https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2023/12/1/23981194/givedirectly-basic-income-experiment-abhijit-banerjee-tavneet-suri
Money always helps, but for the very poor, one lump sum can last a long time.
Actual summary:
While you're free to circlejerk about how the article shows how great UBI is, that's not really what it talks about.
The researchers found no evidence that any of the payments discouraged work or increased purchases of alcohol
I'd say that this is a pretty important finding. This is a common talking point for people against UBI, so finding evidence to the contrary is promising
I agree it's a useful insight, but it's the only sentence in the entire article that isn't instead discussing the merits of lump sum vs regular payment. Saying that "it's the takeaway" from the linked article is insanity.
The Wikipedia page for Hitler includes the sentence:
The stock market in the United States crashed on 24 October 1929.
That doesn't make it the takeaway of the article!! If you want to make a case for something, bring the right evidence. As the researchers themselves have said, this study can't just be generalized to high-income countries.
Be careful of this conclusion. When a similar pilot project was done for homeless people (in Canada, I believe), the methodology was rigged. They made it so only people they felt would be most likely to give the pilot a positive result were selected. This created an overwhelming bias towards the outcome.
I'm not sure exactly what the methodology was for this Kenyan project, but I'm hoping that there was no selection bias.
That's not what rigged means. And either you didn't understand the selection process or you don't want to understand it because you are against the idea of the UBI
Just to put it out there, I COMPLETELY AND FULLY SUPPORT UBI.
That’s not what rigged means. And either you didn’t understand the selection process or you don’t want to understand it because you are against the idea of the UBI
My example of the (I think Canadian) study, was set up in a way that could only produce a positive result. In other words, they excluded people who would contradict the result that the study organizer was after. It was rigged in quite a few ways, not only in selection bias but also in publication bias, and researcher bias.
That particular study left me doubting other studies, which is why I think it's important to acknowledge that these bias' exist.
That's not to say that this pilot wasn't a huge success, as I do think it was!
But if you specifically omit alcoholics or drug users, then it's hard to conclude that “The researchers found no evidence that any of the payments discouraged work or increased purchases of alcohol".
It's a bit of a sham research in this regard, but that doesn't detract from the fact that UBI can improve someone's quality of life.
Your analysis is rigged just as much. It was not a rigged study, it was asking a specific question, because that's how research work.
Would you prefer it if they specifically selected drug addict and long term unemployed people? But what would that experiment show? Absolutely nothing, unless you happen to not know yet what drugg addiction or depression do to people.
When you say it was rigged, you demonstrate that you don't understand the question that was tested in the experiment.
...it was asking a specific question, because that’s how research work.
"One of the big questions GiveDirectly is trying to answer is how to direct cash to low-income households."
What I'm saying is that if they are excluding key demographics from those low-income households, then their study is bias. Nothing more, nothing less.
The conclusion they came up with regarding the purchase of alcohol might not even make sense, for example, if they gave money to a high-religious group of people who don't consume alcohol. Is that making my point any clearer?
I was only suggestion caution based on how I know the other study was rigged.
Would you prefer it if they specifically selected drug addict and long term unemployed people?
Depends on the study's objective.
Put it this way: If a study is trying to find out whether UBI would benefit a community, state, or country, it NEEDS to include an accurate representation of the demographics of those groups of people.
When you say it was rigged, you demonstrate that you don’t understand the question that was tested in the experiment.
I'm saying the other study was rigged. I can't even see the methodology of this study because the link is broken. If I could see how they distributed this money, and whether any exclusions were presented, I could form a more accurate opinion.
This is not even really a proper implimentation of UBI anyways right? They are injecting more capital into the local economy of course people were better off...
I still dont see this as a proper experiment of UBI since it's not self-contained within a society.
Okay, great. Then let's actually do it. Everything below 100 percent implementation is a success so let's stop handwringing over the size of the experiment and pull the trigger.
In this experiment, external funding is paying for the handouts.
In a self-contained system, the same system/community providing the handouts would be generating the revenue for them (e.g., via taxation). Think of existing social welfare where "the system" generates the revenue that pays for the welfare programs.
That's irrelevant to the question here. Here the question is how would people live their lives depending on the variation of the UBI. They still pay taxes. It's no different than government money.
The question you are asking is where the money will come from. Or how will the government finance this. It's not a difficult question to solve, except for liberals who hate taxes more than anything else on earth.