12-year study will look at effects of universal basic income

Re:12-year study will look at effects of universal basic income by crsv on Monday May 07, 2018 @10:43AM (#17013095)

I'm not sure if I'm understanding this correctly - maybe I'm missing something significant here, but it says they're giving people 75 cents per day per person? How is ~273 buck a year going to provide any kind of valid measurement? Even at poverty levels of income, you're not talking about an amount of money that reasonably effects anyone's social mobility. I'm having a hard time understanding how this providing even an academically interesting insight into the effects of UBI. Am I missing something big here?

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Re:12-year study will look at effects of universal basic income by RubenSandwich on Monday May 07, 2018 @10:44AM (#17013106)

From my understand this is going to the poorest of the poor in Kenya, because the median Kenyaian monthly salary is ~800 USD.[1][2] So this UBI experiment does not seem to be for the average population, more as a form of welfare. Still interesting and meaningful research, but not the long term UBI experiment many are waiting for.

[1] http://www.salaryexplorer.com/salary-survey.php?loc=111&loct...

[2] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=80%2C000+KES+in+usd&t=osx&ia=curre...

Edit: Source [1] seems to be unreliable. See below comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17013632. So while the number is wrong, it does seem that this UBI is still targeting the poor.

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Re:12-year study will look at effects of universal basic income by nopinsight on Monday May 07, 2018 @11:44AM (#17013632)

The figure from the above website is wrong. US$800 per month is in the upper middle-income territory but Kenya is still a lower middle-income nation.

https://qz.com/635952/kenyas-goal-of-being-an-upper-middle-i...

Kenya's GDP per capita was around $1143 or less than $100 per month in 2016. "The average monthly wage in Kenya is 6,498 shillings ($76).", according to Reuters in 2013.

https://tradingeconomics.com/kenya/gdp-per-capita

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-kenya-reform-idUSBRE94R0M...

This means that the basic income ($22.5 per month or ~20-30% of national median salary) to be provided to Kenyans should account for a substantial part of their income and the experiment could become a basis for an analysis of basic income effects in certain communities.

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Re:12-year study will look at effects of universal basic income by crsv on Monday May 07, 2018 @10:50AM (#17013157)

Thanks, somehow I missed that, this makes much more sense but then raises some fundamental questions regarding the potential pigeon holing of UBI as a tool whose efficacy is primarily shaped by the state of the economy in which it is deployed (ie this study is highly dependent on the underlying economy being that of a severely under developed nation state).

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Re:12-year study will look at effects of universal basic income by jerf on Monday May 07, 2018 @10:59AM (#17013223)

Maybe I'm being slightly too cynical, but that's pretty much inevitable. A great deal more "scientific knowledge" than you'd probably be entirely comfortable with knowing involves taking a point sample of some space and applying it way, way away from where the sample was actually taken. If this study succeeds, then you can expect the HN commentariat to be citing how BI has been scientifically proved to be a good idea until the end of time, and if this study fails, the opposite.

Even better, there's really two types of BI going on here. One is as a mechanism for poverty alleviation, by getting capital to people who have none. Not just "not much", but none. The other is as a solution to the as-yet mostly future problem of the work force being automated out of existence in every industry that people below a certain IQ threshold can work productively in. Expect those to be conflated freely, even though in my opinion they're two different problems. (If you squint really hard, yes, they blur together, but don't ignore the fact that you're squinting.)

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Re:12-year study will look at effects of universal basic income by jfoutz on Monday May 07, 2018 @11:50AM (#17013700)

As one of the likely cheerleaders, without the tax credit, it’s not UBI. (In my humble opinion) This is pure charity.

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Re:12-year study will look at effects of universal basic income by jgtrosh on Monday May 07, 2018 @11:42AM (#17013616)

What do you mean by pigeon holing here? I don't understand what are the variables and what is the value space. (No disrespect, just trying to understand.)

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Re:12-year study will look at effects of universal basic income by latchkey on Monday May 07, 2018 @11:08AM (#17013292)

$148 USD in HCMC [1], which is a modern city.

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=vietnam+average+salary

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Re:12-year study will look at effects of universal basic income by Sverigevader on Monday May 07, 2018 @10:50AM (#17013155)

I'd assume that a UBI study like this would start with having people suddenly not being forced to work to survive, or do anything for that matter, while looking at how their lives change over the course of at least a year. Without any kind of guidance I'd expect a fast descent into apathy and lethargy with most people.

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Re:12-year study will look at effects of universal basic income by doubletgl on Monday May 07, 2018 @11:46AM (#17013659)

This contra-UBI argument is often made, but I find it a bit short-sighted. Instead of having "survival" or "career" as a overarching goal in life, (some) people will have to find their own purpose in life. It's a bigger challenge but I believe in human adaptability. The question is how painful it will be initially and how long it will take for people to settle in this new mindset.

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Re:12-year study will look at effects of universal basic income by Sverigevader on Tuesday May 08, 2018 @03:40AM (#17019487)

This is essentially my viewpoint as well. To mitigate the effects during the transition period I imagine some kind of social service in place where people can spend a lot of time learning to adapt to this new lifestyle.

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Re:12-year study will look at effects of universal basic income by jpindar on Monday May 07, 2018 @11:57AM (#17013762)

Would YOU quit your job and descend into apathy and lethargy? You're saying you'd PREFER to be poor?

Centuries of human history shows that most people choose not to be poor, if at all possible. Many go to great lengths to avoid it.

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Re:12-year study will look at effects of universal basic income by dragonwriter on Monday May 07, 2018 @12:25PM (#17014014)

> Centuries of human history shows that most people choose not to be poor, if at all possible.

And it's not just “poor vs. not poor”; a substantial share of the people who have the capacity to be rich without much effort expend additional effort to be more rich, if there are opportunities to do so.

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Re:12-year study will look at effects of universal basic income by spacehome on Monday May 07, 2018 @12:31PM (#17014073)

Some do. Some are quite contented.

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Re:12-year study will look at effects of universal basic income by herbst on Monday May 07, 2018 @03:08PM (#17015512)

Since I don't have to worry about a basic income (online business, not part of some experiment) i do a lot more for me, society and my future income.

Therefore I highly believe also other people would adapt this way given a real chance.

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Re:12-year study will look at effects of universal basic income by aaavl2821 on Monday May 07, 2018 @11:32AM (#17013503)

I'm not sure if this played into the researchers decisions, but giving a small but meaningful amount of money to very low income people allows you to increase the size and duration of a study for a given level of research funding. many low wage workers live on a dollar a day or less, I think wages for textile workers in Vietnam for ex are $2 a day, and poverty levels in Africa are even lower

If instead they gave $40k / year to people in the US, they could only fund 625 person-years. So this design would limit the ability to predict how UBI would work in the US, but 1) provides help to those who need it most and 2) maximizes your sample size

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Re:12-year study will look at effects of universal basic income by p1esk on Monday May 07, 2018 @04:40PM (#17016310)

So after spending $25M we still won't know if UBI would work in the US. And we won't know if UBI works for middle class.

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Re:12-year study will look at effects of universal basic income by deevolution on Monday May 07, 2018 @10:47AM (#17013125)

Also considering inflation and the weakening of the US dollar and theyre getting even less. There are so many environmental variables as well, especially over such a large time frame. It will definitely be hard to find a strong signal through all that noise. They need to go big or go home with this kind of experiment.

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Re:12-year study will look at effects of universal basic income by mobilefriendly on Monday May 07, 2018 @11:05AM (#17013274)

Well, the dollar is up about 80% against the Kenyan Shilling over the past ten years. Even if the dollar weakens in the coming years the local currency may fare worse.

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Re:12-year study will look at effects of universal basic income by ashoon on Monday May 07, 2018 @10:58AM (#17013217)

Checking into Kenyan living wage numbers from a few sources, it looks like this would be no more than 10%-15% of a living wage.

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