New results from another completed basic income pilot. This one was in Cambridge, MA where 130 people got $500/mo for 18 months. Did they work less? No. They worked MORE.
Recipients went from 36% FT employed to 40%. Those who didn't get it went from 30% to 28%.
cambridgecf.org/research-on-...
That’s because “socialism is BAD” as everyone knows. And “handouts will make people lazy and entitled”.
I think this is like when “religious” people believe that atheists are incapable of morality and will automatically do all manner of atrocities without fear of a god to keep them in line.
For those asking "why keep doing these experiments": the researchers know. The repetition of these studies is 1. their version of throwing a binder at policymakers going IT WORKS YOU CHUCKLEHEADS FUND IT ALREADY and 2. helping people who could benefit from UBI by giving them "experimental" UBI
The pilots are great; huge fan. How about support for scaling up, though? Some back-of-napkin figures...
$500/mo to the ~165m Americans making < median income = ~$990bn annually (if I'm reading numbers that big accurately). In the long-term, Medicare, etc. costs go down, but how to get started??
While I’m not personally a fan of *U*BI, $990 billion is less than what we currently pay out in interest payments on our fiat currency and receive nothing in return
Set the interest rate to zero, forever, by law
The interest payments are what enable our endless deficit spending and why we haven't run into the fiscal crisis the doomers keep forecasting. We pay reliably, keeping demand up, keeping rates down, allowing more deficit spending.
Huh? No, we, the government, the Fed, decide how much interest to pay and we can decide *today* to pay 0%
The interest rate has nothing to do with deficits, my friend
Ok, I suppose this is just the misconception that investors “fund” the government
Our government funds itself by issuing and taxing its own money; US bonds are just a holdover from the gold standard as is most of our monetary thinking
It's kind of amazing how much mainstream economic wisdom of income substitution effect is just pure theory, completely unmoored from actual data on human behavior.
That's fascinating and encouraging. With a.i on the rise it's on, our govt better warm up to the idea of basic universal income quickly or there will be a massive hole in our economy. Amazing results tho here especially considering $500 in Cambridge is equal to like $20 anywhere else lol 😆
