[creadee]

A lot of people around the world have been receiving old-age pensions for quite a while. Many are still healthy and able, with some of those working and some not.

Why will this study provide better data about how people will behave when given a basic income than the presumably huge amount of data available about how healthy people behave on a pension?

Working out how to plug a basic income into an economy, how to arrive at what it should be and how to transition an economy to include a basic income would be a better use resources.

[eru]

In Germany, I think, you can only get your state pension when you stop working? (Or at least, there are severe restrictions on working.)

But given these caveats, that probably exist similarly in other countries, it's a good field to study.

Of course, the social expectations on people on old-age pensions are quite different from the ones on the working-age population.

[creadee]

> In Germany, I think, you can only get your state pension when you stop working?

I think that's the same in the UK, too. In other countries you can work and still receive the state pension, but most seem to be means-tested...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_pension

Denmark apparently has the best pension scheme which includes a "public basic pension scheme"...

http://www.thelocal.dk/20141013/denmark-has-worlds-best-pens...

> Of course, the social expectations on people on old-age pensions are quite different from the ones on the working-age population.

Which is why I said 'healthy', who should be the subset who are studied.

[eru]

Yes, but I think even `healthy' is not enough of a qualifier.

Ie healthy old people (who are well off enough) might be expected to go on cruises etc. I wouldn't count their voluntary unemployment for much, when I was trying to forecast what effects a universal basic income had on the general population.

(On the other hand, I would count their voluntary employment for a lot.)

[creadee]

I think we can assume those whose income is just a state pension or just a BI won't be able to afford cruises...

As with a pension, many of those receiving a BI will have other sources of income, so I think it is a good match. And if you look at my link about Denmark, you'll see that Denmark is to do away with forced retirement. Their pension starts at 65, while their forced retirement age was 70. "Current employment legislation allows companies to dismiss employees when they turn 70, but Frederiksen said the legislation should be changed to reflect the modern workforce."

So even in the country with supposedly the best pension scheme in the world, people still want to keep working beyond 65.

I don't see much point in small-scale tests of a BI. They'll tell us how a few receiving them will behave, but they won't tell us how businesses or the economy will behave when everyone's receiving them. And it's the latter we really should be wanting to understand.

[eru]

Depends what you mean by small-scale. On a US scale, all of Denmark is small scale.

[creadee]

What I mean is it won't tell you how a BI will affect the economy as a whole. Not that studying a pension scheme will either, but it can probably provide you with insights that are just as useful as YC's study will.