> Finland proposes paying the unemployed (this differs slightly from unemployment benefits in the US) while Ontario proposes paying anyone below the poverty line.

Neither of these is a UBI. Paying only people who are unemployed is in particular quite the opposite of what you want, because it discourages people from taking a job since they'll lose the money. Moreover, you need more of the middle class to be receiving some of the money (they'll pay some but not all of it back in taxes), because that's what increases consumer demand.

> Neither of these is a UBI.

They're considered quasi-UBI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_basic_income#Quasi-U...

I do agree there are better implementations to be had, and that the implementation probably makes all the difference in outcomes. That said, I wouldn't say they're expressly not UBI.

I also just learned about this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_basic_income#Alaska_...

Quasi expressly means not really.

Google claims under 9,000 results for quasi UBI. Some use it to highlight how actual UBI would be better. Some use it to describe programs like basic income for everyone in rural regions. Not expanded unemployment benefits.

It's also a good expression for something that doesn't perscriptively follow UBI but accomplishes the net effect or intended outcome. I'm willing to admit that there's more than one way to accomplish what UBI wants to accomplish.

But you're then using evidence from the not-UBI to claim that a UBI doesn't do something (benefit businesses), when the difference between the UBI and the not-UBI is that the not-UBI wouldn't be expected to do that thing.

Right, because that's the only evidence I have to draw from when UBI in the form you're referencing doesn't exist yet.

I also didn't say it can't, but I think the choice to make it optimal for SMB's, middle class, and upper middle class is an intentional one. I don't think that'll happen just by doing UBI. Hence I said, if you think it will then citation needed.

This is the same form of argument people use against building newer nuclear power plant designs.

A: "Newer designs are safer."

B: "There is no evidence of that because they haven't been built yet."

A: "We're talking about the design here. You can see that it has these passive safety features which..."

B: "But there is no evidence of that because they haven't been built yet."

A: "Okay, then let's build them so that we can see the evidence."

B: "No, we can't build them because there is no evidence that it works."

That's not what I'm doing and I don't appreciate you misrepresenting what I said like that, intentional or not.

UBI is purely theoretical. It does not exist anywhere on the planet in the form you're describing.

The US has engaged in UBI-like systems for quite a while, as have other countries.

UBI ascribes that everyone must get the benefit in order for the effects to be felt.

COVID incurred UBI-like payments, how these were used is worth studying, but they don't prove or disprove UBI. They certainly didn't improve the situation for small businesses, which is my point - if it takes a holistic UBI system to prove UBI and you're unwilling to figure out how to decompose it, then we'll never get it, and we're all doomed. That to me seems rather silly.

It is not a given that UBI will be a boon for businesses (big or small). Personally, I do think it will benefit large corporations, but it remains to be seen how small and medium businesses will fare -- and I think that largely depends on implementation details that need to be discovered. That much needs to be proven.

In order to prove some of the claims of UBI, countries are doing experiments and looking at specific effects that their implementations have in order to gauge UBI. Nobody is going to look a the monumental cost of UBI and fire a hope-driven-missile in terms of policy and economic risk, which is absolutely understandable. Finland and Ontario are putting out some tests, the inference they draw will largely depend on the questions they set out to answer. This is probably also informing them on how they could roll out UBI progressively.

What I was contesting was the absoluteness of this statement:

> This is why a UBI is good for businesses -- customers have more money in their pockets.

Nothing says that because people have money that they will spend it, much less where you want them to spend it. That has to be incentivized and we have to experiment with how to incentivize it.

It's a lot closer to UBI than existing systems. The Finnish case is an experiment where a random sample of unemployed folks can be paid for some time even after taking a job. It explores the impact of the very incentives you're talking anout.

(And yes, the lower-middle class will probably still be net UBI recipients if only barely, because this helps with smoothing out incentives at the lower end. You don't want to have a sudden benefit cliff, or else a breakeven point that's infeasibly high.)

If UBI is implemented we may be able to do away with minimum wage, at which point small businesses could possibly offer better (more interesting, less stressful) working conditions for less money, it’s possible people might go for that.

Right now companies must make $X per employee per hour. If their business cannot do that it’s deemed that it’s not productive enough and should not exist.

Agreed, that is a possible future, but it also depends on not raising taxes for already cash strapped SMB's and bankrolling those efforts with large corporations and high income earners who have lots of capital to fight those initiatives.