The claim is that UBI could create a permanent dependent underclass, and evidence that a cohort of unemployed people receiving lots of money from the government self-reports greater happiness than a cohort of unemployed people receiving relatively little money from the government over the space of the year does absolutely nothing to address that.

It's rather secondary to the real objection to UBI: paying for it.

Quite consistently, at least in Canada and the US, welfare is claimed to cause dependency, lazyiness, and reduce the ambition of the receivers WHILE we are paying for it.

I'm saying BOTH that it's good for people AND that it's affordable are still in dispute and that the claims are clearly not obvious.

Sure, and my argument is that proving that welfare recipients who temporarily received a greater subsidy than other welfare recipients self-reported greater levels of happiness than welfare recipients on less money does absolutely nothing to undermine arguments about welfare dependency.

The arguments - with varying degreees of plausibility - are all of the form 'long term welfare dependency is unhealthy for society' not, 'welfare recipients would be happier if their welfare income was lower'.

Ok. Why are you making that argument to me? I never asserted the opposite? Why are disagreeing with a point I never made?

You disagreed with someone up the chain that the experiment's conclusions were "obvious". Since all the experiment appears to have found is that recipients of temporarily more generous benefit entitlements self report less stress and greater confidence than those who receive less generous entitlement, even most hardened opponents of the welfare state would agree that such conclusions were obvious.

> The most persistent objections to UBI (or welfare or unemployment for that matter) is that they cause dependency and lazyiness; that they destroy the self-confidence and ambition of the receivers.

And that's not conflicting with reporting less financial stress during an intervention. The self-reported consequences from eating some candy are very different from the consequences of using candy as a primary diet for long periods of time.

There are three claims that the comment I replied to said are obvious; two claims are constantly disputed and one is regularly disputed. None are, therefore, obvious.

My point is that there are differences between a) what people self-report and what the outside world thinks about their situation and b) an isolated short-term experiment and a long-term domestic/global thing.

If you won $1bn in the lottery, you'd be quite rich and, in so far that money can make you happy, probably also quite happy. If literally everybody won the lottery at the same time and got $1bn, you'd be back where you were before winning the lottery, as your $1bn wouldn't have the same relative value. Sure, you have a billion, but bread now costs $100k and your rent is $100m.

Ok. But I never said any of those things were true. My only point is that the claims in the study are not obvious, I'm not claiming they are true.

I happen to believe they are but this study doesn't establish that; and we are missing a golden opportunity to do some real UBI studies with the billions in aid that are suddenly sloshing around.

UBI is not welfare. Welfare is supposed to be designed as a safety net to help people get off of welfare and help pay for the people who need it.