Yep. Meaningless. Yet the paper will be blasted from one end of the earth to the other by people who care more about their agenda than the universe's frequently unhappy truths.
Probably the same people who said that increasing the money supply wouldn't cause inflation because MMT or some other tendentious garbage.
It's not meaningless. It's not enough to prove that basic income will have a long term positive impact, but it is enough to show further experimentation on a larger, more long term scale is worthwhile. It's decidedly unreasonable, not to mention unscientific, to dismiss something because you don't like it.
We've done that experiment. The results are self-evident.
This isn't suggestive, valid science. It's the equivalent of setting up a "scientific" contraption that purports to be a perpetual motion machine. You can create a pretty convincing fake perpetual motion machine, but because we have a broader theory of mechanics, we know perpetual motion is impossible, that the purported machine must be cheating somehow (even if it's not immediately obvious), and that to give funding for further study based on that machine's existence would be absolutely stupid.
We've done a long-term wide-scale UBI experiment? Where?
I hope you don't mean any fickle systems tied to covid, and I especially hope you don't mean the unemployment boost the US did; unemployment pay is very different from basic income.
And even if something fails, that doesn't prove it's some kind of impossibility like perpetual motion machines.
The closest analogue to true UBI goes on in the oil-rich Gulf nations. Citizens are basically guarenteed a job where they don't even need to show up, which is basically an inefficient form of UBI. Some, like Saudi Arabia are transitioning to true UBI.
The result of this is that these nations are completely reliant on foreign labor. Both skilled on unskilled work is dominated by foreigners. The latter have enough leverage to live comfortably. Unfortunately for unskilled workers, they're kept in slavery-like conditions and even have their passports taken away because otherwise, the cost of living would be too high for citizens to live off state income.
And the closest Western equivalent is the pension system. Also not a perfect comparison since pensioners are obviously older and have more assets on average, and some have large private payouts at the time state pensions kick in. But few people carry on working full time, and the system relies almost entirely on the labour of people who are not entitled to pensions to sustain it, to the point pensionable ages are needing to increase because healthier, longer lived people don't retire any later.
I've seen enough of my elders get their pensions to know what happens. Suddenly their schedule gets MUCH busier. Just because they're not necessarily doing paid work, doesn't mean that they're not doing useful things in society.
Hard to find good sources but Kuwait had a median household income of $40k. Meanwhile, almost 1 million workers make less than $300 a month, so Kuwait citizen families likely make a lot more than $40k.
The purpose of money is a medium of exchange for goods and services. Giving money for the sake of nothing defeats the entire purpose of money, because you're giving everyone money without creating new good and services. Note that this is different from conditional payments like food stamps or pensions, which serve the purpose of insurance. This is also different from welfare, which is targeted towards certain people in hopes of improving their well-being.
> Hard to find good sources but Kuwait had a median household income of $40k. Meanwhile, almost 1 million workers make less than $300 a month, so Kuwait citizen families likely make a lot more than $40k.
Yeah that sounds pretty unbalanced.
> The purpose of money is a medium of exchange for goods and services. Giving money for the sake of nothing defeats the entire purpose of money, because you're giving everyone money without creating new good and services. Note that this is different from conditional payments like food stamps or pensions, which serve the purpose of insurance. This is also different from welfare, which is targeted towards certain people in hopes of improving their well-being.
People get lots of things for "free", like infrastructure, and that doesn't defeat the purpose of money. Basic income isn't "for the sake of nothing".
What conditions do you think are important for food stamps and welfare?
If a certain level of low income is good enough, that's basically equivalent to universal income plus progressive taxation.
So how would that be different from Americans getting ~$12000 and buying goods from developing countries where workers also make $300 a month.
>People get lots of things for "free", like infrastructure
Infrastructure serves a specific purpose. Why should we give money to people for free when we can instead use it to build infrastructure?
>What conditions do you think are important for food stamps and welfare?
Welfare targets people who cannot provide for themselves, such as children and the disabled. We don't lose much productivity by giving these people money. Every able bodied adult should be expected to give back to society.
> So how would that be different from Americans getting ~$12000 and buying goods from developing countries where workers also make $300 a month.
I don't really know how to respond to this because we buy those goods anyway.
> Infrastructure serves a specific purpose. Why should we give money to people for free when we can instead use it to build infrastructure?
Every category of spending has diminishing returns. You'd never want to spend everything on infrastructure, or zero in any effective category.
> Welfare targets people who cannot provide for themselves, such as children and the disabled. We don't lose much productivity by giving these people money. Every able bodied adult should be expected to give back to society.
We also want to have certain standards for non-dehumanizing employment, and not everyone has access to jobs that meet those standards. Basic income is a way to help that situation a lot, but do you have better ideas?
Also how much productivity do we need to demand from everyone? Somehow a century after establishing 40 hours, with productivity per hour skyrocketing over that time, we're demanding more than 40 hours from so many workers just to make ends meet.
This phrase is usually used to force through otherwise unpopular economic policies. But here’s the thing, this isn’t actually an argument. You’re unilaterally asserting that you’re right and that anyone who disagrees with you is a child that refuses to accept “hard truths”. But you have offered literally no evidence for your assertions, only bluster. This is mere abuse of rhetoric, not an argument.
Oh, and it’s funny how only other people have an “agenda”. As if you aren’t also expressing a policy preference too.
Probably the same people who said that increasing the money supply wouldn't cause inflation because MMT or some other tendentious garbage.