high by regional standards. I don't think you want to drive that up...

(that's part of a wider problem with trying to draw any inferences about how a basic income might work in a developed country from this. It's perfectly reasonable to believe the results and the appropriate design might be precisely opposite)

>How will you decide who to give the basic income to?

>We'll choose the communities mostly for operational reasons. We're experts at delivering cash in very poor rural areas, and that's likely what we'll do with the pilot. Within the communities, we want to test a universal basic income, so we will enroll all full-time residents of a community.

- from the actual fund-raising page - https://givedirectly.org/basic-income

So, they aren't incentivizing baby making between families. But there may be between communities. That said, as people are elevated socioeconomically birthrate tends to decrease.

Edited to add: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_and_fertility

Will the income be permanent?

People will act differently if they know their needs will be provided for them for life as opposed to a few years.

The article says 10-15 years. Certainly not permanent, but I think it can be considered 'a long time'. Knowing it will come to an end eventually likely will have an influence though.

A very similar idea to basic income has been tried and failed miserably because it ends up as employer subsidies.

If you are willing to work for X money a year, and you get a basic income of Y money a year, then you will be willing to work for X - Y money per year if other conditions don't change. This is will end up as tax-payers subsidizing corporations in the long run.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speenhamland_system

Basic income reduces the supply of labor because it reduces the employee's need for income. Basic income increases the velocity of money, increasing the demand for labor. In a competitive market this should cause labor prices to rise.